The Rollup TV: Monday, August 25th

Transcript

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

[Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat.

[Music] Hey, hey, hey.

[Applause] [Music] Yes sir. >> GM, >> what a what a weekend. We had the uh >> Jackson hole on Friday kicked us into a absolute whirlwind.

>> Yeah, man. Dude, I saw Tom Lee put out a tweet from like a screenshot of one of his buddies on email saying like, you know, this is what's going to happen to ETH. It's going to go down to 4100 and then to 5100 quickly. And it's like it's it's not gotten there yet. But it's funny that people were memeing Tom Lee for doing TA on a like crypto Twitter TA with billions of dollars >> in email. That's the most boomer thing about it. >> Yeah, it's hilarious. >> Meanwhile, >> um >> yeah, Bitcoin, I mean, had the entire market had a had a rally off of Jackson Hole and then a big old leverage flush.

I >> Yeah. >> Have you seen as to what could have possibly explained the nuke from one >> Yeah. Some guy nuked his coins. >> Some guy one clipped like 24,000 Bitcoin or something. Is this the same guy that's rotating that Bitcoin into ETH? >> No, I don't think so. I think it's a different guy. >> I You've seen that as well, I'm sure. This the two half billion dollar whale rotating from Bitcoin to ETH. >> I have seen that. >> And if I'm not mistaken, that's that's happening on Hyperlid that he's executing these trades.

>> Yes, he was doing it and then he was longing on Hyperlid. I think he's got a lot of Bitcoin left. The only other problem is the other seller has like I think 150,000 Bitcoin left or something. So yeah, that's a big one. So we'll see what happens there. The the problematic thing is that is that Sailor is not buying as much as he previously was. I think people are a bit worried about that. >> He was in some hot water because of the adjustments that he made to strategy strategy. We talked about this last last show where he was aggressively buying aggressively buying despite what the MNAV was and he made some adjustments to that. Some stakeholders weren't too happy about it.

>> Oh, I see. >> He slowed things down. >> Okay. Um, yeah. I mean, look, that was a very quick wash out on Bitcoin. It happened in like 15 minute candle, I think. Uh, we'll see what happens to the market. I think it's a little bit red today. But yeah, that that Friday move was very um it was very kind of like you know how you know when the market moves and it's kind of like inorganic in the sense that just happened so fast. Those are always like pretty pretty prime to be retracing.

>> I I laugh because I remember the copy pasta tweet that was something like this market is being artificially manipulated to suppress your bags. >> Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was coffee pasta to the max. >> Yeah. So, >> good times. >> Well, we got a sick stream today. We got um >> we've got Grant from Blockmates, a good friend of the show and uh in crypto media. He's been talking a lot about football. Fun as well as some of the other onchain metas. So, I have not gone in and done anything uh in football.

Fun, but I'm pretty I'm pretty I'm pretty excited to to hear what he's got going on there. And then um we have Lorenzo from Ark as well as Rob from Dragonfly. So should be a fun stream today. Um and yeah, looking forward to kind of talking. I don't know, Rob, did you see the football fun stuff? >> I've seen a little bit of it. Um prediction markets in general are all all the rage. Um yeah, >> what I've seen about football. Fun is that uh they have these player tokens that are somewhat associated to the performance of the athlete. Um, football is obviously soccer and they're they're, you know, primarily focused on this particular subset of prediction markets,

but >> yeah, >> I this is sort of like a prediction market memecoin crossover because and maybe Grant can can tell us a little bit more about it. I don't know that there's a resolution like that there's an outcome or a or a ceiling to these tokens which makes them trade more like memecoins. Obviously, they're yeah, prediction markets have an outcome. They have a max ceiling, a max floor. They e either go to zero or they go to one. Memecoins. Yeah. Football.f fun. I'm not sure which category they fall into. So, I'm curious to learn more about that. >> Well, I think Yeah. All right. Well, Grant's an a guy. I think he likes football.

>> Uh, as we would know it as soccer, but let's get Grant up here on stage. Um, and, uh, let's let's, uh, let's find out what's going on with Football.f fun. Uh, let's make sure he's in in the back and, uh, pull him up and let's talk football. Fun. Let's talk onchain Meadows. uh see what's going on uh over over in the land of the prediction markets onchain degening and fun stuff there. So, we got Grant up here now and uh we'll pull him up. Grant, what's up, man? Man, it's going I mean, you had yourself a weekend, I'll tell you that. I see you in the trenches on football.f fun on the timeline going crazy, man.

you were told would amount to nothing. Um, yeah, we came for over the weekend, but then obviously major pullback today and yesterday. >> Okay. Okay. So, so Rob and I completely like just kind of uh missed this or just didn't even pay attention until it kind of came up on Twitter. I think a lot of people probably did, but maybe you could just explain to us like what's the mechanism? What's been your experience so far? Have you made money? Have you lost money? I feel like you're probably a big football fan, so this is right up your alley. Like what's going on? Why is this exciting? Like what of the mechanics work are working? Kind of walk us through some of this stuff.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, um to set set the scene a second, there was something in the UK called Football Index. This was probably pre-crypto even for me. So, like 2015, 2016, and maybe even dated pre that. So when I was a skint university student looking for how the hell do I stop eating rice and beans uh through the week came across football index buy and sell football players like just it it's as simple as that. The problem is that thing got that big I think there was a lot of image rights and you know copyright issues and stuff like that. I think they just completely winged it and that collapsed with over 100 million pounds which is probably 135 million worth of people's collateral that got

deposited into the platform completely centralized probably just running on a Google sheet. Um but it had product market fit because it was like if you can spot the next kid coming through an academy like really really young like these people are complete nerds. Do you think people in crypto Twitter nerds go and see football Twitter like it's and when the two worlds like collide there's about three brain cells rubbing together across the full full spectrums right so I think having that like precontext losing money on that [ __ ] thing like a while back and then seeing this come online and just pumping into it and then giving it a go and just depositing a couple of shekels in and then I checked it and I was like all right this thing's starting to move and it had kind of

connotations to you guys are both have experienced this. you've been over to an ecosystem early and then you're just like this money's like doubled or tripled over a couple of days and you're like maybe I'll add a add a few more magic beans to the to the mixture and then it just started going off and then I don't know if it's just you know how good the Twitter algorithm is at creating this huge echo chamber over a weekend wasn't really much too much happening apart from that Ethan BTC which is obviously big news but people were looking for a place to gamble and I think given with the advancements with regards to onboarding mainly privy. Um >> yeah, >> I think it just unlocked and kind of everything kind of came to this really

really good good point where everyone wanted to hyper gamble and that was the platform of choice. >> So so Grant following up on on Andy's question here, what is the mechanism because we were a little bit unsure before we brought you on. We were discussing okay this is a prediction market or is it a meme coin? Do these resolve to a certain price? Do they come true? What's the mechanism here? >> Yeah. So, it's basically the the the way that I've heard it described and the way that it is from a user experience perspective is you deposit in USDC on base and there is a free version as well. So there's the free version that is free to play which also has a lot of traction which is another thing where I was I seen it and I was like usually there needs to be a huge

incentive for people to actually go and like play a game with inside the industry and I don't even think the people on that side of the fence even know it's like related to a crypto product which was also really interesting. So for me deposit USD USDC on base then you kind of get you get credited goal gold sorry so it's one to one and then you go into the transfer market and you pick up shares of players. Now I don't know if that what that phrase will stick around for much longer given what we see with friends and stuff like that but so immediately you're looking you're looking at like who's available. It's players from the top five leagues.

There's still players coming online. There was just a drop today. I think there's a drop every day at 6 um 5:00 PM UTC. So you're getting onto the ecosystem. You haven't looked at the June board 5 million TVL. Well, you're immediately going to go and pick on pick the best players. Lamin, Mbappe, Salah, maybe Harry Kane because Rising Tide list all ships. If Mark Capital comes in immediately, even if you don't know football, you're going to know those names. So that was the player. But you take the USDC, which is credited as gold. Again, removing any of that. What is this? US dollars? is at USDC. If you've never experienced USDC before, you're a little bit confused. You've got an in-game credit which is one with USDC and you just buy it and it looks like a unis swap interface. It's a sell your gold for a player and then the shares

are credited into your account. You can see your portfolio goes up and down and then which I'm sure we'll get on to today is >> a lot of people probably seen the first extreme unrealized P&L on the screen. >> Yes. and uh have been met with these >> they arees these are they are high but there's there's method to the madness and uh I'm sure we can get into that. >> Yeah. So you you wrote about that too, right? You were like hey like I saw a tweet you were like uh finally something that doesn't just allow like self-interested actors to max extract if they basically are super early and like max out the strategy. Um, and so I'm curious like like do you think like so basically what you know maybe you could

explain how these fees work as the or you know as the uh larger amount of gold that you want to pull out of the system or kind of sell a card for or a player for. Um, and if you think that's right because I think people would probably agree with you and disagree with you on how to limit people's winnings or like what is considered fair in this kind of like fully open environment, you know? >> Yeah. So putting a putting a crypto head on for a second, it makes sense given the context of everything that came before it. So we use the opposite end of the spectrum.

Pump fun, right? One-dimensional something lists. It's immediately 85% bundled. Probably five five bots on the planet are making the vast majority of money. First transaction buys from the likes of Cupsy and all those involved. That is a game that is already figured out. So the edge is now eroded completely away to probably a handful of people on planet, right? So you cannot get a game off the ground if you use that same dynamic and there are no consequences or incentives, right? So you allow people to buy, you allow different um maximum a lotments of initial players that are coming out the market. So there was Alex Alexander

Isach who's at Newcastle United now. There's been a big story about him going to Liverpool. He kind of dropped today at 5:00 p.m. You could only buy $150 worth, >> right? So it stops people kind of like bundling and sniping. You don't want someone sat with 85% of the the supply >> because we all know how that works. That works from a meme con stage all the way through to a low flow high FTV stage. And it's the same thing. It's the same pig, different lipstick. So how do you disincentivize that? Well, if you want to exit, you can exit and you can exit the full position, but you're going to eat the slippage and you're also going to eat a 25% tax.

That might not be good long term, but getting the players out the gates and preventing this skewed distribution in the hands of very very few, it kind of works. So, it might not work for the rest of the entirety of the the game's life cycle, but I think getting out the gates and having good distribution that is fair and equal without, you know, just putting it in the hands of like 10 or 15 people who can afford to just spy up all the supply and will have really really good bots, let's be honest. But it it's you can exit, but you're going to get you're going to get stung.

>> Th this is always uh the paradox, right? is that you know the proliferation of of tokenization. We have prediction markets that you know go explode. You want all of these like longtail prediction markets. It's the same problem as longtail meme coins, longtail creator coins. We always run into this liquidity issue. And so is this something unique to football. Fun? We've seen this before. Can we apply some of the same principles of either an order book or an AMM and just sort of man manufacture the incentives such that we solve the liquidity situation on these longtail football coins. If not, it seems like we're going to continue to run into this

issue over and over again. Yeah, it's I feel like even with what you're seeing now with like all these new launch pads that are coming online again to use Pump is one extreme to some of these others that are coming online maybe like a a boop pump works because it's so simple and one-dimensional. The problem is that that edge that game is already won, right? It's already won. But the opposite end of the spectrum by making it so complex that the average person doesn't have a clue what's going on. that also doesn't work. Is there something in the middle? Maybe this is kind of verging towards the middle. The team are been inside the industry for a very long time. They're very, very savvy. They're not pulling any punches when it comes to people who want to max

extract in the early days. I think you need to put those guardrails up as much as possible whilst allowing people who want to stick around for like a long term to to do all right. Like you again, you guys have seen this. One of the main ways to make a really really strong community is give people fair and equal opportunity and access and being blunt make them rich like >> y >> it can be as simple as that. >> No, I mean it is and I saw that I saw that that that this was happening in football. Fun. just takes me back to like just any of the early ecosystems that you know that you were previously referring to where it's just there's nothing more exciting than just like

sending sending some amount of coins onto a new chain or onto a new place and then just never having to re-up because it just keeps going up and then you can just take out and go back to where you came from. It's like now you just have like this new little like pocket of your portfolio, >> junky bridge that you don't know you're going to lose all your funds on. >> Yeah. And then by the end of it, you have like little pockets on like 20 different chains, you know? Like my friend tech wallet I haven't used in forever, but sometimes I go on Rabby and I'm just like, "Oh, I can, you know, I I can see it." And they're like, "Hm, there's still a couple grand in there." Okay, cool. Like >> he's still going to bring it back. I believe in him.

>> So So Grant, we are uh not not much of footballers over here. Andy and I are both from the States. And so >> we're soccer fans soccer over here, bro. So, and so who are who are some of your sleeper? Uh, >> yeah. Who's the sleeper picks down there? All that fun. Who? >> Yeah, we're a little un could you give us some some football education on on some players that you like? >> Yeah, good shout. So, my my brother's really really into it. He played Sora. He he always finds like weird edges in games. So, I'm kind of like leaning on him for this one. But there's there are a few um quirks in the scoring algorithm for it that if you want to play the actual game, there is a skill-based game attached to it which is really really unique. So it's not just a whales

paradise effectively. You get a lot of points for for goals, right? So you're looking at your Lamin Mbappe Salah Harry Kane is getting on. He's a little bit older but he's also in Bundesliga or German league now where you'd expect him to continue and go and get 30 goals a season. So that can help. The there's also a few that are maybe they're going to get transferred into larger teams that he can go and pick up. I don't know if this Alexander Reek one's going to go from Newcastle to Liverpool. If he does, I can imagine there's just going to be a plethora of goals and that could be a good one. He launched today so it might be a little bit profy there. Um there's also a few that might get you probably want to get sold. So, the Man Manchester City keeper, bright young prospect, has just

signed for them. But then they've also just signed a well, it's about to go through a new a keeper called Donnaruma who literally just he's probably the best keeper on the planet. So, you probably want to sell the previous keeper they've just signed with uh Trafford. Um, and yeah, if you want to maybe I'll put a little list out shortly after this, but there's a few that I need to Oh, there is one that I uh did >> clip this one though. I did um I did use the Americans expense because Jude Bellingham who I'm pretty sure you might have all have heard of. He's like Ali that's his biggest star probably since David Beckham. He does have a brother called Job Bellingham. So very very similar. And he also played for Bellingham's previous club Bruceia Dortund. I think there's going to be a

few people just go on see Jay Bellingham and think whoa he's super super cheap and recognize he's got a brother >> and that could be his left. >> Yeah. Just a maximum left curve. Just All right. What's the strategy on this one? People's attention spans are low and there's someone All right, let's go. >> Well, that's cool, man. I mean, it's been it's been fun just to I mean uh frankly, it' been more fun had I been uh on chain with it, but I had a weekend outside um not on the on chain. But um shout out to those who did and I hope that your portfolio is doing well.

Sounds it sounds like maybe because the market's down today, the the the are they coins or cards or players are down, they're kind of down in their value a bit today. >> They're they're all tokens. I think it's an AMM underlying it. Um I I believe they replicated the mechanism on the freeto play game as well. So actually use the an AMM to actually price the the offchain stuff as well, which is quite cool. >> Um but yeah, they they chose tokens as opposed to NFTTS, which I believe so rare did. So, um I feel like we've seen that shift between collectibles actually going towards tokens now as well, which is quite a cool dynamic.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> One last one for you here on Football Godf, and then I kind of want to just uh pick your brain about onchain metas in general, what you guys are doing. I know that you just moved too. I want to hear about that. Um but do you think that this has longevity? Like, do you think this is going to be And if it does or if it doesn't, why? And like maybe what do you think would allow this to have longevity based on your previous experience of of participating in onchain metas that have it and you know that and that some that that that just kind of you know phase out.

>> Yeah. Um I I feel like as I was saying that those two worlds colliding from crypto maybe kind of a bit of finance and football is some of the most kind of addictive personalities on the planet and everyone's trying to find edge and you can't discredit the people who are coming from the football background as well. There is a merge of the game where if you're just purely playing to win from the strategy perspective, like building up the best teams, finding kind of undervalued talent and putting those into your squad meets people who just want to play like the money game, there's going to be this really really nice collab. And I think I honestly believe like the game is good enough to stand on its own two feet. Even if you take like the monetary aspect out of it, I there is that weird connotation

because the on-ramp is through crypto that you are going to get tied to the markets. Like I made a joke yesterday like, "Oh, Wales are selling BTC. Best go and sell my uh onchain football shares cuz it's like two totally dislocated markets. Like why should they ever be affected or correlated to one another?" But they kind of are. That is the thing that does concern me a little bit. The other thing is maybe the players rights and the naming rights. FIFA and notoriously >> [ __ ] us for that. Um but >> yeah, I saw that. I saw a tweet about that. like how how are these guys able to use these guys' names and and rights without really it's just kind of like a >> I believe they pulled their information from OPA which is like the basically the most extensive football database on on

the planet. Um and they've I don't know they they've done some wizardry and they've got some really really good lawyers around it. So um so I I believe that could be a sticking point. Um I'd like to hear from the team if I could be completely wrong on that. They probably did shitload of legal due diligence and I'm talking like waffle here, but um I believe there's enough people playing the free game to make it a success. I think I really think it's probably one of the most interesting and fun use cases that I've seen in the industry and it's not just because like things are going up, things are going drastically down and we're still trying to figure out like what what the new launch is. A lot there's a lot of strategy and it's not onedimensional. I think helps as well. Like again, I keep

bringing coming back to pump fun, but it's a game with one deterministic outcome. It's like how much supply can you get as early as physically possible? And >> that edge is completely eroded. So yeah, I I do I do like it. Um and I feel like it's I don't know about you guys, but I think I feel like it's about time we start seeing stuff like this. >> Yeah. Yeah. You know what's cool about this uh stuff is that the the pumpf fun mechanics and I mean this applies here a bit but I think after this initial phase it'll change is the pump.f fun mechanic for memecoins is very much like it's not really about fundamental belief in any individual coin or community or like uh project if you will as much as it is

just like being early. Like if you're the one bundling or sniping or you're the one with the inside information that you're going to be able to buy like the first minute it graduates or before it graduates uh or you're in that insider like early early stage then you can just kind of continuously run this engine of like getting in under a mill selling hopefully 510 [ __ ] you know all the way up to 50 to 100 if you get really lucky which kind of has slowed down now. last year it was like everything would run to you know about 20 mil 50 mil >> um whereas like previously even I mean sure DeFi summer was similar where you the earliest to yield farming you were you know going to make the most money but somewhere along the lines there was like this okay if you believed in a

really good project and you just held it and you had like some sort of like research to as to why that you wanted to invest into it and you created this thesis then you were rewarded you didn't necessarily have to be the earliest. You had to be earlier than most, but you didn't have to be like, it wasn't about just like dumping on the next person because of, you know, you were earlier than them. Now, I think the abundance of coins completely changed this. Uh, but somehow along the way, I think we could get back to that kind of like research uhesque philosophy around, okay, like I'm holding this, you know, token because X Y and Z. So hopefully that this platform while it's not like research but hopefully it's not just about okay we were early here the first week now it's just about like you know

people kind of hopefully it goes into a more strategy based game with like actual skill and believers and stuff versus just like being early to every drop or being early to like this first week. Uh because that's what I think actually makes games and like these metas sustainable is if it's just whoever's earliest and then dumping on the next person, it's just it's not going to last very long. Yeah. Yeah. And and Grant, just to kind of round that out, I'm curious h what you saw in this project, this game that made you get in early and have some belief, the the the founder, what did you see in the founder, Adam? H how do you think he's been able to make this a massive overnight success? And what did you see early on that gave you that signal?

>> Yeah, I mean, I've been kind of, you know, how the algorithm just throws you little nuggets now and again, and it's I usually have this like rule of like three. if I see it from three completely unrelated sources, like I have to stop everything and go and try it. So, the algorithm kind of worked its magic for whatever reason. Um, and then I just jumped in and had a look. And I I always say this to people like particularly if they're coming into like this industry or wanting to invest for the first time. It's go be curious. Weekends are for trying stuff out. You will find stuff before the the masses by reading docs, doing the basics of due diligence. No one likes to read.

No one has an attention span, and even just putting a limited amount of money over there where it's like this can go, this I can set this on fire right now, but it's enough to keep me interested if anything does start to happen. >> So, being curious and just trying stuff out. And nine times out of 10, you try stuff and it's rubbish. It's it's the same thing you've seen maybe with a couple of different steps. Like the whole gaming thing that came around before was yield farming with a couple of extra steps. >> Um points were just again yield farming with a little bit of an opaque APR where the team got to decide how much you got at the end. A lot of it's the same pig different lipstick. When you do see something that stands on its own two feet and isn't something you've used or

tried before and you have to figure out the dynamics, particularly when you've been in the space as long as as long as we have, that's something to pay attention to. Um, but it only comes with reps from being curious, I think. >> Yeah. Yeah, dude. So, you just moved, man, to back to Europe. Is that the deal? >> Yeah. Um, just trying to find where we want to live. >> I'm Airbnb hopping now. >> Haven't found a spot yet. >> There's terrible art around me. Um, yeah. I don't know. I've been out in Asia for the past four years. typically find um island life is good, but it can be I don't know 30 40 50% harder to get anything done. Um so I wanted a bit of >> civilization, come back to Europe. It's

a brilliant place to spend a lot of money I found over the past few weeks, >> but it's it's really really good. Um but I don't know, maybe maybe Spain, maybe Portugal, maybe Italy, I don't know, somewhere it's got really really good food. But along that all along summer, >> good food and beaches and that that kind of like warm vibe, right? >> Yeah. And like a lot of festivals in summer. >> Yeah. Nice. Nice. And uh you know, I think you wrote a tweet about it saying that like team was growing and that you guys are growing into different like just like the business is is growing as I imagine you know us both are. What's the like are you guys launching new podcasts, new verticals? Maybe you can just like give us a quick update and to the community like what are you guys

building? what can they get from being a part of your community etc. >> Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Um much of the same on the written front. Um was really really happy with the response to the like the research side where I think bread guy threw up the it's like a battle of research. So you got to choose between two and we ended up going at at the top there. So I was really really happy with that kind of going toe to toe with some of the big boys. So if it's not broken don't fix it on on the on the research and the written side. So um and just like looking to I suppose cover stuff that's at the forefront of the industry new novel unique not really interested in the 10th hyper liquid fork you know um on the video side trying to again you guys have done a brilliant job

the inerson interviews trying to do a lot more inerson stuff um it's nice to get out like been stuck in stuck behind a laptop for a very very long time now so trying to do a little bit more of that and then just trying to find kind of I suppose unique ways to do written or unique ways to do video or unique ways to do whatever format it is, but kind of like do it a little bit outside the box. But um yeah, much of much of the same more in person stuff though. I think it beats being behind a screen, doesn't it? So >> yeah. And how big is the team now, dude?

>> Uh any given day, I think fluctuates between like 18 and 22 maybe >> depend on like Yeah. capacity and demand. But yeah, it's uh hard to keep up, particularly when you're all remote. It'd be so much easier without everyone in one place. But um yeah, it's the way of the world now, isn't it? So >> this is the same with moving. Then you got to pick a place. You got to get everyone to get there. Everyone's got to find the right food and the right >> shilling the shilling will start once I settle. >> Yeah, exactly. >> You really should come here to live. It's amazing place. >> Um dude, more broadly on the market side of things, we're kind of dumping today, but it's been up down chop. Um, what are you thinking here? Like people, a lot of

people are calling for a top. I'm sure you've done well, like we have over the last two years. Like it feels good to be like, you know, like Robbie and I are kind of like, all right, man. Like regardless of what happens in in in the market, we're just pressing the red button slowly but surely because, you know, can't run back 2021 playbook after getting smoked in that bear again, let alone the 2017 playbook, getting smoked there again. So, we're kind of like, all right, man. Like, it's been a good run. We're obviously still bullish, but look like, you know, just happy to be taking chips off the table slowly for future runway, for just life, etc. You know, I I'm sure you're I don't know if you're late 20s now or mid20s, like 25, 26 or 30, somewhere like that. I'm getting to

be 26, Rob's 26, no longer 22. You know, girlfriend, life, these things start to come up. I think you got a kid grant now. Um, so >> they're all great at spending money as well, so you need a lot. >> Exactly. So like it's, you know, it's you're not, you know, in Bali in 21 again, you know, just [ __ ] around. So that being said, like what's your personal outlook on the market? How are you managing your risk? Um, you know, have you been pressing the red button? What's your vibes? >> Yeah. Um, see, see, I've been through the ringer a few times like like yourselves. Um, 21 was great and then it wasn't basically overnight. And then 2017 was the same. you think you're a genius and you get your ass handed to

you. So, the way I kind of played it and I've kind of sorry if I'm repeating this if anyone's listening, but I like I've probably taken 85% off the table like three times now, like from the start from the end of 2023. So, when stuff started to get really really stupid, I like to kind of call it creating like creating a new save. So, when you play like Pokemon or GTA or something and you kind of like maxed it out, you're getting a little bit bored and tentative of where you are, you know, start a new fresh ser, take your 5% off, put it in the pan, put it invest it into something that's a bit more tangible, and then start again. And I I've done that. And what I what I feel like it does do is you're not constantly sweating. You've

covered your bases. You're you you're content. You can go to sleep at night. and it makes you think a little bit more clearly about what's actually happening in the market because you know if it goes to zero overnight it's all right you've you've looked after yourself um I'm probably like on that third save should we call it right now um still a sizable portion but um that's keeping me interested but it feels weird because everything should be setting up going into a lower lower rate environment where stuff should start going ballistic but at the same time I'm starting think like markets are extremely forward-looking. Has this been kind of on on the cards and telegraph for so long that it has been a one of

the longest selling news events? But I don't know. I what I always say as well is just play what's in front of you. It's it's very very difficult particularly you seen some of the best minds in the game just getting completely chopped up and crashing out. So um I wouldn't take any advice like an idiot from me. >> Well, we don't think you're an idiot, Grant. That's a that's a good uh that that's a good like mental model though, like saving, you know, like it's like checkpoints right? >> Yeah, that's it. Checkpoints. Yeah, that's a better way to put it. Yeah. >> Yeah. Just like set your So that way if you die, you go back to the checkpoint.

>> Yeah. It's like you go back to Professor Oak and get your starter Pokemon again. >> Yeah. Yeah. You think of it as like a game. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's the right way to think about it. I mean, yeah, it's been it's been a the last two years. I mean, I feel like honestly I feel like uh a lot of people, including myself, underperformed what could have happened, but it's still been an incredible run. Like, if you didn't get soul hype or the memecoin mania of 24, now you're just finally getting your ETH pump to all-time highs. If you if you weren't heavy in Bitcoin as well, um then it's kind of been it's it's been pretty rough out there, to be honest.

>> Hard been really hard. >> Yeah. Way different than 21. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. What do you think about that? Do you think like cycle theory is correct? Like I'm of the opinion that I don't think people can just turn up and expect this stimulus check every four years now by throwing a dart board a dart at Coin Gecko and expecting everything go up 10x overnight. I don't know. But >> yeah, I mean I definitely subscribe to the law of diminishing returns. Like if you take like a logarithmic chart across like ETH Bitcoin >> and you see like okay like it it had its kind of parabolic growth phase and now it's just in more logarithmic kind of like just basically like a S-curve like we're and we're we're actually at the point now where like that S-curve is

like really kind of starting to flatten out across the board >> which probably lends itself to be more of like a super cycle type of in environment but just like far less explosive. >> Feel like Robbie's gonna take the opposite of that. I don't know. I don't know, guys. Sounds kind of bearish. >> No, dude. I'm bullish. I'm just saying >> out there and Jackson Hole just said he's gonna just turn on the money printer and let it go. >> Yeah. No, I mean I feel you on that. But like is Okay, so let's play this way then. ETH went to 80 last bare market and then went to 5K. So that is like a almost like is that like a 60x I think from the lows. ETH bottomed at 888 or something this time. No way. at 60x's from here or from that low. Like that

would be like 50k E. Like this thing maybe gets to like what people are calling for like 25 at like max which would be absolutely ridiculous in the next couple >> two trillion or something. >> Yeah. If it went to 12k that would be outrageous in the next six months >> instead of the multiples which you're saying is compressing and I tend to agree the magnitude of the market cap increase right if it was a 60x to add 10 bill market cap that those are numbers are totally made up. Maybe it's a 5x to add 10 bill this cycle. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. >> And and with stable coins as well, like >> I seen a stat the other day and I was like 2030 there'll be a trillion dollars worth of stable coins. I was like that is bearish as [ __ ] Like there'll be way

more than that. >> Way more. >> Did you see uh Arthur Hayes's uh screenshot on his presentation? >> I think he called >> I also seen him give a presentation on Filecoin. How that was going to go to like $1,000. Absolute absolute pleasure having you on, man. Would love to have you back sometime. >> Anytime. Thanks, Jen. >> Yeah, this block mates roll up mashup. It's been a blast. >> Yeah, congrats on the success, bro. I think we're going to do something >> with the guys. Um I think maybe with the Magic team and a couple others. I think we'll do a little event, so I don't know if you're going to be there.

>> Yeah. Yeah, all the boys will be going. I'm stuck here, unfortunately, trying to sort a visa out, but um I'll I'll drop a message with Alex and he'll he'll sort it out. Yeah, we're taking the full film crew and stuff. So, >> beautiful. All right, dude. >> Awesome. Thanks so much for your time, James. Appreciate it. Do I have to do anything? No, I just go off. >> See you next time. >> Cheers. >> Well, I mean, that's good intel on the football. Fun stuff. I uh I didn't really pay attention to that over the weekend, so I'm glad that we had the chance to catch up on that. >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. Um I mean, it's fascinating stuff. Obviously, the prediction market meta is huge right now. Um but as well, the the memecoin meta and just the way that we're going to continue to proliferate tokens. Yeah,

>> I think, you know, it kind of brings up the same kind of liquidity situation that we have been talking about, >> right? >> And so I I tend to think uh yeah, there's >> there's so much room to explore here. I mean, this kind of gets even back to Yeezy, which is a totally different situation, but it's like there's there's hunger, there's thirst, there's demand for tokenization, even if it's totally a grift. You can tell that people want to deploy new tokens, and we've got to figure out a way to make these tokens sustainable. to your point. Yeah, you're asking sustainability sustainability that we're going to need.

>> That's one way. That's one way to sustain it. We're going to hear more about maybe some of the macro sides, some of the more institutional thesis from, uh, our guy Lorenzo, another friend of the show, uh, at Arc. >> Yeah. Real quick, what did you think of, um, dude, I think that that Grant's checkpoints save thing is great. Like, you know, let's say you pull 70 to 80% off the table. Then you've got 20% left and all of a sudden you're thinking like, "All right, uh, well, now I'm now I got to grind again because like I'm down. I'm down. Like my portfolio is much smaller." I don't know, man.

Market's red today, so it's got me it's got me tripping out. Like we should have I Dude, I was going to clip more on to uh yesterday and I just didn't do it and I knew I should have done it. If you think it's all over here, look, exactly like you should be kicking yourself for not clipping. I I think I should have, dude. >> There's gonna be Well, there's going to be one one of these days, one of these times where it is going to be all like all over for, you know, for the foreseeable future. And so, you just want to make sure that you have enough clipped so that >> you know what's a good what's a good hit rate, right? Is it eight out of eight out of nine, nine out of 10? As long as you as long as you because you're only

you're going to miss it the last time. That's the only time you're going to miss it. So, as long as you clip enough times to dilute that last time when you miss it and it actually is all over, >> then it'll you'll you'll dilute it in uh in returns. I think that's what he's doing here. So, >> let's get Lorenzo up. Let's see what he thinks about >> Let's see what him him and the art guys are thinking about the uh about the move today. Lorenzo, it's good to have you on the show. Good to see you uh last week or the week before, a couple weeks before, whenever that was. What's up, man?

>> Yeah, awesome, awesome to be here, guys. And uh yeah, great great to be uh to be on the show, >> man. Bitcoin's crashing, man. 110 111 the market's freaking out today. What's your read? Uh after after JPAL on um Jackson Hole came out and basically was very doubbish. I think a uh surprised a lot of people. I think a lot of the markets took that as a as a sign to go to the upside uh today and and over the weekend and uh yeah, looks to be kind of bloody Monday out there for Bitcoin and some of the coins. What's your read today?

>> Yeah, look like we we're actually like pretty long-term focused honestly. I think like daily swings like this like where um we don't pay like too much attention. Um I think generally I mean you've seen I think ETH went down to um 4.1K and then basically we tested the 5K it was you know uh uh um very quick and now I think we're at 4.5 4.6 six. Um yeah, honestly I think just like u um ARC um the type of funds product that's we that we have and also um just in general like the the thesis doesn't

really change. So um yeah, we don't pay a lot of attention honestly to daily daily swings. Yeah, plenty more uh interesting things to discuss here. And I think >> all right, Rob, >> I think it's just if you get wrapped up in the short term, I mean, you're gonna you're gonna get tugged around like the market. So, I I take that most of the investors in ARC are also long-term focused, right? So, that you kind of represent your stakeholders here. What is the thesis that you guys believe in? You have stakeholders that believe in it as well. What are some of the general trends that you are that that you are placing bets on and that you see from these stakeholders? There's interest to also align with digital gold or future of payments or future of finance. What

are some of these things that you seem to really stick in the investor's minds? >> Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, look, we um we've been really early to Bitcoin route. I think we were one of the first uh kind of public asset managers to give um you know our clients uh exposure to uh to Bitcoin through GBTC. This was like in 2015. Uh I was at the firm but I don't even remember what what Bitcoin uh was was trading at. Uh but you know generally like obviously we think um you know we've published models on on Bitcoin so we're very very uh um we're very excited still about you know

store of value uh um thesis on Bitcoin. We're obviously um you know we're also invested in Ethereum and Salana and kind of the smart contract and we think there you know I think while Bitcoin was uh very easy to get for Treadfi in terms of narrative um I think smart contract L1s have been uh you know uh tougher to to explain right it's not that easy you know the tokconomics you know they change their protocol upgrades I think the narrative is just uh um it just messier, right? I think now we're starting to see uh uh things uh turn um and I believe just it

it will take time, right, for for a lot of uh uh the the L1s and then kind of DeFi tokens and longer tail of of of assets. Um, so you know, we spent like a lot of time I think obviously we're we're very excited about stable coins and RWAs uh right now. Um, I think if you look at the space right now, it's very hard um to see 10 to 100x more growth without RWA taking off really, right? Yeah, >> if you compare like the two cycles, um, now we're at 4 trillion, but like 2 trillion of that is Bitcoin basically,

which you know in DeFi doesn't really count. So if you compare like TVL from, you know, this cycle to last cycle, it's pretty much the same, right? And most of that is really like ETH appreciating in price because, you know, a lot of the money markets more um, you know, um, a is just like the price of ETH kind of increasing, right? and that kind of pumps to TVL. And so I think for us like looking at you know the next kind of two to three years um it's very hard and that's why you know we're very bullish on uh um we're very excited about stable coins and rwas is just because it's hard to to underwrite you know 10 to 50x growth in the next year without seeing more of the

tread fight assets kind of coming on chain right and I think that's a realization most investors are having uh in the space. Um and so, you know, when you see a lot of these, you know, we've had Robin Hood announcing, you know, that they're doing L2. We've had, you know, Dinary, I think, on on Avalanche, um Circle with with Arc, and I think there's going to be many more uh ride. I think that is really um the the thesis for the next you know year or two years is really tread m meets crypto and I think you know we're very excited about that.

>> Yeah. So on that on that note, Lorenzo, when you're looking at the uh ETH treasury companies, how much how much impact do you think these ETH treasury companies seeking yield will have on the uh actual DeFi products that you know you mentioned the the morphos, the athenas, the stable coins? How do you see ETH treasury companies deploying their capital on chain? Will they do that? And then how do you see that affecting either usage, valuation, TVL, etc. of some of these larger DeFi companies and you know is that part of the thesis?

>> Yeah, it's a good question. I guess we can talk about that like broadly uh because um obviously Micro Strategy has been around for you know a lot you know a long time. Um and we had you know for kind of 2 to 3 years we didn't have any soul on Ethereum DATs and in the last kind of 2 to 3 months we had you know a thousand launching. So I think it's pretty interesting. Um look I think that in general they're very uh they're interesting and you know we're still doing a lot of work on it. Uh it's probably we've been you know doing a lot like in the last two months. Uh but I think the biggest realization to me is public markets are so are so much bigger

than crypto then I think that is kind of the the main appeal of of uh of these dats right? >> Yeah. >> If you think um even for tokens like Ethereum and Salana we don't really know how it's going to uh play out in terms of the the spot ETF right in terms of staking or not. uh that that's still to be determined. Um, but even even for even for Ethereum where you know right now I don't know if you've seen guys but I think there's a 13-day staking queue right now >> and so you know you can imagine that spot ETF are probably going to be able to stake less than 50% because of liquidity reasons

>> and so how much multiple do you kind of um you you put on that on that yield you know and that basically the revenue that the DATs are going to get on a on a yearly basis right? >> Yeah. But Lorenzo, I think you're you're missing the idea of like like liquid staking being just as as uh profitable as actually owning a validator. Like why why would anybody do a validator when you could just toss it into into LA? I guess there's more risk. Yeah, I think you know um if you're looking to allocate like uh ETH and Soul then into uh into DeFi um I'm not sure like from a compliance

perspective uh a lot of these teams are actually going to be able to use liquid staking protocols. >> We'll see. Um, but I think for us, you know, that was kind of the an interesting part of the DATs where I think it's a it's an interesting rapper, an efficient rapper if you if you look at the the yield and also obviously you have the arbitrage with the the MNAV, right? And we'll see how that is going to play out. Um, but you know, I've um I think I' I've posted this and this is uh this is all public, but if you look at a few of the dats, I think it was uh um it was bid mine on, you know, in the span of a month, um Ethereum went up 60%, but

they actually increased the you know, the ETH per share by 130%. for example. >> And so I think it's going to be interesting to see how the multiple plays out on a lot of uh on a lot of these. But as long as they're trading above one, you know, one mnav, they're going to continue to do to do these ATMs and basically arbing that and increasing the ETH or kind of soul per share. So that is one thing. I think the other thing Andy is as you said is a lot of these and you you guys have seen it the Zilla which is basically you know uh they're going to allocate to to DeFi. Um we'll see how that that uh plays out.

I'm not sure I think I'm not sure the risk that you're taking to get the marginal yield in DeFi is actually worth it when you can actually increase your Ether Soul per share by you know leveraging the the MNAV, right? And so I think you have to you have to ask yourself you know even on Salon and Ethereum you can get like three four 5% like pretty easily but when you get to like high single digit you know what risk are you taking? And I think you know that's probably a question that um probably an answer we're going to get you know from uh from some of these data. So I think in our head you know we're still uh doing a lot of work. I'm not sure, you know, we're just not sure

the um the value out of uh deploying onchain and getting into riskier and riskier kind of strategies is actually long-term the most sustainable uh you know strategy. >> And anyone not already following Lorenzo should be following Lorenzo because he is severely underfollowed. you posted a picture about the relative leverage that is being taken in the place in in the in the market nowadays versus back in 2021 when we had a lot of centralized finance, Voyager, Celsius, all these guys blew up. And so what I think the market perception is that these DATs are super levered and they're going to blow up any second. But when you're looking at the data, you see that th this space

isn't as levered as it was back in 2021. Not by a long shot. And so what what is the what do you think is causing this divide? Is is the leverage just moving elsewhere? We don't have the data to see it. So or or is there something else that's going on that's kind of causing this this skew between perception and reality? Yeah, I think look like uh the the picture I posted I think it was like a Galaxy report with they do like a a tremendous job on the research side and uh yeah obviously if you compare um you know in terms of lenders uh and leverage where we are today from compared to last cycle um obviously we had you know the Genesis the Block 5

that actually blew up but if you look at the percentage right now of CFI and D5. Um DI is is much bigger as a percentage of you know borrow than than it was in in previous cycle and you know that is mostly uh if you look at D5 that is mostly a Moro Spark and you know a couple of other which are really like dominating uh the space. Um so I think I think you know in terms of leverage we haven't seen uh any spike most of that again are on protocols that you can actually monitor a morphul everything is on chain even maple and

the other protocols which I think is the biggest different with the last cycle right you didn't really know how much of it was rehypothecated with genesis with blockfi you didn't really know who was depositing you didn't really know like the strategies who who was that lend to? And so, um, you know, I think people are getting a bit stressed obviously because we're we're entering the fourth quarter, uh, and, uh, the cycle, you know, if you see the four-year cycle, obviously we're kind of getting it to the end and so people looking for, you know, signs of leverage, which is obviously um, some of the, you know, the early signs of the the end of the the bull market. But I do think you know if you compare it to last

cycle uh we're not there like on a nominal kind of um a nominal basis and I also think the quality of leverage is just like is much more transparent right because it is in many of these platform and we haven't seen actually you know centralized platforms like blog genesis to that size popping up uh which I think is is very good and kind of healthy for for the market. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And um yeah, it does. I mean, I've just been seeing tweets like, "Oh, we're in the eighth inning.

We're in the ninth inning." I mean, I don't know. People spend too much time trying to find the top, I think. Um and really just just zoom out. One other thing that that you um posted recently was about Athena. Athena has been getting a lot of traction uh with regards to actual uh stable coin market cap growth recently in addition to just general like mind share and kind of appearances on my timeline. Um and what's interesting is that their mechanism is is literally designed for lower rates, right? The lower rates get crypto speculation theoretically goes higher. You get a better basis trade.

You get better yield. Whereas other stable coins as the rates lower, Tether, USDC, the the yield on a the yield on Morpho declines uh in Pendle, etc. Kind of get like this dichotomy here, which works well in in Athena's favor. um you know when you're looking at Athena other stable coins this general kind of landscape here how do you anticipate let's say we get a 25 bips or 50 bips cut in the upcoming Fed meeting and then you know maybe over the course of the next three to four Fed meetings we get a total maybe of a one one basis point cut. How do you anticipate that affects the DeFi landscape which feels like people are so entrenched in the current setup which is like a like a four and a

half to 5% rate kind of environment. How do you see lower rates uh changing the DeFi landscape? Let's say we get that over the next six months uh one basis point or a little more uh down. Yeah, I think it's going to be very beneficial like o you know overall um if you look at you know uh uh rates right now um you know they're at 4.5ish right and so um they're kind of on par with with with DeFi rates like with onchain rates I think you know once they're going to go down um you're going to see actually DeFi starting to be much more attractive

you know on a on a comparative uh kind of basis. So you said that Andy like um I think if you see Athena kind of yield on SUSD I think on a trilling you know 7day I think it was like 17 18%. uh something like that. And so I think right now obviously with that with with uh um with rates as they are like DeFi is less appealing, right? When you you start to have like uh rate cuts um you're going to have kind of more speculative uh behavior and so you're going to have more leverage being taken on, you know, on ETH BTC to take out loans and basically uh um borrow USDC.

And so I think we're going to see rates on chain go up and that is going to attract a lot of a lot of capital, right? I think that's the the the most interesting, you know, phase is when you actually have a delta like pretty big between treadfire rates and onchain rates. >> And so I think, you know, all the all the all the borrow protocols that you've mentioned, I think they're going to be um they're going to be big winners. Athena obviously, you know, I haven't checked how much of the open interest Athena is right now uh globally.

>> Yeah, it's a lot >> I think. Yeah, last time I checked, I think it was nine 10%, but I know they're not they're now doing, you know, the same strategy with with um with Bitcoin and perhaps like another token. So, we'll see, you know, how big they can they can get. I'm sure like the open interest actually uh grows faster than the price, right? like for for if you know if you increase the price by 20% I'm sure the open interest actually grows uh even further. Um so we'll see. I think the real test is you know if you look at previous cycles um right now it's really like tether and US and tether and circle uh um you know dominating the space for stable coins

like both Athena and Sky you kind of have to get to a certain level right like the 20 30 billion threshold like the 20 billion threshold I think has never been touched by by even sky like in the last uh in the last cycle and so I think it's going to be interesting for Athena to um if they can actually get there, right, and get in size. I think at least like the same order of magnitude as as Circle and and Tether. And I think the next phase is is really like centralized exchange. ultimately like if you want, you know, USDS and USDE or even SUSDs or SUSD to be kind of accepted uh broadly, you're going to have to have um you need

more of the centralized exchanges to accept the the stable coins, right? As collateral for >> per margin. Like without that, I think it's very very um difficult to envision, you know, growing kind of past 20 billion. Um and and they remain a bit subscale right because like cither just continuing to grow. >> So I think that's going to be that's going to be very interesting. I know Athena they're also working like on converge the you know the the the L2 would securitize uh and so I'm also very curious there what they're uh what they're preparing.

I know they've announced, you know, Pendle, aid, like a few early protocols to to deploy on on Converge and I'm sure there's going to be a lot of um, you know, a lot of intersection with like tokenization obviously as they're doing this with with Securitize. Um, so yeah, I think just broadly very bullish uh, you know, very I think it's going to be a catalyst for a lot of the the onchain protocols and uh, a lot of the a lot of the stable coins as well such as as Athena.

>> Yeah. And Lorenzo, you kind of uh, you alluded to this with Converge and also in one of your previous tweets with regards to um, circles arc and um, stripes chain as well. uh you know, you've kind of put out a funny tweet saying what's more likely them to be an L2 or something else. But what we kind of have now in this stable coin chain game is you've kind of got like the plasma and the stable which are like I'd consider them more like cryptonative tether chains and then you've got like stripes chain which I'm missing I'm blanking on the name. It's something um >> tempo >> yeah tempo and circles arc chain arc not ark. And so you kind of got like this

like these two different uh se like sub- sectors of these chains where I see like plasma and stable are very similar. Plasma's token is already like pre-market trading at like 56 bill or something. Stable is a little bit earlier in development and then ARC and Tempo are obviously kind of still in development. Like how do you how do you uh reason about this? Like what is your mental model for these stable coin chains, these payment chains right now? Um how do you reason about their token? Do they need a token? How do you reason about whether they're kind of like real in the middle or grifty? How do you reason about like is it is it a viable thing to invest in? Like just kind of like curious what your mental model is for this kind of like stable coin chain landscape.

>> Yeah, Andy, it's a really good question and I think you know we're still kind of looking at the landscape. I think it's very interesting because every cycle we kind of you know retry the the corporate chains, right? Like if you look at LRA like XRP like we always get a try like every uh every cycle uh and also I think you know what it means to be like a an L2 or like a you know just an an L1 EVM chain that on on on its own right um I think you know for for just to talk about circle and arc like very quickly I I do think like the DeFi infrastructure right now is not

maturing enough for really the use cases that Circle is is looking at, right? It they're really going after, you know, the Treadfi markets, you know, banks, brokers, and ultimately I think, you know, a lot of these players, um, they need, you know, they need like reliable fees, like reliable low fees, right? Like if you have like a memecoin launchpad on your same L1 and the fees is spiking, like that's that's not going to cut it, right? for for a tread fight kind of institution like that that's the reality right like even if you have like a fee market they want to know exactly how much they're going to pay um they need like you know dark pools like I think like 20 20 25% of the the you know

public kind of um the equities market is traded on on uh on um on dark pools we don't have that infrastructure you know privacy with ZK is extremely expensive still like even even on on public blockchains means you need to be able to have rollbacks, right? Uh of of transactions. You need you need to be able to have kind of meta data metadata with with the transaction that you're sending. Um invoicing bill. It's just like I I think a lot of things that right now in DeFi, I think we're going to get there, but they're either expensive or they're they're not there yet, right? And I think if you look at kind of the CPN and um and the the ARC blockchain in general, you need that to

on board to have like FX markets or like even, you know, the equities markets, you need that, right? >> And so I think um that's kind of one thing, you know, we've been thinking about. The other thing is, you know, it's still EVM compatible, right? And I think a lot of people wish it was like a an L2, but if you think about it from an economic perspective, at least for ETH the asset, like L2s are paying basically nothing to ETH, right? Like in terms of of uh of um data availability, right? And so um economically Ethereum the base asset is not losing much, right? Um and USDC is already uh

centralized as a product, right? I think many people don't realize that, but USDC and USDT are freezible, right? And so I think the fact that they can also be transacted on a chain that is a bit more centralized, you know, with kind of proof of of authority um is not really a a big change. I think overall, you know, we'll see two different tactics. Obviously some going more the centralized way and some like you know base and Robin Hood that are self deploying on L2 and I think they do have a road map to kind of decentralize the sequencer and you know having more kind of the Ethereum ethos. We'll see how that plays out. Um but I think it's definitely you know again

this time is different right I know you never have to say like this time is different but just in terms of scale of stable coin and use cases um we now have a lot of use case outside of crypto right a lot of the emerging markets a lot of people are using stablecoin for other things and so I think it's going to be very interesting to see um how uh how it plays out I think overall it's still very creative to Ethereum and EVM in general. Um, but we'll see. >> Yeah, >> Lorenzo, just got one last question for you before we let you go. You you had another tweet about an onchain IPO and then in the in the same spirit of this tokenization and bringing more of this onchain.

How do you expect this to play out? What's the structure that you have in mind? Do you see this mostly for cryptonative companies that are looking to go public? Or do you see this as a mechanism and a method for really any company, crypto or non-crypto, to to access deeper liquidity and and launch something onchain? Where do you how do you see this playing out and what's the structure? If a company's listening and they're thinking about doing something like this, how would they go about doing it? >> Yeah, it's a good question actually. You know, it's it's funny because like when when Treadfi markets are hotter than DeFi markets, you start to have founders wanting to do IPO rappers instead of launching tokens. And when the DeFi

markets are kind of hotter than TreadFi markets, you start to you start to see like centralized companies that should probably do an IPO that want to launch a token, right? So, it's like I think it's just very interesting. Um yeah, to answer your question, I think the the pump ICO was actually really interesting for that. Um they raised I think in total they raised more than a billion dollars. Correct me guys if I'm if I'm wrong. Right. >> A bill. And you look at the Circle IPO, the bullish IPO, I think Circle uh raised a bit more than a billion dollars and bullish, I think they ended up uh raising uh 700 million. I think you just

realize that, you know, DeFi right now has pretty deep liquidity, right? if you wanna if you want to do um an ICO kind of onchain, um this was probably not the case, you know, two or three years ago, but now you actually have uh uh capital uh to do so. And so I think Robbie like initially yes it's probably going to be um you know crypto companies or at least like you know companies that are uh um that have some kind of um you know have trading or crypto within their their business. Um I think we'll see many of them and you're already starting to see this like getting um their shares like

tokenized natively, right? Like uh on on the blockchain and I think at some point you're going to maybe see the tokenized uh shares being more liquid than actually the the Tread Five shares, right? And um and at some point I would imagine that you know maybe like a company is going to decide to okay like um we're going to do like a full kind of onchain ICO and we're going to uh we're going to leverage uh you know blockchains. I think we're definitely going um that way. We'll see who gets the kind of you know do the the first jump let's say. Um but yeah overall I thought you know pump was very interesting because that is

like the order of magnitude actually of of ICOs in in in treadfy markets >> and I actually do see a lot of I think in general like people are are excited um about tokenization but they say okay like it's just going to be a representation of the share onchain. I actually see that a lot of new use cases and I'm very excited actually you know being able to do um you know new strategies if you see like the the acred fund for securityize like gauntlet is doing like >> and so I think you know even um you know that intersection with prediction markets I think people really

underestimate like the you know the number of new products and new ideas that we're going to have with uh with tokenized uh tokenized shares uh onchain. And so um I don't think it's going to be just a representation, right? um even having per you know pers on a Tesla stock or pers on um you know an Nvidia stock like that doesn't really exist and you know the real uh the real per the real crypto per uh so so that you know is obviously one thing that comes to mind but I think we're going to see you know net new innovation because of that and actually very very excited about that >> beautiful yeah I mean look I I put out a tweet those like I think all the actual

action and real progress is happening in all the unsexy areas right now which is like stable coins, payments, enterprise, tokenization. I mean tokenization is kind of cool, kind of sexy but not really. Whereas like you know eight years ago in 2017 this this is where we were all focused and somehow we got distracted along the way and now we're like right back to like let's solve the core problems that crypto can solve. So, Lorenzo, appreciate you coming on, man. And, uh, we'll speak to you soon and have a great rest of your evening and day today.

>> Thanks, guys. It was awesome. I mean, thanks. >> It was a pleasure, man. Speak to you soon. >> See you. >> All right, buddy. All righty, Rob. Um, good little session there with Lorenzo. Um, good to hear from him. Um, and have him on. U next, we got Rob from Dragonfly. um talking about debts, what he's seeing in the in the venture landscape, uh and more. Uh you're good to go on your end, Rob. So, um yeah, man. What was any key takeaways there from Lorenzo? >> I think he's just a super smart guy. I think Arc has a very unique position in the space. They've been around a long time. They were early and correct. And I think Lorenzo, given that he's a

director of research over there, very involved in their digital asset strategy, um has a lot of good takes. Um he has uh his his hands kind of in both of these pools, the cryptonative pool as well as the um the institutional pool. And I think that's a pretty unique uh balance that he can draw conclusions from both of these when it comes to DATs, when it comes to um these onchain IPO structures and generally the scale at which he sees financial products once these two industries are are combined.

>> I think he has a a really deep understanding of what is possible once a lot of these products move onchain. So always great to talk to Lorenzo. Up next, we've got Rob Rob Hadock GP at Dragonfly. We'll get him up here on stage. Just toss him up. Rob, good to have you. Um, you are the >> you are you are the other half of Dragonfly, which we know are our famous or our infamous Hib clip on him calling the top on proof of stake uh was was the one to remember from Permissionless, which I suppose because of DATs, he's now reeled back in. But it's good to it's good to have you on. I've been watching a couple of the Empire Roundups. Good to see you there as well.

And um yeah, man. H how you doing? >> I'm doing well. Uh thanks for having me on. It's a bummer because we the market's like melting down the last few days. I was like I was like really excited. You hit me up on last week and I was like the markets are doing well. A good Jackson Hole uh conversation and then you know the last two days have been been a real bummer. But you know we we are where we are. >> Yeah. You kind of called it though in one of your tweets. I think uh after the flush you were like weekend pump into the the leverage flush. It's just classic >> classic. Yeah. And it's it's happening again here, you know, after uh I think the equity markets were pretty tough today as well. So, uh but we we'll we'll get back to it.

>> And Rob, do you think this is kind of a blip on the radar given the more dovish Jackson Hole sentiment? um are we going to start to see some more structural changes and you know general monetary policy and that's going to that's going to take its effect or are we starting to frontr run whatever the next thing is if we're dovish now we're going to be hawkish later we're starting to see that turn out >> I think what you saw in the market I was just actually chatting about this with a a few really smart uh traders that I know is the initial reaction on Friday is everybody was excited about the doubbishness and they were surprised they were a little bit caught off guard or caught off sides there's I think an expectation that um you know POW continued to be a little bit hawkish and

that you know maybe there would be some some downside there. He was surprisingly dovish and he also indicated maybe a change in the way that the Fed is going to think about monetary policy going forward. So the initial reaction was you know way into the upside right and we saw just everything rip. Um, right after that happened in a lot of the conversation Saturday into Sunday from a lot of the macro traders that I that I you know am close to and that I think are are quite smart became well what does this actually mean about the future of monetary policy in the US? What do we think this means around you know potential um effects on or knock on effects on the economy over time? Do we think like higher inflation over time is that you know net negative or you know potential growth and is that going to

eat into you know the EPS of um a lot of these these companies and I think what we're seeing right now is the uh kind of just understanding that you know maybe that change that Powell indicated on Friday is not actually good for growth over you know call it the next you know 12 to 18 months and so we're seeing that a lot of that initial kind of pump retrace because of Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think uh the the sentiment here was like, okay, we're starting to lower rates and inflation is still above their target 2%. And so what does this mean? We're just going to forget about >> I think Powell told you he's going to probably forget about the 2% or 2% is no longer, you know, the mandate, right?

And if that's true, then what does that mean for, you know, and how does that permeate through the the rest of the economy? And I think there there's a maybe an expectation from a lot of people that like 2% was still a goal. We would get back down to it. It would just maybe, you know, higher for longer was the story. And now it seems like the story is like, well, maybe it's just higher forever. And what does that mean? >> Is that the hyperinflation? Bitcoin is the alternative. The denominator is going to zero. Like this is really playing out. This isn't just a meme. >> Yeah. Listen, it's um you know, maybe it's not hyperflation, but it's 3%, but you know, 3% leads into 4% eventually.

And I think that's the concern, right? And and I think as I think about it, there's also a concern about well, what does this mean if assets continuing to inflate, but things like, you know, you know, incomes don't inflate, right? Or it becomes you start to see that, you know, call it this like wealth disparity that has existed kind of continues to blow out, right? And if that blows out, we see a lot of, you know, the gambling behavior that we've seen or a lot of the concerns around just, you know, how do how does the new generation make it, right? And that result that can eventually if you you know take it out long enough can result in just you know uh unrest right and like broader issues globally.

>> Well I think I think you're speaking to him Rob and uh I think the the answer is hop into the metaverse with your AI VR set get your Pizza Hut delivered and uh have your dopamine sent to you via Neuralink or fight fight your way to make it to the Citadel. So one way or the other. Um but Rob, you brought up a good point that that that I think that the uh the mind share of crypto Twitter at least has been orienting around uh which is uh you know this kind of hyper financialization with regards to prediction markets. Uh it's been a lot of talk about that the last I don't know 72 hours really even like like the last week the the poly market CEO DM'd me and was like yo man why is there so much talk about prediction markets on the

timeline now like what's going on? Um, you know, from your perspective in in the venture seat, you know, is our prediction markets or what we've seen on the venture side with our small fund is more of like interesting spin-offs of them with, you know, either opinion markets or conviction markets, different timebased decay functions, different outcome functions. Um, is this something that's interesting to you from a venture perspective? How, you know, and I also put out tweet like how do I get exposure to prediction markets? Is this a trend that you want to invest in? like what do you think about it from a you know a personal portfolio and you know perhaps how is Dragonfly thinking about it?

>> Yeah. So so Dragonfly is a a relatively large investor in Poly Market and so you know we we have exposure there. I I can't say that we've done any of these spin-offs and we've seen all of them they they've crossed the desk. I I find that um if you take like a really successful platform like a poly market and then you say okay I'm going to splice it up into like you know verticals and you know try to like kind of win at that vertical. I I don't find that that typically in most cases has, you know, is able to get the right, you know, kind of funnel in place, right? You can't pull enough people into. You can't pull enough eyeballs. Maybe you can get like a really good like core group of, you know, like sports gamblers to come to your sports gambling website

um that that is, you know, focused on that. We've seen I think there's like a football one that uh sixman is back that that has been >> football a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Great. So, so there's things like that that maybe that that you know really is interesting for like a really hardcore group of users and you see them move there and and and as we all know in in platforms like this like you know 20% of the users are like 80% of the volume right and so that you really have to focus on that that hardcore group but I I think you know broadly these platforms whatever can get the most eyeballs in are the ones that usually typically win and that's why you see you know who's gotten the biggest it's poly market it's Koshi it's like people like this um so

we haven't backed any of the what I would call the more the more you know verticalized ones or the the more I guess like smaller market ones like you know opinion markets and things like that but not to say that they won't be successful it's just been as we think about you know venture outcomes addressable markets it's you know a poly market's been where we put our our play >> yeah yeah I mean I think I think we've been you know ideulating on it as like a crossover between media and these markets like if if there's a way in which you can come on Rob today you you have a take like you we're we ask you about a salon of dad or something a and and you have a you have a take then we can just go directly take that take make a prediction market for it on poly

market or on a you know it may be easier to to do on a smaller one if if there's some like liquidity grant etc etc right and then we we can then create this interaction with our audience such that uh they're betting on your takes that just happened on our show today that you know let's say the outcome is a month away, then all of a sudden like now we've created this kind of uh this kind of relationship where our audience can make money consistently or lose money based on the takes of the guests and whether or not like we agree with it, we disagree, they can they can kind of like uh uh tail us or fade us. Um so just kind of like ideulating on like okay if we know a couple things are happening.

One is that uh everything is going faster, attention spans are going lower and people want to be you know actively participating in some sort of financial way. Then it's like it's all roads lead to like some sort of way to basically allow your content consumers to participate in a speculative upside or downside of your show. Um and so yeah, we we've just been running through experiments on thinking about how to do it. >> Yeah. Listen, I I love the idea. I think you have an oracle problem, right? And there's nothing people like hate more than saying, "Okay, well, I put my money behind this thing. Now I think I'm right and now they're telling me I'm wrong and like now I feel like I'm rugged." And like that's the problem you have in these things all the time, right? Is like if there's an opinion or if there's

like unclear like, you know, Oracle resolution, right? We've seen it with Poly Market with with UMA. People get, you know, quite upset over the um the the Zalinsky suit uh uh conversation, right? You know, there's like hundreds of millions of dollars on the line there. Like now you start talking about like okay well I say something about you know let's take a a take that I've had over the last couple of months which is that like I think like Xtocks is not a product that like people are actually going to use on chain right you can go look at the data right now and you can tell me oh well people are using it it's doing $3 million of daily volume right and I could be like well $3 million is like absolutely no volume like I what I said is is correct and there's just

there's those problems about how you resolve those things right and differences of opinion and so I think the more you have oracle issues or the more you have like subjective resolution the more people are going to be upset in these types of markets. And if people lose money and they think it's unfair, like they're just not going to come back. >> And Poly Market is hilarious for this exact reason because they whether you call it shooting themselves in the foot or or simply just not caring. They list markets like is Earth flat or will Jesus come back this year? like they do just absolutely ridiculous markets because people find them entertaining and then they sort of deflect all the responsibility onto Uma and Uma just takes it like there's they're the oracle

they're the resol they're the resolution engine and the source of truth. I also think that um Andy to your point about media and the way that this combines uh and converges a show and its audience I'm pretty sure allin the podcast with Chimoth and uh Jason Calacanis these guys are already doing this on Poly Market which is really cool to see. I've also seen Zero Hedge some other Twitter personalities start to list their own markets on Poly Market and so it's really cool that Poly Market is doing this. Uma's got their hands full for sure.

>> But I I am really really looking forward to uh user generated markets within reason. Obviously you can't go all the way into the augur scenario where they have assassination markets and all this crazy stuff. But user generated markets I think is some some nut that one of these prediction markets will crack. >> Yeah. Listen, I think if you if you ask Shane like he'll tell you like he wants to be the information oracle for everything, right? like he wants to be the market for everything and and that's what they're trying to do and they're trying to thread a needle, right? Like you go look at the Koshi resolution scenario and how do they do it? It's entirely subjective, you know, based on, you know, the an internal body that they have that does that, right? And Poly Market's the other end of the spectrum

like they're trying to use a, you know, decentralized like third party like UMA, right? And there's obviously, you know, been at times debate about whether or not that works, right? I think what's clearly true is you don't want, you know, entirely like some subjective third party from a regulated business to to do it. And maybe at times Zuma hasn't worked and how do we, you know, find the right, you know, part of that spectrum is, I think, still a work in progress that everybody's trying to figure out. >> Yep. Yep. Rob, kind of shifting gears here um to some of what's happening in the in the broader kind of market here with these treasury companies and with the just broad kind of adoption of uh Bitcoin, Ethereum, and quite a few of other assets. Um yesterday there was news that uh I think Jump, Panta, and

Multicoin are looking to raise a billion to buy Salana in some sort of treasury vehicle. Um I I've been tweeting out that I think Salana is next on these. Uh I'm not asking you for any information that you're privy to, but I think in inside of the circles, people know that Salana is uh or that some sort of treasury companies are coming for Salana. I think it's just like like a logical next step. Uh and then leading into the you know other assets. Um I think my main question is is kind of where where do you see us in the in the scope of this entire paradigm? And I asked because uh about three three months ago I put out a tweet that was like uh you know we're in the revenue meta like everybody cares about revenue.

They're like and that kind of blew up and I got a lot of flack for it and it became a term on crypto Twitter and you know I'm I'm equally embarrassed as I am proud of it. It's quite a silly thing. >> Yeah. And so that poll blew up but like I think we're very clearly out of the revenue meta and into the DAT meta. Now, obviously, it still persists and everyone's excited about Hyperlid's numbers and a's numbers and etc's numbers, but like we're very clearly not in the like let's look at DeFi Lama and see what to buy anymore. It's like okay, who's buying what in size? And so, like, you know, I'm just curious like in this transition like where are we at? Do you think in this kind of treasury company uh accumulation uh meta or concept? Um, you know, has your views changed over

the last several weeks to months? Um, yeah, like how are you thinking about this at large? Then we can kind of get into some of the nitty-gritty. >> Yeah, I would say two things. So, first, I actually don't think we're out of the revenue meta. I do think people are distracted by the digital asset treasury companies. Just a lot of the volatility um at least to the upside has moved from the tokens and into uh these digital asset treasury companies, especially on Bitcoin actually like you know, Bitcoin V has been has been somewhat depressed over the last you two months. Um I think so if you look at like what's done really well in the token side like Athena, Hyperliquid, a like these things that are doing really well in DeFi and so I think that continues to to be true on the treasury company side like listen

like it's clear that across crypto there is a lot of interest in these a lot of the people who you know you probably see it in your group chats it's not just the VC funds or the trading firms it is also you know your average like you know whales or your average like retail traders who are, you know, if you go into your your group chat, like they're talking about, you know, ESB and they're talking about Micro Strategy and they're talking about, you know, um, Bit Miner and like all of these things, right? And so, um, I I think it's it's pretty obvious that people want to move where volatility is and like things like ESB have honestly traded like, you know, shitcoins at times, right? And you've seen like, you know, the the price move like 70% in one day, which is, you know,

you don't typically see in equity markets, right? And so that's been been interesting to see. I think to your point there's a somewhat in terms of the private investors or the people who are doing the pipes, the people are doing the converts. I think there's exhaustion a little bit. There's been so much of so many of these that have come out. Salana obviously to your point a lot of these are coming out but you know there's you know and I think there was another B&B one that was announced today and then there was a B&B one that got delisted last week and then if you you kind of you know pull forward like everything that you know we're seeing happening I I would expect that you're going to see a couple of these for every asset in the top 20 or 30 and even some you know kind

of beyond that or at least they'll try to make that true right and if that's true like how much private capital is there to invest in these things I I think we're you maybe in this like lull or this dip where people just feel tapped out, especially the cryptonative investors who have participated in a lot of these. And so we need to get more interest, more capital from, you know, the the traditional investors, the the the Wall Street investors and not just, you know, the Jane Streets of the world who are going to like, you know, invest in your pipe or invest in your convert and then like hedge you on the per to the downside and like, you know, trade out immediately, but you have to get like longerterm investors. But I am starting to see a little bit, you know, and I think this will probably pick up

post like the August lull when volumes are really really far down, the some of the traditional financial firms on the street who are starting to think a little bit more um thoughtfully about these and and not just and take more of a notice and not just saying, "Okay, well there'll be an ETF someday and I want exposure that way." So I I think we're, you know, in the seventh inning, but I don't think it's over. >> Yeah. Rob, I take it you guys are one of the longer term investors in this space. H how much do you balance liquid versus VC and the time horizon that comes with that? And then and then also, you know, if you're not too uh distracted by some of these Digital asset treasury companies or some of the short-term metas, what is your focus on a longer

time horizon? >> Yeah, so we um we have four venture funds. We're currently investing our fourth venture fund and we do have long like long only liquid fund, but we look at that book like once a month. So it's not active trading. we're, you know, not trading in and out of positions. It's it's really kind of like a liquid venture as people like to talk about. Um so, you know, with the DATs, like we haven't really participated. We we did publicly invest in one um called TLGY or Stablecoin X, which was Athena's. Um and that's because we're already a very large Athena investor and we want to continue to support them. in places where we've played in these, you know, digital asset treasury companies, it's been things or uh tokens where we're already large investors and holders and um that's only place we're going to

continue to play. Like we're not, you know, playing the premium to nav game and trading in around these and it makes sense for I think some of the liquid hedge funds. It's that's not who we are. >> Um to your second question around okay well you know what are we focused on? I actually think you know it's a lot of the old narrative right I you know we've what are blockchains good at? Blockchains are good at moving value and information, right? That is what they are good at. And every time, every cycle, people start to talk about, you know, all of these things around social and gaming and like, you know, other types of, you know, AI and and the other types of metas and and maybe the tokens do well and they pump and people trade around them, but where do we ever see

PMF in those things? I it's unclear to me that we we have in in really any of those, you know, verticals. So, we continue to do what we think, you know, crypto is good at. It thinks about moving money. So, you know, stable coins, payments, DeFi, um you know, broad like financialization markets and and things like poly market, you know, trading, um you know, uh infrastructure, right? So, continue L1's, L2s, like crosschain infrastructure, messaging layers, wallets, right? The things that um we think will continue to reinvent the global financial rails and will change the way that you and I interact with finance over time. That's where we continue to focus. And we still think there's a lot of things to invest in on those themes. And so we're trying not to get distracted around, you know,

whatever the shiny new thing is that crypto Twitter cares about today. >> Yeah. Rob, are you seeing different types of founders come into the space? Like one thing, um, you know, like let's say that there's these unsexy narratives that we all know that are the best use cases for blockchain. Like 2017 type narratives that we all got bowled up on that are like now coming to fruition. payments tokenizations RWAs uh stable coins, uh, enterprise use cases, crossber remittances, etc. Like very boring, but like very very important. Um, like are you seeing a next generation of like non-cryptonative founders that you guys are are uh being pitched by or like maybe like exstripe employees or like exevolute people? like

are you seeing a better new generation of founders that you haven't previously seen or is that is there still like a brain drain into AI or a brain drain into other uh sectors because crypto is still not kind of like sexy enough? >> So it's absolutely picked up again. So if you remember, you know, 2018 there was a little bit of that and then, you know, Bitcoin went to 19K, back down to three and I think we lost that that meta again. And then 2021 actually the founder quality was tremendously high. But you'd get these kids who came out of Stanford and you know they had, you know, 4.0 CS degrees and they're like, I'm going to do a unis swap fork on uh, you know, name your chain, right? And you were kind of like, okay, what's the point? But all of those things were

getting funded because everything was moving so quickly, everything was doing so well. Um and then you know obviously we had 2022 which was a tough time for all of us who are in the space and we we kind of had a der of talent. you know, people who were very cryptonative were still here, but that new talent, that new wave, you know, really kind of disappeared for a couple of years. And then over the last, call it, you know, year or so with, you know, Black Rockck and the Bridge Stripe acquisition and, you know, just the excitement, you know, since the new administration has come in, we've seen that, you know, talent level for that entrepreneur pick up again, especially in things where, um, you know, again, what blockchains are good at. So the tokenization aspect, you know, to your point, you know, payments and stable coins, like the amount of

people I see from places like Stripe or like large payment companies, um you know, large financial institutions um there it's it's really really growing quickly. We we've we funded um a number of people this year who are, hey, I've always been interested in crypto, but you know, we're coming out of this big financial institution. We've got a CS background. We've been doing crypto on the side and you know now we're really excited to go full-time because we feel like now is the time and you know that's you know that was our investment actually in Athena right um you know guy young used to work at Cberus right which is you know a big private equity firm and during 2021 he was like you know maybe I'm not supposed to say this but he was like deening it up like on the side you know the whole time and then he

was like I want to be in the space full-time and he he made that move when the market was you know kind of at the bottom but a lot of guys like him are now feeling comfortable making that move and so we've been really excited about that group of of entrepreneurs. That said, there is still competition with AI that has made I I think it tough beyond maybe the financial aspects. So in those other parts where people have been excited about that, you know, those people who aren't necessarily wanting to build, you know, financial rails, they might still be going to AI. And so there's a bit of that brain drain. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, I just thought that that like this next era of founders is going to um like I would be excited to invest in somebody, as you said, like a guy obviously in in hindsight, but

somebody who's coming from that world and wants to work work in crypto, but has that like because they're not coming with the same baggage and mindset that a lot of like the crypto natives kind of have with regards to tokens and projects and protocols. They're going to come in and they're going to try to build a real business. They're going to be a part of the revenue meta. They're going to generate revenue. They're going to figure out a way to like, you know, either get it back to shareholders, token holders, etc. And, you know, build something that has immediate like, you know, just immediate need. Um, now that they might struggle with like some of the culture and the vibes and the and the conferences and but you can always hire out for the these types of things.

Um, but yeah, I think that that that is the big turning point. Like you know what I'm trying to get at here with with the thought is like even though we're still not early to crypto like the last 10 years was obviously like the early phase we're still like early enough but like maybe with venture like investing in the 21 22 23 cohort has worked out but maybe there's like a whole new set of like even better founders that we've ever seen in the space before such that like the venture cycle is almost restarting in a way where there's entirely new niches and sectors that will come in from better people, better ideas, more positive regulatory clarity that will make a lot of the current projects look small and like like like like they were early in 5 years. So

maybe like the venture cycle is like almost restarting again because of the positive changes in the in the regulatory regime as well as just the broader perception change which is bringing in these new founders. I don't know >> I I think this is going to be a really good advantage for new founders. I I think the whole space is maturing. It's getting more sophisticated. there are there's been more dispersion. So in 2021, you know, everything went up. Everything either went up together or went down together. So, you know, you could throw a dart at the wall and, you know, you maybe over the right time period, you would make money, right?

That's not true anymore. I think it's it's healthy because we want there to be dispersion. We want there to be, you know, winners and losers because that's how, you know, we are able to differentiate between people who are building good, you know, product with PMF and and people who aren't. and you know then the token becomes less of the product and hopefully people focus more on the product itself and what they're building right because I think there was always this meme on Twitter that the token is the product which was was unfortunate right but I think a lot of people took that to heart and it meant that they didn't build for the future today we're seeing a new set of founders who want to come and they want to reinvent the way money moves they want to reinvent the way people bank right and that's exciting and I think there's

really only three investable areas of technology anymore and it's AI, it's biotech and it's crypto. Like that's it, right? That's where all the growth is coming from over the next next few years. And so if you want to build in the fi financial ecosystem, like it's crypto, right? It's, you know, AI, you know, can can help out, but like that's the place where you want to be. And I think we're seeing a lot of, you know, really exciting new founders who understand that finally and feel comfortable doing that because of the regulatory clarity. >> Not a big robotics guy, huh? Listen, I put robotics, AI, I kind of put them together.

>> Yeah. >> But yes, >> Rob, I got I got one last question for you before we let you go real quick because you spent so much time thinking about stable coins and you're and you're talking about reimagining how people are banking. You you put out a a a quote tweet on one of the Wyoming stable coin, which seemed to me like was a big deal. was a public. It was it was one of the 50 states launching their own stable coin. But you kind of had a cautionary tale to tell about, you know, kind of watch out for the issuer banks. Is this because stable coins are coming to eat their lunch or these issuing banks that are that are backing these stable coins are kind of in trouble? What what was maybe you could just unpack that and clarify a bit.

>> Yeah. So, so what I was really trying to say there was um if you think about what an issuing bank is and and I'm sure a lot of your audience hasn't thought about payments that closely, but um people or a bank uh sorry, I'll back up a second. So, in traditional payments, there's a four-party model. The four-party model typically has, you know, call it an issuer, the person who's like issuing a credit card essentially and is backing that credit card with credit. right >> now. Um, what happened in that, you know, Wyoming stable coin was they were saying, "Okay, well, we're going to issue a stable coin. So, we don't necessarily need a bank unless you need credit, right? And then we're going to allow you to spend that stable coin if you get we're going to allow you to get that stable coin if you have social

benefits or on your tax return. And then we will allow you to spend that stable coin with a a Rain issued card. Rain is a um a company that does like stablecoin backed cards, but they have their own um they have their own like regulatory license essentially so that they don't need a bank to issue that card. Meaning that all of a sudden now I can get my tax return from Wyoming in a stable coin and spend it without ever having my money touch a bank. Right? >> And that type of payment flow we're starting to see more and more of, right?

Like if you look at what Stripe has done, they said, "Okay, well, we're going to issue our own stable coin. We're going to issue our own stablecoin backed card. We're going to issue our own virtual accounts uh overseas, and we're going to also acquire bridge, which is going to be able to do the orchestration across everything. If you take all of that together, and now also, by the way, they have privy, which is the account layer. You take all of that together, theoretically, you never need to touch a bank, right? because like you can get you can spend in your Stripe ecosystem with a stablecoin backed uh card for like a supplier that is also in the stripe ecosystem, right? And so when I look at the future of payments, if they're happening on stable coins, then

you don't really need an issuer bank anymore because the stable coin issuer and the card issuer can be outside of the banking system potentially. I mean genius act there's a lot of conversation around in a banking license but you know you have companies who are able to get OCC regulated and and you know obviously circle trying to do that and others are right and so I think the long tale especially like the non-gibs like the community banks the you know call it midsize banks I think they are in a lot of trouble and you're seeing that right now with them trying to push back against the genius act in terms of um potential yield or this like workound.

So, there's this there's been this like rumor that's gone around and I think we've seen it talked about on Twitter a little bit that the banking lobby wants to not allow Coinbase to give you rewards if you hold USDC on Coinbase. It's because and they're saying specifically that we think there's going to be deposit flight. We think people are not going to want to keep their capital in the bank anymore. And they because they realize they are not competitive, right? And when they say they're going to be deposit flight, I say, "Okay, compete." And they don't want to compete. That's the problem right now. And so we're reinventing how banking should work and they're trying to entrench themselves. And I think, you know, the the stable coin um out of Wyoming and the rain card was one part of that, but I think the issuer banks

are in real trouble over time. Th >> this feels like the same thing that got shut that shut down the Facebook Libra project because all of a sudden social media companies were going to go and and innovate on banking and probably another deposit flight risk as you're describing. >> Yeah. And but the the market's ready for it now because we have >> like, you know, we have this regulation, the Genius Act, and we have regulators and and people in the administration who want to push forward this innovation, which is clearly better for consumers. Like, why do I care about the banks if if they can't compete, right? And and you know, that's a long conversation.

I'm sure somebody listening to this is telling me about local mortgages and things like that. And I get it. We It's a nuance conversation, but compete. That's all I'm asking for. >> Yeah. Yeah. Ra, I I think uh if there's a world where where we have like a fully stripe like a full stripe based payment rails from their own stable coin, their own chain to everything to a card to the POSOS system to the issuer, etc. All like that would be it feels closer than we think, but that would that would be insane. That would be so that that that would be great. I think the only thing that you may have like like maybe skipped over in the explanation was just that you need somewhere to like hold the funds which I suppose would be like the chain your account on the on their

chain. >> Yeah. I mean they're they're quite privy, right? So like you have your wallet um and they have the virtual account which is is also um is is on chain and yeah now they're building their own chain in in Tempo I guess. And you know I mean right now Stripe does still use um Lead Bank which is kind of like a fintech bank for for their card issuance. But let's say that you know the stripe wanted to use you know Rain instead and this and who who has their their own um kind of you know regulatory license so that they can go and and issue this card without a bank like you don't actually need an issue bank at all. The only bank that needs to be involved is holding your like collateral for your your stable coin. That's it.

And other than that you can get rid of banks altogether. There's there's a question around how you get credit into the system but a lot of people are trying to solve that right now. Rob, we appreciate your time and and um and the insights. Uh look forward to having you on again in a couple months. Hopefully we can get some uh some some more interesting DAT uh shakeouts developments uh stable coin payments, etc. Uh always a pleasure to uh speak with you, you guys from from Dragonfly, Robbie Hib, the guys. So uh pleasure to pleasure to have you on for the first time and thanks for the insights, man.

Thanks, >> guys. I really enjoyed it. Pleasure. Cheers, man. See you. Have a good evening. Peace. All righty, Rob. Pretty good stream today. Um, what's your uh what were your key takeaways there, Robbie? Just generally speaking, uh on on Grant from Blockmates onchain Metas, Lorenzo Arc, and uh Rob from Dragonfly. >> My primary takeaway was that it is a warm day in Florida today. Had the camera overheat a couple times, but we got that solved. Um otherwise um I mean it was t tremendous I think you know all all the way from uh the institutional takes that we had on prediction markets which are clearly

just a one-way a one-way street uh in adoption that's seem like a near-term distraction um kind of get them a little bit more of a sense how this macro environment is shaking out I think it's really interesting times because we kind you know, everyone kind of feels like the music is coming to an end. It's the seventh day. >> Dude, we're dumping right now hard. >> But again, like I think it was CMS that had, you know, how many 20% pullbacks were there on the way to the latest all-time high. There were several.

>> And so, like I think every time there's a big dump like there is right now, we got to ask ourselves, is it over? Is it never coming back? One of these days that is going to be true. It is never going to come back. It's all going to be over. But with the current environment, the the the rate environment, the the levels of adoption, it just feels like it's not quite over. Even though we're close, it's just not quite over. >> No, it's definitely not. No, it's just uh I mean, things got pretty pretty over overheated there for a little while. Um, you know, and I think uh I think look, we'll see. I'm not I'm not really going to make any market predictions.

I'm just trying to I'm just trying to I'm just trying to get back to it. I I I'll take I'll take one one conclusion here that I drew uh as far as like forwardlooking uh scenarios to play out was from Lorenzo at how when uh macro interest rate drop it presents DeFi rates as more appealing >> and that could be the catalyst for a blowoff because as you right because you would imagine that macro rates drop there's a big in uh uh onboarding onchain to get those uh DeFi lending rates and then those consolidate >> and then those get diluted and then there's nowhere to go. You can't get it onchain, you can't get it offchain and

then all the leverage gets wiped. And so it feels like we're at maybe step two out of three where okay now macro rates are dropping. We could anticipate some onboarding, some movement from offchain to onchain and that could spur like you know kind of an onchain rally. Whereas right now all of the anticipation, all the leverage that's happening at majors that get centralized finance leverage. Yeah. Almost like CFI back in 2122. >> Yeah, it is similar. >> We're going to, you know, potentially see uh some of that come onchain and then >> I mean look, maybe we'll get a turnaround Tuesday tomorrow. Maybe not.

Either way, we'll be here on the stream. We'll see you guys tomorrow. We got another banger tomorrow. We're going four times this week. We're gearing up for daily. We're gearing up for a bunch of new segments and uh fun stuff. So guys, thanks for joining us today. Great stream. Uh enjoy the clips, enjoy the excerpts, and we'll see you tomorrow. >> All right, Rob. Peace. >> Peace.