The Rollup TV: Thursday, August 14th

Transcript

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It's a bull market. PPI. I don't even know what PPI is. The [ __ ] Bro, please tell me why the price of my freaking eggs are going up affects my cryptocurrency bags. What's going on here today, Rob? Why is everyone freaking out? >> I heard inflation is only up from the fees that hedge funds are charging because the market's going up. That's why in there's more inflation. market goes up, hedge funds charge more management fees, and therefore the inflation in PPI goes up. And that's why that's why we have a a PPI print of 3.7 today.

>> I always wanted to be in the hedge fund business. Now I'm just a crypto streamer. >> Did you did you guys know what PPI even means? >> Yeah. Uh I think we chose the right business here. Um, I must say that being a uh a crypto streamer, uh, it it feels more true to ourselves than uh than wearing a suit. I got the Fearless Soul Dream Temple uh hookup going on today, >> dude. I've been rocking my Dream Temple green shirt here in Hawaii and it's been sick.

>> Mhm. >> Yo, shout out to Dream Temple, guys. >> Honestly though, that is the one that I like. The Fearless Soul one. I kind of like I wore on a date in New York and I was like, "All right, like this is a vibe." But I also felt like it was a bit it was a bit like asking to get punched in the face, but maybe not. >> I think the one that says [ __ ] coiner is a little bit more like punch me in the face. >> No, I actually like the there's a hodler one that I think is even better, actually. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. If I ever see you on a date wearing the hodler shirt, I'll uh I'll know that it's real. >> Yeah.

>> Um I like the Fearless Soul one. It feels a little bit less crypto native and a little bit more like oh there's something there's kind of like a unique brand element going on here. Um meanwhile we have uh that city Tom Lee is the next Satoshi. >> Yeah, dude. I put out a tweet like who's the main character and I think uh I think uh I think it's very clear that it's uh Tom Lee. Let's check it out actually. Um who's the current main character in crypto? Tom Lee 43%, Michael Sailor 26%, Trump 7%, Vitalic 23%.

So that's where we're at. >> It's tough to say that Vitalik is is the main character when it doesn't even seem like he's the one that's driving the ETH pump. >> I have another question for you. >> He was uh he was the one he was the third place. Eric Trump was last. >> Oh, Eric Trump. Oh, yeah. That's right. Um, we've got uh ETH hardly reacting to the PPI news. Um, obviously I think you know the the reaction here a little bit more seriously is to you know now that inflation is a little bit higher than expectations. Uh the market is reacting and expecting the Fed is a little bit less likely to cut as substantially in

September. Um, >> dude, don't cut. Trump's going to lose his mind. >> Oh, yeah. And he may let that lawsuit go through that people were threatening to to >> Oh, yeah. They he was going to sue J. Pow or something, right? >> That's right. Yeah. >> What I mean, look, I don't look so uh people are like trying to figure out how to time the market more or less uh with like the like the like the rate cuts. Um what I'm seeing is like two different schools of thought. One is like market's going to end in Q4. It's going to be the top signal in Q4 and it's going to be over. Other is like higher for longer super cycle. Um, so I put out a poll

actually that was like, and this is relevant to the rate stuff because I put out a poll that was like, when is this market cycle going to top um, cycle in quotations? And 42% of people said Q4 2025. >> Uh, you consider that accurate or you're >> I don't know. 27% said Q1 26. 19% said Q226, 15% said Q3 2025. So it basically seems like most people think it's going to end sometime between Nove or October onwards through March, that time period.

>> That's the majority of people's belief at the current state. >> And you're betting that the majority of people are typically wrong. I don't know. Um I don't know. It also people in my audience are probably like been around for a while. Yeah. I don't know. I think people that have been around for a while or like they probably think that it's like going to be over. >> I don't know. >> That sounds about right. I audience has been around for a while. These guys have these guys aren't first cyclers as as far as we can tell.

>> Um >> Exactly. >> We're not first cycling. So people that haven't been with us that long uh are also not What kind of sample size do you see on those polls? >> Uh that was like 3,000 people >> on that is more than some poly market uh >> markets. Some of those that you see on the timeline only get a little bit of volume. >> Yeah, exactly. Um all right, dude. I think we got uh Himu, our first guest. We have a sick lineup of guests today. Uh we got Himanchu, CEO of Sensient with their recent grid announcement uh and and uh what they've launched there. I think we we both met him and can which was sick.

Um and then we've got a friend Dave from Ether 5 Ventures who is going to rock with us uh talking about the state of CryptoVC. Ian, this chief strategy at Ono should be a good conversation about what they're doing there. And then I believe we have um last but not least, we've got a serial entrepreneur, investor, um film maker, uh a guy named Les Borsai, who's also the co-founder of Wave Digital Assets. So, should be a fun stream. Um and yeah, pretty stoked on this. So, let's go. We're going to get Hanchu up there. But, but yeah, that's

the uh poll size, Rob. And that is the that's the state of affairs. So, kind of coming back to the to the rates, I don't really know. I mean, dude, if Powell cuts rates in September, then that's probably going to be bullish for crypto. If he doesn't cut rates in September, we know that it's going to come in October, so it's still probably bullish for crypto. I don't know what is going to happen, but I I don't know. things are already getting wild and I just know that I when things get wild I get I get cautious.

>> Yeah. Uh Mr. Buffett uh had a similar uh a similar philosophy. I think ultimately it comes down to the denominator. You know that is especially true for Bitcoin. It's not like Bitcoin is increasing the numerator, right? It's it's not making any fundamental changes anytime soon. Ethereum too, you know, like we see more chains that are launching, L1s that are launching. That's not particularly bullish for Ethereum fundamentals. I think the main thing that's driving this is the denominator going to zero, the dollar being inflated away and then printing more and more of it as as well as uh more inflows into this ecosystem.

>> I just think what's driving it is the debts. I think long term what's driving this stuff is the actual is the is the like I think generally I don't really know like I was thinking about like okay I'm I'm sell you know like I sold like uh I don't know like six figs of crypto and I was like okay cool um where do I put this and like I don't really want to buy equities right now um they're like so extended but like I think as long as you have the the thesis of like scarce assets so like gold crypto real estate and um you know whatever it is that you want to invest in that's scarce I think you'll do well. Uh I think that's a general investing thesis that we should hold uh for the next while until

something changes with the system of uh kind of like the yeah as you say the denominator going going down. So all right guys we got Himu in the back co-founder of Sentient. They just launched their grid stuff. We're going to get him up here uh and get him firing. So, let's get Himanchu up. Himu, good to have you back. Good to see you in Ken and uh welcome back on the show. >> Yeah, thank you. Nice to see you, man. >> Yeah. So, tell us about Grid, man. Tell us about the latest happenings on Sentient. I think we last spoke um maybe like three three months ago or so. Uh what's what's new since then? Um and also just like what's new in the AI world since then that that you've been

tracking? Uh just curious to hear what you're building and what you're seeing that's interesting out there. >> Yeah. So this grid is as we spoke last we have been for almost 6 months or so before that have been collecting all these different pieces that can allow us to build open source AGI and not just us open source AGI is not just one company thing. It's many people come together to build it and there have been different data sources. There have been different agents and there have been different models and now grid is the activity which puts them all into the singular piece. This is the next phase of sentient starting where you're putting all this into a single piece which you can also experience through one of the native chat bots on the grid which was

earlier called sentient chat. And so this is the activity to put them into one singular interface from the AI side and also to bring this uh economy to unify them into a singular goal, a singular economic output. >> Yeah. So I I I have a a a broader question kind of coming into grid >> that I think is going to be >> um >> something relevant here. >> Uh OpenAI just released their their GPT5 model. Um, and Meta Meta's Llama 4 is now almost out of the race. Open AAI's models, as we know, are being heavily censored. Grock and Elon is is trying to

kind of like play the other side of that. You know, I'm just curious, is there is there hope for a non-Chinese open-source AI contender? Like, is that sentient? Is that somebody else? like how do you view the open-source AI market today and then you know how is grid sentient going to be a part of that? >> Wow. Yeah. So there there are a few things packed in there. Uh so so one of them which is very close to me is I bet we better hope there is an open-source non-Chinese model. Actually llama closing is a big deal. It's a really big deal. uh mainly because this it was the beacon of opensource models and uh uh

yeah there are Chinese companies which have open source models we use them too but to be fair it appears to be a part of GTM I myself personally don't believe that they are committed to the open source part it's a business nice great business move there was some lucky coincidence that it stands there going forward I think it's very important to have a neutral uh not associated any of either China, US I would say open source model which goes forward. On the good side, today itself I heard that NSF had a big program in US to support open source and today itself I heard that uh Allen institute got 150 million to start an open source model. This will be one open source coming from academic world. So hopefully that remains open source for a

long time. And uh the activity at grid right now is not only focusing on model. In fact the model that we are building is not a frontier groundup model. Right? It's a finetuning activity. The activity at grid is to convert them into this more converg flows. Models can be a part of grid. Models are a part of grid. But the AI that is coming out today which you can experience is to convert them into flows which are uh multimodel flows. So you know people build pieces of it but the real use of AI is something like chat GPT which or GPT 5 through chat GPT which you can experience and then you are in awe of it. So different things people build converting them into these

flows which you can experience and be in awe of that's what the grid chat would be about. uh but at the same time the next phase and today we are not doing it but there's something very important is to figure out what will be this next generation of open source models which are uh neither Chinese and nor one of these bigger companies we don't want to wait for we don't want to wait for uh open AI to open source next of its model >> frankly this looks very challenging right now uh there is I I appreciate uh the next generation of activity which has started because of whatever happened in the US.

I think this new policy is sort of giving a good impetus for this activity and what you're seeing in all institute is a spin-off of that there are other countries Korea for example which is starting an open source LLM activity and uh India there's a lot of talk about it but still not started but I I'm I'm very hopeful it will start from India also. So you will see that countries who want want to stand out as an open as a big player in AI will now take this opportunity to put out something in open source. The big bottleneck of course seems to be compute but but it's still not such a serious bottleneck. I think these countries do have uh compute power to at least have a basic reasoning open source model.

>> Well Hanchu before Rob goes I just want to give you the confetti. Congrats on launching grid. Congrats on trying to push this space forward. You deserve the party. We are going to open source AI. We will not let it be controlled by the individuals who want to see this future be technoc owned. I know it's a big fight. It's a big feat. So, congrats and let's keep fighting. Rob, I know you got some questions about AGI, monetization, ownership. Yeah, >> all kinds of all kinds of things happening in this space and I think it is starting to converge with crypto uh in a very in a very interesting way. Uh just today uh you probably saw Google bought a stake in a Bitcoin mining

company and there's there's theories out there that uh they are doing this in order to get closer to the infrastructure that is currently using a lot of compute and it's using it's using the compute to mine Bitcoin and they're trying to combine some of their AI infrastructure with uh Bitcoin mining infrastructure to make very strategically important areas uh of infrastru instructure for nations, companies, etc. Um, kind of contrasting the the techno company uh uh you know that we talked about versus open source.

I'm curious when when you're looking at this maybe from the hardware side and you see the potential for monopolies to come out in Google open AI uh you know kind of the leaders in this technology right now. What do you think is the edge that they have and how do we how do we prevent this industry you know on once they sort of form a moat around that hardware what other things can we innovate on to prevent them from creating this monopoly >> the edge that they have is very strong actually Google right now the comeback of Google is u it's awful it's uh they have the distribution the model openage model all said and done is a great model

I think it's it's one of the marvel actually right and the edge is also in terms of compute that they have collected right amount of compute however it's a very clear realization that there is no uh deep technical edge I don't think it's a deep technical edge it is right now a source edge because for all the requirement for open source AI the research around AI has been open source and you know you keep on getting one thing after the other one thing after the other there's abundance of ideas now in AI always has been and what I have found and what we have at sent also found and what all my friends in research labs tell me is the idea space is not the idea space is not uh uh

infinite and everybody knows what needs to be done it's an engineering problem I I like to say it's like rocket science in the sense like in rocket science it's not difficult but you have to burn rockets yeah and that's how you actually get to the So it's rocket science and in the sense that you have to experiment a lot to get their things right and you have to have that expertise and people were usually patient to get gain that expertise. They have two three years but this is suddenly there's such a huge pressure that a player like Zuck will go ahead and make this crazy offers. This is just to obviously it's a great marketing as well but it's also to move fast. It's not like those things cannot be recreated in two years but he doesn't want to lose those two years and he he just wants to

move fast and just you know and it's not the kind of knowledge which requires uh oh can I can I come back and can I get those code and how will I steal that code you don't just steal it you can just recreate the same thing here when you come here in a very little time >> so that's barring that I don't think there's any big secret I think there's no edge as such of that fundamental kind although Google has a phenomenal uh TPU cluster which is optimized for this transformer architecture and that is why you can also assume that for some time people will not move away from transformer architecture because hardware is getting optimized for it and uh we also know that this is the baseline robotics comes over it robotics models are building from where this LLMs

have left they are taking this language knowledge as a base so robotics is the next phase and whatever material discovery this and that so everything will build on this baseline so my take on it is we are entering a super compute hungry world. Crypto is familiar with that with that world. Yeah. >> Uh and and there was all this push back against let's not oh proof of work pollution and this and that and you know that was just the beginning. Forget about >> AI came and just oneshotted that just Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. So I I think the this what what I've been also saying to many sort of let's say let's say even in India one of the thing I've been pushing P for is that create a compute hungry nation.

Yeah, >> everybody should be asking for compute for some reason or the other and if you have compute requirements everything falls in place. You start getting prioritization of demand. If there's demand then people you know then Nvidia makes space for you. Everything falls in place. Just create comput hungry communities nations and that's the that's my response to uh this compute that is collected. We are ready to produce a lot of compute. If people consume it they will get it and if they get it we'll build models. I don't think there's a mode of that long-term type. >> Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Well, then it so with that understanding, OpenAI, as I said, kind of just released two open-source in quotes GPT models, which was like something that I think a

lot of us a lot of the AI community was excited about, but I'm not sure that it's the same understanding of of this of what open AI actually means or what what open source AI actually means to you. So from the lens of this of this moat that you describe with regards to uh kind of just the actual compute itself, you know, does does open a launching these new open- source models actually meaningfully push like open source AI forward? Is it more like a marketing play? Like what's your what's your take on on these new models with regards to like their moat, what they're trying to do to kind of please people as well? like how do you actually see that

uh from your perspective? >> It was a half ass thing. It was actually quarter ass thing. I you know the >> it's nothing you know it's >> no because it's just it's it's behind by 6 months and in fact in fact the reception was also lukewarm. I think it's not it's they did something to the model to quickly distill and fine-tune something like by the way it's live on uh sentient chat. put it up right away with one of the things it is I but okay it is a welcome thing that they are putting out some open source model but you know the whole play is to get the latest model nobody because they know nobody will build an application around an older model if it's behind so uh actually I quite didn't understand what was the whole

play around GPT5 even even GPT5 itself was lackluster lackluster compared to what they already had it's not like I I still as I said up front Right. I'm in what they have built but but this new this new release is not anything interesting and uh yeah nothing much about that open source thing. It is some alignment with the broader policy. I feel maybe they were the message was to align with the policy makers in some way. I that's what I felt it was not not a full hard thing. It's not an open source attempt. It's not something new like when Deep Seek came out then open source got this big impetus. when llama first came out open source got this big impetus and uh I don't think after

deepseek I've seen a big splash of open source after deep sea that was the last one in terms of model and now we have normalized that although I would say that whatever we said about Chinese model in the big there's a constant release of Chinese models which are interesting the kim model which came just not it's not out but when which was discussed just before uh GPT I'm quite keen on that one the I want to see the deep research flows on Kimmy which they have promised that's a moonshot AI's model. Uh Quinn is doing very well. Quen 3 release was awesome. Uh it is under the radar big releases. So I nothing very exciting about the GPT release.

>> Yeah. Nice. That that makes sense. And I'm actually I'm actually curious because you guys like you said have normalized open source, right? Um, and yet there's things that you have put into place that I don't believe are incorporated into models elsewhere. For instance, um, Stacy Mure put on, uh, what what seems to be a great article. Shout out to Stacy. And in it she talked about how you guys do token level routing and composable AIs which I I think is uh is something that differentiates you because when you submit a prompt obviously that prompt is broken into tokens and then there's a prediction algorithm that tries to predict you know what the next token and the next word is and you guys route

different tokens to different models depending on the task at hand. Is that something that separates uh some of sentience models from some of the existing models that may be out there elsewhere or is this kind of standard practice and and you guys have have now just you know open sourced it? >> That's that's actually an idea which Greston and our team came up with. It's a great idea. Uh I I'll tell you what that is. This goes back to what Andy was discussing in the beginning that Grock is a little bit uncensored model and GPT model is uncensored.

Actually GPT model itself and this is public knowledge right like there was a lot of talk about GPT photo was taken off because it was a little bit uh psychotic in its interaction with humans in the sense that and that psychotic behavior was more of the kind that to engage with you it was and this is their Reddit threads on it. Uh it was it was hailing you as a god and you know people got very used to it and they said you know this guy understands me because it was calling you a god like like you will ask it what's the only hope for humanity and it will slowly convince you that you are the only hope for humanity and like this was the kind of [ __ ] that was doing but it was an outcome of making it sound more like human

>> now Grock also is exceptionally good at it. It is also making the model sound like human models so far and if you look at claude for instance or even Gemini they're like some help concage how can I help you I'm sorry I cannot do this for you uh oh I would uh you know that's not human voice and it's just this I cannot do this that I cannot do. So, the next generation of AI models need to be more humanlike, not only in their intelligence, but also in their EQ, right? That's the hard problem. IQ, yes, they're very good. They I'm sure ace all the EQ. They're awful, >> dude. They're so bad. I don't know.

>> I I'm I'm using five yesterday. Sorry to in interrupt. I'm using five to uh figure out the best way to ask this girl out to go to this concert and it's just it is the worst uh potential text messages ever. like absolutely awful. >> I have never heard that use case before, man. It it's it's okay. Yeah, >> what were you thinking? >> But I think you're right. >> I can't believe it. Yeah, obviously it is. >> EQ is just not there, but IQ is like super gigabrain, right? And so like yeah, just to continue your point there.

I mean, what are the ramifications of that? Like maybe you can finish that that thought. So, so, so we basically wanted to build from from last year onwards, right? We wanted to build models with EQ. That was one thread we always had. And the challenge in building this model, Dobby is one such model. The challenge in building this model is that once you start making a model human, then it just like human it can say anything. But human can shut up and do not express their mind. But it's very very difficult for model to shut up and not express his mind. So then this sort of it's all all everything breaks down and you know Grock had a Grock every week every two weeks has one thing or the other where it says something completely crazy because people got >> it just said something out of pocket on

X and X suspended Grock. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It can it can happen right? It can happen on because it's a humanlike model. the alignment is very difficult to solve that problem of how do you keep it humanlike and yet retain some basic features of the original model and not make it completely crazy. That's the research we have been doing and in fact one good news is that whenever for me whenever growth goes crazy which happens every two weeks there's this human cry and all the media also reaches out to me and says hey what happened there is this like because we are the only ones who worked in that area so kudos to grock for going crazy every week uh but but that research that you're talking about is a technique for building taking a model and mixing it with another model to give it the voice

of this model while retaining the capability and uh alignment of the original model. So this new model is just trained with that voice like a fun voice of let's say whatever it is right and then you just mix this tokens and it turns out that if you mix the token this way this this voice characteristics are preserved and yet original alignment and capabilities are preserved to a large extent. So that's the technique. Maybe this is too obvious, but it it just I it's crossed my mind that tokens are what make up, you know, these these inputs and outputs that we get into into an into and out of an LLM. you know, if if we're doing some verifiable AI work or we're trying to create composable AI models, does it not

make sense to, for lack of a better term, tokenize the tokens like take those tok input tokens to output tokens, put them on a blockchain as, you know, ERC20s or some other token and and then actually compose and interoperate these models with one another by letting the models spend and receive the tokens from these other models. Is that an effective way to create AI interoperability? AB absolutely you I think one of the important learnings of the LA so one way or the other every AI every great AI you interact with is somewhat mixing multiple models so deepseek famously people knew about mixture of experts

mist is a mixture of experts model as well which is not just single model it's a multiple model thing but deepseek famously brought it to forefront when a mixture of expert model of this size was doing so well and you could train it and that's one idea of mixing multiple models. I just spoke of another one of this token level routing. There are many many ideas to mix models and most of them do really well and so a good highly capable model is actually mixing a lot of model either during each query or by routing. So chat GPT tried to route across all its different models and it failed at it and it had to reset the whole thing. So, so most of the cutting edge AI is sort of combining

multiple models and it makes complete sense to use use crypto to sort of incentivize and you know govern how they come together. It makes complete sense early attempts and mentions of these projects but they all dropped. One thing I found about crypto AI is that a lot of people have uh sort of not continued and dropped away about this early attempt because this is a general phenomenon in AI. In AI timing is very important because you conceptualize this idea you enthropize this models and say that's what's next that's for next and models don't make that much progress and they will drop those ideas and then model catch up and then suddenly those ideas are all feasible and uh I think time to revisit those ideas and we are doing it

by the way we are doing it not only in just terms of routing but in very complex ways of combining within the model multiple models and then across model multiple things through this workflows uh we are doing But I know that many other projects were doing it one and a half years back but eventually I found that they have dropped and they doing something else now. They should come back. Models are now better. >> Yeah, actually that brings up a a good point. We have a community question for you from the comments um from frost crypto. He wants to know how will Sentient ensure fair access to AI model ownership and monetization for smaller developers

or communities. >> Yeah, I'll give a quick answer to that but but there'll be much more details about it coming soon. So we I'm I'm one of my uh >> basically asking when token >> projects is >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but but one of my favorite projects has been bit tensor and I think I think they are they are amazing in the uh sort of the clarity of it. The only thing is they started with being bit tensor for AI but now it's not bit tensor for AI. Bit tensor is bit tensor for anything and there is something more to be done if you want to do it only for AI in the sense that that whole model of having emission fuel it.

So we want to do it the same way but you want to tie it to an AI outcome just that's a DLDR on how this emission would work. So you paste all these different parts of the grids are these artifacts on which people can stake and and based on how well they are contributing to the final AI they get rewarded back. That's one short answer to that. How do we evaluate it? How do we give them these things? There are many many parts to it and that's what you should uh keep hearing for a lot of action in the next three months man. That's that's my answer to it. >> Hamanchu we appreciate your time. Thank you for answering the community. thanks for talking about some deep insights about kind of the kind of let's call it web 2 AI web 3 AI sentience grid uh

always a pleasure to chat w with you and just recycle the the kind of mind on oh this is really happening fast it's very important and uh a fun stimulating conversation topic as well as obviously something to dedicate your career to man so yeah appreciate you coming on and look forward to catching up in a couple months again and and seeing where you guys are Absolutely. My pleasure, man. See you. >> Cheers, man. >> Thanks, Hanchu. See you next time. >> One last confetti.

>> That's on grid. >> AI. >> That was Hanchu. Um, look, I think we're at a place in the AI crypto stack where uh, you know, we need some of these projects to come out, deliver something, have a go on a big run. Uh because that whole niche has really really slowed down. I was actually talking to Ilia from Near about it. Um you know, they're they're launching some cool enterprise stuff. We'll probably get him on at some point soon, but but yeah, it's just like that niche as as you said, it's just kind of a lot of it faded out. And so I think Sentient hopefully can uh bring, you know, revive some of that. Allora, uh Ritual, Hyperbolic, some of these

teams hopefully as well. Maybe the next phase of this crypto AI sector is more of like this like VCbacked research projects, not like kind of like DeFi summer uh AI agent memecoin projects that we saw at the end of last year. But >> but we'll see. I think what Hamashu was saying was that AI is sort of the the dog wagging cryptos the tail like for a while there and I think it was a se that came on the show and was kind of talking to us about AI crypto in general especially when >> like the AI uh memecoin uh thesis and AI XPTt farcoin truth terminal all these things were were going on it was like well which one is leading the charge in

innovation >> um and I think very clearly we've seen that okay, you know, we were able to adapt tokens to this, but AI is the the tip of innovation and crypto is the one that's kind of like, you know, like lagging behind it a little bit and trying to play catchup. >> And so, I think, you know, what we've seen is uh AI slow down a little bit and because of that, crypto hasn't been able to innovate really at all because they don't have anything new to really work on top of. I think >> I don't know, maybe I don't know. I don't think AI is slowing down really at all. But >> I think if you compare chat GPT5 and like that incremental increase to previous models

>> in the models like the like the progress. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. >> It's it's decelerated. >> Yeah. And I and I think as a result cryp the crypto element of crypto AI has really slowed down. >> Um last thing for you. I was I was texting my my buddy last night about like the the charts and the the cycle and everything and he was saying look I think at some point AGI is going to come about and be like this Bitcoin stuff this proof of work stuff this is stupid we're just going to crack that puzzle. Um so I don't know there's a there's a whole conversation about AI Bitcoin proof of work. We got Dave in the background. We're going to get him up here. Dave it Dave is the uh lead at E Ethery Ventures. Uh welcome David to the show. Do you prefer Dave? David either

way. >> Dave is fine. How's it going, guys? >> Good. >> What's up, man? Are you in New York? Good to see you. >> I am in New York. Recently moved, so just settling in. >> Yeah, settling into the chaos >> for crypto VC. New York is the place to be. >> And uh >> how's it going? I think you uh you know, you you've kind of had quite the journey uh leading up to Ether 5 Ventures. maybe you can, you know, tell us a little bit about how you got here and then catch us up on the latest at Ether 5 Ventures. >> Yeah, sure. Um, so I got my start in Tradfi, basically working in wealth management and then asset management and then in 2017 uh discovered crypto, fell down the rabbit hole. Um, and was doing research for a large uh multi-trillion

dollar asset management firm called Wellington. was there for about four years and then basically in 2021 was spending like all my time on chain uh DeFi yield farming and so decided like I should do that for a full-time thing left that uh to go join a fund of funds on the west coast investing in other crypto metro hedge funds and then caught up with uh Jed who's my previous boss at 3BC ran a small venture fund there uh invested in a couple really great projects like Athena Monad research etc Um yeah, and then in 2025 was looking for my next thing and uh got introduced to Rock and Mike and joined the Egypt side to launch the venture fund. And now we're just uh aping a bunch of

hyperlquid projects. >> Hyperlid projects Yeah. Um, yeah, I think there's a huge opportunity on the Hyper EVM side. Like, um, I think a lot of people are I mean, if you just look at it from like revenue generating on an L1, Hyperlid's one of the most profitable L1s, but on the EVM side, there's actually not a ton of activity and also like a lot of the projects are actually going for below market rate. So there's projects that have, you know, three, 400, $500 million

of TVL that are raising, you know, at uh the same valuation that a, you know, pre-product no traction startup would be raising for if they're building on Salana or uh, you know, any of these like on Monad or anything like that. And so I think there's a huge difference. Um, I think I think that's actually going to change though. I think like once you start to see projects TGE and those things get, you know, rerated and up to like a couple hundred million, people are going to realize that like there's a huge opportunity that they're missing out on and that's when you'll probably get FOMO. So, um, we're trying to like I mean this maybe like a little bit of alpha, but like we're trying to get as much exposure as we can on the Hyper EVM side before people kind of like figure this out. Uh, and then and

then figure out what we do next. I mean that kinetic platform could be the biggest like one of the biggest liquid staking platforms behind ETH and Soul basically. >> Oh yeah, for sure. I mean Kinetic's the like the market leader there. We we actually recently led around in Hyperbe also building an LST for them there and those guys were super uh yeah just super excited about. So uh yeah, hopefully we'll give Kinetic a run for their money. >> Nice. David, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this DAT uh phenomenon that's happening, hype and hyperlquid. I mean, they they have one maybe more like are you involved? What are you thinking?

What are you hearing? Where where do you think this lands? >> Yeah, we we see a lot of uh these deals come come through. Um unfortunately, we we just I don't know. I I think it's a good way to make money if you're a trader. I think if you have like access um it's definitely a really great way to basically flip for like quick multiples. I just think that I don't know. I feel like at some point like this stuff just ends up you know uh not being great and then um my guess is like a lot of people are going to lose money in these deals and you know maybe like the upside is like you get a you know you kind of get like a couple of quick three 4xes. Um, but I think the downside is like maybe

you get involved in some lawsuits or something down the road. I >> that is what I'm thinking as well and hearing that this these that these are going to end in lawsuits for sure. >> Yeah. So, we're we're we're largely avoiding them um on the venture side, but uh yeah, but we know a lot of people I know a lot of folks that have made uh a lot of money investing in these ads. >> Yeah. Um Dave, we've kind of stopped doing venture on almost in the last like three months pretty much entirely. Uh we did like 40 or 50 deals on our fund which it's called uh Good Idea Ventures.

We're going to un unveil that in the next couple weeks. So if you if you if you're here, >> you're getting alpha on the memeable name of our of our memeable fund. Um, and yeah, I mean, we just kind of, you know, I spoke to a a pretty prominent VC in the space back back uh about six months ago, and he was just like, "Look, man, a lot of people raising capital right now are like very opportunistic. You you don't know what their true reasoning is or true motive is." Ended up calling them like bull market warriors. Um, is this a phenomenon that you're seeing on the VC side? you know, are you seeing a lot of different types of people trying to raise capital for new ideas that maybe weren't around in in, you know, during the bay or newer to

crypto or kind of how is your strategy or thought around this change? Obviously, you guys had just been raising, so you know, you you need to deploy capital, but yeah, I mean, are we justified to think that maybe it's a better time just to focus on liquid. How do you feel about this kind of like bull market VC liquid kind of phenomenon? What are your thoughts here? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I honestly I don't have a a the you know, like 100% of the answers. What I've been hearing a lot is um LPS in general are um kind of down bad from like the 2020 2021 vintages. Um and so they're a little bit like just kind of uh and then

also like if you look at crypto landscape, right? Like there there have been like a select handful of coins that have done well. Bitcoin, ETH, Salana, Hyperliquid, but outside of that like broad landscape of alts are still kind of like trading at near their like 2022, 2023 lows. Um, and so I think like yeah, I think just like a lot of people are are a little bit um they haven't made money in venture and so they're like, okay, why do I need to to deploy money into venture when I can just buy Salana or just buy Hyperliquid and kind of get the same type of returns? Um, and so there's a little bit of fatigue coming in from that side. I also think that a lot of people are, you know, conscious that maybe we're kind of towards the

tail end of another bull market and so they don't want to really deploy that much capital into, you know, kind of like the liquid funds that they need to hold for uh, you know, six, seven plus years. um they'd rather maybe like wait for the bare market to to start and then like scoop up like coins for the cheap or like be able to buy, you know, large cap liquid for a discount. Um I I do think that like this creates kind of like an interesting dynamic though where it I mean I don't know on the venture side it does feel a little bit similar to like the bare market like post FTX like there are certain sectors where like AI is super hot stable coins are very hot but >> you know outside of that like

>> you know there's not it's pretty hard for like founders to raise capital uh from especially from the venture side. So I think we think that that's like we view that as an opportunity and then on the etheri side like because we have you know the etheri network brand distribution etc. Um we're kind of able to leverage that to be like pretty good go to market and distribution partners for any port that we invest in. And so um yeah for a lot of these I think it's kind of like uh the opportunity to extend them a lifeboat and you can kind of get like pretty good terms that you normally wouldn't be able to get. Uh and so yeah, we we're viewing that as like a huge opportunity right now.

>> Yeah. >> So, so you think a lot of like the vintage 21 bigname funds are just or you you know they're just less active right now? I think I think a lot of people are um I think a lot of funds are actually like raising for their next vintage and right I mean >> I don't I've heard that it's been pretty tough like people having to >> yeah people having to cut back or like it's taking maybe you know two times longer to raise the same amount of capital uh or and I I think like it's it's also like trickling down from the top where like in in Tradfi like a lot of um institutional investors are also overallocated to private uh exposure.

And so >> it's like everybody's kind of, you know, doesn't want to lock up capital for a long period of time. You know, if you look at stratified markets, like maybe people feel like uh the, you know, macro is like a little bit shaky and like they'd rather just be in something where like they can get in and if they need to get out, they can get out versus like having to be locked up. Like I don't know you guys you guys have seen all the stuff around like um Harvard and all these universities and their endowments and how they have to sell their PE positions at like pretty steep discounts they need to get liquidity. So I think like these things are all kind of uh indicative of just like not a lot of capital like flowing into private markets.

>> David, how much do you look at macro given the the long time horizon? Yeah, we honestly like not not really like that much at all. I think especially like given where where we invest in the price points that we invest in. Like we're investing things at maybe like 10 million, >> 1520$20 million valuation. So like the downside for us is like pretty limited. It's basically like uh if they survive the cycle and they're still here and they have traction probably going to do pretty well and like it's going to it's going to be hard for us to lose money.

So um >> yeah. >> Yeah. We don't pay attention to that macro too much. That's honestly what I've learned as as well. And like I had an early VC friend like when we were on the early stages of our fund that I should have listened to more which was like look man if it's under 40 mil under 30 mil like it's pretty much always a good deal as long as the founder is reputable and like you trust them and it's a decent idea. The way where you start getting in trouble is when you start investing in like the later stage series A stuff or even just like stuff that's upwards of like 70 80 mil at seed 100 200 mil because a lot of these assets in the last bear things like a for example they bottomed around 200 mil FTV 150 200 mil

um you know and I think I think that's the case you know maybe it's lower this time around because there's there's more assets but yeah generally what you're looking to protect I suppose is basically what is the worst case of a altcoin bare market like where is this thing going to go I mean the answer is obviously zero but like realistically more around like yeah that 10 to 20 to 40 range so if that's your entry then you're usually you're usually kosher >> yeah exactly like I I think as long as they they're alive and still like you know cooking and and growing um you yeah if you invested like a 20 million or a $10 million valuation it's going to be pretty hard for you to lose money like the worst gaining is like maybe you get your money back or like you're only up

like 2 3x. Um but yeah, we try to we try to back like really smart teams in really big markets um and try to get you know negotiate as far as we can on the valuation to protect downside. Yeah. >> Was there a p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p piece of advice or like a lesson that you may have learned from your time at a at a more traditional fund like Wellington or or you know following that that kind of sticks with you and and you know kind of gave you some of that some of that experience ahead of time that you're now applying in your current role as you know the

head of the Ether 5 ventures. >> Yeah, that's a good question. Um I mean Wellington is is was like predominantly sort of like public market equities. um or like like markets in general. So I think like I mean uh like I think the best advice that I got was basically um from a trader that I knew on the commodities desk and he just said you know as long as you don't have to sell like you're pretty much good to go in like any market as long as you can kind of just keep holding on to the asset and just never be in a situation where you're like forced to liquidate or forced to sell your position. These things always bounce back. And so I I think about that a lot like in you know

just kind of like personal PA trading like you know you don't want to take on too much leverage and be like a foreller when these things like crash inevitably but then also on um you know I think like on the venture side like it also makes this point where like >> yeah again going back to the valuation piece like if you can get really good valuations it's just so much easier to hold those positions because you're like you know you're you're up uh even like 2x or whatever even even in the depths of the bare market it feels buying something and being down like 50%.

So >> yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's like that's one thing that I'd like to improve on my portfolio going forward. Like I mean, after this cycle, quote unquote, is like I want to be in a position where it's like borrow against core assets versus having to sell them and pay cap gains and like do do all that because uh yeah, I mean like there's there are meaningfully easy borrowing tools for Bitcoin, ETH, Soul, and like majors now. And I'm sure Hyperlid slowly gets that. I mean, as as it happens on the hyper EVM there where I mean that that's the dream world, right? Is like you have enough capital to be able to earn income, have a a meaningful position in that and then uh

just borrow against your crypto holdings to pay for whatever you need to do, but do it in a strategic way and um and you know, never be a forced seller of the as of the actual principle. >> Yeah, you guys you guys should definitely check out some stuff on Hyperlocate. I think like uh I mean I don't know I I don't want to sound like too much of a maxi but >> we have hype bags just so >> nice nice um yeah because I think like I think structurally especially what you can do on the on that platform with with regards to like the delta neutral trades um there's actually a lot of really interesting things that you can do on the borrow side as well where like you know potentially you could borrow against collateral and then like open up a delta neutral trade with that stuff

and tokenize that and then eventually essentially you're you're like borrowing a um sort of like a tokenized delta neutral trade that's like that acts like a stable coin, but you're also earning the funny rate on it. And so it's kind of like a loan, but you can cover a lot of the interest costs on the borrow. It's your main asset by the step rate. And so effectively, like you're getting free borrow. There's actually a couple projects um uh we maybe we can chat afterwards. I can I can send that stuff over to you. I don't want to give up like too much alpha uh but like there's a couple of projects building this out on the hyperlquid side. Uh, it's pretty interesting stuff. So, >> all right. Is is is that is the Hyperlink ecosystem the the ecosystem that you're most bullish on overall?

>> I think for now like over the next call like six to 12 months definitely like um we're most bullish on it there. I think like one it's just like a really exciting ecosystem. too. I think structurally like because they have the quab market there, like the yields that you can get on any type of stuff that you do in DeFi is just naturally going to be like a couple percentage points higher than what you can get in other ecosystems in my opinion because you can just like harvest the funding rates and harvest like the >> Yeah. Yeah. Wait, so why is that? >> Yeah. So, like think about like stable coin, right? on um on Ethereum, you know, it's like it's purely up to supply and demand is like what you get paid for on the uh on these like on like an a

pool or something like that, right? just like how much supply there is and then what's the demand and then there's some kind of like curve that you get paid out on and then uh on Hyperlid um you can basically take whatever you borrow and like dump it into a delta neutral trade where you're earning like funding rate and on average funding rates pay 13%. So like you know in in like the in like a pure bare market where maybe like funding rate is like negative you just get like the a you just get your standard a you know whatever that borrow um rate is but in like a you know in like a bull market where people are trading a lot like sometimes you can get crazy high funding rates by like through the delta neutral trades and so um you

know like when Pump Fund launched uh when Pump Fund launched on Hyperlid and not to like shill our bags too much, but we we invested in a company called Hyperbe. Um, they had a vault, which is like a USDT vault. Uh, basically, it's like a bunch of different trades. Um, that's in there. One of them was like a hype delta neutral trade. The other one was like a um like a fartcoin and also I think a pump fund basis trade. And the pump fund basis trade was basically printing like >> I don't know like couple hundred% APY per day like when the thing was trading for for the first like >> one, two, three weeks. And so that vault was literally yielding like 50% APY and you're like you're just not going to get that on like any other chain because you don't have this claw deck that's like

you know generating a lot of like the perk flows. Um so we think like structurally like I mean I think like structurally like DeFi is just going to give you like at least if not better yield on hyperlquid. Um and so that's like a structural advantage. And then the third one is just like this kind of like opportunity mismatch where like when we talk a lot of projects on hyperlquid like there are projects with real traction, real TVL, real users making like you know a couple million of dollars of ARR per year and like yeah the valuations that you're getting for these are basically like the same valuations as like pre-product pre-traction some random pitch.

>> Yeah. Exactly. And so it's like, yeah, would I rather, you know, pay $40 million to get something that has like $400 million of TDL or like something where it's not even built yet? Um, so, uh, I don't think I don't I think that dynamic is going to change like eventually but >> that's the Yeah, >> because people are sleeping on EVM. Like people are bearish on Hyper EVM right now, >> right? Exactly. >> They literally are on it. And I think also like uh I don't know, we'll see. But I think you're going to get like a pretty big like season 3 airdrop by like participating on the EVM because like that's I mean maybe like a non-intuitive thing is like I I think that like the valuation premium for Hyperlid will eventually come from the EVM side because if you look at like in general

Yeah. >> it's valued like a deck still, not like an L1, >> right? Exactly. And so like you know when when it gets value like an L1 like I think all the stuff on the EDM cytocope is gonna also like just moon. So um >> just repric. So yeah you're betting your career on Jeff. That's good to know man. >> I'm glad Mike is is subsidizing your degeneracy. >> Yeah. You know it's uh it's what we do. How does uh how does Etherfy Ventures support their port codes? And generally like what are the top one or two most valuable things that you that you've found that uh early stage founders appreciate from uh working with you guys or just in general from from VCs?

>> Yeah. So I think like probably the biggest help that we can give to our ports is helping them on the distribution and product market fit and the go to market piece. think there's a lot of like really talented builders out there that build great products, but the problem is like how do you get it in front of an audience that actually cares? And I think that's where like we can step in as either fine where like you know we have this like big brand and we've got like a couple hundred thousand followers on Twitter. Um we have the card program that's got a bunch of active card holders, you know, whales that are depositing uh tons of capital into our into our vaults and and TDL on the platform. So, um, yeah, like when it comes to actually distribution, we can basically be like a big kind of, you

know, brand name, uh, customer for like any port that we use and help them drive a ton of TVL or activity or whatever it is. Uh, and that's usually, I mean, in my opinion, that's kind of like the biggest risk for most startups. And so, uh, that's where we try to lean in heavily. I mean outside of that though like we have a ton of folks on the team like we can help folks build uh products like ship um there's a lot of like real operator experience like Mike and Rock both kind of like built successful companies in the past as well in web two and so um this isn't like the first time that they built a company and I think a lot of times like the wisdom and knowledge that comes around like how do you structure deals like are you getting you know who do you talk to like what's

the sort of like right you know the the quickest path from like A to B when you need to get something done. Like those guys actually have a ton of experience that like I you know I rely on a lot and a lot of our ports like go to um and it's just help it's just helpful because like they can just cut through like a lot of the noise and just tell you exactly like hey this is what you should be doing you know like here's how fast you should be growing in order to like hit kind of like the next milestone. Uh and it's just good to have like experienced folks who have who have done it in the past like on the cap table and like helping you out. So >> definitely. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Etherfi uh is uh one of the one of the uh more traditionally based businesses uh less hype, less speculation, more fundamentals, uh when you look at some of the traditional business metrics and and Mike comes on the show and he talks about cost of cost of customer acquisition. He talks about LTV and all of these real business fundamentals that are typically lost when we're looking at what would be almost like a DeFi primitive like a like a lend borrower market or uh some of these other things. Uh they don't operate like a typical business whereas Ether does and to your point it gives you sort of a a a schematic to base your growth and and a more uh more

wellrounded experience that you can draw from. Yeah, 100%. Um, yeah, I mean like I I ultimately I'm I'm very aligned there. Like I ultimately think that in order for crypto to really like be what it ultimately wants to be, like these things basically need to make a ton of money. And uh yeah, I'm a I'm a revenue maxi. Um I mean that's why I love Hyperlid so much. >> That's why I like I love things that make money. Uh >> yeah, I feel like it's the only way like you know.

>> There you go. revenue meta. Revenue meta enjoy right there. >> That's right. >> Did you guys >> Did you guys successfully finish the raise or or is that still ongoing? >> Yeah, so that's it's still ongoing. Um we have uh a little bit under half of the fund raise. Um and so yeah, if anybody uh if any investors are out there or anybody wants to chat, um happy to. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. I just wanted to plug that for you guys. Um and and would you say it's been considerably more difficult than expected or as expected?

>> I think we're actually like ahead of schedule in terms of um you know where we're at and where I've seen other funds at. Uh but yeah, you know, it's always a grind and it's especially challenging for like first-time funds uh which is what we are. Um but you know, I think the track record kind of like proves over itself. like we've done uh pretty well for uh you know the first couple investments that we're doing and we're seeing a lot of like really good deal flow um trying to craft some more like strategic uh opportunities for us uh and I think the results will speak for themselves.

>> Beautiful. Okay, cool. Last thing for you from me Dave. Um, is there any particular like sector or kind of narrative that has completely slowed down in the in the VC world that you've kind of like haven't seen much deals for? You know, things like crypto gaming come to mind that has seemed to have completely faded away. You know, it's funny. I had an old investor friend uh um tell me that it's always the boring stuff that makes him money and venture, never the sexy things. and may you know may maybe that's an example crypto gaming but yeah is is there just general sectors that you're just not seeing any demand for at all and thus

less pitches for or um just curious on like the far end of the curve what's not being picked up at all really? >> Yeah. Um yeah, I think you hit like nail head. Uh I'd say like crypto gaming, NFTTS, metaverse type stuff. Um yeah, we I I don't know. Like maybe I'm just not really like in the flow, but I've basically seen like none of those um raise capital. I I'm actually I don't know. Like yeah, I'm not as bearish on that stuff. I I just think that like it was poor execution and you know, it's I don't know. It's very like cliche VC to say, but I think like you know metaverse gaming like you know a multi-billion

dollar company coming out of that doing NFTTS is like 100% going to happen again. Uh and that I think that that whole like industry is going to boom at one point in the future. Um, but you know, I think I think it just kind of needs like a very very strong operator or like a very strong uh team to kind of like come in and execute. Um, I yeah, I just don't really know like too much about like I'm not and I game a lot, but like I have no real like credentials to like evaluate gaming or NFT stuff. So, we don't we don't really see ton of that stuff. It wouldn't surprise me if uh you know 10 years later like a metaverse you know company is like one of the most valuable companies in crypto like uh you

know Minecraft and these games like make a ton of money uh gaming have like millions and millions of users um that there does feel like there's some like natural synergy there. Uh yeah >> you're looking at it man it's pudge of penguins get with or get >> maybe that's what it is. >> Yeah exactly. Wait, I got to go buy some pengu after this. >> IP IPcoins, social currencies. >> That's right. >> That's right, brother. >> I have a I have a I have a buddy. >> Yeah, I have a buddy who who went all in on Punchy Penguins like um like when they first came out and uh he's been through the ups and downs, but like now every day he just like flashes his portfolio at me and like he's like, "I told you you should have like gone all in on the pain goose."

>> That's so good. Dave man from E25 Ventures the man the myth fresh into New York City. Appreciate your your time. Hopefully you guys get the rest of that fund closed quickly and yeah man it's been a pleasure. Speak to you soon as uh after you guys wrap up and deploy the capital. Thank you for the uh hyperlid hyper EVM alpha and general takes. Uh it's been a pleasure man. >> Yeah been a pleasure guys. Thanks for having me on safe. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers man. Well, Rob, I did not realize that there was that much happening on Hyper EVM uh as far as like teams raising that are actually having uh have a lot more TVL than their uh valuation and a lot more

traction. >> That's pretty bullish. >> Maybe uh Good idea Ventures doubles down on EtherFi and uh double dips with Ether as well as Ether Ventures to get a little bit more exposure to the Hyperlquid ecosystem. Maybe I don't know. I asked uh I asked Chris here about about uh about his thoughts on uh investing in uh funds and stuff and he's had some good experiences, some bad. I kind of just I don't know, maybe it's a good idea, but I would just uh good idea. I would want to invest into a fund that is like >> completely separate from our expertise or our our industry with like far less risk. Yeah, I mean that that's the thing about, you know, essentially uh is it's

almost the same thing as hiring, right? You want to hire people that are really good at something uh and much better than you at at at one particular thing and have them focus on that. Similarly, right? You could say the same for portfolio. You want to place capital in funds that have an edge in some different area, some different >> Exactly. >> something else other than where our edges. Um >> well, because it's funny because like I bet these guys are getting good deals for >> the fund because nobody wants to really invest there and the people are overlooking it. Um and then they have the edge, right, of like the distribution and the brand and all this stuff. But, you know, similar applies here for us. So anyway, up next we've

got Ian. Ian from Ono. Um, and yeah, we're going to talk about RWAs. I mean, Rob, let's talk about this these L1s, huh? Stripe and and Circle. >> Let's give it a take. >> Um, >> that's what it's all about. I mean, those are obviously uh stable coin and payments based chains. I think there's there's so much happening. The RWA space when we're thinking about bringing every asset on chain. >> Yeah. Most of those assets are RWAS. The cryptonative assets are a fraction of the assets overall. So I think there's there's a ton of room to explore here.

Um and yeah, I'm very very much looking forward to speaking to Ian about it. I think they've got some recent announcements as well. And uh we're gonna >> we actually had our our good friend Graham from Omni uh or ex Omni who I was doing the podcast in their office in New York uh recently joined Securize as the head of ecosystem. We'll give him some confetti if he's watching if he sees this clip. Congrats to Graham. Um make that money, brother. We got quite a bit of uh we we got some alpha here on uh on securitized and we we know what's cooking over there. So, the boys are uh boys are eating good and um and yeah, shout out to shout out to Graham for

joining the tokenization push. Had a spicy tweet. Tokenization is the only use case that matters in crypto. I don't know about that, man, but uh we'll let him fly. >> One of your tweets. >> No, no, that was Graham's tweet. >> Oh, that was Graham's tweet. A little bit spicy. Tokenization is the only thing I mean >> only use >> tokenization is a very important piece of blockchain and crypto rails. >> Definitely. How what are you gonna do on blockchain without tokenization? >> Right. So, >> um but yeah, I'd like to talk to Ian about the L1's. I think he's just going to join back uh here in a sec. L1's that have launched. I think had some big bigger news, too, >> um that I didn't quite get.

>> Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna get it. All right, we're gonna get Ian to give us thato news. And it's no flak against security. I think Rwas are going to grow the space as a whole. Ono is a part of it. Securitize is leading it. We're gonna we're gonna uh get the answers from all of uh the key people and players in the space so we can bring a well-rounded perspective to these sectors as a whole. >> Um yeah, we've got the we've got the segments rolling out too. We got some uh for for for those of you guys watching, we have some fun new segments rolling out on the rollup TV starting I think maybe end of next week early early falling definitely by the end of the month. Um so pretty stoked on those and

we'll have some more focused conversations with different people from from different sectors. So excited on that. Um and looking forward to being able to kind of roll those into uh their own kind of show almost. So, if you've been rocking with us for the last 5 months on the Rollup TV, you've seen the evolution and uh this is the next step. We actually have some sick new overlays as well coming. Um so, so yeah, I think we're just waiting for for Ian here, Rob. So, um I'm looking at the market. Looks like we're getting a bit of a bounce across the board.

uh market sniffed out that PPI news. It felt like it felt like yesterday night here. So, while you were sleeping basically, we started to pull back. Um and and yeah, I think that news came out. I'm not sure if the market knew about it somehow or just kind of was fearful of it, but it we're we're probably just going to bounce again from here and just go up again, honestly. Like, if it's a real bull market, this dip lasts a day or two. and we bounce again. So, yeah, I'm probably pretty bullish here at this on this dip.

>> Yeah, I believe so. It does feel like dip uh slurping season. Um, you got a couple other news pieces that have come out over the last few hours. >> What do we got? >> SEC Chair Paul Atkins to discuss Project Crypto Tomorrow. >> Uh, okay. This was something that I think caught a lot of people's attention, but there wasn't a huge reaction to it. um project. >> There was no like information about it really. >> It was really just that um most of crypto is is not securities. Uh yeah, the SEC is going to carve out regulation in particular for crypto and they're going to classify digital assets and digital asset securities and those two are going to be distinguished. And so

you still may have securities that you know are some sort of income product and they're paying dividends and and maybe you know that that sort of thing. But then you're going to have digital assets um that might just be governance tokens that might just be you know utility tokens as it was classically called. Um and we've even seen the SEC say that uh you know staking those tokens that are not securities doesn't make them a security just because they're staked. So, I think >> just to say, I mean, shout out shout out to Hester Pierce, the SEC commissioner, uh met.

>> Yeah. Did you get a chance to talk to her at all or was it just like a quick in-n-out? >> Very briefly. She was mobbed at SBC and so I did get a chance to meet her. Um, she was extremely bullish on the ecosystem as a whole. And she as a leader of the SEC is being very, very thoughtful with how she's putting forth regulation. You can just tell that um in the past when we had Gendler, he had these blanket enforcement actions and there was no nuance. There was really no uh consideration to some of these things may be different from the other. It was just crypto as a whole >> uh and there was enforcement um on that category as a whole.

>> What did you ask her? Like what did you say to her? >> Um I essentially said that I love what she's doing. Uh she had a great speech out there about privacy when it comes to stable coins and payments. >> Yeah. >> She told this >> pretty hilarious story about her grandfather eating uh peanut butter on watermelon, which sounds kind of disgusting, but it was basically like you can combine two things typically privacy and then stable coins on the other end. And you can combine these two things to kind of get the best of both worlds. Um, and so again, didn't have a ton of, you know, you know, much time uh to go really, really deep into things with her, but invited her on the show. I think she's looking forward to it and we're gonna make that happen. So stay tuned for Hester Pierce on the rollup.

>> Yeah, man. We've got Ian in the background. We're ready to jump in. Uh, first time for Ian on the show. I'm good friends with Tom, who's a longtime BD growth guy o over there. Met him in London a couple times and and have had some good times. and then actually met Nathan here in Hawaii in December for a little party at at at Nick's house. So, this is my first time meeting Ian. Ian, welcome to the show. Um, and uh it's good to have you. >> Thanks so much for having me. >> Yeah, man. Roban >> Rob and I were just kind of chatting about uh these, you know, Stripe L1 announcements, circles arc L1 announcements.

You know, you got Plasma and Stable button heads with them. We've got like somewhere in between like stable coin chains aren't valuable to like stable coin chains are the future of finance where crypto Twitter is versus institutions are. >> All right. >> What what was your honest reaction to these two announcements? Um you know did it catch you off guard? What was your take? Um why is why are these companies building these stable coin chains? I just like to get like a more broad holistic view and then we we'll dive into some of the specifics. >> Yeah. No, 100%. Uh, I mean, did I fully anticipate so many tribe flies to launch their own L1?

Maybe not entirely, but it doesn't really surprise me. I feel like a lot of the the mindset of a lot of these companies still is that they prefer at least some semblance of control over the environment that they want to build, right? And I agree with a lot of crypto Twitter out there of like, do you truly need another L1? It really depends, right, on what it is that you're trying to accomplish with that particular L1. How permissionless is it going to be? Are you creating it for censorship resistance in the first place? Or do you just looking for a 247 rails that you can plug into Trafi in the way that you think is very helpful and it kind of runs the spectrum a little bit. I don't

expect the big Trafi L1s to be the most permissionless chains, but that's fine, right? The the concept of these private Trafi chains or semi-private Trafi chains has been around for a while and a lot of people hate on them for good reason because historically not a lot of people have really used these things. But I think what a lot of people forget is that the Trafi Rails right now just aren't very good. And if you can build a private chain or semi-private chain that at least helps you bridge or hook into Trafi in select ways so that if you can then at least have 247 movement of some value and then go to the true public

chains that works. That's fine. That's a helpful product. Um but it just it's a spectrum and a lot of people don't judge it on a spectrum. Whereas I think the reality is at least for some of these trap fies having a chain that is not fully permissionless but at least helps them improve their own internal infrastructure and the like is already a giant step forward. >> Yeah, very very interesting. Um to your point these companies are choosing more control over composability. I'm I'd imagine if I was in their boardroom, they're talking about their own network effects versus what they stand to gain from tapping into perhaps like, you know, Ethereum or another public

blockchain's network effects. Um, I I'm curious as it relates to Ono and what you guys are doing in uh the RWA markets. You guys, congrats. Andy, tea up the confetti. Just launched Global Markets, conveniently named >> Confetti. >> Ono GM. Uh, which is a platform that will include a broker dealer with accounts at traditional trading, clearing, and settlement venues. Uh, in addition to accepting client orders via API and web app, also accept orders via smart contract calls and or token transfers. So this feels like as you were just describing kind of this bridge between the traditional world and the cryptonative world maybe it exists on a public chain or just generally in a web

3 world. Tell us a little bit more about why GMO global markets and how you anticipate uh the market will react to adopting global markets >> 100%. Yeah the so our we're very excited to launch it. It is our platform to launch and essentially tokenize any publicly listed stock and ETF that trades 245. Uh it's going live with a 100 or so assets give or take but over time will scale us to a thousand plus assets. The way to think about the platform truly is that it is in a way a connectivity between the onchain world and the trafi world where all of the liquidity for these stocks and the like

sits right there have been tokenized stocks in the past. We've all seen, you know, the Kraken X stocks launch. We've seen the Robin Hood announcements and the like. But none of these platforms right now truly fulfills its promise. We would argue in part because take the other other products that are out there in a permissionless like format like Xtocks, you're seeing these things dep quite a bit left and right, right? You're when you buy these stocks, you're not 100% sure that when you what you buy on chain truly is the right price as is available.

>> Tokenized stocks, I believe, is the uh Oh sorry. >> Just lost you for a sec there. you you you you stopped that tokenized stocks like following Robin Hood basically. So like 20 seconds back problem with that model is that you've

segmented liquidity onchain and offchain, right? There's no easy connectivity between the two. So, you're trading onchain in these liquidity venues, but once liquidity dries up, these prices start to diverge from the underlying. So, as an investor, if I'm buying Tesla stock on chain, I would love to know that the price I'm getting is the same thing as what I would get in the Trafly environment in the NASDAQ, New York Stock Exchange, and the like, right? You want to make sure that there is parody between the two. But the way these systems currently have been architected, that liquidity bridge does not exist, right? That's why you get these stocks that start to dep. It's very similar to what a stable coin can do. If there is an instant minting of

USDC or USDT, you're you're starting to see environments where these things depict and you need that instant liquidity, instant minting and burning to bring it back down to a dollar or bring it back up to a dollar. Um, and you see need the same thing with stocks. So, our platform truly is the first time where our assets are issued in a stable coin-like format. Um, where there is instant minting and burning of these assets so that what you buy on chain can be bought at the same liquidity and the same price as is available in a normal brokerage account.

>> And so, is the right way to think about this almost like a a tokenized rapper? you know, I if uh you think of something like, you know, stable coin probably fits this bill, but also something like wrapped bitcoin. Um and and you know, imagine wrapped bitcoin is available for redemptions, right? I can take my wrapped bitcoin, I can send it into the smart contract and that smart contract will deliver me one bitcoin on the bitcoin chain. Similarly, you guys have a broker dealer as part of Onondo Global Markets. And so, if I send my tokenized Tesla stock into the Onondo Global Markets broker dealer, it'll burn the tokenized version and it'll release this real uh legitimate Tesla equity into my

brokerage account. Well uh almost. You can send us your tokenized Tesla and you will get the value of the Tesla share back in stable coin instantly. The reason why it's not exactly how you describe with, you know, you get your Tesla and your brokerage account is transferring stocks between brokerage accounts is incredibly difficult, right? You would have to wait days and days and days. Um, so the way it what you can do though is essentially buy a token on chain that represents the same economic exposure as the Tesla stock where dividends are reinvested after withholding the appropriate taxes and

essentially where you get the exact same economic exposure as if you were holding the Tesla stock in your brokerage account. If you at any point want to redeem said token back into stable coins, you can do that 245 in size. >> You know, I'm curious, what type of clientele do you expect the demand for this product to come from? Well, like when you guys were scoping this out as something to really push forward as part of the ono roadmap, like what is the market segment of of of the world that you're like this product is definitely for these people and this is why uh you know I'm curious is it like people like us who are like you know pretty native on chain is it more people that are like crypto curious is it larger investors

institutions like who is the market segment that you anticipate to you know soak up a lot of this uh uh of the demand side of of of this product. >> Yeah, we expect there to be quite a large retail audience quite frankly that historically globally has really struggled for access into US capital markets, right? If you look at there's a lot of talk right now about stable coin and it being a better mousetrap to get access to the US dollar, which we would agree with. The same thing is going to be the case for tokenized stocks and ETFs. It's a much easier way for a global audience to get access to US capital markets. And people fundamentally underestimate how large that population is and how large that

untapped demand really is. Like brokerage outside the US, there's a lot of minimum balances you need to hold. You get absolutely ripped off on the fees. You may not even have the products available in your brokerage platform that you want. You can't buy them 245. There's a lot of limitations right now for global investing. Whereas at the same time, you've got 400 500 million people who have a crypto exchange account, a crypto brokerage account essentially, that are willing and wanting to hold crypto, but that would love to get access to US stocks in a much more straightforward way. So, we fundamentally believe that the same

audience that has figured out that a stable coin is a nice way to get access to the US dollar at some point will figure out that tokenized stocks and ETFs are a very nice way to get access to US capital markets. But even for a US audience, quite frankly, because I get this question a lot. Okay, I'm in the US. I already have a brokerage account. Like, why why do I care, right? >> Yeah. Um but even there I have multiple brokerages bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro brokerage accounts I can compare and contrast the two some brokerage accounts give me 245 trading which is really nice uh but then if I

want to take margin on that platform I can only do it to invest more I can't actually take it off platform into my bank account if I ever need a mortgage or whatever right other brokerage accounts do offer that but they don't have 245 trading or the rate I get on my margin is absurdly high. I would love to just have my stocks in tokenized form, move them between platforms, even maybe have one investment account where I have both of my crypto and of my stocks in one place so I can get margin on both at the same time. And if I don't like the margin in that particular platform, I'll go shop it around on DeFi or wherever the hell I want. Right.

>> Yeah. >> It's almost like what a stable coin did for your bank account. I think most people would agree a stable coin is actually a better mousetrap than a checking account because you can send it wherever you want 247 and you can use it in DeFi. Same thing for tokenized stocks and ETFs. And I would argue it's even a bigger leap forward because at least with a bank account, I could easily send money to you or wherever else. With a brokerage account, I mean, you can transfer stocks between your accounts, but it is not an easy process. >> Yeah, as you mentioned. Yeah, I think this like one interface for I think that's where we're going, right? I think that's like what the race is for Robin Hood for all these different places is like one interface your entire financial assets that are like basically like like

let's just call like your digital assets uh which is basically everything that isn't real estate land physical metals etc etc commodities uh all all in one place uh and one part of this that I think is that I've grown a thesis on and that I've seen slowly play out is that I think private credit is one of the dark courses of the RWA market that is like set to really uh if you look at at like the uh at the pie chart on RWA.xyz out of the 250 or sorry it's it's it's a significant uh number. I don't want to butcher it. It's it's a very small slice of the pie less than four four or 5%

right now. You know my thesis is that that's going to grow to like 10 to 15% of the RWA market in in the coming years. I'm curious like do you agree with that? Do you think that's right or wrong? Um and then iso positioned to expand into private credit markets or into other kind of adjacent uh RWA markets or you know pretty much just focus on on the stable coins and and equities side. >> Yeah, it's a great question because I do get it a lot and it's almost a fundamental question of like which asset classes does it make sense to tokenize in the first place? Yeah. Right. Um we've always taken the view that you tokenize things for two reasons. Number one is globally people want access to

the product and they struggle to get it. So putting it on crypto rails is a better way to facilitate the distribution and access. That's one. And then number two is people want to use the asset on chain as a form of collateral. And collateral can mean that you stake it, you use it for margin, you could do a wide variety of things with it, right? But for both of those things to be true, typically people need to have some semblance of pricing transparency. People want to be able to understand what is something worth. That's where you get into trouble with stuff like tokenized real estate, tokenized PE funds. Quite frankly, even some of these tokenized private company investments, you just don't have the same investor disclosures. So, >> you mean like the whole like the open

open AI >> stuff? Yeah. All of these things. How are you going to value it? Because the disclosures requirements are not the same. If you go to public markets, any public company has a ton of public disclosure requirements. They do quarterly reports. It's quite easy to at least form a perspective on what these things are worth. And you have very deep and liquid markets. So that makes it a good access play because people can look at what is really the price of this thing and if I'm what I'm buying is the same price as the underlying. and it's good use as collateral because if people ever need to liquidate it there's a very deep and liquid market so that's why we focused on you know treasuries public stocks ETFs to go back to your question

around private credit the nice thing about private credit is it moves you up on the yield curve right but you do run into the issue at times of what is the underlying how much is this thing worth how do I value it now the good thing is with some private credit vehicles they're also wrapped in a public wrapper so you can buy ETFs that essentially are, you know, private credit ETFs and we can put those on chain, but we're not going to be the tokenization company that goes out and tokenizes these esoteric private credit products or real estate and the like. People have tried that. I hope someone figures it out, but we just don't think it's a good use case.

>> Yeah. So, basically, in in markets where there's not like a very liquid, tradable, and clear public value that is agreed upon by the market, it's much more difficult to tokenize those things. then that is going to require a different mechanism than you know what is currently present in the market today. >> Well said. >> Yeah. Got it. Cool. You know, earlier we were talking about uh using some of these assets as collateral rather than selling it for liquidity. And I'm curious as you you are bringing more and more of these tokenized stocks onchain.

Um you you mentioned distribution and access is is one of the the key differentiators value propositions of these onchain equities uh or tokenized equities. Um are you guys are you working on sort of the bridges from uh kind of the native chain to some of these other chains where DeFi exists. Are you working on some of those integrations? For instance, I can imagine a tokenized Tesla on A and borrowing against it on A or are you building out some of these solutions and and these D5 protocols yourself? Where do you where is sort of the next uh the next jump here from a product perspective?

>> Yeah, I think it's a great question because I don't I think DeFi is amazing. It is one of the key reasons why you put an asset on chain. I also think that DeFi is not quite built to support a thousand different stocks and ETFs all of a sudden. >> That would be chaos. >> Yeah, pure chaos right there. Now, so we launched our global markets platform on mainet Ethereum. We'll go to Salana BMBB chain pretty soon. We'll go to chain once it launches pretty soon too. And you know the that is really an access play because we want to go where the users are obviously public you know mainet Ethereum has a lot of users Salana B&B chain there a lot of users I

think people are going to really welcome the fact that they can get access to these assets and I'm pretty positive that the DeFi ecosystems on these various chains will support these assets in a limited way right because I don't think a right now is going to all of a sudden deploy a thousand different markets for these for these stocks in ETFs. It's not that it doesn't scale like normally in a brokerage account. You can have a thousand different stocks and ETFs. It'll just show you what your margin balance availability is and you get it in your account, right? Current DeFi isn't really set up for that. Um, so that's part of the vision for the Ono chain quite frankly is to build out an ecosystem, a DeFi ecosystem that really

is tailored towards these public stocks, ETFs, treasuries, all-in- ones, so that we can really build brokerage on chain in a better way, but the current DeFi protocols may not necessarily be super well set up to do that at scale. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe at best you can have like a like a mag seven type of selection on something like like an a or even just like an index. I I don't Yeah, individual stocks as you say like even on a today or most you know suitable lending markets there's a selection of you know 10 to 20 crypto assets that are deemed you know reasonable to borrow against right and so to extend that to equities is a whole another kind of

level kind of on a tangential note here um Eric Trump slowly becoming a main character in crypto Twitter somehow dunking on people for calling for ETH to go lower uh pumping Bitcoin celebrating shorts getting blown out all sorts of stuff. Um I saw he was present at the summit last year or maybe it was earlier this year in New York City. Also recently saw him on an interview talking about how banks are basically losing like that the current setup with banks is failing that they can't process transactions on on the weekend all these types of things. Um, you know, I'm just curious like in your interactions with the, you know, with the World Liberty Finance people, Eric Trump himself, like what has been their their driving force

or what has been their like like what is those what is that interaction like um speaking with them? Just like generally curious what you can share your experiences and feel you know feel free to share whatever you feel is is relevant. Yeah, I mean the they've got they've become quite public in why it is that they're building what they're building, which in part is because obviously the Trump family experience with getting debanked and the current system quite frankly not really being in service of everyone and not operating 247. I think when we had them over at the Ando Summit already back then, which was in February, that vision was very clear and that is why they're building what they're building. Um so you know it

it it helps quite a bit if someone with that you know public stature etc is spreading that narrative which I think is true and as to you know why Ethereum in the first place why DeFi in the first place if if the president's son uh has been debanged and is publicly speaking about it and is use and and has that as the narrative as to why this technology is relevant in the first place that's pretty powerful. Um, I would also add that, you know, in my interactions with him and the the the person itself, he took the time to meet a lot of people within Ando, uh, you know, I always find that quite impressive when someone truly takes the time to just meet everyone and

say hi to everyone. So, honestly, I can't uh have nothing bad to say. >> Beautiful. Ian, we we appreciate your time and joining us today. um look forward to seeing on chain roll out and um yeah look forward to just the broader development here. It just feels like this space is the space of this kind of iteration of crypto today. um you know, narratives come and go, but it does feel like this one uh with regards to RWA's tokenization is only really at the beginning stages, which feels crazy because crypto's been around for so long and it's like, wow, like this was the obvious along like we tried so much other stuff, but like why didn't we just

try this? Um so, >> well, >> I'll give you a fun fact. Um I used to manage digital assets within McKenzie with the consultancy and the first project I did for a trafi was in 2016 and it was about tokenization. So already back then it was the you know what can we do with this technology obviously since then not uh it hasn't really played out as fast as what a lot of people thought. I do think this time is different in part because you have a lot of stable coin liquidity out there.

Onchain adoption is real. The whole concept of tokenization to facilitate access to an interesting asset for a global audience. DeFi exists now. It didn't exist back then. So, I think the time really is now to start moving all this stuff on chain. the adoption will probably take slightly longer than what we think, but I think the primitives truly are getting built right now. >> There certainly is lots of momentum. Um, and you guys are pushing uh the space and RWA space forward as a whole. So, thank you for that. Keep up the good work. Ian, thank you so much for coming on and we'll see you next time.

>> Yeah. Cheers, man. Thanks, man. >> Bye. >> Speak soon. >> Thanks. >> Congrats on. >> Alrighty, guys. Um that was uh that is the the state of tokenization and RWAS from the perspective of um stoked on just the growth there from all sorts of angles really for for from my perspective like this stuff is interesting. It's exciting. Um but it's not as it's not as fun as like the DGEN yield farming or the or the cryptonative stuff. But it's, you know, unironically the thing that's going to push us forward much more than uh probably from a narrative perspective, from a capital perspective, and just from like an

adoption perspective more than any of the other current concepts in crypto. >> Guys, Andy's the DGEN of the rollup. He doesn't find this RWA tokenization stuff particularly uh fun interesting. I mean, if it translates to number go up, there you go. That's what's fun and interesting. and ultimately the institutional wave coming and uh rising tide lifting all >> every time I hear tokenization I just think money rain >> look that is that is the numerator right every every asset getting tokenized is growing the amount of assets on chain and therefore uh growing the numerator so you can do the money rain one more

time before we get our next guest up here less Borsai I think I'm saying that right founder of wave digital assets, another institutional player in the space, a leading adviser for digital assets and bringing together smart capital strategies. Uh where >> unironically an adviser to a Gotachce as according or a Gotachi according to his Twitter. Um also a prominent LA technology entrepreneur. um who has experience a serial entrepreneur, former music promoter and manager and adviser in the crypto and music technology space. Um guy has been on some pretty big platforms. Um and

recently unveiled a samurai sword in 2022 next to Charles Hoskinson. Um so that's what's going on there. And um yeah, let's get Les up and let's hang out. >> Less ready. I think Les may need just another minute to set up, but I'm I'm checking out Wave Digital Assets. Okay. >> Because uh they have a whiskey and bourbon fund right next to their NFT fund. >> I mean, pretty pretty interesting to see the uh the variety in some of the fun thesis that we've had on the show. Ether 5 Ventures. Dave, of course, from Ether 5 Ventures had a uh pretty spot-on hyperlquid EVM, hyper EVM strategy. Uh

pretty core thesis there. Uh we're going to hear what Less is. >> Wait, wait. So, you're telling me Les Les is involved in whiskey companies? We have to hear about this. >> We're about to find out. Less, welcome to the show. >> Less, welcome up, man. >> You know what? I've heard of Winona Jud. Uh she sings

the national anthem on another podcast that I like called Kill Tony. And she comes on, I think she's uh down there in Texas and appears on that show every once in a while. And uh she does a good job. Uh, see you.

>> I'm gonna have I'm gonna have to fact check that. We'll we'll report back by the end of uh the end of the show here. Andy. >> Yeah, that's that's what that's what we do these these days, Les. I was uh I was uh trying to get a girl to go on a date and I was chat gbting some texting. So, that's the state of the younger generation. Just be glad that you're that you're not a part of it. And uh you know, Oh, I know. All right. You're cool, Les. You're cool.

Yeah. Yeah. Les, so Les, you have quite quite the background in the music space, in the investing space. Currently GP at um at at a fund uh Wave Digital. Um also I see in your Twitter bio involved in Avagotch, which is cool because Mark Zeer is a cool guy. I I don't know how how involved you still are there, but um man, I we have this titled as as as um Les talks about serial entrepreneurship, crypto investing. Honestly, man, like I would love to just hear a story about something that a endeavor in the music industry in the technology in industry, how that kind of led you to crypto. Um you know, tell us about a big win or a

big loss or a big lesson. uh share some wisdom with us if if you don't mind as well as as as well as our audience. >> I'm I'm going to pack in 30 years and five minutes if I can. So, you know, my my journey started when I was 16 years old and I I left home. Uh I didn't go back and I needed to figure out how to make a living and uh I started borrowing warehouses and throwing raves. So by the time I was, I don't know, 19 years old, I was working at the largest concert company because no one understood DJ culture, you know, coming over from Britain and bringing that first iteration of rave bands over in those times. And, you know, ultimately I I became a concert promoter from that.

Then worked at a record company. By the time I was 22, I was heading up tour marketing for MCA Records and didn't really understand what my job was. I know that the first week I was working there, I went to the 94 Woodstock and I guess that was my job. Um, and um, you know, from there, you know, after that ended, I I went to the Silicon Valley and I worked at one of the first kind of internet-based record companies and they raised a whole bunch of money from a different, you know, all these different tech companies and venture firms and and that imploded in great fashion. But for me, you know, I was still a really young guy, flying to work every day because I refused to move

to San Francisco. You know, I wanted to stay in LA. So, um, after that, I I kind of got deeper into, um, managing artists and I managed Jason Morazz and a whole bunch of pop punk bands during the 90s, late 90s. Um, and we'll get to the punch line. And then I did a lot of the early iPhone apps. So what that means is, you know, when the Taint app was coming, we were talking to them about doing that and I ended up building apps with like Lady Gaga and Jason Derulo and, you know, getting into music licensing and gaming. And 2013 turns up and and I'm like, [ __ ] you know, I've missed this Bitcoin thing, you know, it's trading at $600. Like, how did I miss it? And I

said, I'm going to find the next one. And, you know, understanding how to use Reddit, I um found Ripple. I found this wallet called Pier Wallet which was the first XRP wallet and I convinced Ripple in 2013 to allow me to be an adviser which they did. Um and in 2014 I invested in the Ethereum pre-sale by figuring out how to download the JSON wallet somehow and then everything else that came the DAO and you know the first DAO and all that stuff. Yeah. Um, so 17 rolls around and I'm talking to my friend who's in finance and convince him that we should do something in finance and and it wasn't a fund. It was the first reg one of the first registered

investment advisors. >> So I'm just going to keep rolling guys until we get to the end of the story. >> I'm loving it. I'm loving it. >> So I'm just going to let it let it rip here. >> [ __ ] yeah. So, you know, when we first started the company, it, you know, it was on the heels of the insanity of 17 and, you know, we were traveling around the world and getting a sense and and it was really just like three things that we did. We we invested in a bunch of like crypto startups, but we also had early products because we followed this regulatory path. First as an RAIA with California and then, you know, with the SEC. Um, so we had one of the first Bitcoin yield fund products, you know, and we also started managing treasuries for the big protocols. So doing DeFi

with a lot of the native tokens. So by 20 we're managing like billions of dollars and and everything's great for a second and then everything blows up, but we didn't get hit by any of it because we didn't believe that [ __ ] We looked at FTX and said, "No way." >> Y >> and so we were really fortunate and we really went the other direction after that. We looked at all these companies that had blown up and I was frustrated. You know, we were trying to buy Voyager, which was an exchange, and I lost to FT, I lost to FTX, and then I lost to Binance. And I'm just like, [ __ ] this.

And we decided we were going to go buy alt tokens. >> And we did. We started getting into the bankruptcies and buying massive amounts of all those alt tokens at a discount, liquidating them while everyone else was like panicking. >> Yep. So at the same time in 23 I decided I wanted to focus on government which was an odd thing to do and I guess you know it was just from my experiences I saw a real opportunity and the first thing we did is we did an RFI and an RFP for the US Marshall Service to manage their alternative assets. Not the class Coinbase just won, but there's class one, which Coinbase won, and there was

class two to four, which was all the garbage. And I wanted the garbage. >> And we're actually in a protest with the US Marshall Service still over the management of those assets. And you know, they've been doing RFPs since like 2019. So, you know, then this administration gets there. And by this time, I had met with 23 attorney generals and I'd gone across the country looking at how they dealt with crypto, how they seized crypto, how they custodied crypto. And I went to Interpol at the HEG and that's when I had my aha moment. I'm like, "Holy [ __ ] they've got these track and trace companies and they got these custodians, but they don't have anyone that's a registered investment advisor doing public private

partnerships." So, I decided we were going to build out this business and it was going to be giving education away, which we did. and I hired the former deputy chief of IRS criminal investigation and started building out this education platform for law enforcement. >> And then the second part was doing some software and the software could show you what's been seized in real time, what that was worth, all the reports, it's financial software. I'm giving that away for free as well. >> So the net net of the whole story is is I, you know, from 23 I'm building out this government practice. A new administration gets there. everyone's fallen all over themselves, you know, to be part of the crypto council and the

crypto summit, all that stuff. And I knew Bo from before. And he was really, really sharp. And, you know, there's a lot of sharp people there. Tyler Williams, you know, you know, the Treasury guys, the commerce guys. And, you know, we started to talk about what we could do and how we could help. And and in the middle of it, I just thought, Jesus Christ, this is crowded. like every time I [ __ ] turn my head, >> there's another crypto company, you know, with an agenda. And I'm like, I don't really want to deal with that. >> So, I went back to the States. Um, and I started meeting with everyone at the state level who was touching crypto. So, what happened was to get to the I feel bad. I'm like [ __ ] talking to you.

>> I'm loving it. >> You're doing great, Le. But but to get to the punchline, the thing I I realized a couple of things that the pressure coming from the administration is going to impact the states. So when people talk about things like equitable sharing through federal seizures, what that means is is if there's a federal seizure of cryptocurrency, what they used to do is they used to liquidate that asset and pass it to all the departments at the state level that participated in that seizure. They do it with everything, you know. So now you're not liquidating it. So those states are holding those seizures, right? Then the second part that happens is you have civil

that starts to take payment for um you know unpaid taxes and [ __ ] like that. Then you have these states starting to accept it. Then you have unclaimed property which is also crypto. So what you see is you're seeing not only the value of crypto go up but you're seeing states pass legislation to buy it. New Hampshire, Arizona. So now you have all of this asset class acrewing without liquidation because the president doesn't want it liquidated and you have states that don't even know where it is what it is. >> Yeah.

>> And there's a massive disconnect but it's creating a panic and I haven't really been good at much in my life except being early with things. That's one thing I've been pretty good at. So, you know, I started thinking about the digital reserve and what that looked like. I guess I'm going to talk about this and I never talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it because I've been working on it so long. The digital reserve is great if you're holding assets and allowing them to appreciate. It's a vault, you know, the same way the stockpile is a short-term solution that you can kind of deploy. But I thought, you know, if these states have all these assets, why don't we create a structure where we rebalance them, put them in a trust and issue municipal bonds so the

state can bring back low price debt and they have re, you know, they they'll have capital to use within a state based on not liquidating those underlying assets. And long story short, you know, opening up the, you know, debt market with crypto is really what I'm focused on. and and I have been and I have some announcements coming pretty soon that are pretty exciting because if you look at the debt market compared to equities and you know look at Michael Sailor selling his preferred stock through the roof >> you know there's institutions and insurance companies and endowments and pensions I can't take exposure in that so the last real book end to this is the president comes out and says hey retirement plans you can take exposure

well that's kind of true they can except for the fact they have to follow a protocol to take exposure. So those are all the things I've kind of been working on and that's how I went from being a runaway rave promoter that needed to make money to doing something in finance which is just a crazy journey. >> Yeah, it definitely is a crazy journey. Specifically on the states, have you found that the that the that the state level conversation is as receptive as what seems like the federal level is to crypto now or or is there more or less kind of push back, questioning, concerns?

Has is is there a difference? >> Yeah, there's a big difference. >> Yeah. Um, you know, the cool thing about the states is there's 50 of them and they're all different >> and they're all at different levels and you know, there's some states like Arizona and New Hampshire. They're incredibly forward thinking and they want to, you know, New Hampshire by design has to be clever just because of what their tax status is and they have to do really innovative things. Arizona just likes doing innovative things. You know, it's a state where Whimo was the first self-driving cars and, you know, they like doing that kind of stuff. There's states like North Carolina and Wisconsin that can be innovative and Nebraska and you know so you get a different flavor with a group of people that are in the in these states and you

know a lot of that leans politics and you know what we're seeing is you know when everyone clamored to the crypto summit I I don't know what the [ __ ] they thought they were going to get out of it you know like the white house was going to bless them with you know some special magic business um you know it's like I really didn't get it and you know for the amount of money that was being spent you know on lobbyists to to make a lot of that happen and it and it didn't happen anyway you know whatever they thought they were going to get so for me the states were interesting because it was just something no one was looking at and you know if you go back to my music career I think there's a parable in my life with everything that I do that ties

back to music >> so when I was 23 years old I learned this concept when we were releasing records There were two ways to release records. You could blow your brains out, spend all the money, get it on MTV at the time, get it on radio, get the big tour. There's no underlying foundation. But not every artist could do that. It wouldn't work. So what we had to do is microarketing. Meaning we would go to individual states and see where there was success happening at a local level and we would just expand on that. So, I don't really need to do all 50 states, but if there's five that are interesting, I'll start with five. And, you know, again, crypto's global. So, there there's a need for these types of

new products across the board. And and I think the other thing that's really interesting is like if we look at the ETFs and how successful they've been with Black Rockck, I mean, look, they're not getting exactly creative. I mean, what we do is really complex products, you know? Okay, let's do a [ __ ] Bitcoin ETF. let's do an ETH ETF. You know, maybe they'll work their way up to an index one day. >> And, you know, I just look at this other market and I just look how massive it is and it coincides with everything this administration is doing. So, it's not that hard to be strategic.

>> Yeah. you know, so yeah, I'd say to answer your question in a really long- winded way, the states are many versions of the federal government with their own, you know, teams, and some are really receptive and some aren't. >> I've I've stumped Robbie. Robbie's like, "Okay, stop talking." >> I've got I've got so many things happening. Like I I got a question from the audience that relates back to your music career. If you don't mind, we'll switch gears for a moment. >> Of course, after all the important stuff we just talked about, tell me about the weed you you used to smoke on the bus.

>> I bet that was fire. >> I So, this question from the audience is uh uh if you saw the if you saw Woodstock in 94, we have a question about the Green Day Mud fight. >> It wasn't it wasn't the Green Day Mud fight that was the better fight. The better fight wasn't a fight. It was when Trent Resner and Nine Nails. So, I got to see that before it happened where they're putting mud on themselves and it was incredible because they became the audience. The whole audience was covered in mud at that point. And to answer the question, yeah, I saw the Green Day fight, too. But, but the moment, the real moment was when Trent and 9-in Nails did it because they came out just covered in mud and it was incredible.

And it was the front page of every, see, they had newspapers back then. It was the front page of every newspaper the next day. And wow, that that's insane. Um, especially to go from from that into uh I mean one of the just most prominent asset classes now at one of the highest levels and and become advisory uh to that. And so through the transition, you know, you also mentioned working at some of some of you know the government official like statuses. Now when when you see you know someone like like Bo was in in the you know he was in the administration he has since left. What do you what do you see as sort of like

we're not going to ask you to predict the future but the evolution that this is on the trajectory of right when we're we're looking at integrating these systems into some of the highest levels of government. Do you do you have you know some advice if you were in the position that maybe Bo or David Saxs was in? How would you advise the current administration to incorporate the technology and these products into what what they have access to? >> Well, look, I was fortunate I got to sit with Bo before he ever even was in the job and you know, we got to talk a lot about different things and you know, I don't think it's about advising government. I think it's about executing and if you have a solution, hopefully

they adapt it and that that's the difference. You know, I'm not really in the business of legislation. I'm in the business of educ execution and I think legislation's important, but I just don't want to be part of it. You know, I want to do things that that are good by giving education away or giving our software away for free, you know, because if you don't have a baseline understanding at the federal government level or the state level, then what are we actually [ __ ] doing? You know, if you can't explain to someone what DeFi is or how, you know, a stable coin works and why that's good for the dollar or how the peg works, you know, or how it can be a treasury, whatever, you know, it's like if if most of the people who work in government don't understand that, there's no advising

anyone because everything in government, you know, at the federal level is based on consensus and everyone has a different opinion. So, it's an incredibly tough job for those guys. But if we break it down by agency, you know, my biggest goal because I I'm not a real fan of the US Marshall, I don't think they should be touching crypto. They've been inept since the beginning of the process. Um, and it should be with Treasury because Treasury has good people. Um, Secretary is a good person. Faul, you know, um, Depac Flander is a good person. Tyler Williams is a good person. Like they understand the asset class. Tyler came from Galaxy, >> you know, so these are these are good people. in the administration that

actually do understand this. Um, so I think, you know, the go the goal is to educate the ones that don't because none of it's going to work without that. >> Yeah. And this has been a somewhat of a partisan issue, but when you really get into the nuts and bolts of it, it really doesn't have to be, right? ultimately this is about upgrading the the technological and financial technology that underpins a lot of uh a lot of this country's economy and so that it it would be something that could benefit both parties.

>> So I remember the first congressional hearings we had on cryptocurrency and as a Democrat I I'm disgusted with my party since then. You know they didn't asked thoughtful questions. they, you know, didn't do the research and you know what the Republicans did. And maybe it's because they give a [ __ ] about money. I don't know. Um, but, you know, I'm really kind of torn because, you know, there are things that just should have been executed on, you know, along the way. And, you know, when when we have Democrats holding back because they're not getting their agenda on an Epstein file, it's just a load of [ __ ] And you know if you have an asset class that co can generate resource that you can

deploy to help people which we clearly need it at at the university level you know there's budget problems at the pension level there's liability issues I mean just in states or the federal government that's a lot that we can solve based on digital currencies and how we redeploy them. And I don't think that should be a partisan thing but it is. And you know, I've been in crypto a long time now, 2013, and I always say this that this administration and the focus on the asset class is the thing that is changing everything for digital currency.

>> Mhm. >> And it's happened since January and the guy put out an executive order, then a digital report that covered everything they said they would cover. And now the SEC falls in the line to have sandboxes and safe havens where not that long ago we were getting debanked. And the CFTC figuring out, you know, through clarity what they're going to be doing with um the SEC is um you know, just us moving forward. >> Yep. Yep. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of Democrats are who own crypto and and are have been a part of this industry, especially in Ethereum. I think Ethereum has been a pretty like liberal Democrat

kind of vibe, let's just say. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but that's my been my perception. I think they've been forced to rethink their stance because of how partisan this issue has become. >> Yeah. I mean, I haven't been following that so much. I mean, I I I think, you know, just breaking it down to the simplest baseline, people have to understand what this [ __ ] does. And you know until they understand the difference between Hideera, Hyperlquid, I think you were mentioning Ethereum, >> you know, all of the different tokens and >> and the ecosystems and economies that are built out of it. And you know, going back to, you know, the whole point of Bitcoin, it came right after subprime and the collapse and >> you know, h how is that impact going to

you know, move us forward now? um you know with all the things that these tokens can do without centralized authorities and lower fees and you know and and DeFi emerging which is going to be another important aspect to this. So I think you know once we start to put all those pieces together you get the whole picture. >> Poor Marcelo is looking at me like hey dude your time's over. We got another guest. >> No less you're you're our final guest. So so want to be mindful of your time. I if you can I've got >> I'm good. >> I've got >> one question for you and then and then something to show you. One my my question is you know I think we share a a philosophy here. I think we have a common goal of education that that's something that the rollup was born out

of a lot of the things we do are on a mission of trying to educate others and help spread some knowledge about this technology and what it's capable of. And so when you're when you're getting into some of the rooms with some people that are in positions of power, they're they're decision makers either at the state or the federal level, but they still don't seem to understand this technology, this this these assets and and what they mean. What would you, you know, what would you suggest, you know, just to a fellow educator that, you know, is trying to share, you know, some information? How how are we able to just spread this knowledge further so that it ultimately reaches these people? Well, I've been doing it a long time now and it's working because you would you would be surprised. These states and the

people that govern within them are hungry for education. This is not a situation where they're just like, "Ah, it's it's a scam." They want to know what it is and how it works. And, you know, I would say, you know, from your side of it, you know, we don't own a pipe. And we have contracts with lots of states and agents, federal agencies that we just give the education away. So, if there's something you want to give away, put it through our pipe. Doesn't matter to me. You know, I'm not looking to get rich off educating someone. And um you know, the part that's really incredible is just how receptive everyone has been.

I went to a pension conference. I can guarantee you we were the first crypto company to ever go to this conference. And you know, I mean, seriously, the only crypto company that was there. And you know, when the president says pensions, you know, retirement funds can take exposure now, I'm like, okay, let me let me see where we're at. And there were people there that took it very seriously. They have a lot of these consultants that, you know, want to learn about the asset class. And and you know, the thing about retirement funds, too, is you there hasn't been innovative products in and you know, debt in a really long time.

Tobacco bonds were kind of interesting. you know, maybe renewable energy bonds, charter school bonds, but not this. And what's really fun about this and the way I compare it again to the creation in the music business is like in the music business, you got to meet an artist, you got to create a record and figure out the environment of that record. What did it feel like? You know, where were we taking it? And it's kind of the same thing, you know, with with this, you know, there's these your ability to create these products in the same way and being creative, but having this financial underpinning. Um, and when we start to think about like what diversified products look like and, you know, using crypto non-correlated assets, you know, connected to

traditional real estate bonds or something. I'm just making that [ __ ] up as I go. You know, it seems like a really, really big world out there, and the world's as big as we want it to be, and that's what's really cool. >> Yeah, there's a lot of room for creativity and and imagination when it comes to these products and this just because of what this technology is capable of. Um, Les, thank you so much for coming on. Before uh >> be before we let you go, if you got one one more moment, Marcelo, our producer in the background, did cook us uh something. Maybe you can just confirm.

>> [ __ ] >> I believe this is Winona Jud. We brought it full circle. >> Let's get this up on the screen. >> Marcel, if you can. >> I can't believe he Yeah. Yep. That that's that's that's why Nona Jud, but I want to see her singing the national anthem, which I believe was your claim, >> I believe. So, can we play this? Maybe we didn't. And here here she is hitting on Joe Rogan. >> Oh, yeah. No, I remember this. This was after her mom died. Um >> Oh, no.

>> This is on Kill Tony. Fantastic podcast. >> Okay. Well, I haven't managed her in years, so like But yeah, I Okay, she's on Kill Tony. Never saw it. >> I I I man enough. I'm man enough to say when I'm wrong. Okay. >> Well, I wanted to This was This was Yeah, Tucker Carlson's on that episode there. Why known to Judge Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson? >> That's her. I mean, Unwritten Law would have been a more interesting kind of band to pull up, but that's okay.

>> I thought we we were gonna get a video of of the mud fight. >> Oh, yeah. That would be a good one, too. I just want to make sure that was like nuts, dude. That like Woodstock, it was like literally my first week working at a record company. And like, dude, like the people I worked with were so [ __ ] up. And like that whole place was like such a disaster. I was like all nervous. I was a kid. like, you know, I was 123 >> and like they were like, "Don't use the bathroom, you know, in the in the RV." And I'm like, "Okay, so like you're going looking for bathrooms in the middle of the night." And they were kidding the whole time. So, >> oh man, I love a good rave. Less, I'd

like to have you on again for a longer session, man. It's been an absolute pleasure. >> Super fun, guys. >> Thanks, guys. >> See you again soon, Les. Thanks for coming on. Cheers. >> Bye. >> All righty, Rob. That about wraps us today. Uh, fun stream. Good stream. >> Oh, yeah. >> And, uh, market's getting a little bounce. Vibes are up. 10:00 a.m. here in Hawaii. Time to get some more work done. >> That was great. >> And yeah, that was a that was a fun stream.

>> Oh, yeah. Great times. Um, another well-rounded show. I feel like, you know, consistently we're bringing on uh guests from all walks of life. Ian was great on the institutional perspective about RWA's >> Ono Global Markets. Congrats to them for the launch. >> Bang. Can we get some confetti? >> There we go. >> There we go. Um, we had uh we had less all the way from the music industry to uh some more of the current happenings uh with crypto and the government. Uh can't forget David uh from Ether 5 Ventures coming at us with the uh VC angles and I believe we started off our show. It's almost amazing uh to think

that this same episode had him on Shu on AI. >> Feels like it. >> Absolutely incredible. >> Thank you Rob. Thanks everyone for watching production team. See you guys next week. >> Alex, Marcelo, Nero, Leo, all the guys behind the scenes. You guys are the best. We'll see you next time. Andy, you're great co-host. We'll see you see you very soon, buddy. Peace. >> All righty. Cheers, guys.