Rollup TV Live: Outlier Ventures, Wormhole Labs, Moonbirds and Alpen Labs

Transcript

[music] [music] How about the [music] [music] mother? I'm above the [music] >> [music]

[music] >> JP Morgan, Black Rock, DTCC, Fidelity, the entire thing was just institutions. [music] It's just it's next level. This industry is going to the next level. And guys, I I don't know what else to say. You said it. You finally said it. We're so bullish. [music] I'm bullish. We're boys. [music] [music] [music]

>> [music] >> I'm above the [music] [music] >> [music] >> I'm the mother. [music] [music] H the [music]

mother [music] [music] is headed to the top. If we're not already at the top, we're going to the top. We're on fourth floor today. We're going to be on floor one and then we're headed straight to the moon, boys. >> Intro goes crazy. To the moon, Rob. >> Hey, I'm thankful. I'm thankful for uh for the innovation exemption this year.

This this year, >> dude. To the moon. Did Vanguard just save our bags? Is that what just happened? >> I think Paul Atkins I think Paul Atkins hopped on. He's making a whole New York finance tour and uh he decided that he's uh he's Santa this year. >> To the moon. To the moon. Dude, that so there's a doomer news account that is similar to Zoomer. If you guys have seen them, there's like a a doomeride and a Zoomerfi one. Do not listen to anything that the doomer guy says because he put out a post today that said the that that Micro Strateers was officially going to get added to the S&P in January and I completely bought it and totally BS. So, >> no, they uh

>> I kind of got uh owned there. >> Yeah, Strategy's not getting uh added to the S&P with Bitcoin under 100K. That's >> not anytime soon. >> That's just not they need they need there. We went through the uh criteria for them to get added. do think that if and when they do get added, it is inevitable and they will be added eventually. But >> yeah, >> and I think it will I think it'll be bullish because there's a lot of flows and funds that are just tracking the indicy right? >> Yeah. >> It's just tracking the index and and a bunch of passive money is just buying the S&P without any regard of what's included. They're just trusting uh standard and poor to make their decisions for them.

>> So, whatever strategy does get included, that that'll be quite bullish. But no, today I >> today was Vanguard. I think you think it was Paul Atkins. I guess it was probably was Paul Atkins, but the Vanguard thing probably didn't make much of an actual difference. >> Well, the Vanguard thing was rumored yesterday. I doubt there was much flows in the first few hours that it was live. Yeah, >> maybe I'm wrong, but >> uh >> actually, how do we even look? Maybe Blockworks has that data. >> Well, it's just the ETF, right? But it's a matter of how much volume they're seeing through Vanguard's >> Yeah.

>> Uh ETF. Like Vanguard is a broker. You can buy the ETF through them as a broker. >> Yeah. >> Uh but it think this thing was already available. It's just a matter of Vanguard clients being able to buy it. >> Yeah. All right, guys. We got our first guest ready to go. Uh >> I do think this Paul Atkins thing is going to be bullish. >> Let's talk about it with Jamie. I'm sure he's gonna have a take. >> So, yeah. Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure he will. So, we can bring him up here whenever he's ready. >> Uh but I just watched the segment and I think uh I I do think that what they're trying to do is push forward as much as they can without Congress. Right. So the so you know they're trying to do market structure, they're trying to do genius,

they're trying to do clarity, all these things. And what Paul Atkins said this morning, and he's going on all of these things, he's trying to make a big press store out of it, is that they have enough power just in the SEC to push through some exemption for a lot of uh companies to go and be more publicly accessible to broader markets. >> Yeah, could be. >> Okay, guys, we got Jamie here. Rob, hold on. Hold on. Jamie, are you there? Just >> I am here. Yeah, hopefully you can hear. >> You're with us. >> Yes, we can hear you. Very good. >> Uh Rob, please please please finish. And Jamie, I'd love to hear your thoughts just to kick off about this Paul Aen speech today because I think it it it did have some immediate market impact, but I think the more longer term impact

is probably what actually matters here. >> Well, you're going to have to tell me what it is because I'm in Art Basel Miami looking at art at the moment. So, wasn't wasn't paying attention. [laughter] >> That's not too far from digital art. So, it's It's It's >> exactly where you should be, man. Yeah. I I was in our Basel last year. Pudgy Penguins threw a nice party. Um we are from Florida and uh our Florida is the home of our Basel, so it's a great time. Um and yeah, this regulatory exemption is uh is what Paul Atkins uh is talking about today in New York. He's making a bit of a press tour on NASDAQ and uh on on Wall Street. He's saying basically the SEC has the power to open up capital markets to a lot of these offerings from

crypto companies. Uh and they're not required to wait on Congress to push forward legislation. Uh they have the power to exempt a lot of companies from uh the regulatory overhang that had plagued the industry for so long. Um which ultimately should end up for a free market and uh should allow a lot of these more innovative crypto companies to flourish uh in public markets. >> Yeah. Well, look, I mean, sounds positive. And the reality is that um the regulatory environment in the US has just never been more positive, more constructive.

Um and yet we we we are where we are with the markets, right? And so that's kind of the great um paradox at the moment really. Um so it's great for innovation. Um, and I think in particular things like DeFi, um, where founders can be based in the US and and not be concerned about ending up in jail, right? And you know, we've had this drag on the industry for for over a decade now really um helping people uh have this kind of chicken um this kind of game of of uh uh regulatory arbitrage and like having one entity in Singapore and you know one foot in Dubai and and it it the the amount of you know for a startup if you think about these things

as kind of just early stage startups like the the the amount of money that was required to be spent on structuring ing alone u and minimizing the risk of innovation um was just ridiculously prohibitive relative to any other industry any other kind of thing a founder could be doing. So um on the one hand it's good from a kind of markets perspective but I think it's also good in bringing more founders into the space right it it's kind of legitimizing the space it's giving them more certainty that they can innovate in it and there's not kind of this risk that you know half the founders on the planet are just not even going to consider entering the space if they think they're even coming close to breaking the law. So this this is good

news. >> Definitely. Definitely. Um Jimmy, has the has your kind of venture arm from uh Outlier, have you guys had a change in strategy the last six months? Uh you know, we've seen this shift towards uh a lot of these public sales. Now, I think Aztec just went live with their ICO today. We saw Infinex announced their sonar sale. there's a general shift in uh direction in terms of air drops versus ICOs as well as valuations as well as you know business model and focus on customer and you know I think there's just a lot of a lot of different takes going on right now and from our perspective we we had uh you know done about two years of pretty heavy early stage kind of venture funding from our

own capital from like pretty much mid 23 all the way to like about Q1 this year since then We've pretty much said no to about 99.9% of teams maybe only written like two checks in the last six months. Um our thesis is pretty much just around okay guys we're at a certain point in the market where things have gotten a bit a bit out of hand. Uh people are raising easily. People want to throw money at anything. We're going to take a back seat and kind of watch this unfold. Uh and then kind of re re uh invigorate our venture stuff, you know, when the sentiment goes goes bad again. And Frankly, we got there a little bit quickly quicker than we expected, but I think it could get quite a bit worse uh if we do go lower and but that's when we kind of think the good venture deals

will actually appear again. Do you agree? Are we missing something? What are your what what what's been your uh strategy this year from a venture perspective with with regards to actually allocating to to founders? >> Yeah. Well, I mean, so you know, we've been operating for near 12 years now and we've constantly had to change our model, right? and it it's kind of just inherent to the to the industry. Um and so yes, you know, we we've kind of over probably the same kind of time period that you're talking about um with your your change in strategy, we've similarly um restructured the organization and kind of realigned it to where we think value is going to acrue. Um in what are we

now? So yeah, beginning of 23. Um, so actually to step back like our we're an open-ended fund effectively. We're actually an LLP, so we don't manage the party LP money, which gives us huge freedom in what we do, the time horizons that we invest in. Um, a change of strategy. Um, you know, we could in theory affect overnight if we wanted to. It doesn't sadly it doesn't quite work work like that at our scale, but in theory we can. Um and generally our model is that we we kind of have this um uh seeding and harvesting depending upon where we are in in the cycle. Um

traditionally we've always been very focused at preed seed. Um you know we were up studio then we're an incubator um then we're an accelerator with the accelerator we became one of the most active investors by deals done in I think 23 and 24. certainly top three. Um and that was very intentional. We thought that was the time to be deploying at that stage. Um that gave us a portfolio now of about 400 investments. Um heavily indexed on on seed across pretty much every category from ZK to um DIP, even some emerging ones like um robotics. And so we we kind of feel like we've got most bases covered now for

kind of the our broad thesis which is kind of a a decade long and something that we call the post web. Maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later. Um so we kind of feel we're we're indexed if not overindexed on on on on seed. And so, uh, with regards to that, we're kind of now just, um, watching how that plays out, um, how some of those mature and and because that 400 portfolio is, um, has different stages now as a consequence of being around for for 12 years, it gives us lots of different kind of data points on the market, what's working, what's not working. Um, both like within categories and more

broadly. Um and you know from those data points we we then try to I mean it's more art than science is the is the honest truths right but we try to kind of synthesize that and say okay if we project forward what does that mean for the next 6 12 months. Similarly, one of the one of the benefits of having run the accelerator and in particular in collaboration with a number of different ecosystems is it also gives us kind of um some insights ac across some of the kind of larger blue chip protocols where where adoption is actually happening.

You know, how that might be uh may or may not be correlated um with their kind of performance of their token. [snorts] Um and so that all of that to kind of together um gave us a a pretty stark view of the market I'd say coming into this year. >> Um and it was really just a case of beginning to transition the organization to move away from um acceleration at scale. So we we're still um running a couple of programs very very selectively um within things like privacy which we're highly convicted of and we believe is going to be relevant for um this kind of transitionary period.

>> Um but more generally in terms of what we're doing with our liquid capital is putting it to work in in liquid markets in secondary markets. um primarily because um you know we need to finance our business um but also because we think that's where the action's going to happen. So um that's to kind of just set the scene in terms of kind of how we orient to the market but effectively our view and and this has kind of been the house view for the last 12 months is that we're going through a period of consolidation. you know, clearly everything that was going on with kind of the meme coins was this kind of last attempt to kind of just recycle gains because there was no there was no real new capital coming in. Um, and a lot of

the attention kind of obviously with ETFs and stuff went into Bitcoin, ETH and and and Saul. So the alt none of that was kind of cascading down into alts and certainly wasn't cascading down into new launches. Um so within within that context um we believe that there'll be consolidation. Um especially if the only new money that's coming in is going to be institutional and through institutional products. They're going to be looking for tried and tested networks um tried and tested founders. And actually one of the ways that we're kind of looking at this now and I think you can kind of uh see this with with the kind of privacy narrative that's happening is um it's not just kind of

capital follows trust and and ultimately we're in a trust crisis at the moment. Um when you're in a bull market trust I signal becomes very diffuse because everybody can be right a little bit. Um what happens is in a market like this which is not just um I'd argue a bare market but a sustained bare market um you that trust collapses um and what begins to happen um is that it will it will kind of reconstitute itself around um I believe a very small handful of signals which are people like Vitalic you know people arguably like the Vinkos twins people who've been across cycles

who largely have their integrity intact and are talking about things that they think are important for the industry. You know, privacy being one, identity. Um, and so the good news is that I think that capital will begin to coalesce around these signals, a very small handful. Um, that will be institutional for better or for worse. Um, but it will be going into things that I think are important to progress the industry, important to bring new assets, new kinds of economic flows on chain. Um, and so really that's kind of where we're looking to allocate capital. I'll be honest with you right now, you know, I mean, even when I go to like get my head

shaved at the barber, right, people know I'm in crypto and they say, "Where should I put my money?" I'm like, "Dude, I have no idea." you know, like right now it's a complete show. Um, >> yeah, I've actually nobody was asking me in things like during Thanksgiving week. I mean, I had a couple people talk to me about it, but nothing like what it's usually like. >> I mean, honestly, I think it's being opportune like I I don't think the floor's necessarily in yet. um you know, we've kind of moved quite a lot of our liquid into stables and stuff like that and even some cash and and then we're kind of looking to reallocate when there begins to be a bit more of a recovery, but I think it's going to be slow. Um I think it's going to be gradual. Um I think it's most likely going to

consolidate into, you know, like the top 20, top 50. um I don't think that's going to yield you know crazy multiples but I think it should over over the course of the year you know give decent returns ultimately look the problem is um for our wider portfolio which is kind of seed late seed um you know many of those have put off launching uh their networks um some for over a year you know even even before 25 and every quarter they're like should we do it should we not do it. They of course have a lot of legacy issues that they need to reconcile on you know previous rounds and valuations

um all the kind of traditional launch methods are just aren't working >> and you know everyone's jaded you know you kind of see a lot of interviews and um dudes just look worn out washed out >> and everybody wanted uh Monad to fail like everyone wanted Monad to be a scam. >> Yeah. Well, so this I kind of liken it to this grieving process, right? Most people are grieving that they've roundt tripped it again. You know, they didn't realize the gains that they should. They everyone's feeling a lot poorer and again when you see equities performance and tech stock, it's kind of like it's a bit depressing. Um, and so we're in this phase of like anger and blame. So

everybody loves sovereignty when they're up and you know they don't like responsibility and sovereignty when they're down. So, they're looking for people to blame, whether it's Ral Pal or like, you know, Chris Benes, like whoever it is, it's like, I I did this because of that person and now I'm my bags are down. Um, and so, you know, people will get over that. Um and and and when they do, um you know, they're going to have to um they're going to have to then figure out, okay, well, what do I who do I if they can't form their own opinion on on what they want to invest in, well, who do they have conviction in as a signal?

Um and like I said, I think that's going to that's going to be a very small group of people. I think most people, most institutions, and I would even like hold my hands up and say outlier, right? you know, we've we've kind of lost a bit of our signal, right? Because for us, it was indirectly, you know, product of scale is 400 investments. Um, you're going to have a few blowups in there, right? Um, especially in these market environments. Um, and you know, that's nothing we've done. In fact, if anybody's lost, it's like we've often been the the biggest bag holder because our our tokens vest over several years.

Um but by virtue of our model like our signal is not as strong as it used to be and it and it shouldn't be right and we've got to re rebuild that rebuild that trust. So like we've gone through a whole process of just even doing due diligence on our existing portfolio >> like phoning them all up, interrogating the numbers and actually understanding, >> you know, historically we just support them and amplify what they're doing because we back them and like we're loyal. But actually, you know, there's there's going to be it's it's hard times at the moment. Bad markets lead to bad behaviors. some people are just tied it locked into, you know, a very narrow range of options. And so we're actually even just getting a lot more selective

of within our own portfolio those that we will and will not amplify. Um, and so I think there's this whole reset that has to happen. It starts with trust. Capital will then follow. >> Um, but I'm also like really optimistic. I think like privacy is a great thing. Um, it's great that we're talking about this and not all the other that that people have been wasting time on for, you know, the last two years. It feels like almost >> there's loads of other stuff that's really >> Do you guys do Aztec? Are you guys investors in in Aztec? No.

>> No. >> What about Zama? Did you guys do Zama? >> No. >> Okay. Those are both coming out sooner than later. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, Jimmy, I if you're somebody who's who's watching this right now who's, you know, got a basket of, you know, venture bags, liquid bags, uh, tons of different altcoins that are obviously still vesting or that they're down bad on some Bitcoin, some some majors, you know, how are you thinking about your your allocations going into 2026? How are you thinking about the the first and second half of 2026 in general? Um, it seems like uh sentiment is pretty low. It seems like people accept that there's a bare market that we're either in one now or that it's certainly coming while at the same time,

you know, from a from a bigger kind of perspective, it's never been better to be in crypto from a regulatory perspective, from a institutional adoption perspective. How do you kind of balance these two uh viewpoints and perspectives and kind of just uh phenomenon happening at the same time when it comes to your portfolio going in the end of the year into the end of 2026? Well, I mean, so to kind of the initial question, which was like if you're retail and and you know, you kind of got this exposure uh to, you know, pre uh pre-listed and and um you know, maybe some kind of low low liquidity uh alts.

My first advice would be get a job, like just some steady income for the next year because it's going to be wild. It's going to be bumpy and you know, you're not going to be getting crazy multiples, right? So just like get something that's going to bring you some cash and pay your bills and and just kind of get some comfort because really what what you want is optionality, right? And so that's what we've been quite careful to do at Outlier is to make sure that we have optionality, right? We're operating at a scale that we can afford to run over the next 24 months um without being a force seller. We're actually getting loads of OTC in equity um which is quite interesting. Um and in particular in regions like Latam, we ran a couple of

programs in Latam and like bridges and there's a lot of again coming back to this consolidation theme there's a lot of M&A happening right there's very few um there's a like a very small group of entities that have cash that are cash rich they want to put that to work and there are a load of others that might have launched a token but have kind of postponed it they've just focused on you know creating revenue and and and building value in equity business and most of those are just going to get acquired. And so we we've kind of got um as as people are starting to build positions or or negotiate um mergers and acquisitions um we're we're part of those conversations because we often have a kind of a hybrid of equity and token

exactly for this reason because it's we're not always sure across cycles where value is going to recruit. Um so you know we're we're actively looking at those. because we've executed on um you know exiting some of those divesting from some of those positions. We generally don't follow on in equity. So for us um you know we're all about the token and so if we can sell some equity great because we just get diluted anyway. Um and and so so that's being very very kind to us. Um and and we're being very kind of opportune there. Um and then more generally we're we're kind of sitting out a little bit. Um, so we're not necessarily doing uh we'll do

some selected deals um but but typically kind of later and where you know the business has they have a solid business. We're actually seeing a lot of teams that have progress in terms of users especially in a B2B context that are revenue generating sometimes even profitable at least break even. We're seeing a lot of um restructuring going on. So um where they might defer a token um they're kind of restructuring things where the token rights are kind of moved within um an equity entity and and so they're raising through equity but that equity carries token rights and and then

there's some optionality for the investor as to what they do there. Um, [snorts] and I actually think, you know, there is something in um, DATs. I know kind of everyone's on them at the moment and rightfully so, right? I think a lot of them are probably already in a lot of trouble. Um, uh, kind of more from naivity than anything else. But it's innovation, right? And a lot of things have got to fail when you're trying to do new things. But I do think there will be a trend towards harmonizing equity and token. um and having public entities like a an equity startup that actually lists maybe before it launches a token um and then when the markets come back,

you know, and they'll they'll have to figure out the relationship between those two things. We actually um uh did a kind of public proposal for Bass. Um just thinking around this like if you're if you're Coinbase, how do you reconcile like being a listed company and and and then and then having this this token out there? Um similarly um uh we're probably going to do one for um Brave cuz we're an equity investor in Brave. Um and you know that their their kind of equity business is going really really well.

There's a lot of stuff I can't say about it but they're very very well positioned in an agentic sense. Their API is being heavily used um by a lot of LLMs at the moment. And so there's a lot of interest in Brave Equity. Um, so you know, might they be looking, I don't know, at at um acquisition. If I were them, I'd be certainly thinking about spaxs. You know, might might I do some acquisitions and roll things up? But you're going to have to reconcile token and equity. And so I think these are the big questions.

We're going to have to see um new models, blueprints for what works. And I think this kind of gradual harmonization is a maturation of the space as I said that will lead to more institutional money coming in. I I think that's a good thing. I think indices which track categories and and perform fundamental analysis like seeing capital allocated against fundamentals is my is my dream. Like I've just it's never happened in 12 years. We spent all this time like designing tokens around utility. Nobody gives a They just want to, you know, they just want it to pump. And the less actually I think retail a driving

narrative the better. Retail can of course participate. But if they're following fundamental analysis, I think that's net positive for the space. So directionally it's all really positive, right? You just got to stay in the game, stay solvent, um, and and do what you got to do to kind of get through this. >> And that's that's where the signal comes from. You've been in this game for 12 years. you you mentioned some others and it's the people that stick around throughout the cycles that continue to coalesce the this the uh trust right these people that stick around are ultimately trust shelling points uh and they end up surviving people follow along um Jamie thank you so much for coming on I think it was an absolute uh pleasure uh you've given us a lot to

think about and I think you know others that are looking at this market that are kind of judging the sentiment they're trying to juxtapose right the the positive when it comes to the regulation, all the things happening beneath the surface, but this very jaded uh feeling that they're seeing in in the public sphere. I think you you really helped uh provide some through lines and and some clarity on on the way to think about these things. Thanks so much. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. And like what I would say as a kind of a closing thought is, you know, we've been through several of these before. Yeah. and and they are soul destroying because every nobody on the planet like traded how they should have done, right? Nobody on the planet realized the things that they should have realized. We all roundtrip

stuff. It can be depressing. But every time this happens and there's kind of a reset like if I look back at every other low, this is the best low that's ever been in terms of the environment because other ones were like a digital assets going to be a thing. Like there's been existential moments where like maybe we've just wasted seven years of our life on this thing and and actually it's just been like a fantasy. For sure digital assets are here now. I've never been able to say that from a market low like this.

>> Awesome. >> I agree. Thanks. >> Thank you so much. We'll see you next Basel. >> Yeah. Thank you. Bye. Bye. >> Bye. >> Cheers, man. [snorts] >> Our Basel. Great times. Great vibes always. I uh I'm honestly not jealous of missing it at all, but I definitely would be it would be fun to be there. >> The crypto stuff is always a little bit uh there's a crypto side of Art Bos and then there's like going enjoying enjoying the vibe, seeing seeing some art big. You like art? You go to art museums Andy?

>> I haven't been to one in a while, honestly. Um so yeah, have to figure that out. But like I said, I'm good on an art basel. is I don't think there's anything there for me. [laughter] >> All right, let's hit a quick commercial break and we'll be right back. We've got an interview that we want to show you guys with S from Wormhole. Uh it was a good time. We recorded it yesterday. We're going to show it to you coming up next. >> Yep. [music] >> Yet is built for big moments. The most fun you'll ever have with your crypto.

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been a lot happening not only the wormhole ecosystem but wormhole connects ecosystems together. We're going to be talking about monad Salana what it means to launch on Salana and how wormhole played a pretty significant role in helping that come to life. Uh say before uh before we get into it it's your first time on the show would love to just get a little bit of an intro into yourself and uh how you ended up at Wormhole. >> [snorts] >> Hey guys, nice nice to be here and thanks for having me. Um, yeah, I mean a little little bit of an intro. Been in the space for a long time. Um, really got into Bitcoin around 2010 2011 just as a holder just watching this project post 2008 financial crisis. Was like super interested in it. Um, didn't do

much in the space until maybe 2020. Um uh when I joined uh an HFT firm, started working there on the crypto desk over at Jump and um and then from there started contributing to a lot of projects. Um and and you know helped out with some of the the the infrastructure side of of the building efforts that were going on in in uh both Salana and Ethereum. Um and then you know wormhole seemed like a a really really cool idea um because of all of the pain points that we had experienced um building other primitives other other DAPs right and trying to get more

utility for the assets that um that we were using. And so uh to me it was a very much a no-brainer. We thought the uh the number of blockchains was going to continue to grow um and that this pain point would become more and more acute to the end user to people like ourselves who are trying to build in the space and so um we started to think of like from first principles like what can we uh what can we build and and contribute to that will maybe alleviate some of the friction. >> Yeah. Yeah. from from our we we've talked a lot about modularity and and uh again the the multi-chain thesis and uh the idea that there is more more and more blockchains that are coming up. A

lot of this uh TVL is happening on chain and and uh interop solutions like wormhole are are connecting them bringing them together. We've talked about the interop landscape uh quite a bit on the show. We've had Robinson on, we've had Dan from Wormhole on, uh, and you guys are, uh, are movers and shakers in the interop space, which is a very competitive landscape, but you guys were able to help execute on the Monad launch. And Monad chose to do something particularly unique in launch on Salana. And I think a lot of people were somewhat they were somewhat confused or or uh curious as to why Monad decided to launch their token on Salana given that Monad has its own blockchain uh and the typical playbook is for tokens to launch on centralized exchanges. And so uh this

caught a lot of people off guard. They were curious about it. Why did uh why did Monad decide to launch uh the Monad token on Salana? And how did Wormhole play a role in helping bring that to life? Absolutely. Um I can't I can't really speak to for Monad, but I'll give you my perspective um for why they would do that. Um I I think it really comes down to the way in which these blockchains uh are looking to compete, right? So how how does Monet actually see competition? Um and how does it see what what what are they bringing to the space and why are they valuable to the space? And I think for them um launching their token

only on sexes and their own L1 wasn't it's not the really the product that they're building, right? Um the fact that their their token is only listed on their blockchain is is not a moat. It's not something it's not really the reason for for for why they exist. Um, and so what I what I think kind of drove them or at least why they engaged positively with the Salana listing or the launch on Salana was simply because, hey, we want to rethink the playbook of trying to um, you know, uh, engage with the entire crypto universe, right? Not just centralized users and the nent community that we're building on Monet, but everyone. Um and and so everyone

understands that Salana has one of the best network effects in crypto. Um and you've heard so much about, you know, um trading on Salana and traders and the community and the and and and the you know, being number one on DEX volume week over week over week, you know, um and and so like there's there's a bunch of different ways you could try to tap into them. I think this particular way with Sunrise was very novel and it was something that um allowed for them to say okay this is how I'm going to engage with the Salana ecosystem. I'm going to do it in this almost mutually beneficial value additive uh way as opposed to just like deploying a bridge and hoping that you can siphon liquidity and users that

way. I think it was a little bit more thought out and I think Sunrise played a very big role in that and that's why this the launch ultimately was was was pretty successful. >> Yeah. So te tell us a little bit more about Sunrise. Uh I think everyone is is familiar with the wormhole portal uh using it to go from Ethereum to Salana and back uh obviously expanded in the interop landscape. Uh obviously the earn product is now is now live and doing well. Uh what is Sunrise? How does it how does it complement the rest of the wormhole product stack? Yeah, I think Sunrise is is kind of marrying three major friction points.

Um, specifically focused on day one listings. Like what are the what are the points of friction to be able to list an asset minute zero, day zero for everyone to be able to have a good experience um with that market. And those three things are really, you know, fast bridging or the ability to bridge these assets in and out, right? Um I think that's that's a critical first step and that's a major technological piece. I think the second is go to market. How do you actually get um everyone within an ecosystem involved in a way that they are aligned to make this uh launch as successful as possible. Um and that's that's very

difficult just because it's very hard to get people to care about stuff, right? Um you have to be a little bit thoughtful with that. It's something that a lot of teams struggle with. And then the third is obviously liquidity, right? Um and having a liquidity strategy for an entire ecosystem um is is is kind of like that last third pillar of the strategy. This these are the same three problems that centralized exchanges have to solve every time they list an asset, especially if they list a new asset from a new blockchain, right? That they have to newly support. They've got to figure out the tech. They've got to, you know, figure out a strategy when it comes to go to market and they've got to also figure out um what does minute zero look like. Um and and that largely comes into play with with

the liquidity question. >> Yeah, th this was a pretty massive campaign. Uh Sunrise Defi is bringing newly listed assets onto Salana and and helping more decentralized launches for these tokens rather than the typical playbook. you give a significant portion of supply to centralized exchanges. People are tired of that. They don't like it. Uh and I don't think projects like it either. It's it's the centralized exchange cabal that ends up building this this uh uh vendor lock in uh as a result of the way that they were doing things and and Sunrise DeFi provides an alternative. Um and so I I would anticipate that a lot more projects are going to do this. I'm curious how you guys landed this Monad deal. Like you guys uh you know like we

said earlier the the interop landscape is extremely competitive. We've seen M&A play out. Robinson has been on the show talking about this. Um when you guys were in discussions and you were talking to Salana and you were talking to Monad, how did you end up talking uh talking to the Monad team and and what was their feedback when you initially brought them this idea? I mean, I think it was it was it it wasn't as complicated or as indepth as one would assume um given given the the the size of the launch. I think it really meant it was just really a bunch of people thinking from first principles what is important to us and and what are the reasons why we are building the the things that we are

building, right? And so really it came down to like are both of these major brands going to engage with each other and Salana was happy to do it and and I think Monad was happy to do it mainly from a really good place of like hey can we flip the script on competition right like everyone is everyone is going believes that you have to be very crablike in this in this industry and pull everyone down whoever's doing well or whoever's building something similar you've gota you bring them down or else your existence is at stake. Um, and I think both of these teams because they're really they really believe in themselves. Um, and they really understand the value that they're trying

to bring into the world. They're they don't approach it that way. They're they're totally happy with there being competition. They understand that there will be more competition in the future and they don't see their success in bringing each other down or invalidating the efforts of the other. um they see it as hey let's actually compete on execution. We are actually really going after um you know some of the same stuff and we're going to bring the technology. We're going to bring the community. We're going to bring the um the strategy. Um and and I think both teams really welcome that because they have a lot of confidence in themselves and and and they're really going after something real versus just going after perception, you know.

>> Yeah. Totally. Totally. Because on the face of it, you'd think, oh, both of these chains are fast, performance enabled. You know, they're going to be fierce competitors because there's a, you know, a fixed set of users. Some of them are going to go on Salana and if they're not on Salana, then they're going to go on Monad and vice versa. But like you're saying, these these two are actually complimentary. And as Monad is starting to build a base of its own user activity, it can tap into Salana. There's a strong overlap between the users that would enjoy the applications of both these ecosystems. And and it shows. I mean, DeFi Sunrise had I think it was it surpassed Hyperlid if I'm not mistaken.

>> Yeah, it did. And within within twin the first five or six hours. Um Yeah. And that's a big statement because as far as trading goes in crypto today, everyone's watching uh Hyperlid. Even even the centralized exchanges are watching Hyperlid. And so for that to to happen I think was a was a really really big milestone. It was one of the KPIs that we wanted to hit but we were uncertain whether that was going to be possible or not. >> Yeah. So h what what were some of the other KPIs like generally I I think this was a resounding success. How do you think you know other projects in the ecosystem are going to look at this.

What is what value is this going to provide them over and beyond centralized exchanges? you're speaking to the to the, you know, plethora of projects that are out there that are still yet to launch a token. They know they're going to launch a token and they're looking at their go to market playbook and they're kind of weighing the options, right? Centralized or decentralized listing process. What what kind of what what would be your message to those founders? I would like really understand why why you are pursuing a centralized exchange listing because if you really kind of go through that and you understand why you understand it kind of boils down to a couple of things. I'm going there because it will be able to provide the best trading experience to the most

users. That is the reason why you you want to list on an exchange. That's why you're willing to pay, you know, any any, you know, the high prices, go through the process, do all the things that you need to do. There's a lot of hoops that you have to jump into both with with the with the exchange and with within yourself that you have to like kind of change to to to get that across the line. Um, and so if your north star is I want users and I want um, you know, a great trading experience for those users for my asset, Sunrise is showing you that you can do that on chain.

>> Like that that's the that's the that's the big thing. And um, yeah, like I I I think if you put it as simply as that is like a lot of people doubt the Salana ecosystem. They doubt they doubt the network effects that have taken place there. they doubt the initiatives and the efforts there but you know as someone who has worked on many L1's L2s been part of many many of their day one launches. Um you know you can certainly tell the special ones from you know kind of the forks and the more of the same right and and and and Salana and several others but Salana really takes the cake in terms of like being able to build a culture and a network that is extremely valuable to any team that's building in crypto. So you should have a strategy

for being able to at least speak to that economy. Yeah. And so the thought process as it goes is um you know like we we talk a lot about how trady and DeFi are no longer separate. Wall Street onchain finance these things are just becoming one. It's just finance no longer tradi and defi. And similarly I I hear you making a a parallel here which is uh centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges. These are essentially blurring. You know, you could say Hyperlquid is decentralized, but it's kind of only a three out of four multi-IG, you know, based on the validator set. And you could kind of see Coinbase going in the direction of like, yeah, it's a centralized exchange, but they're going deeper and deeper into the

direction of listing all of the assets that are available on chain, you know, and pushing people to base. And so the lines between centralized exchange, decentralized, these are getting blurry >> and these are uh effectively becoming exchanges. And what I heard you say is like, you know, look, the reason you launch on an exchange, putting aside whether it's centralized or decentralized, you launch on an exchange to get distribution, you launch on an exchange to give the widest net of people access to your token and and the best trading experience possible. And so more of that is happening on chain. I I'm curious how do you think this is going to play out? You know, as the centralized exchange cabal starts to get

broken up. You know, for a long time we were talking about how decentralized exchange volume was coming for centralized exchanges, this was going to flip and now it feels like it's it's happening. Do do you see it similarly from your perspective? >> Absolutely. I think you know the there's still this big moment that people um in this industry are waiting for which is like when price discovery for any particular asset is onchain right and that's something that's been spoken about for such a long time. Um, and the limitations to that have largely been technical. Um, uh, they've been economical, they've been, you know, some of the other stuff that we've talked

about today, liquidity, things like that, right? Um, but that is a worthwhile future to pursue, right? Because that ultimately validates the entire effort um, of building, you know, programmable finance like that's decentralized, right? is that when when when actually the majority of what is happening in a specific market is happening onchain versus on on on centralized or you know permissioned servers. [snorts] Um so that line is being blurred and everyone is approaching it in you know in their own strategic way right like everyone has different position right Coinbase and Binance's position is very different

they they you can see their models are very similar right both have their own L you know L1s or L2s they have their own chain they have their own decentralized apps they have their own wallets you know they're able to list the memecoins they're able to list these assets that maybe would not be good fits for Binance proper. Um, then you've got the Hyperlquid of the world, right? You've got many of those, but you could just point at Hyperlquid. And what is their strategy? Their strategy is, okay, we are 100% focused on the onchain trading experience and we are going to progressively um uh raise the bar of what that looks like so that even if you know, even if the sexists come into this

space, we're going to be ahead of them, >> right? Um, and then you've got Salana, right? You've got Salana, you've got Monad, you've got, um, some of these other very high performance, uh, lowcost, you know, giving the builders the kind of throughput that they need to be able to to to build, um, parallel on par or better experiences than their centralized counterparties in Tradfi, not just in sexes, but in Tradfi in general, right? Um, and and and they're pursuing their own strategy with that, right? So I think this is kind of that moment, you know, it's one of many moments to come, but it is a moment of like, hey, it's very clear how these lines are blurring. It's very clear that uh the the ga no one's stepping off the

gas when it comes to you know bringing bringing some sort of convergence but really what it's going to end up looking like is all of the assets that you can trade on on on tradi you can trade on defi all of those you know and then at some point you cross some tipping point where you know you start to see price discovery on change so now it's it's like that's like your that's akin to like being added to the S&P 500 Not everyone has to trade on chain because that's where the source of truth comes first, right? And we haven't had that yet, but I can, you know, people are building toward it. The writing's on the wall and you can see how those network effects would compound um as Salana has one of the most distri the the most distribution uh uh and and you know we

could expect that price discovery onchain would happen on Salana first. Monad again, lots, you know, great brand identity, great brand associations, great partners, plenty of apps. We'll see how it pans out. What What has been your take on uh the Monad launch so far? >> I think it's been phenomenal to, you know, and and I I I'm trying to I I'll say that very objectively, right? I've been a part of so many L1 L2 day one launches, right? And I can say I mean I know there's a lot of like controversy right now about Monad and its launch and things that Arthur Hayes has said you know and there's there's a big discussion happening on on on CT about it but but I mean I think I think largely that discussion has been like

two different uh world views that are not they're not really arguing the same points. So you have on one side you have like [snorts] you know a short-term view right objectively a short-term view and then on the other side you have a long-term view. It's very hard for the you to have like a genuine conversation because they're not really arguing the same things right like >> Arthur by his own account has not really uh you know looked at the tech or doesn't care about the tech hasn't looked at the code doesn't care about the the the the novel innovations that Monet has done. Um on the other side you have the long-term view which is like hey yeah you can certainly be a trader of uh Bitcoin or Ethereum or Solana you know the entire you know 5 10 year

history of those those things and you could you could you could have that that that that type of analysis or you could kind of look at what we're building right you could look at the technology look at the community look at the different things that we're doing and you could say hey maybe this is a better version of the EVM right and what is that mean? What does that mean to me? Just like if you were to talk to someone who bought Bitcoin in 2010, you know, it's like I'm not actually looking at, you know, all of these short-term things, right? I'm not making an argument about the Japanese yen being like, you know, hiking up interest rates and then saying that's why monad is going to zero, right? That those are very different um very different outlooks, very different types of

analysis. I'm just saying, hey, I believe in uh decentralized money, right? I believe in sovereign money and I'm gonna I'm gonna I think this is the first time in in history that something out there is actually giving people the ability to to to do that, right? And so I think that debate is largely like not not a real debate. It's more just two different ways of looking at stuff that that you really can't argue. One one side can always be right. The other side can also always be right because they're just arguing different things. But I would say that their launch has been amazing because of all the launches that I've seen in the past. I've never seen an ecosystem launched with 70 apps. I've never seen those those those apps raise over $150 million to try out all these economic experiments on the chain. And

this is all day one, right? Like this thing has been alive for seven days, maybe eight day, not even seven days. Um you know that I've never seen all of those components, but I've also never seen so much uh innovation happen on the EVM side right there. Everyone likes to compare like Salana or Monad or any of these other chains like oh yeah they're they're trying to be an Ethereum killer. I mean, sure, you could you could take that viewpoint, but really what they're doing is that, you know, Ethereum is the kind of Ethereum killer, right? Like, you have someone who's pushed the EVM faster than Ethereum has, right? If you go and trade on Monad or you trade on Salana, it doesn't take it it takes 10

seconds to understand why this is a better experience, right? Um, Monet has been able to do that with some some some pretty amazing engineering work if you know they're not sacrificing some of the things that other L2s have sacrificed, right? They're almost calling out in my opinion, you know, I won't speak for the team, but in my opinion, like they're almost calling out this whole like L2 strategy, the idea of having centralized sequencers, Ethereum going down a road map that in it essentially makes it free to uh leverage their settlement layer, right? like they're they're not getting uh paid for any of that. So, it's very hard for anyone to kind of look at what Monad's been able to do over the last three years, see the um the improvements

on the on the tech that you know you would want to see in the EVM, make it completely EVM compatible um and then launch with such a strong go to market and such a strong ecosystem in such a short amount of time. I you know, for me it's like one of the best launches I've seen, one of the best executions of a team I I I've seen um ever. Yeah. Yeah. I I uh I tend to agree. I think uh Arthur and Kone are arguing uh two different things. Uh they're not arguing that uh they're not debating on a on a similar playing field. One of them is talking about the token, the other one's talking about the tech. Uh, one of them is talking short-term time time frame, the other one's looking at a long-term

time horizon. I do think it's still very early, even though they've been building for so long. Uh, and they've obviously made uh improvements in the tech. I think it still remains to be seen. Um, because they took so long to build, it hasn't been live for very long. And so we're going to see how this plays out uh over the coming months to years because ultimately these technological improvements, you know, whether censorship resistance wins or if it's performance that that maintains the moat, we're going to see which one of these matters more uh when the rubber really meets the road. Say, uh last thing I got for you, I want to I want to hear about the wormhole road map. Uh we talked a lot about wormhole, talked about Salana and ETH, uh which is great commentary on the market as a whole, but

what is going on in the wormhole ecosystem? What can our community look forward to uh in wormhole? >> I think Wormhole has been incubating a lot of really interesting ideas, Sunrise being one of them. Um there's a massive effort uh at least on our to really focus on what comes after bridging, right? what what are the applications? What are the what are the things that actually push this space forward? Unlocking Day Zero listings was one of them for this team. And I think us being able to incubate Sunrise really push that out into the world in a way that had a major impact and has got a lot of people, you know, rethinking what that

looks like and what they're what one of the one of the most important things that happens in this industry. How how to actually pursue that in a new way. I think we've got a lot of those things that we've got lined up for for 26 which is really you know a lot of the tech has been built the friction points still remain to be able to provide the enduser result or or outcomes that you want for the end user right and so when we talk about like the sex first verse Dex wall fading right it's happening across the board right we all of this stuff is being abstracted right and that that's why I always say like execution will win execution on the team right if the team can execute, but also like execution will win because in a world where nobody really cares what blockchain you're

using or what consensus model you're using, what they care about is can you deliver the experience with the proper parameters that the market wants. Um, and and that's really what what what the wormhole labs team is is is is focused on. >> Incredible. Say, CEO of Wormhole Labs, thank you so much for coming on. absolute uh great work uh helping the Monad launch uh with Sunrise and uh hope you guys have a great end of the year. >> Thanks, man. Appreciate it. >> See you soon.

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Go anywhere onchain instantly with relay.link. Relay is closing in on 10 billion transferred. Go to relay.link to bridge your assets now. Money shouldn't wait for Mondays. Following his real upgrade, Polygon is now one of the fastest chains for stable coin transfers and payments. visit Polygon Tech. >> Yo, coming up. >> Oh, [snorts] yeah. >> I had to take a little sec off or a little break off for that segment, but I'm back.

>> Is the word. >> I hope you guys enjoyed that that chat. Uh, say and wormhole are doing cool things. They were pretty instrumental in bringing Monad's token to Salana. And obviously, that was a huge campaign and people kind of caught people by surprise. They were like, "Wait, Monad is a chain. Why wouldn't they just launch on their own chain?" But they're trying to break up the centralized exchange kapahal. Uh the entire idea is that there's more distribution happening on chain and decentralized exchanges are continuing to eat into centralized exchange market share and you can get a lot of distribution and a great UX and and give people access through decentralized exchanges.

>> But let let's bring up Spencer. I'm actually curious because Spencer's had a lot of experience building IP um you know developing uh not only Moonbirds but uh been instrumental in some other uh uh brands in the web 3 world as well. And you know before we get into Moonbirds and IP and all these things I'm actually curious but uh welcome to the show Spencer. I'm curious what what you think about Monad's launch uh given that this was so hype they had so much community uh force behind them. They did a really what seemed to be a really good job building the brand before launching the chain. Just curious how you think the the launch ultimately went. I mean I think like it went good but good in a certain way right which is like it they did the thing right like in

crypto like there's this vision of like okay you launch at a couple billion FTV like this is good like a lot of people eat if you launch at a couple billion if you sustain a couple billion this is even better right like there's there's like a very explicit thing that happens I think most interesting part was the lack of Binance in their launch and I think it's it's a it's a quite a successful non-Binance listed launch right like you you see most successful listings go through Binance. It's been less and less so recently. I think largely due to like the perceived sell pressure from Alpha, but like um you know, it was a very very successful like we're not using Binance and it's going to be okay launch uh so far at least. I also think like they did a very good job of being top of mind at a time when

there wasn't as much going on. Like one of the things I think is a hallmark of this cycle is like there are fewer very interesting projects I think in crypto that seem to have like delusional founders building towards something really exciting. I think as a result of this you saw a lot of the there there was a very meaningful talent drain to AI this cycle which I don't think we talk enough about. >> Um and there was fewer new entrance and so you saw a lot more sort of derived games. I think you see, you know, Monet is probably this to some degree, but a lot of different flavors of like some L1 with progressively lower floats that like has some sort of like chart that looks a little too good to be true is

like kind of the flavor of this cycle. [laughter] >> And so I think like there was a little bit more of genuiness to how Monad launched where like there really was campaigns you had to live under a rock to not know about Monad launch like the last couple of days like they did the cards. I think the Monad Cards was a very successful marketing campaign. um etc. And I think like they're they're reaping the rewards of that. Also, they launched at a time when a lot of people wouldn't launch and I think it was just quiet. And so, like, you know, we're still talking about Monad days later. Had Monad launched, you know, December of last year, we would have moved on in in 48 hours, right? Yeah.

>> I think where >> I want to see the future for Monad is like how many Monad DAPs can you name? Like how many things on Monad Andy or Robbie can you guys is Yeah. Like >> I mean like I can Yeah. No, not really. >> But also like I don't know does this matter right like XRP like how many like ecosystem projects can you name XRP like and that's huge right? So it may not matter right we maybe that's not the thing that actually matters for success of an L1 in 2025 and which is a crazy thing to say but going into 2026 it may not be the thing that matters right mimemetic like as a matter of fact I would go so far as to say like Uber driver shilling coin is more important than like number of

ecosystem projects by like a lot right >> yeah I mean at least in today's age >> ripple substantiates that claim >> uh ripple is the ultimate uber Uber driver shillcoin. Uh >> great. I will tell you every founder of every coin wishes they were the ultimate uber driver shill coin. Yeah. >> Like that is the the like >> pinnacle of achievement for for a coin. >> You're right and that's kind of the great at at become ubiquitous. And I think um you know you you've been involved with Pudgy Penguins. Uh they have certainly re reached some sort of exit velocity outside of crypto. um in which case, you know, in in which they've been able to basically get their

their visuals and their imagery in gy and you have people that are spreading the word, spreading the good word without people even realizing it. Similarly, you've got BB on your jacket. Uh I'd love to hear more. you know, BB is the word and uh and uh you know, you you've t essentially taken moonirds and and now are looking at uh scaling it to also reach exit velocity and become ubiquitous outside of crypto. Maybe you could just tell us a little bit about how that's going.

>> Yeah, I mean that ask a small question, right? That's a there's a lot a lot of different things that are going on here. I think like you know, let's take maybe a step back to dive into this topic because I think I think the context is important, right? which is tech adoption in crypto like the marginal tech seems to have really plateaued. I think what that means is the the the meaningful next steps is all about consumer adoption is about reach is about you know we talk about why is monet good because it had reach like that's why it's good why is XRP good because it has reach right so like but one of the things that drives reach is intellectual property I think this is a thing we see historically right like when you think about you know I think for example like

large anime titles reach more audience than the names of major corporations right this is kind of a weird and interesting thing to think about but but it's it's very much the case and when you think about maybe traditional media like I think I think a lot about is superheroes so basically all superhero like when was the last time you heard of a new superhero right >> probably never >> because almost all superheroes basically all superheroes come from 1940s and 1950s which is the golden age of comic books which is when all this IP developed and they created this crazy moat that has outlasted most people who were alive in the 1950s and 1940s right which is a kind of crazy staying power now I think if you look that where the society is going are IPs coming from com all com all IPs should

not come from comic books right like clearly we're in a digitally native age we should have digitally native IP right even more take that a step forward we are here because we believe in the future of crypto and the growth of crypto like we should have crypto native IPs but my view is that that golden age of comic books actually already happened in crypto that was 21 to22 bull cycle for NFTTS that is the golden age of IP that comes from crypto and I think you've seen this right like Pudgy Penguins comes from that era comes from that era board apes comes from that era right like uh Moonbirds and Burb IP comes from that era right and so when you look at who has really successfully done something I think Pudgy is you know the the the the best case so far I think

what they really won was being the face of crypto I think if you look in the 2122 cycle like board apes was so big board apes was bigger than basically anything has been since then in crypto of a new launch, right? Like people forget this. Like the if you talk to random people on the street, they have some vague knowledge of these monkey pictures that were expensive on the internet at one point. Even if they don't really I mean I've talked to people who don't know what Ethereum is but know what the JPEGs of monkeys are, right? Like that was a level that Pudgy has reached a big level of success. I don't know that it's as ubiquitous as or it was at its peak. Puggy has done a much better job of like maintaining stable and growth around their ubiquity, but like this is this is sort of the

golden age. And what was really cool about us acquiring Moonbirds was like it was like the only one of these IPs that hadn't yet done a token. And this was like I looked at this like oh my god like this is the opportunity to own a golden age of crypto IP IP. Now I say golden age because you know look NFTts today are not what they once were right in 2122 the NFTs were a much bigger thing. volumes, floor prices, everything supports that argument. But that doesn't mean that like what NFTTS are is useless or what even the brand is is useless, right? The brand can express itself in so many different ways in the same that like comic books today are not what they were in the 1940s and 1950s, right?

Comic book collecting has gone basically straight line down. The grails still go for a lot of money and all these kind of things, but like like the medium with which we consume Superman has changed over the years, but Superman is still Superman. And this is kind of a thing that I think about right um with what is the medium by which we consume the IP that exists in the space. I think you know there's a couple of trends that are really important right now. AI is absolutely like if you think about intellectual property intellectual property changes fundamentally with AI like how do you grow it? What can you do? You know the videos you can put out the ways you can bring it to life the way your community can bring it to life.

When we first acquired moonbirds, we, you know, did a lot of AI image generation of I was doing of my Moonbird and I helped other community members do it of their moonbirds and we sort of that was our first marketing push was take over the timeline. We're going to be the first brand, you know, to really lean into AI generated content and a lot of people didn't like it. There were people who said, "Oh, you know, this is just AI slop." You know, there's a lot of art collectors from the original proof collective. They're like, "This is not art." this and you know a lot of people kind of left and that was okay because I said look like you're gonna attrition at some point if you have that view because we're gonna lean into this because this is the thing that you have to do right if you own an IP in 2025

into 2026 like you should leverage AI in a very meaningful way um and even if it's not quite as good today like it's clearly going to be better very soon right better than all other options and so like being at the forefront of that adoption is not risky to me um you we've even seen like activations that we've done with like story protocol and Abau with AI games and and and remix with AI games and and and and and Abau with the with with the AI merch. Like it's not only our own ability to create better products, images, story, like marketing support. It's also like the community's ability to create stuff, which I think is really a cool moment to live in. That being said though like we always lead with our own flagship products because

like fundamentally and this is a difference between Orange Cap Games our company which owns Moonbirds and say Pudgy is like we are fundamentally like a manu a design and manufacturing company like we made the Pudgy Penguins trading card game vibes um you know we design distribute manufacture that. Um we've just started to tease the the details around the product that we sold. Uh, so I think it was like a couple weeks ago we said $25 Moonbirds physical collectible. Buy as many as you want 24 hours and we sold $1.7 million of them. >> Um, >> so 68,067 units.

>> Yeah. So like that was a huge moment in like the growth of this IP for a lot of reasons that may be obvious, but a lot of reasons that might not be obvious. So the obvious reason is like you know there was $1.7 million wanting to buy physical collectibles of this IP. like that is obviously very good for the IP. The not maybe not as obvious is how many doors that has opened in distribution in the traditional space, right? Um so that is a very meaningful launch for a toy product period, right? Not just in the context of crypto. It's the largest RWA sale ever on Salana primary sale, but it's also like a really meaningful sale in the context of like what that product is. And I almost just accidentally leaked it. Um, [laughter]

but it's uh >> Okay, cool. >> Yeah. Sorry, I'm ranting. >> No, so so that's a big it's a big launch. It's still kind of a mystery box. Expected delivery sometime before the end of the year, maybe Q1, early Q1. It' be like one of the larger distributions of the BB IP. You also mentioned, so that's like one medium. You also mentioned the work that you had done with uh you know Abau and Verse 8 basically using uh AI to create custom moonirds and almost allow people to create their own fantasy of the of their uh ideal character. Um and basically like create a new culture. Um so that's also like in the digital form. Then

you've got the actual NFT that people can buy, hold, use as their PFP. Um, and then they've got like social media, uh, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. So, so, so you've got like all these like living forms and and digital forms of IP. Um, and so I guess maybe just helping you put that together of of like what that entire picture looks like uh, now going, you know, into 2026. Um, you know, obviously you've brought this branch to, you know, new heights now really from our perspective. Um, how do you round that thing out into next year? What verticals do you want to expand on that you see a lot of potential with? What verticals do you

think maybe don't need as much love? How do you think about kind of holistically the different form factors of this IP? >> Yeah. So, I think like where we've done a really good job is like being a cultural thing in crypto, right? Like that is, you know, you meet a lot of people who know about it. You we you know, Burb is a thing, right? is the the simplest way of putting that where like we've done a lot of you know soulbound token activations etc. I think obviously like the really big upcoming thing for us is BERB token launch really, you know, radically changes what the BERB IP is in a lot of ways in its relationship to crypto. Um I think it's a almost linear improvement, right? Like like whereas the NFT market has been really shaky in terms of volumes and prices and

all like like the rest of crypto like you know has been high volatility, yes, for sure, but there's been a lot of like bigger outcomes there. And so I think moving into that arena is really exciting for us. Also, there's just like a lot more people that own coins than own NFTs, right? A NFTs on a perunit basis are just generally expensive. But B, like a lot of people just trade on exchanges, right? Like Korea is probably the most relevant country especially the most relevant country to retail trading volume in crypto. And early on in Korea, like there was a big wallet exploit. So basically everyone uses centralized exchanges there. Like you know the centralized exchanges, some of them have NFT marketplaces. They generally do basically zero volume, right? But like the pool of people that can participate on chain with your IP is really expanded

and this is something that we have been really intentional about. So we've been doing these soulbound token activations, right? Um I think it's 184,000 wallets, unique wallets have a Moonbird Soulbound token now in their wallet. This was very important to us because of this thing that I said which is like there's just not that many people that trade NFTs, right? And so like you know per I think prior to us doing activation it was like somewhere like 5 to 10,000 people had a moonbird like or related NFT in their wallet you know we we have 20x that number of that have something with a moonbird on it in their wallet right like that is very meaningful to me they've interacted with us onchain in some capacity um but really like the view is we have to break out of crypto right we have to go be something in the

mainstream I think this is non-negotiable to me right I I think really what crypto is all about net inflows of capital where do they come from for a period of time like in the 20 21 cycle like you know this was people coming onto centralized exchanges net new participants the exchanges were marketing a lot that there was user growth they would go and sign up for exchanges I don't think we see that this cycle right the exchanges aren't really growing in their user base as a matter of fact they're they're having this war with decentralized exchanges but like like there isn't it's the same people moving around these venues if you really like Look at it, right? It's the same liquidity that's PvP and it's and it's marginally more sophisticated every time, right? Like the longer the average tenure of someone in crypto who's in

crypto today is much higher than it was last cycle because many of them just stuck around and we haven't gained as many new people. Really where the new capital comes in is, you know, from public markets this cycle. I think the ETFs really did bring people in. Uh the DATs, good or bad, did also bring people in. Like there's a lot of that kind of thing. So, so I think a lot about where that where that happens. But you know there's a story and it's really meaningful to me which was when we first did Vibes which is the Pudge Penguin trading card game. You know, I had a friend of mine who I knew from trading cards and I had come to him and said, you know, hey, you should play the game. And I said, I said, no, no, no. It's crypto, therefore it's a scam. And I

said, no, no, please sit down and play the game, then you can decide. Right? And he took it. We played a game and he loved it. And he was like, actually, this is a really good game. I still don't like crypto, but this is a really good game. Right? Then he starts playing it online, right? And he does quite well. And at the end of the first season, the rewards are paid out in Pangu. So he has to go make a wallet, connect it, get the Pangu rewards, right? Checked his wallet. He's now using the money in that wallet to trade memecoins. And so like this is someone who went from it is crypto, therefore it is a scam to trading memecoins. And how does that progression happen? I'm going to make the argument that holding something physical in your hands, right?

Really gets you over like the a problem to a lot of adoption. We we've everyone who's the easy lowhanging fruit to adopt crypto has already adopted crypto. We have to go after the hard things and it requires some sort of persistence, right? And I think one of the hardest things for people about crypto who aren't already here is like it's too conceptual, right? It's like I don't understand what this is. What is a cryptocurrency? What is a memecoin? What is a, you know, what is a bitcoin? I don't know it. And this is where IP is so strong because IP is something you can put in their hand. You can't really put a Bitcoin in their hand, right? But you can definitely put a BB in someone's hand. You can definitely put a penguin in someone's hand, right? And having that physical tactile experience, ideally that draws

you into the digital world, but gets you over that objection of like this is too conceptual, right? And that's where like even if that happens one person at a time, that's where that diehard fan like if you are the onboarding for that person into this world and they enjoy this world, which many people do, crypto is a lot of fun. Like I think this is a thing that people don't realize is like like we have a lot of fun here relative to a lot of other places of the internet. a lot of the other places in the internet are a lot more salty and ordinary and all sorts of things like like this is kind of like I mean there's good and bads to crypto right but like like it is actually a fun environment I think people just are are a little bit afraid to experience it so if you can be

that bridge and they come and they find that joy then then you have them as a as a collector as a consumer as a participant for life >> I I mean I totally agree I think that that the the the best thing that these that these brands that has broken out of the space have done is is one they've brought it outside of all things finance and brought it into more culture and to like day-to-day culture of of different people. Like if you look at some of the Instagram accounts of of some of these big kind of IP NFT brands, they're completely removed from like finance and speculation. Just much more like relatable to the uh normal folk and then bringing that even further into the physical whether it be in stores or in in in malls or in toy form for kids.

It's just and then using that to bridge the gap. I think like like the term is like fidgetital like fi digital. Uh it's kind of like what what they call that that that merge. Now not sure this this may be silly kind of based on what you've just uh you know yeah spoken about but people are are wondering right now as they're listening to to this like >> you know NFTTS have been on a hell of a hell of a market uh you know run. I mean they have had I agree >> like altcoins of the most part they're not much they're not you know much far away from where the entire altcoin market is and so you know you you look at blur right now and I mean it's pretty sad it's like top volume for the 24 hours 170 ETH on Pudgies next you got

knockos moonbirds but like man back in the day it would be top volume 5,000 ETH >> uh easily uh and some of these collections, right? And and I think uh punks have just gone under the price of one bitcoin for the first time in a while. I just generally think people want to know like is this just is this category of the crypto economy over? Like are NFTs just completely dead? Uh are they are they is there something that's going to bring them back? Like is there an investment thesis for like the NFT category at large right now? And the reason why I preface this as being a silly question is because well you bought Moonbird so clearly you you see there is. So maybe like what is that for people who are either holding wondering if it's a good time to buy trying to

figure out which collections will survive what the just like generally speaking how are you looking at the market right now for NFTTS from uh investor point of view >> yeah I mean there's a bunch of things right so like I think that NFTTS when they had royalties meant that their companies could exist without business models and almost none companies adapted to business models like it's not a coincidence that like the companies that are doing relatively well, right? So, Pud I would say like Pudgy and Ourel, right? Like are companies that were acquired kind of like either towards the tail end or after royalties was a thing and then like we have from day one been revenue driven, right? And like guess what? Making money helps keeps the

lights on. And we're getting to a point where like a lot of big companies that had millions of dollars but never focus on revenue like it's kind of hard to once once you've you know had this magical money flow that you lose like it's kind of hard to then figure out revenue right and if you're a company that's spending money and not making money like that is not a recipe to stay open and so like that's a really tough pill to swallow and the NFT market has done really poorly this cycle. Um there's a lot of variables there. I love NFTTS and something that I'm sad it's something I'd love to see come back. But I think you'd also look at this and say like you know um for us at least in the position that we're in like like the endgame is not like like NFT is an

important part of the journey right and is an important part of this but the endgame is not like if if NFTs die moonirds isn't dead. I think that's really important, right? Like NFTs in many ways, if you look at the most successful outcomes, like the most successful outcome of Pudgy Penguins NFT is Pangu the token. Like that is the most successful part of that. And if you think of Pudgy Penguins NFT as a building stone to get you to Pangu token, then they were an incredibly successful building stone, right? like regardless of how they're doing now. I think there's some aspects of how the relationship of a token and NFT work post the launch of the token that maybe could be improved on and there's some stuff that we're working on around that which you know we're not ready to share yet but like like I think

that there's some deep thinking and experimentation that should be done but like you know look when you look at what Pudgy Penguins is it's lots of you know like a lot of success comes from token when you look at what board apes were and and are like apecoin was a huge part of that story right and so you know where where we say Hey, NFTTS, the venues they're traded on, their liquidity, like it's not what it was. I totally agree. Right. I think it's really tough in a lot of cases to buy um NFTs, especially if when they launch their token, they made mistakes about launching their token, right? Like that's a really hard thing to come back from, no matter how good the art of the NFT is, for example. I think we see this especially in the art world for NFTs.

Like, why are art NFTs struggling probably a lot more? I mean, you used to see art blocks towards the top of those lists like you don't really anymore, right? Um, why are NFTTS except for Skulls of Luchi basically the only one, but like why are the rest really struggling is like because they didn't have this relationship to a token, the token market isn't as bad as the NFT market like like it is in a better place. And so those with tokens like they just they just work better, right? I that's part of it, but I think it's also like you know going back to this parable from earlier in our call like if you look at like okay comic books, right? comic books are basically dead.

But you're not going to look at me and say the Superman IP is dead, right? You're not going to look at me and say any of those comic book IP like Superman is not dead. Comic books might be dead, but Superman exists in other forms and expresses itself in other forms. And that's where like thinking about the company as an IP focused company right first is I think the key because as long as the IP survives and is valuable and is valuable to stakeholders and as long as you bring your stakeholders along in the journey in the way they should be brought along then like you win together by staying on top of the meta you don't win together by trying to bring back like like this is a big question for us right is like do we try and be the brand that brings back NFTTS it's a thing that

I think Pudgy did briefly it's a thing that But this is a very tough challenge, right? Or do we want to be the brand that like wins the coin market, right? And find a way to have that like create, you know, benefit stakeholders across the across the spectrum of of stakeholdership in our organization, right? And like to me it's it's it's obviously the latter, right? Like like we had this great opportunity to win a really big market. I think there's actually not that many interesting companies that are launching funible tokens, right? I think obviously Monad was one of them, but they're very orthogonal to what we do when it comes to actual brands with real products, real revenue. You know, we we've done millions of dollars of revenue in the last 12 months on Verb IP on um our Vibes TCG that we produce. Like we're a

very real company. Um and this is where I'm kind of excited about the market being a little bit softer. I know this is like a weird thing to say, but it's like you don't see who's swimming naked till the tide goes out. like as someone who's very clothed like you know that doesn't hurt us. I mean it might hurt the industry like in the past like when FTX collapsed and I've talked a lot about this it was like holy shoot like the industry might be over like I I remember thinking like this like we might like I might need to go do something else like like like crypto might be over over I mean like my trade was just super long because it's not over everything was way too cheap but like there's a feeling of it might be over. I will tell you nothing that is

happening right now feels like the industry is over. Nothing is even close to that. No, not even remotely close. It's not even remotely close to even Silicon Valley bank like nothing is h like oh prices are down. Sailor selling Bitcoin. If you believe in crypto, sailor selling Bitcoin cannot end crypto. If you believe in the inexorable nature of the industry that we're in, none of these things matter. There's no existential risk today to crypto and certainly nothing like it was back then. Bybit got hacked for $2 billion dollars. Never once felt like an existential risk, right? Not even a little bit. Like we are sufficiently like no like >> like CZ went to jail. Not existential like [laughter] >> Yeah, exactly. We're beyond the point of uh of industry collapse. So to your to your point, it's like it's just about

outlasting people at this point and building with a longer term horizon and doing it. Well, it's not it's outlast and build smart and build for a future that you believe will come and then be the best positioned when that future comes. You know, like like a thing that I think a lot about this is a you know, we were investors in Bullish's IPO, right? >> Like why did Bullish IPO before Kraken before actually I was shocked. >> Why? But I'll tell you why. It's because that team was led by private equity folk and their entire history of existence had been preparing for an IPO. And then when it and you couldn't IPO for most of the time they existed. It was impossible. There's no way. Crypto product no not a chance. Circle IPO happens. It's the best IPO in like forever. Banks are like what's the next

crypto company ready to IPO? And every other crypto company is scrambling to get ready to IPO. And bullish walks in the door and says here's my financials. >> Yeah. And now you have Paul Atkins on CNBC this morning saying make IPOs great again. >> Yeah. >> My pogo. >> And so like the goal is be bullish, right? The goal is be the best positioned for the thing that you think will happen. They said we think that IPOs will be great for crypto and we want to be the most well positioned for an IPO. >> So do you think there's a chance that Pudgy Penguins or Moonbirds or some NFT brand of the like >> will IPO next year?

>> Next year probably not. I don't like like I think I think next public market cycle definitely. Yeah, >> that's like the bet that I'm trying to make is like and I think that like no one's ever IPOed with a funible token except for Circle, but that's USC, so it doesn't count. Um, but like like like no one has launched a funible token also IPOed. To me, that is the golden goose. Like that is the thing you have to do. Now, no company right now in crypto that be that makes money off anything other than trading volumes has enough revenue to actually IPO, right? Like like like >> so the goal is in the next however many years it takes to get there like you have to be doing enough revenue to go public and that probably means acquiring companies that probably means you know

growing your business lines very subst it means a lot of different things but like this is where I'm excited because my vision is like collectibles world is like you can do those type of things right and so um like you know we're probably on the track to do something like $6 million in revenue this year our goal probably for next year is something like money, but I want to get to like 200, 300, like I want to get to a billion dollars a year in revenue. That seems like a crazy number, but like I think you can get there making collectibles, um, manufacturing, distributing, uh, designing, like that's really what we're what we're trying to do. And I think if you do that, you have the opportunity to go public in a future cycle. And if you go public in a future cycle with a fungeible token, like this

has to be good for both, right? This is like a I could be wrong about this thesis, but this is my very strong believed thesis. The beauty is that pursuing that route because it is a revenue based route like you inherently also unless you make big mistakes with how you acquire that revenue like should have enough operating capital to keep the lights on and survive, right? Like the thing that is derisked this cycle is like the banks made way too much money off crypto IPOs, right? Next time the market is hot, the first thing they're look at is crypto IPOs, right? And this is just this is the beauty of how financial incentives work is like the circle IPO was great. The bullish IPO was insane, right? Like the bullish IPO was was nuts.

>> Y >> these are two of the best IPOs like ever. All right. Both crypto both this cycle. >> Um >> you better believe next cycle like you better believe that the bankers are really planning for that next cycle to be the ones that capture that alpha because it's the best alpha into a future cycle. Like like this is where the beauty of the marriage between Tradfy and crypto really comes into play. And like you have to be the type of company that that type of person understands and wants to court. And this is why revenue has started to matter more because they judge those companies based on revenue, right? Crypto folks have historically not. But now that the marginal bid is Tradfi, like Tradfi definitely cares about this. And so that's where like >> it's really a mentality shift that you have to get into.

>> It it's happening at every part of the the Tradfi stack. Um, Black Rocks made the most money off of crypto ETFs. So, it's not just IPS. >> Yeah. >> ETFs as well. It's happening at every part of the stack. >> Yeah. >> Super bullish. Spencer, are you going to uh Art Basel? >> Uh, I think I'm gonna I think I'm going to run down to Art Basil. Um, I will be going to Abu Dhabi uh as well for Breakpoint. So, >> okay. Busy man. >> I just, you know, look, I don't love running around, but whatever is the most important for the BBS, this is this is what we got to do.

And so, you know, it's not about where do I want to be, it's about where do I need to be. [laughter] >> Well, thanks for coming on, man. Um, and good luck in the next month. I I know it's a huge month and then into January for next year for you. So, uh, not necessarily jealous of your travel and work schedule, but uh, I know you're going to crush it. So, thanks for joining us. >> Thanks so much for having me on, and I hope you guys have a great one. You >> too, man. Cheers, man. Thank you. Go BBS. >> BBS the word. >> Yeah. See you, man. Up next, we've got our friends from Alpin. We've got >> Samanta uh the one of the co-founders of Alpin. They heard some news and

overheard token rumor mill uh from Dev Connect about some mainet plans. So, there's a lot to talk about. Privacy's back. Bitcoin yields are on. Um Rob's having his wreck drink. Let's get Samanta up and let's let's get to it. Let's talk all things ZK, Bitcoin, and the new financial layer. Um, should be a good one. >> Yeah, let's bring them up. I'm ready for for a technical talk here. We've been deep in the financial the financial vibes here. I'm ready. >> Deep in the financial vibes, huh?

>> It's probably because the market's bouncing. We had a VC and we had Spencer and >> Exactly. Every green day we talk finance. Every red day we talk tech. >> All right, guys. We're going to get Saman up now. Uh BTC clocking in 919. E >> Samanta >> 3020. >> Welcome to the show. We've had uh a couple guys from from your team on uh David way back when uh some some great discussions on OPAT and all the things. Uh David was a great guest on our Bitcoin and Beyond show and uh and so Alpin is a friend of the friend of the show. It's your first time on man. It is. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Welcome. >> Thanks, guys. Thanks, uh, Robbie Andy. It's It's great to be on here. Um, >> yeah, let's talk tech. I was actually hoping to talk more finance, too, but maybe we can do both. [laughter] >> We can. It's a green day. Let's talk finance as well. What's uh what's the latest on uh on the new financial stack out of Alpin? >> Yeah, you know, we're we're focused around Bitcoin. Everything Bitcoin, we uh Alpin exists uh as a way to make Bitcoin more useful. Uh and we think that the huge green field opportunity right here in uh unlocking BTC collateral here with all of the like actually interesting things innovations that have been made over the last decade

uh in onchain verifiable finance. Uh we should not have that all be gatekept and go through like single wrapped BTC asset. That's not what's going to drive industry adoption. So uh you know the the latest is uh we we have some very amazing partners uh coming on launching native live uh on Alpin uh we're currently on testn net uh we'll go live with them uh uh as day one mainet launch partners uh you know TBD on on date it'll be uh some point next year first half of next year let's let's let's say that we haven't released uh any more from there but uh you know we expect you know to hyper focus around uh uh some of the DeFi opportunities within Bitcoin.

So thinking about building uh you know bitcoin credit markets uh how do we get like why should the biggest uh exchange you know BTC stable swaps exist even on Ethereum or base they should exist on on on on Bitcoin on Alpin a bitcoin rollup and so we've been really hyperfocused towards those applications and and very excited to kind of announce more on that. >> Very cool. Very cool. I think people are very excited. Um, we've seen a lot more roll-ups go towards this strategy of trying to bring uh Bitcoin onto their stack and uh and use it in what they're calling Bitcoin DeFi. I'm of the position where I think most of this is

going to happen at an institutional level. Um, crypto Twitter for the most part does not own very much Bitcoin. Um, it's not really a retail asset anymore. It's mostly a whale and institutional asset. Uh, but I do think with regulatory clarity, we're starting to see like strategy, you know, talk today about, you know, starting to engage in more Bitcoin lending. Most of I I tend to think maybe you have more clarity on this. I think most of this is happening offchain right now and it's going to be a lift to try to get these companies to use their Bitcoin onchain. What's the latest, you know, you guys are talking, I'd imagine, to miners, whales, and institutions that are holding the majority of Bitcoin. What is the latest from those conversations?

>> Yeah, I think uh on lending specifically, I think there's like a structural mispric of uh CFI uh lending. I mean, you you you have not not even like the institutional and and Wales, but like even retails paying 12 15% to borrow against Bitcoin. We see that that is significantly better on chain with solutions like uh a morpho. I mean, Morpho is is is growing super fast. I last I checked they had more wrapped BTC as collateral than even ETH and they're primarily on Ethereum and and uh and Bass. I think that's an incredible opportunity. Uh what's interesting about that and and worth pointing out is uh you mentioned like more institutional

holders and interest but in reality there's there's like you know on the lending side application there there are a lot of Bitcoin uh retail holders that want to access um you know real world capital liquidity uh against their Bitcoin holdings without selling it. There's even applications like EtherFi that exist on Ethereum and and and and others. Uh I think they're seeing a ton of demand uh coming from the Bitcoin retail holders saying, "Hey, yeah, I would like to get a line of credit against my Bitcoin to go buy coffee or buy, you know, or do mortgage or or what else." Uh and so there there's a lot of interest to tap into there. But I think that uh what's what's

an interesting you know to me on this side is like if we if we can build this you know trust minimize BTC which is you know our bread and butter this is what we've been focused on this is what we're launching on mainet with with things like clock and garbled locks bringing zk verification to bitcoin this is not just like a trustminimized you know version of of wrapped bc that's you know possible on the EVM but a credibly neutral one and if you look at how different fintexs, crypto companies and even even banks are adopting uh like a example to point to I mean I mentioned Morpho look at Coinbase they offer Bitcoin back loans uh you know this is kind of this mullet play they have users

they have distribution and uh they're tapping into onchain vaults just much better pricing structurally much more efficient uh much better rates to borrow against Bitcoin Will other distribution players tap into CBBTC? We think not. We think that the trust minimize aspect of BTC is not just about, you know, better custody, etc., etc., but it's also a neutral standard that the rest of the industry can get behind. So, if you have other partners that want to tap into Bitcoin financial services, uh, they would want a neutral BTC standard for that. And I think that's going to be a huge driver for use

cases uh that actually exist all these kinds of like lending applications, swaps, uh better payment flows, etc. Uh so we're excited about that. Uh on on the whale side, yeah, I mean I think you're right. There's there's a lot of movement towards uh you know ETFs uh and uh getting Bitcoin financial services through those ETFs and through kind of private banking. Um but you know our thesis is that we should be able to out compete uh even even there uh and you know just with onchain verifiable finance like we're we're seeing uh kind of where things are headed with uh you know moving from variable interest on

lending side for example towards a fixed rate this is something that's like we're just getting there uh and I think that's going to be really competitive uh with what's available offchain >> very cool So, I'm I'm just curious if I'm a Bitcoin whale. Uh the things that matter to me are probably like uh not wanting to pay taxes uh on like transferring of different like wrapped versions or I don't want to have to I don't want to have sat on my Bitcoin stash for like five years, eight years and then just because I want to do some product, you know, so yield or some borrowing against I have to pay a tax on that. It makes no sense. It's like I'm still just using my Bitcoin. That's one thing. Second is I don't want to have to risk any sort of like smart contract

risk, wrapped risk. Like I want like the native version of this asset, which probably goes handinhand with number one. Uh and then in addition to that, I probably just want to borrow against it. Uh because I just don't want to pay I want to be able to like realize my my profits effectively without paying the tax on it for having to sell. So a lot of it comes down to like risk and tax. uh how does Alpin create a product or an environment that allows products that enable this uh feature set to actually happen onchain on Alpin? Like is this the big priority for you guys? Am I on the right train of thought here? Like what am I missing from kind of like customers want? I think that's that's definitely one of our flagship products

here is how do we bring the very best of uh onchain lending uh and pair that with you know the the very best of accessing BTC in this trust minimized way which is what what we've been doing um we made this intentional choice of when we go live uh uh on the ecosystem we're EVM compatible uh that that's helped a ton in terms of uh you know really great teams immediately kind of being compatible already uh realizing that BTC as a collateral is is a really you know large kind of segment to go after. Uh and I think you know for us a lot of that focus is also on can we get you know some of the top stable coins here natively uh can we get some of the best

you know onchain off-chain rails integrated uh and uh all the way to kind of like you know the playbook that we typically see with new L1's and even you know L2s is like it feels much more horizontal of like let's let's go after every you know every application have forks have you know bunch of like hundreds hundreds of applications and max out some of these KPIs. I think we have a very different go to market kind of approach here. We see that there's um you know there are very clear you know handful of applications like less than 10 you know probably closer to five and we want to go super vertical and make sure all the way to the UX uh like this is this is you know uh this is

our full focus. So like building super deep liquid markets uh is is very important to us. Getting the most competitive rates here uh getting the integrations that are necessary so that it's it's just a native solution. Uh and that's kind of where our focus is is around I mean you mentioned lending that's absolutely you know a flagship uh application that that will be available and Alpin provides the infrastructure for teams to you know bring uh and and write solidity code and access basically all the tooling around the EVM but uh do so with BTC uh that's actually you know maximally trust minimized uh uh in that

environment and then work with a bunch of different you know there's so many tiers to this ecosystem building but you know another part of our focus is distribution partners uh we think distribution is everything here where you know what are the channels for users to actually like meeting the users where they are. Uh you know they may be on a a non-custodial wallet or they may be on like some custodial uh exchange service etc. Uh and so we've been spending a lot of time with these different partners of they want to access Bitcoin financial services like lending like you know being able to kind of initiate a a card uh against Bitcoin or against stables that people have. Uh and so

having those funnels uh to actually drive in activity is so much more sustainable we think uh long term for the ecosystem than uh you know kind of bringing in billions and billions in a pre-eposit box and kind of you know hoping for the best basically from there. >> Yeah. And speaking speaking of some of those partners um th this has become more and more crucial to the overall strategy of roll-ups bringing Bitcoin into a place where it can be serviced by DeFi. Starknet is one of those chains. You guys have partnered with Starknet.

Curious about this partnership because on the face of it it's like okay we've got two rollups. Aren't you guys competing for liquidity? But I think to your point about distribution channels and and making Bitcoin programmable uh and a productive asset in terms of collateral, there's a lot more going on here than meets the eye. So could you tell us a little bit more about this partnership and and generally how you guys are working together? >> Absolutely. Yeah. So first of all, like the Stark Net team, Starkware, these guys are awesome. Uh we we've been, you know, since the start of Alpin U, we've been in touch with various people on the team there. um very technical obviously on ZK side and a lot of respect uh for the team. So it's a team that we wanted to work with uh for for a while. Uh the

way that we are kind of approaching this partnership and the way that even like Alpin rollup infrastructure has been designed from from the get-go has been like uh keeping in mind like basically we have several years of lessons to learn from from the Ethereum rollup roadmap. Uh so what's like working what's not working there and one of the immediate things for us was like there's so much fragmentation here all these roll-ups are siloed um and you know this seeps up all the way to the user experience which is something that we've really wanted to avoid of you know there's so many different ETHs and so many different you know basically across all these silo rollups and so we we design we've designed our rollup infrastructure in a way where you know

we decouple like what's called the orchestration layer from the execution layer. So you can imagine basically multiple execution layers of which Alpin will be one of the you know EVM compatible execution layers can kind of plug in into this shared orchestration layer that finally settles on Bitcoin. And the advantage that's afforded from something like that is interoperability across these different you know uh these different uh execution layers and also uh like a standardization of of of a BTC like an open standard BTC asset where um you know different distribution channels different kind of wallets can support this and immediately sort of get this support across uh different execution uh

layers and that that's like that's really important to us to be able to get that uh experience right and not have it be fully fragmented. So doing interoperability using Bitcoin uh base layer is is much trickier uh to do right and so uh that the the where this partnership then comes in with with Starkware or Starknet uh specifically is like uh you know they're they're obviously leaning uh into Bitcoin quite a lot. they have a very strong kind of Bitcoin strategy there. Uh and they wanted to get access to the most you know pristine trust minimized BTC uh uh uh possible on Starknet. And so we worked with them uh for a bit and and

kind of went through our uh uh approach with this orchestration layer and wanting this orchestration layer and this bridge uh to be maximally like not rent controlled at all. Not it's not it should be an extension of Bitcoin core not something you know you're not building on top of Alpin you're building on Bitcoin >> and so we plan to basically have this be maintained within like a consortium which Alpin is part of uh Stark Starknet is part of and a few other teams will be joining as well and everyone kind of has their own ecosystem that they can connect uh and so Starknet will be one of the you know it's a founding kind of one of the execution domains that plug

plugs into this shared bridge and settlement infrastructure that we have alongside Alpin's EVM alongside a few few teams that we have not named yet uh we'll be announcing soon. Um, and really it's it's the framework of how do we think about this as um the you know neutral BTC asset that's trust minimized that uh that can win over like a a single centralized rapper uh and and and that's you know in in that direction it is like sure we are competitive in that there are different execution layers uh we think Cairo offers something different than kind of

the EVM compatible version that we have. Um, but ultimately we we all sort of benefit because we we're driving liquidity and uh Lindy into this uh BTC uh you know standard. >> Yeah. And ultimately building this consortium out is going to build a tighter uh connectivity between the Ethereum ecosystem and the Bitcoin ecosystem. And like you mentioned, Morpho, a these are some of the DeFi unicorns that have been built and are servicing and are some of the most resilient and lindy applications in DeFi and it just makes sense that we bring more pristine collateral into those ecosystems like you mentioned. Um and and this partnership with Starknet

helps. >> I feel like we're just like taking a shot at ETH this whole time. It's like ah more pristine collateral >> the application layer. I I mean, look, I I'm gonna I'm gonna stand on business and say that Bitcoin Bitcoin is better collateral than ETH. I I I don't know. Maybe that's a controversial opinion. >> I don't think so. I think it's probably pretty >> I don't think so. I think the numbers speak for for themselves there. Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh Sam, I got one one last question for you, which is that um you know, uh you know, Sailor's talking about selling, but he's also talking about lending. He's got a lot of Bitcoin. I think he should be involved in Bitcoin DeFi. If uh you know if you were stuck in an elevator with uh with Mr. Sailor, what would be your elevator

pitch to bring uh Micro Strategies Bitcoin onto Alpin? >> Yeah, that's that's a funny question. I I have I have actually chatted with >> Yeah, how did that go? >> Uh and uh he's great. He's he's actually an MIT alumni, too. So, he had like this we have this like brass rat ring. Um so, I also was MIT alumni, so we connected over that. But um uh you know this was uh actually quite early right before the the full it was like late 20 or early 2023 or something like this. So uh it was a cool moment because you know Micro Strategy uh obviously executed their plan in in in full force uh since then.

Um I I think to your question though uh on the pitch you know I think right now we are looking into ways of we're making Bitcoin more productive uh as you know adding privacy adding programmability all of these things ultimately expand utility of Bitcoin make it a more productive asset and with that also uh you know there are different opportunities for yield uh in kind yield with Bitcoin as well. This is an open you know like everyone we talk to is very interested in in in this uh how do you get risk adjusted uh BTC in kind BTC yield um we have some solutions cooking around that uh obviously I think

this is not going to be this will take time I don't think this will be like a day one we have like the ultimate kind of Bitcoin yield solution uh but there are opportunities to to be able to uh provide yield I I would actually pitch more towards uh ensuring BTC. I think there's one very clear uh application that we have. We're really excited about uh figuring out a way to ensure uh the first you know some large amount of BTC that's actually bridged in um and there's an opportunity to LP into you know like basically provide BTC uh as and get in kind yield. We would pay

the premium as part of our go to market spend. It's something that other ecosystems haven't done before, but we think it'd be really interesting to build up Lindy and you know offer this at different um application like wallet neo bankank kind of level of uh you know users care about you know are my funds safe here uh early on in in a in a new ecosystem protocol um like it's it's not something that uh you know everyone gets comfortable with. I think the term bridge is itself horrible brand. And so we have like some interesting ideas there in terms of how do we think about ensuring uh value both you know BTC bridged in but other assets coming into

the ecosystem. I would talk to Sailor about ways that we can make some of the Bitcoin that he has uh potentially USD reserves more productive uh through uh this kind of ensuring uh solution that that we're coming up with here. Do you actually think that um like if in the event that strategy would want to do some sort of lending, would they actually want to do it, they actually want to do it onchain? I I just see them now. I just see them go, "Nope, I'm going to go find a centralized lender. I'm going to do it offchain and I'm just going to do it in my way because this is like the safer way." Like what would be your message to like or like how h how do you think that they should be approaching this? Like is it a split? Is it uh because you also just can't put

all your or you know let's say you want to allocate 20% of the Bitcoin that they hold to lending. You can't just also put all of that into a single lender or a single platform because that would be silly too. Um how how do you think that they might go about that? And like do you think that they would want to put any of it on chain? >> So this is like if they want to borrow against the Bitcoin, >> right? Right. Exactly. >> They want to get dollars against the Bitcoin. Yeah. So I I would basically say like look um there first like it you know our our system has this one of uh assumption on trust and livveness. Uh so we have a bunch of you know entities lined up there. Some of the you know most well-known custodians etc are going to

be part of this set and so every single one of them has to get compromised for for the deposit there to be compromised. even if you're not comfortable with it and you want to bring in size um we would talk about having you come on as one of the N uh entities uh in the signing set. So like basically at that point you know as long as you're trusting yourself uh even if everyone else tries to uh you know steal or you know whatever run the deposits um it's effectively a a no additional counterparty risk solution if you're in that set. And so there's there's been some interest from like a like a family office uh you know wanting to be part of that for this kind of reason. Um so there are kind of much more there's much

more flexibility when it comes to the kind of counterparty risk that you take on. Now I think where he may you know I think you're right to say like yeah like I still like would he be comfortable uh even with that uh counterparty risk what about like the unfamiliarity with smart contracts etc. Well, what's what's interesting is that like on lending like you know the protocols we were talking about like Morpho and NAV these guys have you know tens of billions of dollars in aggregate like uh already secured and and they've been around for a while uh and Morpho in particular I think they're it's not like the entire I mean Morpho market like this is as far as I understand under a thousand lines of code and formally verified right and so there's there's a lot of lending

security that already comes with uh some of the smart contracts uh that will be available uh on Alpin. And so uh getting I think some of those guys comfortable is going to be pretty big. It's going to be hard. Uh but like we're seeing some interest coming in for sure from from DATs um uh along these same lines. So >> want like participate on chain. >> Yeah. Yeah, I think the other part that most people don't talk about here is like uh it in in in some ways it's not even going and convincing. It's convincing like where are they custodying the Bitcoin? Uh can that platform basically offer like a two-click solution that's using Alpin and and and kind of lending

uh vaults etc underneath uh to be able to service uh those loans. uh if if you build a super easy integrate basically a super easy solution onto those you know like like as an example maybe Anchorage uh which I I know custodies uh a lot of bitcoin uh especially you know amongst stats and so on uh this makes the uh it makes it much easier uh to convince uh some of these uh more institutional players to actually go use it they don't have to worry about navigating you know doing an atomic swap in and blah blah blah like that's abstracted away. They trust the custodian. Custodian's part of this, you know, one event set and boom,

you know, they can access loans uh directly there. Uh and so it's it's a lot more about closing the the distribution channels and like you know in that example it's like well would Anchorage use you know Morpho on base and and take their users? >> No no they want to use it on Alpin. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. like and that's where the you trust minimization is actually very relevant in in that kind of context. >> Simon, man, I appreciate you joining us. Uh great first time on the show. I know it's going to be a busy couple months ahead for you guys. Um so looking forward to tracking that and I know you guys have some alpha that I may may or may not have overheard at our event in Buenosirus that we'll keep under wraps

for now, but the audience is ready to hear it uh maybe next time. So see you soon, man, and thanks for joining us. >> Awesome. Appreciate it, guys. Yeah, I enjoyed the time. >> Thank you, man. See you next time. >> All righty, we got S ready ready to come on up. Let's get Sal up. S is the CEO of Sovereign. We're talking about DATs. This guy started a near that. I think he's bullish on privacy. I think he's bullish on Zcash intense revenues. Uh we got a lot going on here, guys. So, let's bring him up and uh let's get fired up.

Last one of the day. What is Near doing these days? >> Oh, I'll tell you what Near's doing because uh they just sent out a newsletter blast and we've got fresh fresh data uh while we get Saul up. Let's bring him up so that we can hear his take on >> up 11% today. >> Yeah, >> sitting in here at about 1.8. S, what's up, man? How are you? >> What's going on? How are you? >> Not too shabby. Uh yesterday the the world was ending. Today the future is bright. Not sure how this industry survives. Uh not sure how we survive this industry, but but S, it's your first time on the show, man. So would

love a quick a quick brief about yourself. Uh and I know Rob's got some data and some points and some thoughts and he's fired up. So let's just get uh right into it with how you got started here with Sovereign or SVRN and uh kind of a bit about your your backstory, man. >> Yeah. Yeah. Happy to do that. and Andy and Rob, thanks for having me on. Followed you guys for a while and appreciate what you built here. So, >> on the personal side, I've been in the industry my whole adult life. Uh, started off in the institutional side at Stage Street, focused on emerging technology risk, specifically machine learning and blockchain. Then went over to KPMG, built their advisory business in the US, focused on public blockchains with the thesis to institutionalize crypto as an asset class. We were about I don't know seven eight years early on

that endeavor but we're on the front row seat of Coinbase building the retail exchange you know Coinbase custody being launched Prime worked on a number of awesome projects got to collaborate with Facebook in the attempt to build a stable coin network uh obviously did not work out well uh from a regulatory perspective but had a great experience as the industry matured into the chapter that we we now call institutional adoption. uh went to the venture buy side in 2021. Have been on the buy side running venture funds for the past five years, both of which were very close to the deer ecosystem investors in near protocol at layer 1 and then across the ecosystem and a number of projects. Uh and then over the summer as kind of the

DAT 1.0 era was starting to slow down. Uh there was a discussion that we had at out east and then subsequently at Salt and Wyoming with a number of the execs on the near foundation side and they were thinking deeply around what does this evolve into in its next iteration and form once we get past kind of the first wave of speculation and hype. Um, and that became super interesting to me to think about, you know, not only kind of this capital markets flywheel, acquire a bunch of the tokens, but actually build a legitimate business that empowers the network and brings it to the mainstream.

Um, so that's kind of what brought me here. Super excited for the build. We're about 60 days in post announcement of the pipe. Made a ton of progress across a number of fronts. I look forward to double clicking with you guys here. >> Yeah, man. I mean, dude, Rob, I know you got some stats and stuff. Um just looking at the charts today like for example Kyle Samani launched his forward industries debt. Uh I I I remember I was in Hawaii when he was raising for it. So that was in August. Uh and then he launched it in September. I think it was buy he basically was that last pump that last kind of shoulder up to 230 240.

>> Sold at 140 today. Uh it was just at 125. I think we're probably at a local bottom here for the whole market. We'll see how we how we span out. I I know this because I was talking to Rob yesterday as if the whole world was burning down. Um I was also slightly hung over, but like for example, so so Kyle is now down I mean let's call it 45%ish on like a billion dollars of Salana like like what like what's happening here to these debts? Because I think a lot of people are now kind of taking the taking the piss out of them a bit. Um, how do you how do you think about uh this first iteration and like are you glad that you kind of were a little bit late to the party or do you not view it

like that? Like how do you think about this first iteration being like I guess complete in some capacity and now also underwater? >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean so also in in regards to forward industries like let's be fair in that it's unlikely they deployed the full capital race and the pipe in the time window that would lead to them being down 45% today. Um so but where we launched in terms of the time window I actually feel quite fortunate. You know we've we've kind of been at the very very tail end of this wave one speculative phenomena and are now in the period of time where public market investors are looking through to understand actual business strategy. The sophistication of the asset management approach not just at spot but also in

options markets where we're actively engaged. Um, and then really looking towards like how do you build a network aligned business that gets monetized in the native network token but ultimately is constructive to driving applications to scale on that network. Um, the other piece of this that I think is quite interesting is like everyone looks at BMR as kind of the flagship example of how to hit the capital markets flywheel. Uh, and I think they've done a wonderful job at that. Tom Lee is a great spokesperson for Ethereum, but the whole industry, you know, more than a decade now. Uh but the piece that people don't often focus on is like their timing was incredible. They were catching Ethereum in their initial wave post pipe when Ethereum was trading 1,400 to 2,000. And so there's this

element of timing on execution that leads to you either having the wind behind you as tailwind or wind in your face. And being at the very tail end when we were in peak negative sentiment on DATs with token prices kind of already suppressed bare market territory is ultimately going to be a buoy for us moving forwards because our accumulation of near is sub $2 on an average cost basis. So I think when we repric spot and near will probably outperform and have strong beta versus ETH and Bitcoin in this next lag and wave, we're going to be uh kind of lifting accordingly.

We uh we had Lane from the foundation come on during Dev Connect and uh the stat that I had that Andy mentioned was uh I mean look this this thing is so hot that the stat was uh near intense cross six billion volumes last 10 it feels like now at this point we're probably past 10 billion just in the last few minutes but um that's the pace at which near intense is is is skyrocketing because volume is happening and Zcash had such a bid now that's you know cooling off a little bit. But what Lane was telling was that was that this is, you know, where we can start to see some potential um whether it's buyback and burn or buyback. He was more on the governance side and thinking more about

what a value acral mechanism could look like. Um I also see you guys have about 4.2% of the total near supply. like you said, your your uh cost basis is near under $2, your your average entry uh and your accumulation target is 10%. Um I think now it seems like because of what we're hearing from Lane and because of the success of Near Intense, it makes perfect sense to accumulate now because there could be potential value acrruel mechanisms back to the token. But I I want to hear from you what the target 10%. Why are you guys targeting 10%?

This is obviously a very significant portion of the supply. You guys would become major stakeholders which you know you already are in the near network. Why 10%? Was it just kind of a number a big enough number where you guys had enough skin in the game? We've seen other dats toss around 5% total network. Why why 10% as the accumulation target? Yeah, I mean the the thought process behind 10% was really derived from like the spirit of this entire industry in the context of decentralization where if you're traversing past 10% up to 15% or greater, you start to challenge like what are the actual forces in this ecosystem. And so our job is to be prudent stewards obviously of of our equity being SVRN but also the ecosystem at large. And so 10% felt like an

appropriate threshold that was feasible based on the scale of the capital raised in the pipe, the forward yield strategies that were running as well as future capital formation through our ATM product which is live. Um and then ultimately an asset base through which we can fund the capex side leveraging yield off the balance sheet for the infrastructure build powering both the MPC nodes for near intents but also what you'll hear more about tomorrow publicly on the confidential compute AI side. >> Beautiful. Um, S did did you like Okay, so we had this whole proof of stake is a meme thing happen at permission list in June with Hib and Tun and a couple other people. We had a couple like viral clips

happen and people were talking about how >> yeah, you know, you're paying all this inflationary yield and then the token's going down and then you're paying taxes on the income and then you're not even outweighing the performance and so like why are we even doing this? uh you know it got even all the way to the point where like Celestia put out their road map and was like we're just going to take this all the way down to 0.25% and do proof of governance as our future model as like our northstar near recently successfully cut inflation by 50% if I'm not mistaken. Um, how much does that matter to you from a perspective of of investing from the thesis of the token? Like just generally speaking, you know, inflation can be seen as an expense on the protocol level when you look at like the balance sheet

of, you know, revenues versus expenditures. Uh, what does this 50% cut in inflation mean to, uh, Sovereign's kind of thesis, to your personal view? Talk to us about kind of like how you think about this. Yeah, I thought it was a huge milestone and and likely the first of multiple that relate to network economic changes and shifting the emissions rate and ultimately budget of the protocol towards useful work. And so the first iteration of that was having the emissions rate natively from the protocol. uh the the future considerations around that will think about how we incentivize you know MPC signing nodes powering near intents but more importantly the the the decentralized confidential compute stack

that will power near AAI. I think you guys probably saw the announcement with Brave recently where Brave's browser agent is leveraging near AAI built on top of Nvidia confidential compute. Um but ultimately the shift is not towards like how do we incentivize the governance but more how do we drive incentives around useful work in the context of the network and really working towards this future of agentic commerce where we have agents we can control we can own we verify that can transact in the real world on our behalf. Um I'm I'm laughing to myself like I remember the clips from you guys at permissionless on the proof ofstake discussion and the reality is like in 2017 18 as these protocols were being designed in the context of the shift to

proof of stake like no one know knew what the appropriate security budget was at that time and so I think we're mature enough now as an ecosystem with protocols like mir having you know as of September 50 plus million monthly active users transacting that we can really think about what is the optimal spend end of the budget construction for protocol like near >> yeah I mean yeah go ahead >> yeah I you know we have a lot of conversations with a lot of different dats right and most of them are like you know we are going to stake and that's it right like >> and yeah you know the the staking inflation is an expense on the network's balance sheet but it's an income on you know a dad's balance sheet that is

staking the asset and so one of the things that I noticed in in the thread that you guys put out when you kind of updated uh updated the community on, you know, where you guys were at, how much near you've accumulated, and what what some of the goals were. Uh was that you don't have any intention of being a passive company here. Like, you know, passive would mean staking and being kind of hands-off, but you you specifically say that you guys are intending on being the engine, the engine for our mission is to make individuals the true owners of the AI economy. And I'm just I'm just curious if you could elaborate on that as you guys have started to accumulate more and more near obviously this is very aligned with the near mission of private and sovereign AI. How are you going to help

accelerate this mission and bring this about? >> Yeah, there's there's kind of two pieces of the word active that are relevant to how we're thinking about this. The second of which is very much in the spirit of what you're just describing here. And so in terms of active to enable this future of userowned private AI, it's really around how do we power and deliver the infrastructure and be the first to market beyond near Foundation to support the underlying components that are required to power use cases like this brave private chat that went live I think last week. Um so on our side we're in active build mode right now and delivering this infrastructure should have some live by year end 25 and then we'll be scaling through Q1 of 26 and Q2 of 26 and then also syndicating that infrastructure

footprint across other providers who are interested in delivering confidential compute to apps running on on near. Um but the word active for us is not just in terms of actually building a business and focusing on how do we scale the near network. It's also thinking about how do we actually manage the balance sheet and thinking about not just these basic spot mechanics of staking, liquid staking, liquidity provisioning, all of which are are largely table stakes. Uh but also looking deeply at the options market and being sophisticated in our approach there to enhance the yield profile, asset accumulation, and also to generate cash, which for us is supporting a buyback program that we announced on Monday of this week, where we're not selling assets off the balance sheet to

buy back equity. We're generating cash by productive utilization of our balance sheet in the context of option strategies that will support share buybacks in the event we trade to a discount at some point in the future. And >> what what does that look like? Is it selling puts and and is the options market for me and some of these coins? Is it robust enough to support SCA uh options and derivatives at this scale? >> Yeah, this was something I was talking about a couple weeks ago down at the bridge uh the ties conference in New York. The option markets today for alts near in particular are wildly different than they were 24 months ago. You're seeing market makers across pretty much every jurisdiction quote uh near options both puts call strategies and in some

cases relatively exotic structures that facilitate accumulation under certain conditions. And so we're participating across the full spectrum spectrum of different option strategies. We're fortunate to have a former options trader, market maker from JP Morgan as part of our team running that internally. Uh, which really helps to manage also kind of the shareholder alignment and the expense ratio of running the asset management function in house. >> Interesting. Yeah, I mean back I mean yeah it the onchain options market hasn't really really kind of panned out but you know DART has and a couple of these others and now I assume you know Vanguards came into the market. There's we saw the ETFs launched today. I think chain link had an ETF several others.

One can only imagine that near will be up up you know relatively soon as well. Um a and you know hopefully that leads to more demand just generally for for these other assets. You know I think people are are kind of wondering when it comes to these strategies like so um you know we did see a couple Ethereum DATs have to sell their ETH to buy back underlying. you're saying that you guys aren't going to do that. You guys will have, you know, a different strategy. Um, you know, push comes to shove hopefully that that that remains the case. But I think people are really trying to understand like, okay, this is year like year one or six months in. Um, like what is the five-year plan of a DAT like or of these traditional like of

your company? Like where are you guys like if I asked you it's Tuesday, December 2nd, 2029. Like where are you guys? like what is the vision for this? Is it just to because like once you get to that 10% mark then what? Um you know then or like how do you do you start to accumulate other assets like you know I think a lot of people are thinking about these companies in like this year and then it's going to be like like they're going to be gone next year like they're not going to exist or something. It's it's weird a lot of the really really short term thinking towards this like what is the multi-year plan for you guys or maybe if you don't want to speak uh specifically on that just generally like how you see the landscape evolving uh over the next like four to five years.

>> Yeah. I mean that part part of the reason that we were relatively late to this kind of V1 window was because we were pitching a V2 story which is part of the reason I got excited and actually put my hand up to come do this. And then candidly, my incoming COO, who's been with us now for six weeks, Dave Schwed, left the job, left Robin Hood, where he was their chief information security officer, not because we're building a DAT. We're actually not. We're building a treasury company that powers an infrastructure business that unlocks and enables confidential compute on your protocol. And so that journey to build a scale infrastructure business is a multi-year journey and one that we'll be on this entire time. the shift in terms of where we put our yield that's generated off the balance sheet will

definitely skew towards capex and then ultimately also proper financing approaches around that infrastructure over time. Um but in the in the early days we're really just trying to get to market and get live to help power and scale the resource stack behind a couple other pilots that are going live and then ultimately production scale use cases in the next six months. So it's like thinking about these things as like acquisition vehicles of different assets to power the the infrastructure rather than just like these financial engineering machines kind of.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And and I would imagine like beyond what we're doing specifically, you will see these vehicles end up becoming acquirers of underlying infrastructure businesses specifically focused on a network. you may see future vehicles in the space look at multi-asset basket based approaches. Um, so I think you know DATs are not going anywhere. Treasury companies aren't going anywhere. It's the first time there's been this kind of like speculative hype around a wave in crypto that actually embodies what it takes to grow up as an industry. you know, introduce public company rigor around financial controls, quarterly filings, financial statement audits, investor, all these different components like um

and I think it's what the industry needs. So, >> I mean, yeah, I mean, we agree. >> You know, I I I was watching this Paul Atkins segment on CNBC and he he the thing that got the headline was this innovation exemption and I think the market got excited about it. uh he says it's coming out in a month or so and that that is certainly going to open up some more financial access for things. But another another part that piqued my interest was this idea about corporate governance. And I think for a long time these crypto companies, not necessarily the companies themselves, but the networks were caught between a rock and a hard place because we tried to be decentralized and we tried this DAO thing, but we realized that it really wasn't effective at getting things done.

And what we really needed and the EFs sort of recognized this on the Ethereum world was like, wait, we actually need to run this like a company and have some goals and go and work towards those goals. And so I think maybe what we're seeing at the on the DAT space is we're seeing accumulation of the asset such that you have, you know, enough skin in the game so that it is worthwhile to go and become almost like an additional labs company for this network. and you can, you know, pick and choose your own mission when it comes to this particular piece of technology and how you're going to orient this network and drive those goals forward. I is that the way that you're thinking about this as you guys are building more and more stake in this

network and and I guess what is it about Near and the AI landscape that gets you most excited that you're you're most excited to push forward? Yeah, I mean just on on the first point very much aligned to where you're going, Rob. Like I think if ultimately we didn't have this kind of wildly unclear regulatory environment over a 10-year period of time, we may have ended up with public companies that were first to market and played the role that foundations had played over time. And so I think as we zoom out over two to three years, you're going to see these vehicles in the public markets be, you know, piece of the puzzle as it relates to driving an ecosystem forward and facilitating the business development efforts into the

enterprise market ultimately into government as well. Um, and I don't know if if we had had clarity that we have today or we will have over the next six to nine months that we would see we would have seen the structures emerge in kind of the offshore foundation model that everyone became familiar with, you know, from 2017 to 2024. Um, so yeah, I mean I think ultimately we're we're fortunate that we have a different point of view, top down administration from regulatory point of view. Seeing Paul Atkins this morning was inspiring to have that be kind of the the top dog at the SEC pushing forward an innovation agenda describing exemptions around that type of work. Um but yeah, I mean in reality at the end

of the day like our mandate is to advance nearest technology and the confidential AI/private AI arc is something that's only going to gain steam moving forward. I've held the view that near technology is uniquely suited as a vertically integrated stack to solve for the key risks related to centralized AI and that's why I've taken the bad and I'm pushing forward the build on the sovereign SPRN side. >> Yeah. So basically Rob what kind of what you're saying is that there's like these labs and this foundation entities typically in even that structure is kind of being torn apart a bit due to better regulatory clarity but because you know a company like sovereign is such a large stake in the network they could they now become like another kind of contributor

of sorts. >> Exactly. And whereas before like you said the foundation was regulatory li it was uh limited to only focusing on the token and they couldn't >> there was like all kinds of fugazy things that they would have to do what they were in charge of like the marketing budget but the labs company had to be just in in terms of like the development budget. Now it makes sense like these things are becoming unified. they can work closer together and still everyone can can kind of divide and conquer and have the separation of labor, but they can have one unified mission. Whereas before it was this kind of facade of of being these separate entities, now everyone can kind of kind of work together.

>> Yeah. >> Um and I think that ultimately that's going to that's where we should have been for a long time and now now we're we're getting back to that place. I just one thing that Sal mentioned that I think is really important to kind of drive this private confidential compute private AI point home like why now? We've heard about privacy for a long time but why now? >> Chat GPT is rolling out ads. I don't know if you guys saw this like >> last week they made the announcement it's going to be coming out probably in Q1 or Q2. Whereas the information you're going to be fed is going to be sponsored and they're going to have, you know, we saw when these LLM first came out this bias that was implicit in these models and the way that they were trained. Now it's going to be explicit in the way

that they're going to be putting these biases into these things because they're paid to influence these models. And I think it's just going to become paytoplay. And we're we're we're just more and more going to the direction where we need private sovereign AI a method of truth seeking in this in this world. >> Yeah, I totally agree. And it's not even just on kind of like the explicit bias being expressed in the models. Like I'm sure you saw last week a third party provider to OpenAI had a security event. Open AAI had to go outbound to its user base and kind of say, "Hey, heads up. It felt like it felt like a crypto moment where I was like, "Hey, heads up. Your personal data just got leaked. You're going to be the target of a fishing campaign." Dave Schwed was just quoted in a decrypt article talking about this

yesterday. So, it's it's not just around kind of model veracity or integrity. It's also around the data that you interact with models and the inference processes sitting inside of central servers that are subject to cyber events. The significance of those events will only increase over time as the mo and value around that data increases. Um, and Near provides a solution of kind of both pieces of the problem like validate what the model does, verify it, but also give me guarantees around privacy and confidentiality when I'm interacting with models so that I know no thirdparty database cyber event will result in, you know, my relationship counseling or my mental health counseling advice and feedback from a model being leaked to a public.

>> Yeah, that's important. I mean, that's also a whole another conversation is the how comfortable folks have gotten with sharing information with these LLMs, which is nuts. Um, S, I think you're on the right side of history here, man. I think you got good timing, too. Uh, whether luck, skill, combination of both. It sounds like uh you guys are in a really good spot. So, props to you. Hope the announcement uh tomorrow goes quite well. And thanks thanks for joining. Would love to have you on again. Um, and just see this landscape just continually evolves. I'd love to, you know, catch up again in 3, six months and see where you guys are at. >> Yeah, it sounds good. Thanks, Andy.

Thanks, Rob, for having me. Look forward to chatting soon. >> Absolutely. >> Best of luck, man. >> Appreciate it, S. See you next time. >> Thanks, buddy. >> Speak soon. >> All righty. >> And that takes us to the end of the guest segments where this last segment is about what's going on. So, Bitcoin's at 921. We're definitely putting in higher higher. We definitely we definitely put in a higher low here on the daily four hours close. If so, everyone's going to be like confirmed bottom. Um, everyone's going to say that we're going to new highs. Uh, >> you know what's funny, Rob, is that for the [clears throat] first time in a long time, you know, a lot of people were saying, "Oh, it's over." But like they

didn't want to sell. Like they were like, "Oh, the bare market's coming." But like you could feel that like everyone was still holding on. Dude, it actually feels like there's a lot of people sidelined right now. Like like the perfect scenario is like this like dead cat that we're talking about back up to the hundreds and then everyone's like we're so back buys back in on everything and then they just nuke it again. Like that would just be max destruction and max pain because it does feel like people are sidelined. It feels like people got so scared people were buying stocks and I don't know man. Uh >> hold on. I gota let me let me let me run with your hypothetical because I'm I'm of a similar mindset. Obviously things look good like right here and now. But let's say we get there, right? I'm going

to go with your premise. We deadc cat up to mid9s. Maybe we hit some resistance around 100, right? 97 to 99 type, maybe even 100 or 101, right? Let's say we get there. Now, in your in your hypothetical that you just you just went through, you said people buy back in and they get shellacked. Do you think if we deadcat up to the high 90s, people buy back in because they're sideline? Or do people actually use this as an opportunity to trim the dead cat? >> I don't know, man. I feel like I feel like the things get so crazy so fast. Like I just I mean, dude, Bitcoin's at 922, up 7% today. The daily candle is ridiculous. Looks like it's going to go

push straight for 95. I mean, yeah. I mean, there's going to be a lot of push back around that 98 to 100 range. I don't really I don't I don't know, man. It would just be so insane if that was just a midbull market pullback and we go to new highs from here. That would just be just oh, brutal. Um, and so I mean, let's see. What do we >> You're looking at the daily. I'm looking at the monthly. We are not the same, my boy. >> I I'm at the weekly. We're let's just say that that 35% pullback from 126 to uh 80 is about the maximum pullback allowed for a bull market in Bitcoin

history. Like you don't get much deeper of a like that was about the worst possible pullback uh to keep a bull market. Um now the other all the altcoins are completely different story. I mean, if you look at the the wick was a lot gnarlier, right? Um, we went down about 25%. >> 35 >> 35% if you include the wick. Exactly. But it's gotten >> I mean, >> we've bounced hard, right? And so we've bounced from the low 80s back 10% higher >> to the to the, you know, >> low mid to low 90s.

>> Also, the Fed rates went from like 30% chance of cut to 80%. So, they're definitely cutting. People were saying that they weren't cutting, which was crazy. That was just like, "Guys, how have we lost our collective minds?" They're definitely cutting. Also, I put up this tweet. People were saying that Tether was a fraud. And >> insult, >> that was crazy talk. >> I mean, you got to look at Arthur's uh look at Valstrom's portfolio. Their biggest bag is Athena. >> Micro. We [clears throat] were also getting the micro strategy FUD. >> Micro Strateg, >> right?

>> L1's have no value. We had a Santiago freaking arguing about L1's. Santi's out there talking about L1's need to be there's a val there's all these people saying that there's all this value in L1's that's going to get constricted back a ton could happen. Who knows? I saw a guy calling for 35k um like earnestly which I mean it's possible I suppose but like it was just crazy man. I think the floor is actually going to be a lot higher than people think. Maybe it already maybe it's already in, but the people that we had on the show today, there is no existential crisis if you look at the previous cycles. Like

>> I don't know, man. I think uh >> I think outlier Ventures guy Jamie was probably a little bit stressed out about the per the performance a lot of their locked tokens as many of us are. You know, it's pretty >> bad. >> I think we have to separate the altcoin market from Bitcoin. Really? >> And we have to look at like, you know, let's be let's be real, right? For all the people who are watching, what are our biggest bags right now? It's Bitcoin, ETH, and hype.

>> Yeah. And then there's and then there's, you know, the portfolio of venture that, you know, we've we've uh we've angled into over the last >> Yeah, we haven't done much over six months. The last six months, but you know, going back uh like six to 18 months we did, you know, maybe even 24 months at this point. Yeah, >> it's been it's been quite a bit. Haven't had any significant liquidity events, but you know, we've seen tokens launch, cliffs etc. right? So there's a venture market of newly launched coins that have come out over the last year or two and then you've got Bitcoin ETH hype which I think are are you know the primarily focus for the liquid bags. Yeah.

>> Putting aside to me the venture bag is like I I >> look fully vested over you know four or five years. It's like look it's something's going to hit and it's going to return the fund you know in five years and then there's going to be some liquidity events uh that that happen around that. But if we're focusing on the liquid bags, I mean, Bitcoin went down 35% from its high. It just happened to h it just happened quicker than we would have expected. >> So fast. And I think some of that is fallout and wash out from 1010.

>> Look, the thing though is this. This thing can get to 107, 110 even, and still be in a bearish structure. And that people can't fathom that, which is crazy. you and I have a have a have a problem of uh time horizon disparity. >> Look, I don't think it matters. I I agree. It doesn't really matter like long-term it doesn't really matter. I I think the Santa rally is probably on like we're on like we're on like it's on. I mean like we're sentiment is bad. I think enough people are sidelined. Uh this daily is enough to secure a higher low on Bitcoin which is enough to give us at least one to two weeks of move. I think, you know, from the people that I that I like to listen to, uh, a

multi-week uh, you know, bare a counter trend rally, if you consider the short-term trend or the midterm trend to be bearish, considering that we put in the high in early October, the high was in. If you consider that to be a deviation, then the high has been put in in August. So, it means that it's been, you know, four monthsish, four, you argue three to four months of bearish trend on Bitcoin. So you get a you know multi-week to month counter trend rally and then you you like there's basically coming a point where there's a absolute shootout between the bulls and the bears. It's going to happen around the low 100ks.

It's gonna happen sometime in the next six to eight weeks and that is going to determine a lot of the trend for uh the first half of 2026 because if Bears win that and turn that thing over 100 105 back under 100 back under 90 dude that thing's going to that thing's going down hard. Um but if bulls win it and can sustain above 100 for several weeks months then this thing could just level out again and keep going. And honestly, I think that scenario would actually freaking throw people for a whirl more than a bear. A bear would hurt people more and would cause more stress and piss people off and cause despair. But man, do I believe that actually this thing leveling out for a while and then

sending would actually throw people from more confusion. Like because right now, if we go into a bear, it's going to be like four-year cycle was right. How do we all not picture that? >> You're saying this time is different. I'm saying if it is different, people will be like, "What the hell?" Yeah. >> Yeah. So, >> I think that's I think that's uh that's pretty accurate. I do think we're going to face some resistance putting uh uh I think we're going to face some resistance between 98 and 102. I mean, it's just psychological at this point, but if you do take a look at the monthly, uh, we're putting it and this candle holds and we don't go back below 90 for like any like we do get a little a little bit more of an uptrend for the rest of this week and maybe next week.

Um, it looks like a pretty pretty solid higher low and uh >> on the monthly. Yeah, it does. It really does. It is about as close as it could get. >> But but I think Yeah, I mean we're going to get a face off. It's coming. The faceoff is coming in the next six to eight weeks, if not sooner, where the the first half of the year of 226 is going to be decided. >> I think we're going to chop pretty pretty hard around 100. We're think we're going to get it we're going to get up there, but I think you're right. I I think the lows are in for now. I think um I think we're going to get a decent amount of chop. And guess I mean what we've seen what happens when Bitcoin is in an uptrend and it just chops around

resistance. Altcoins tend to do well. >> Yeah. I mean that could happen because they've been so beaten up. Look, I'm just going to continue my spot and trim plan. Um hold my long-term bags. Um hold my Bitcoin, try to hold as much hype as possible. Um and uh basically try not to sell any any of the venture stuff. I mean, I was uh in the EtherFi investor chat with DCF Godd. He was like, "If anybody wants to sell Etherfi, like I'm happy to take it off your hands, blah blah blah." And we're sitting there, we talked to Mike.

They're doing what he said, like 60 million in ARR right now or something. >> They're doing buybacks. >> I was like, dude, I was like, I'll see what did I say? I was like, haven't sold a single EtherFi yet, and you think we will now. I'll see you in 2030. Dude, I honestly think that so's like age of exponentials thing, it actually really applies to like our venture stuff. It's like, dude, we'd be remissed to or we'd be remissed to sell things that we invested in with a long time horizon on year two of the unlock because uh because we can like we don't need the money obviously and we don't need the we don't need to, you know, make a move, dude. Like a lot of these are like a thousand extra zero.

Like ether fight is either like the next freaking >> American Express >> or like or like >> Ether lose like 20 grand like okay you know what like let's let's shoot for the thousandx here. Huh. >> That's really where we're headed. >> But that's the venture that's a whole conversation. >> Liquid is where we're at. I think we have the premise. I think we get to 100 or very close to it. We get to high 90s. As we get to low hundreds on this Santa rally bounce, it will be determined whether this is a dead cat and whether people sell the dead cat or people buy the dead cat. We get up to low hundreds and then we get shellac.

[snorts and laughter] >> We're gonna we're gonna see. I think >> let's even hope we get there, bro. My god. I mean, this daily is on Bitcoin is going to be significant. I'm I'm not worried, man. Long-term trend has has not changed. goal is to raise cash in times when people don't want to. So you can stack more sats and coins when people are pessimistic and you can be optimistic because you have cash. You know, couple hundred grand today is worth a lot more than or is worth a lot less than a couple hundred grand if Bitcoin's at 60k. Um and you know that's just where you want to be. So look guys, um I think Santa rally is on. I I think it's hard to say that we're not going to get a Santa rally. I think what happens after that is uh is up for grabs still.

So, >> um we know we know the uh the structure and the landscape going into 2026. You've been saying 2026, you've been listening to Benjamin Cohen. You've been saying 2026 is bearish. >> Dude, I think we go I think Bitcoin does hit that 60k markish in 2026. It's hard to see it not doing it. Even if we rip from here, it's I think it's going to happen, man. Just got to be ready for it. >> I don't think Bitcoin ever hits 60K again. Ever. >> Ever.

Wow. I mean, dude, there is a there is a reality, right, where I mean, you got the QT ending, QT starting, rates being cut, Clarity Act, Trump getting rid of Powell, uh enacting his own monetary policy, wanting to pump his own bags. There's a whole world of reason why it will never go under 60 again. >> But they were saying that was never going under 100 again. >> The president of >> No, we knew it was going three weeks went to 80K. >> The president of the United States, his son runs a Bitcoin mining company.

You think he's not going to like what do you think this just what do you think this is? Like there's a time to be contrarian and then there's a time to just look at what is happening. And if we look at what's happening, the person in charge of the money printer, his he has shown a pattern of behavior to enrich his family. [laughter] You can tail him and his family or you can be contrarian.

>> No, dude. I think it's more like it's hard to see that when I look at my alt bags and I'm like, "Oh, what happened to you Pangu?" >> It's a different scenario. >> It's a different It's a different thing. >> Eric Trump does not run a Pangu staking that. It's not what he does. You got to look at the facts, okay? It's not >> Oh my god. >> We're not going to extrapolate and say, you know, Bitcoin goes up, everything else goes up. I do think if Bitcoin gets to 100, it's macro bull and we chop around that, maybe there is some alt relief that happens. But I think structurally, if you look at where the incentives are, the incentives are for the person in charge to benefit his own self-interest. We know he's going to do

that. The guy's a narcissist. >> That doesn't mean that we can't go under >> family. We can't go under 60K or 70K, though. >> He doesn't have like a magic wand that's like, "Oh, I'm going to stop the price from dropping." Yeah, his magic wand is picking the Fed governor and the Fed governor says whoosh money printer. >> But that's that's in May, right? >> In May. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, all [snorts] right guys, great stream. See you guys tomorrow. Uh, we got a bunch of work to do. So, uh, catch you guys on the flip.

>> America's the crypto capital of the world. 2026 is the 250th anniversary of America. [music]