The Rollup TV: Thursday, August 21st

Transcript

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[Music] Boom. >> Dude, Kanye's memecoin. >> Oh my god. >> I'm rocking Jay-Z 444 vintage tea to celebrate. >> I was up last night in bed at like 10 p.m. 11 p.m. which is pretty late for me. And um and I was just cranking through Kanye just in bed with my big headphones.

Pranking Kanye. >> Oh yeah. I was listening to like uh Yeah. Not like the old old stuff, but >> yeah. >> But so I put out this thread like breaking Kanye West launches memecoin. Yeezy thread did well. Um and and basically what happened in the initial period is he they they like they let it launch for I what looks like half of a day and then basically he tweeted this the CA uh with in a screenshot as if was an iMessage that says a new economy built on chain

whatever that means. Um, and it pumped from 200 mil market cap to two bill in like five minutes. 1 2 3 4 5 six >> six minutes pumped to two to so 10xed. Um, and then I started watching it because I was like, "Holy shit." And then it hit 2.4 or 2.14 bill 2.8 bill. And then I and then I came to realize that half of the market cap was or 70% of the market cap was in one wallet. 87% was controlled by that by that those like like what they call a bundle. And then you know I just summed it up. And so I bought like a grand worth just

because I wanted to just f around and find out. And uh I got I got uh I got my butthole blown out. So that's where we're at. >> Congrats. But you had fun doing it. Enjoy. Enjoy it. GG. >> I mean, yeah. >> What do you think about this? I saw some I mean, there are so many tweets. We We could go through the timeline for hours going through the tweets. >> There was a there was a video from Altcoin Gordon. Evidently, there's a uh a guy on Instagram. His name is Mikey Shelton.

>> No profile picture. >> And he runs an insider community. and uh he helped launch this token. And so the caption is so the guy who is behind Easy Token is publicly bragging about insider trading and rugging for millions of dollars on his IG. >> Yeah, that's crazy. Um, dude, I mean, I haven't seen the uh I haven't seen the um I haven't seen like I haven't done that much like actual digging into what happened or like people's takes, but it kind of just seemed like the market kind of just brushed this off. Like the market was kind of just like >> less than it's about 12 hours ago, so it's still pretty recent.

>> Yeah. No, but I'm just saying like when Trump launched it was like, "Holy [ __ ] Trump launched. This is crazy." Um, this thing went straight to 80 bill and then this thing just kind of like I don't know maybe I saw one tweet that was saying like that that this is just the the lack of speculative fervor in the market. Um, so I'm not sure it's I don't think it's like and the market's down today a bit I think as a result. I think it's because of the the launch to be honest. It's just like what the hell? I don't know.

So I mean >> to put Kanye on the same pedestal as like the president of the United States I think is blowing it out of the water a bit >> really. when when the president launches a coin, I think that holds a lot more weight than Kanye, who >> has really damaged his reputation and his brand over the last few years and I think has lost I mean when you say some of the things that Kanye said, how can you take anything he says seriously? And so >> yeah. Yeah. I mean yeah >> and then you look at the tokconomics and you see that 87% is controlled by this one bundle.

It's tough to really take it seriously and think that there's going to be any kind of sustainable. >> So, check out these numbers. 56,000 wallets touched the token. Um, this is a good one here. 56,000 wallets touch the token. 15,000 lost up to $500. Um, 1,200 lost up to a grand. 2,000 lost up to five grand. and all the way down to a million. One person lost a million. Meanwhile, only five wallets made 1 million. So, it looks like about Yeah, I mean, pretty much like 20,000 users or wallets lost between $500 and a

million dollars. >> What do you make of this? >> Uh, eight 60% of traders are at a loss. Um, I mean, dude, I don't know. I mean, I am one of those traders, but that is I I literally bought Pump Fun on the day it launched on my Phantom Wall with 2K and then and then I was down to 1K and so I was just like, "All right, well, we're going to throw this into Yeezycoin."

>> Oh, I see. All right. That's the old Phantom mobile wallet. That's exactly what that's for. >> Yeah. All right, guys. Best way to generate is on mobile. >> That's easy. Um, we got Josh here in the back. He's getting set up. I just want to maybe Rob, you wanted to run through something with prediction markets. It's definitely the meta right now. Uh, what did you have here for us? I just think that there's a lot of very interesting platforms. Poly Market and Khi are of course the the two leaders in the market right now. Poly Market has a more global audience.

uh still restricted in the US. Call sheet took a lot more of a regulated route. They've got CFTC saying that they're cleared for US traders. Uh part of this meta is also that FanDuel just launched their prediction markets offering. Khi's biggest category right now is sports. And so we're seeing the convergence between sports, gambling, prediction markets, and financialization, stock market, etc. Also, part of this meta is that there's a lot more prediction markets popping up. Previously, I think it was extremely difficult to break into this market because it it it took so much distribution in order to overcome the

liquidity volume dilemma. In order to bootstrap both sides of these the market, you needed some some level of efficient pricing, but you needed liquidity to get that. >> Yeah. >> Really, Polyark was the only uh they started off as an AMM and then switched to an order book once they got some significant liquidity. But it's an order book is the way to do this, but you need liquidity to do that. And so that catch 22 caused uh this really high barrier to entry. I think now we're seeing product market fit and traction on on Poly Market and Khi and that's creating this effect where you can start to put

rappers and start to create new frontends and new distribution channels for those two pools of liquidity almost like we heard from Luke the other day about Hyperlid how it's becoming this liquidity operating system that can serve perpetuals in Phantom it can serve perpetuals in Etherfi all of these are becoming distribution channels for hyperlquids liquidity and their perpetuals market. I think we're going to start to see something similar in the prediction market >> where they start to serve other distribution channels and it creates this more robust ecosystem around these two platforms.

>> Yeah. So like uh using the back end of Poly Market or uh like the liquidity and the infra of Khei and then running like uh the rollup prediction market with our own front end and like our own means of distributing it but just using their technology underneath and then doing that at scale with like FanDuel. I think prediction markets and social media have a really strong connection. Predict prediction markets are effectively news and social media is effectively news. And if you can combine these two and you can have a more empirical uh factchecking or objective source of truth because people are

putting their money where their mouth is, you could really clean up a lot of the social media timelines. >> Yeah. >> So I think there's a strong convergence there. Also, yeah, I don't know the exact specifics of FanDuel's prediction market launch, but if I'm FanDuel, I'm either going to tap one of these liquidity like a call she or Poly market for the infrastructure. Yeah. For the oracle and the resolution of these markets or I'm going to tap them. If I'm Fendle has their own capital, they have their own liquidity. They don't really need to tap into the liquidity aspect. They could benefit from the infrastructure. If I'm one of these other smaller books or smaller exchanges, then I'm tapping into Poly Market. I'm tapping into Kalshi because they have the the the liquidity to serve

these markets. >> Yep. Yep. Yep. Very cool. All right, guys. We've got uh a sick lineup today. Um we've got Josh from Iris joining us up here next. We've got Fish from Token Mill following him. Then we've got Dimma from Subqu Squids SQD. We've got Altcoin Sherpa and we've got Ian from Ledger. I think I might have reversed those orders around, but yeah, guys, it should be a fun stream. Um, and yeah, I think we're going to get Josh up here next and uh let's get fired up. Let's get him into the back end. And Iris has just raised I

believe they're series A, Rob. >> Yeah. >> So, that's pretty sick. They raised $10 million. We're going to hear from Josh about what exactly that money is meant to do, how it's going to help scale their data product. I think we've got Josh in the back end now. So, we're going to bring him up here in just a moment. There he is. Josh, welcome to the show and congrats on the raids, buddy. >> Josh, you got some confetti, brother. >> Oh, yeah. Money rank for Josh, too. >> Dang. You're $10 million richer. The way this works is that goes right into your personal pocket, right?

>> You just The way that this works is that just goes right into your personal bank account and you're just $10 million richer, right? That's how this all works. Bang. >> Dude, you are going to get me in so in serious trouble. >> Congratulations, Josh. >> Instantly regret coming here. I'm just kidding. >> Um, it's been a long time coming and actually like raising in this market is not uh not the easiest. This is the fourth fund raise we I've ever done in my life. Okay. And virus. >> Um and yeah, it's probably like been it's definitely like one of the more challenging markets, but the fact that we've been able to raise more than we have before shows that we're doing we're doing something right. So >> So okay, so Iris raised Series A $10 million led by Coin Fund bringing your

total funding to $20 million. You also had participants from Hypersphere, Tyke Ventures, Veraric VC, Echo, Breed and Wagme VC. Um, talk to us about about the the vision for Iris that you pitched these investors, the vision that you see that you wanted to raise more capital for, you know, what is the what what is the Iris pitch to the investors? How did you guys get this over the line? um you know talk to us about the process about the pitch about the experience.

>> Yeah. Yeah. There's there's a lot there. So um yeah so when we talk about Iris to investors and also to the world is that our focus is about how do we use crypto rails in this case building this L1 to make the I guess data infrastructure part of the stack uh more efficient. And uh what that really means is that the way that you store, you compute, you utilize data should become more costefficient and and and more expressive as well. You'll be able to do more useful things. Uh and this becomes more important and this was kind of more of the conversation I had with coin fund especially is that this becomes very important in the world of AI um because if you look at you know when chat GPT launched yeah I guess now three years ago lo track of time long time um uh

data became this very valuable asset uh really there were three things that are valuable as compute data and the algorithms or the engineers kind of building the algorithms um and and we are very focused on that data part of the stack and and co's thesis is that crypto will make uh AI as a space uh better. Um and the their bet on IRS is is that we will make the data part of the AI stack uh more uh better and more valuable. And they've also made kind of similar investments uh which tie into their thesis more on the decentralized training.

>> And they're also very bullish on Worldcoin. >> Oh, super bullish on Worldcoin. If if you look at Yeah. If you look at the the team's Twitters or X X accounts, >> they are all like every day bull posting, you know, 100,000 people on boarded to one coin and yeah, there's no one more bullish. >> So, was the race substantially more difficult than you had previously thought? Like I mean, you guys have established brand clear product uh roadmap and and growth test nets already live. Like I I I imagine you had just kind of walked outside, told people that you were raising again, you know, looking to go main net soon and you would have picked up some checks and called it a day, but it doesn't sound that way.

>> Well, we definitely um on a relative basis like raising wasn't like the most difficult thing ever. I'm more just talking about how as a founder I think and you speak to any founder that raises any amount of money that the the the VC market is is kind of like down only right now in terms of uh the cap their capital allocation and you definitely feel that that there's uh you know the amount of DD that investors do the amount of time they spend with founders is honestly 10 times higher than let's say when we first raised in 2021 and 2022 obviously during that crazy market it's it's it's you know a thousand times thousand times harder and and actually I'd VCs are even more conservative than they were in 2023 because we we raised one around kind of in the middle of 2023 and that was at the bottom of the bare

market when everyone everyone just wanted to die. Um and uh and even then there was like a degree of optimism whereas now within within venture uh there is I'd say there's almost no optimism um from from most from most venture investors. Um now yes we we were able to raise and we had a ton of interest that's why we were able to raise this round. Um but also making I'm making more of a comment for my also fellow founders who are also struggling as well from from other companies who who have try been trying to raise to raise capital especially for earlier stage companies than than we're at.

>> Yep. Absolutely. I think as you describe it I mean would you have any advice you know for for a company that's maybe in a little bit earlier of a stage than you are? When you go into these meetings with VCs what is it that they're looking for? what what kind of advice can you give to builders uh that are looking to raise maybe a seed or a series A? >> Yeah. So, the most challenging thing, but I think this is this is this is the the hack is that investors want to hear what they want to hear. Uh and what I mean by that is that when they pitch their LPs, they have a thesis. Um and so when you think about, you know, let's say A16Z, that's that's the best one because he has a whole book on this which is really own.

Um, and if you look at something like story protocol, the reason why I was able to to to raise that capital is that it really plugs into that mental model that Chris Dixon has around read write own for the internet and this in that case for, you know, for IP um for content. Um, and that's kind of an example of, you know, if you if you understand what investors are looking for, uh, and it's mostly around what they're pitching their LPs as well. That is actually that's actually the the the really short hack to raising to raising capital. I could give you all of the very uh you know basic things like you know have a product that is going to functional, have a good background, um tell a good story. These these things are all the very very basic things. But also you've got to look at it when

you're speaking to certain investors. The story that you are telling needs to be almost different with every with every investor to some degree because every investor comes from a different a different angle, a different thesis. So that's that's probably the number one thing. >> Yeah, man. Very very cool. So Josh, what are you going to spend $10 million on? Um, I know you're a big uh big party guy, so I assume we'll get some clubs and some tables, maybe some business class flights for you and the ladies. Uh, but outside of your uh eg agregious personal spend at the pub, uh h how do you plan to spend the $10 million?

>> Dude, you you are going to get me in so much trouble. Uh I'm definitely going to get a message after this being like, is is this true? And I'm gonna be like, >> "This is not and this is not financial nor life advice. Things I say may or may not be joking. >> Yeah. Um, yeah. So, I won't be spending uh any money on on on parties sadly and definitely not the pub. I actually, fun fact, I am a British person, but I hate pubs. I am the biggest hater of pubs. So, I'm never going to spend any money at a pub. But um yeah the um majority of the money will be uh focused on I guess uh two things right um one is generally

like scaling scaling the team but more specifically uh I'd say engineering is is an important place where we're going to scale and not so much on the protocol side but more on the I guess tooling and and kind of side infrastructure side uh kind of kind of things and what I mean by that is we need to build better developer tooling to have better you know UX and better uh adoption um but from developers. So I think that's one of our big focuses is to invest some time and money into that and then the other side is more on the actually like direct growth and ecosystem side where we're going to be making a big push um a little bit more within web 3 but really our big focus is going to be around getting institutional adoption um and getting some of these web two companies

preferably also some of these web two AI companies as well using apps on Iris and also using Iris uh directly. So that's that's where a majority of the majority of the capital will go. There's not not going to be any money spent on business class flights with I don't know female friends or pubs or anything that that Andy just said. >> Josh, it may be maybe helpful for anyone who is unfamiliar to uh explain what is Iris uh these apps that are building on top of Iris. What are they doing? >> Yeah, that's a good question. So Iris is an L1. Um but we're very different to let's say you know I don't know let's use the extreme like a DeFi bar chain or Ethereum or Salana. We are a data chain.

So we're focused purely on how do we store large amounts of data on the chain. So uh there are really like two two parts to the chain. One is that uh there's this decentralized storage network that allows you to store data for any period of time at a much much lower cost and then there's the the VM which allows you to deploy actually whole onchain applications on a chain that allow you to interact with the data. So and and that's the best way to actually look at Iris when it comes to the use cases that we have some people that simply just are using uh Iris as a way to store and uh retrieve information. So every time you use an application and it loads some data and it uses Iris it's loading it from Iris's Iris's network and and vice versa when you store data it's storing on the

network. Um and then on the other side there are some applications that are doing actually doing both where they are storing data and they're also uh interacting with the VM. So one example is we have uh brick road which is a data marketplace that allows you to buy and sell uh AI data sets for training essentially. So they work with a bunch of web two companies. They actually the their application uses Iris to one store these very large data sets uh for a very kind of low cost and also be able to kind of share that with anyone who wants to buy it and then also uses Iris VM as the way to essentially tokenize the IP associated with the data. So when you buy uh a data set, they post a transaction to IrisVM and it essentially mints the IP uh on uh on the chain. So

those like those are kind of the the the highle ways that people people utilize Iris today. >> And Josh, when you when you're looking to build out the ecosystem to go to mainet um what are the what are the ecosystem projects that that you guys are incubating or that are being built on Iris that are exciting? I know you just mentioned one here with regards to AI training data sets and when are we h when is mainet coming when when do we get the the launch of L1 um and uh you know what's the timeline for that >> when when token classic um Andy Andy knows Andy knows how to say when token in a very like uh very smart

way um so mainet is coming very soon I obviously won't give you a specific date or timeline, but we it's around the corner. I'll put it that way. >> Like like the corner in like Q4 or like Q3? >> Uh I uh I'll put it this way. I >> bad question. >> The issue is >> this is this is dangerous. This is a dangerous question. If it does go into Q4, it will it will be >> very very very early in Q4. All right.

Later. >> So I I don't think I we're not tell the the ecosystem. What's the ecosystem look like going into mainet? What kind of apps will be live? Which are looking the most promising, etc. >> Yeah. So uh the one application that we've incubated has actually been brick road. Um and so that's been our big focus. And the reason is is that that is one of the applications that it has in actually has institutional web two adoption today already. Uh and we knew that this this problem of uh providing high quality data sets for training was is a real problem in the uh in in the AI space. So that's been our major major focus with getting web two companies onboarded onto IRS via this application.

Uh and that's run by a a really smart founder called uh Freeman. And uh beyond that we have a lot of like smaller applications. We have a custom kind of like email client for example that uses IRS as the like cheap way to um send and receive emails. But uh yeah so our major focus has been around how do we get uh a lot of applications that are just storing and retrieving large amounts of data and then we've been focused on uh applications like brick road where we want where where they will actually bring institutional uh adoption as well. Um so those have been really the the two big focuses from the ecosystem and we have about uh yeah we we have over 50 people in the ecosystem now and but a majority of those uh mo mostly just

using Iris to store data. So that's been the that's where a majority of the use cases lie. >> Got it. Cool. Um so you must be pretty busy man. Yeah, I uh I am the busiest I've ever been in my life. Um yeah, launching a launching a network, launching a token is uh the most painful painful thing ever. Uh especially for me because I am a control freak and I like to get involved with everything in the company. So I uh yeah, I'm just doing everything all the time.

Um but I I do love it, but it is definitely a stressful time. So, dude, something happened with like some NFTTS on Iris or something. You guys had some like community or like some organic NFT collection that like tried to get endorsed by you guys and then like you didn't endorse it. You're like you're like coming into this role of like the the arbitrator of what's what in the community. Uh what's that process been like for you to kind of like step into some of these community uh situations and kind of put your foot down and and kind of say what's what you know like how has that been? What what's the what's the more organic NFTt kind of like fun side of Iris that that I think

a lot of us, you know, in this sphere are probably more in tune with than some of the bigger web 2 AI things that you guys are doing. what's what's been going on there. >> Yeah, I mean you you rais a good point. Um having a community is is a very interesting like going from having you know a small community to a very big community is interesting. uh because you there's a lot of positives and there's also a lot of negatives and it's a very it's very much a learning experience because as you said there was someone who minted an unofficial NFT using our name and we had to like do some communication around that and it was it was very uh I guess irritating situation to put it nicely. Um but yeah so the way that a lot of the community has been

interacting with Iris now is we have uh we have we have a lot of like mini apps. So outside of the core as said 50 plus applications we have actually maybe 15 to 20 like mini apps on Iris. Um and we have this all hosted within our portal. So if you go to portal iris orxyz you'll see a lot of them. Uh and they they've essentially been playing around with a lot of these applications. Uh has been like the the major thing. And we've also done some other campaigns. We did a campaign with OKX wallet um with essentially an NFT giveaway. So we have an NFT white list u and we gave some of those away for this NFT campaign and we had about uh I think it was 1.1 million participants in the end or maybe 1.2 million participants and it was fairly like civil civil resistant as well. So

um that was that was a very successful campaign that we did with uh with OKX wallet. Uh and then we'll we'll be doing uh some other things as well in the in the near future. Uh we also do some offline events. So, I've spent a lot of time I'm in Korea. I'm in Korea now. We've done uh an offline event in Korea. We we'll likely be doing some offline events in China is the goal. Um so, yeah, we we've been doing a ton of uh different community initiatives both online and offline. Uh a lot of them within Asia as well, but we also want to expand to other parts of the world. But sadly, I can only be in so many places at one time. So, and traveling is to be honest, traveling sucks. So, I'm trying to like also minimize the the amount of

time that I that I travel. But, um, yeah, we have a very vibrant community and I uh I actually like I actually really enjoy doing stuff with the community. It's actually like a it's a place that I want to be, which I think is actually one of the best kind of metrics um for for the success of the community. >> Good point. Good point. No, I saw the NFT thing. I thought that that was really funny. Um, yeah. You might have thought it funny. I didn't. >> Um, dude, have you thought about the the Irish token with regards to uh this this entire meta, if you will, of like buybacks back to, you know, giving uh yield back to uh holders, real value

creation, not just governance token. Like are you guys going to do something unique and new and fresh or same POS L1 model? Like how do you guys differentiate and like how has this regulatory environment which has changed and gotten much more positive in the US which really affects a lot of the world. How has that changed your mindset towards the token as a founder? Yeah. So the short answer is actually the regulatory framework hasn't changed much other than I feel more comfortable doing like token sales and things like that. Um but the the the reason I say that is because the network has already actually been designed with a kind of equivalent to buyback. So we have a

heavy burn mechanism. uh although actually the conversation of like burn versus buyback like which is better it's an interesting conversation but yeah so so the current mechanism in the network is when you store data 95% of the of the fee is burn um so the circulating supply is essentially reduced uh get there's a heavy deflationary pressure from from fees which will reduce the circ circulating supply so and that was actually the case uh even when we started you know designing this you know a year and a half ago so I think we um yeah we we we were doing that before the mess, right?

I'm trying to like flex it. That's not my goal. It was more uh due to the way that data chains are built. They they need to be sustainable and by burning tons of tokens is is the easiest way to make it more sustainable. So, um yeah, so that that's kind of the way that the IRS's network works. We did uh we did weigh up actually this is actually an interesting thing weighing up whether we make uh make a a stable coin a gas token on the network to pay for storage. Um because then we can do uh buyback models. And my biggest criticism of the hyperlquid model is that I don't think you should do buybacks every day. I think you should do strategic buybacks.

Like I think I think everyone would prefer a buyback where it occurs during a bare market. Like you want the you want the floor like okay this is a bad way to put it. You want the I guess you want the floor for a token to be as as high as possible. I think is I think is the thing you want to optimize for. Um so we we also have been playing around with some ideas around if you support stable uh stable coin uh fees and you have a big treasure of stable coins how can you compliantly uh use that to buy back tokens at strategic points. Um so those are some of the ideas that we've been playing around and you wouldn't have been able to do that definitely two years ago from a regulatory standpoint and

>> there are so many creative models. First thing of course is is uh you know getting some people to pay for the chain whether that's you know revenue from these apps or it's these apps paying in gas. There's also models right where rather than you know making the stable coin the gas token directly you you continue to have your native token but then you kind of have this pay master model where someone can swap into the gas token which is effectively buying back the gas token and then using it to spend on the network. Yeah, as long as you have sufficient liquidity, which I think you think you would. Yeah, as long as you have sufficient liquidity, that that that would work.

>> Do you have sufficient liquidity? >> I guess that is question. >> That's basically um Well, it depends on fees, right? If we did a billion dollars. >> Josh, what's the listing process like these days? These are some, you know, early conversations for this. You just announced a raise mayet, you know, one day, Q3, Q4, but you know, these are maybe conversations you're starting to have. What what is the listing process when it comes to launching a token? >> Listing a token. >> Uh I mean there's not a lot that I could say. >> Fair enough. >> Um but what I what I will say I mean there it's actually like very like I can only really say 1%. I'll be very honest.

Um just because it's a sensitive process. But what I will say is that uh when it comes to uh when it comes to launching a token, you want to be listed on in as on as many avenues as possible and centralized exchanges still are the kings of liquidity. So our focus will be getting on centralized exchanges and getting as many as possible. I think I think Luke was saying this with with Pangu is that and he's he's absolutely right that you want to have as many people being able to participate in the thing that you've built and the best way to do that is get on get listed on as many exchanges as possible >> as it goes for the process. Um >> yeah I don't know if there's much that I can uh that I can disclose. Everything's all my NDAs. So it's a pretty uh

>> cool understood >> Josh man. One last congratulations, man, for the raise and for your $10 million series A. And uh, cheers, man. Thanks for joining us and best of luck as you road to mainet. I know it's going to be crazy. So, let us know when you guys are getting close and we'll have you on for mainet. >> Awesome. I appreciate it. I really appreciate it, guys. Thank you, >> Josh. Congrats, man. >> Later. >> All righty, boys and girls. a lot of Wait, what's that Rob?

>> I wanted to get the the centralized exchange question in there because for some reason we've there's pumps across the board on centralized exchange. >> OKBcoin has gone ridiculous the last week >> and now Hugh is Hugh token is up a ton. >> Well, maybe because Binance broke alltime highs. B&B did. So, people are kind of gassed up about that. >> Not exactly sure. >> Mhm. Yeah. >> But that is Irish, guys. That is a $10 million series A for Iris. Pretty sick. Um guys are doing good work. Um I like Josh. He's got quite a quite a personality. Uh for a Brit, you can always count on them. Um up next we've

got I think he's still in the back so he's probably watching that one. Um up next we've got Fish. They just launched token Mill. Um it should be pretty interesting. Basically a new way to launch tokens. uh a new launchpad if you will. Um so stoking on that. It should be interesting to see kind of what happens there. I I I think they're I mean the launchpad wars are definitely on. Uh just a matter of kind of what's going what's the what are the differences and like are small like mechanical differences. Is that going to make an impact on the effect of these token launchpads? So that's where we're at there. Rob, we'll get him up in a sec. But, uh, yeah, any thoughts on the Iris, uh, segment there?

>> I just think Josh is Josh is a funny guy. You were clowning him a bit. I think, uh, we're going to quote tweet their raise announcement. We'll see if Josh and Josh a little bit was uh, enough if they're going to boost that. Um, I don't know. He doesn't spend much time in the pub, which I think is working in his favor. We were talking a little bit behind the scenes and he said that uh his strategy in Korea might be to get some K-pop stars. We'll see if that works out for him. What is uh I am still on the fence about KBW. I know you're headed out there.

What are you expecting? You excited? How do you how how do you think it's going to go out there in Korea? >> I think it's going to be an absolute den show. >> Really? >> Just pure madness. Just market's going to be ripping I think. in maybe actually I don't know in September, who knows where the market's going to be, but uh I think people are going to be just I think it's going to be just madness. It's like Korea mania right now. It feels like >> like it feels like everybody just wants to get exposure to Korea from a marketing perspective >> and um you know I'm not sure that's really going to change. So >> so yeah, I expect it to be pretty >> pretty fun. Um and then Singapore token is right after. So >> Mhm.

>> Um I think that's going to be way more chill and and relaxed. Singapore as a city is just super chill. Such a sick city though, like but super chill. Just like hot >> hot and like really futuristic. But Seoul has like this character to it. It's got like a vibe, I think. I mean, I was only there for one day in the past. Um but yeah, I think it's going to just be a kind of a big party. I mean, that's kind of how I expect it to go down if I'm being honest.

>> Yeah, I think from a media perspective, there's a ton of opportunity. We've gotten connected to some uh Korean media media outlets. So, I think that'll serve a lot of the teams that we work with pretty well. Uh both on the good Idea Ventures port side as well as on the on the rollup co side. uh generally I think you know our audience being mostly western uh we we create this chasm literally these two hemispheres are separated by an ocean and so I think building some connections over there is going to end up helping a lot of the teams over here vice versa so there's probably some deal flow over there but it's just funny because crypto is just such a global market that it's only a matter of time before these things get more interconnected so it's pretty cool uh there's some

conferences a little bit later in the year that I'm pretty excited about in the Western Hemisphere. Uh, Base Camp in September, SmartCon in November, obviously Token in Singapore, Korean, uh KBW >> uh, next month. So, there's there's still a ton going on. And then obviously we wrap up the conference circuit in BA, Buenos Aes towards the end of >> Yeah, that's going to be something else. That's for sure. >> Yeah, I think so, too. I think with Ethereum and and their mindset shift, Ethereum World Fair is something that they're starting to put together. It sounds pretty exciting.

>> Is that what's happening in BA? There's a >> fair. There's a world fair. The Ethereum World Fair. >> Okay. >> Don't really know what's going to be uh what's going to go into that, but yeah, >> sounds cool. >> Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Cool. All right. I think Fish is going to jump in. Uh he's just getting finalized set up. We're going to talk about Token Mill. Basically guys, um, TLDDR on this is I I was just having a look at, uh, Fish's Twitter and Trader Joe's Twitter and kind of what Token Mill has done. So So they've gone from Trader Joe to LF Joe, LFG Joe. Tokill, the memecoin game was missing a real flywheel.

One designed to give the trenches what they crave. Explosive pumps on repeat. All right. Okay. Token Mill, the launchpad that turns trading fees into massive pumps. Here's how it works. Every 30 minutes, there are three new kings are crowned. Bronze, silver, gold. Five minutes before crowning, the king of the mountain race begins. Top 10 tokens fight it out on a live leaderboard. Only race volume counts. Um, and you got to become a king. You need top 10 by mark cap in your tier.

Highest five minute race volume. And the mill takes every fee from the last round, slams it into a giant T-W buy plus burn of the kings of the winners, injecting hype, visibility, and volatility. So yeah, this is going to be uh this is going to be an interesting one, but it's Yeah. So that's where we're at with Tokyo Mill. So think Fish is maybe having a bit of trouble, but I think we got him. Um, so yeah, we'll keep this one relatively short as we're kind of getting behind here, but but yeah, this is going to be interesting.

>> I think this >> wanted to come to this because it just came out and yeah. >> Yeah, I think this is the nature of getting uh getting more guests, getting more streams, and being a little bit more nimble uh and on the fly, which is pretty exciting. Josh wasn't originally scheduled. Uh we wanted to get him on because he just announced the raise. He's out in Korea. It's like middle of the night over there. So, appreciate him. It's got to be like 1:00 a.m. over there or something. >> Mhm. Yeah. But that's all good. Um, pretty pretty pretty cool that we're able to just spin this up. We've got our team working behind the scenes.

>> What's your take on the uh do you have any take on the uh on the Bonk versus Pump Fun uh situation? Like Bonk had a big run up in dominance of volume. Now Pump Fun is way way uh over like o o overtaken it significantly again. Bonks such a small amount. Pump Fund tokens obviously down but still trading high. They're doing buybacks. Like I mean as as we get fish in in here, like what's your thoughts on on like this whole launchpad meta? I'm pretty skeptical. I like it's tough to argue with Pump Fund generating billions of dollars in revenue. Uh so that's pretty cool. But when it comes to launchpads overall, I think I need to be convinced on why this

is sustainable. We've got fish in the back now. is going to try to convince you here today. >> I I'd love I'd love to >> live this sustainable. >> Let's get fish on. >> It's been a It's been a very stressful >> an hour and 40 minutes. >> Yeah, man. Uh our apologies for some of the technical stuff on the back end, but we got you in. You're in. Didn't have the link. Yada yada. Silly stuff on our button. >> No worries. I'm here now. >> Um dude, I was just reading off the announcement. So, the memecoin gain was missing a real flywheel. Um, one designed to give the trenches what they crave. Token Mill, the launchpad that turns trading fees into massive pumps.

Here's how it works. I'm not going to read it all again, but maybe you can explain to us how this works, why it works, um, and how this is going to create a more because Rob's question is about sustainability, right? How is this going to create more sustainable uh kind of culture in in in the trenches? But congratulations and welcome on, man. Yeah, I think um you know this is born out of my own frustration at trenches. Like I I'm not a good meme coin trencher. So when I was trenching a few months ago, uh I was one of those guys that randomly had like random filters on Axiom Pulse and just tried all different uh kinds of presets, right? And I kind of realized that uh especially on like

you know these terminals uh you have so many tools and it gives you the illusion that you're equipped to win but it's actually just you know it's as good as like throwing darts at a you know randomly at a dart board. Um, so I felt like we just need a better heristic on how to gain an edge in this game, right? So I felt like um, you know, with king of the mill it was more egalitarian. So the idea is like these coins, yeah, they can be bought. Yeah, they can be cabal, whatever, right? But if you pit them against each other, they have to compete for volume, right? And that kind of makes things better. So I I don't think you'll ever get rid of cabals. I mean, I think cabal in general is like has a bad reputation on on CT. uh it just means

like capital formation rallying behind one coin, right? I don't think you'll ever get rid of those cabals, but the best thing to do is like making it more egalitarian where they have to pit against each other to try and win um king of the mill. So that's the whole premise behind it. Um you know, obviously like this this is just like a nutshell thing. Uh I I'm hoping that the the goal here is like one runner is enough to generate fees that can then trickle down into the entire ecosystem. >> So you've built this kind of like king of the king of the mill. Is that the game? Is that is that terminology?

>> Yeah. >> And basically you have these three tiers for different token types in terms of um what I understand to be a market caps effectively. Maybe you could explain the flywheel for us. Um, what is exactly the token mill flywheel? Why do you want to incentivize a a a trading period of a short amount of time and incentivize volume to show real commitment to to a certain uh, you know, token or project? Maybe walk us through the flywheel and the mechanism why you chose to design it this way. >> Yeah. So, the flywheel works like basically you have a 30 minute window.

Uh, so you get to become king every 30 minutes, right? But there is a five minute window before um the next epoch where there's like a race window. And in order for you to become king, you have to compete with other kings in that fiveminute race window. So the rate the win condition is two things, right? You have to be uh top 10 in market cap in that tier and you have to win the most uh volume in that fiveminute window. You need both things to be true. Um we designed it this way. So, why is there three tiers, right? You know, we've we we built Dexes, we've built NFT marketplaces. Um, we've seen a tons of

token launches. And the one thing that most token launches need from, you know, the first few hours of launch is volatility. That's the only thing that matters. It's not creative fees, is not revshare, it's not any of these like communityfriendly features. It is volatility. Uh, without volatility, they usually die. Like they just basically flatline, right? So, um, we think that if you're able to get past that hurdle, then you reach escape velocity and then that token might have a life later on. Uh, but until then, it's going to be very, very hard. Um, so, you know, King of the Mill is basically like we decided to have three tiers. Like, there's no point having King of the Mill for tokens up to 100 million market cap, right?

Because we feel that after 10 million market cap, you don't need to have this boost anymore. can there you can live like organically as a meme as a you know as as most runners do after a certain point. Um King of the Mill is there to basically try and give you a boost for those smaller coins that need that kind of kick in order for them to get to that next level. >> Got it. Okay. So the prioritization in your mind is like look if the token doesn't have any trading volume i.e. volatility up down. It's not attractive from an investor perspective or from a you know trader perspective because it's like look you know if it's going down a lot you're like maybe I could buy here

maybe I need to sell more vice versa if it's going up a ton. It's it kind of induces FOMO or people yeah who who want to sell. What you're trying to avoid is just basically sideways vol or sideways like boring action. And then I imagine you designed this in conjunction with like okay I've got like LF or LFJ the decks so I can use the volume from token mill to provide uh fe uh you know volume on my decks and then you kind of built this larger flywheel with the other products that you're working on as a result of token mill kind of being like this distribution engine almost for it.

Well, tok the beauty of token mill is like it's a it's a fully service AMM. So there, you know, there's no migration involved, right? It's not like >> bonk fund you migrate to radium or >> so it's not like it's using trader or LFJ's liquidity. >> No, no, everything is like fully serviced. So >> So there's no tie in there? >> No, it's completely independent. Um the bonding curves are there to host the full life cycle of the token from launch to maturity. M >> uh so they could basically like it's an AMN basically.

>> And why did you choose to do that? Why didn't you try to make get you know kind of do the bonk fund or radium strategy wick like token to LFJ? >> I think at the end of the day is like as the operator of the AMM you want to have control of the fees. uh is not just for like profit and stuff but also you know king of the mill right if we want to have king of the mill for tokens at a larger market cap it's impossible to do that with radium because how how can I then take the fees to you know use the bs it gets very very complicated >> got it okay well one of the trends coming out of pump fun uh is this like they're pushing their like ecosystem organic coins they're like look we're we're going to buy back our ecosystem

coins >> are you guys how will you guys support your organic ecosystem tokens. >> Well, okay. So, this is like a big topic, right? Because everyone's bombarding me like, "Hey, what's the runner? What's the runner?" >> Yeah. Like, what's the runner here? Like, what is the >> This is the beauty of King of the Mill, right? It's like, you know, King of the Mill is basically like if there's something that's worthy to be to be supported, it will get attention at least in the lower tiers, you know? So I I feel like it's crazy that a founder of a of a launchpad platform should be trying to pick the winners, right? Even though that seems to be the name of the game for every launchpad. Uh but hey, like if people want to get together, cabals get together and form a a token.

I know like everyone was asking me about fish wheel, you know. Um be be my guest, do it, right? But if you wink in the mill, like that's automatically support. That's visibility. Like I don't I shouldn't have to put my name behind it. Uh King of the Mill does that for you. You know, Fish, I'm curious where like where are the next entrant comes from, right? Like we've kind of got our current segment of trenchers Salana memecoin trenches. Like how I I mean I'm curious to get your take on this most recent Yeezy launch. probably the biggest memecoin launched since January when Trump launched his and it just didn't seem to have the same effect the same the same magnitude right of of

that one back then. Do you do you feel like we're going to get some sort of positive momentum of new entrance entering the space? If so, why? And if not, how do you how how can you make, you know, a launchpad sustainable without those new entrance? >> Yeah, I think um there's just a lot of memecoin trenching fatigue right now. That's that's mainly it right. We've seen this play out with Trump. That's why like, you know, anytime a a bigname celebrity comes out, it's like, okay, you know what? Uh, it's it's a faster race to exits. I don't think people are bored of meme coins, but I think they're just bored of the same game. They need a new game. Um, this is also a reason why we we built Token Mill, right? It's a very experimental game. Like, you know,

we're struggling right now to try and get it to work. There's obviously the cold start problem we had to solve in order to get this flywheel kicking, but you know, the the initial traction we got before we even launched just shows how hungry people are for new games. They they want to try new games out. And I think like, you know, since the the dawn of the birth of crypto, like people are always willing to try new things out. Um, but the current way of trenching, especially with Yeezy launching this morning, it's like, you know, we we've kind of seen this play out so many times, right? Libra, with you and stuff. It's like it's like okay, let's make our money I think and and and exit as quick as possible.

>> Yeah. I mean that was I mean yeah it just seemed like the market kind of almost brushed this one off like it was like okay like whereas if this happened last year it would have been massive, right? Massive >> just kind of like different different era but I think for the better. I mean, these people have just been coming in and just like, for lack of a better term, just grifting off the space basically and like we've all just kind of been buying it and and like now these things pumping to the billions. And so, last thing for you, Fish, um I'm a I'm a participant, right? I am either a person who wants to launch token, I want to buy tokens, I want to participate in in in these games. What is the Nash equilibrium of participating in token mill? What is the optimal game theory

strategy maximum EV? What are some of the strategies one could think about playing? At least just lay us out some of the the the like lines of thought that I could play to try to win in this game over time consistently. >> Yeah. I mean, I thought about this a lot, right? It's like, do you buy the king or do you buy who could become the king? I think the obvious play is like you buy the king, the TWAP comes in, you try and, you know, make a bit of money after the TWAP comes in. But I think the real game is like you try and predict who can become the next king, you know.

Um, you want to get in early, try and try and predict who could become the next game king and then, you know, benefit from TWWAP. Um, I'm curious to see how it works. Like, that's how I would play it, but obviously I'm sure there's a lot of different ways to play it. Um, you know, I'm very curious to see how it evolves. Obviously the first thing we need to solve is like the cold start problem just getting volume in because once the flywheel kicks in like I'm confident that you know there will be a lot of games being played between people even groups even you know different kind of bots still have like strategies I think it could get really fun you know I I really believe in this product >> fish thanks for your time man and again

>> thank you >> apology on the technical side to watch this play out and also just jump in and try it out so >> yeah I'm uh >> I'm looking forward to this just feels like the innovation of like similar to like DeFi summer but in a different way, different product, different kind of idea. But um like if there's anywhere where I'm looking that's not just like institutional tokenization, RWA kind of like innovation, it's like okay the innovation of the best way to launch new tokens, >> you know, this is this is DJ as it guts. >> Yeah, exactly. which is uh but like if we can crack it over time, then we get to a you know a steady state which should be far better than what what we've had in in the past. So that's that's kind of like the beauty of it.

>> Yeah. All right, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> All right, fish. Thanks, man. >> Bye. >> One last little boom for the lad. All righty. That is token mill. Pretty pretty pretty cool. Um, and I wanted to get the information from him as to like what he thought was the best way to, you know, kind of optimize for success in the games. >> Yeah, I I I hear what he's saying about uh the the memecoin fatigue. I think that's real. Like I I'm just curious what what's going to change that. And he said a new game, right?

>> Yeah. What one where it's not just so PvP, you'd think, you know? >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, PvP necessitates like an an E like a like a bigger a bigger population of people to draw from. >> Oh, exactly. Yeah. And that is just not really quite happened this cycle yet. >> I think we also have to like think about what is the thesis behind new coins launching. I think it's I think it's very clear like if if you're looking at the other side of the risk curve and you have RWAs, you have treasuries like the technology makes it so that the value proposition is super is super valuable. It's super easy for for institutions to understand.

It's going to cut their costs and they're going to be able to provide the same quality of service boom on on board >> all all the assets on chain. But when it comes to like a net new class of assets, I can understand why Pump Fund is going in this social fi category, why Zora is starting to pop off because it opens up a new asset universe. Every creator, every piece of content, tokenize it all. >> As far as what the value proposition is for other new token asset classes, I don't know. I'd have to really I'd have to get really creative and really think about what like why what what new asset classes are are ne necessary to create.

>> Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. Well, we'll see how this plays out. Um and it should be interesting. Up next, we've got DZ uh Dimma from SQD. Um we're going to talk about the AI uh kind of meta, the crypto AI space. Um, and actually I think I just saw him reply to one of my tweets about Yeezys. Good place to start. Um, we'll get his take on that. Let's get Dimma up in the back and in. Um, and we'll start with with their newer product around uh this kind of I think it's called like SQDN AI. Um, but yeah, well, we'll have Dimma explain what he saw on the Yeezy launch to start off.

Um, so let's bring Dimma up and yeah, man. Welcome to the stream. Hi Andy. Hi everyone. Um nice uh thanks for having me. Uh nice meeting you all. So uh yeah, I heard about easy. Uh >> yeah, I saw your tweet. I saw your tweet. I saw you uh respond to one of the tweets or I think my thread and you were like we saw this on our AI tool, you know, early like so, you know, walk us through what did you see? What is this tool? um what what was the uh outcome that you you know found from this from this launch?

>> Yeah, actually it's like pretty indicative and uh pretty validating to our mission. Uh so what is like the tool? The tool is called Squid Digin. So uh it's um a project that I launched uh in November uh with the whole like big mission to democratize the trenches. Uh basically right now uh more than 90% of the traders lose their deposit within the first like two weeks uh simply because they don't have access to the right data, right decision, right information. And this like easy coin is essentially like an epid of that. Uh I just reposted uh some stats that basically uh 15,000 people uh have lost uh like $50 or so. uh uh there are like

hundreds that uh have lost uh thousand and more uh a few people lost 1 mil plus and only a few accounts actually made money. So everything is in chain. You can track that and uh at the same time uh how do you actually like level up the the the the field right? So you actually need a tool uh that is super quick and that can also analyze the information that right now uh is only available for prot traders. So and uh at SQD we have uh the biggest data lake with onchain data and like it was a natural extension to basically like build a retail uh product. So uh and this is uh where we are right now. Um an AI powered bot

which uh detects uh early movements, early launches both for EVM and Salana by analyzing uh transfers, flows and like smart money moves. And actually it detected easy launch today uh at around 4 a.m. my time. actually I was sleeping and just like came to this like private chat with um our uh token holders and like holy [ __ ] this thing actually identified the right one and uh it's like printing um I believe that it was after the twe but shortly after actually detected it at

around uh 200 m uh because it identified one of the uh high performing wallets buying in and this is like one of the like key uh signals. So um in the future we actually want to add like a complete auto trading feature in the sense that the bot would have been able to uh trade for you this signal, right? Because right now even if you see this signal you cannot really like react that fast uh to to to validate this but still it was like super early. So if you kind of like u uh so first of all it's like the right token so it's not a scam token and the second uh is you actually

get in very earlier than other like crypto Twitter uh Dgents even know about this right. So, um, the kind of TLDDR here is that, um, if you just rely on your manual skills, especially if you're just like new to crypto, you basically have zero chance, uh, of not losing money. You're like playing against sharks. And in order to uh, actually survive, we re in order to like level up this field, we really need like uh, best-in-class data and best-in-class tools for that. And this is exactly like what we're uh building was SQD providing the data and SQD gen like being an AI

powered interface for that. >> Awesome. Yeah. The uh SQD AI insights are you primarily looking at uh blockchain data? I I take it as the most primary layer. Are you also taking into account or maybe have this on the road map to start looking at sentiment analysis? start to validate some sources of data aside from onchain metrics, but you're looking maybe at Twitter, you're looking at, you know, maybe there's other sources where you can start to pull this data from. >> Uh yeah, absolutely. This is in our road map but not uh our focus at the moment because uh we mainly uh try to catch early launches and uh try to give a

chance uh for small people who have only say $100 in their deposits to catch this like 5x 100x and normally uh if you get in into a token which is only 15 minutes uh old then there no real information on Twitter or like very like actually even uh many services and tax aggregators uh don't even have this token indexed. So uh we actually rely on our like kind of own uh infrared like to to snipe and like to send the transactions but it's like a different story. Uh at the same time uh down the road we definitely want to expand our pool of strategies like in data analysis and that would uh yeah in

particular um uh include sentiment analysis and um I'm also like very bullish on the capabilities of SQD network to be able to serve uh vector data in the future. So this is something that is like also in our road map. Uh but uh at the moment our like edge in our data mode here is like being able to have like very high resolution uh of the onchain data in particular like who buys what and analyze like wallet clusters and like basically have uh like all the power of machine learning um at our hands uh together with like the best-in-class data there.

>> What do what do you think is the future of the trenches? Like we we were just talking with another Launchpad provider, you know, he's talking it was Fish from King of the Mill talking about memecoin fatigue um and how there's really a new game like the memecoin trenches, they need a new game, right? Where do you think this goes? How do you think the the trenches survive long term? Uh I think that uh it's basically like casino and greed which is kind of powers this and fuels is kind of like a little bit of a dark energy but uh this is what makes it like so appealing. Uh because if you have like $100 uh the defy space is not really that

attractive to you because like what can you do with that right? you can farm maybe you can get like I don't know like even 40% APY but then it doesn't really move the needle for you right uh you really want to get this like very hard dopamine hit like of spotting something very early and like holding it like to 10x and ideally to 100x I think that was uh one of the main catalysts uh during the ICO era right and uh I personally was kind of uh attracted to crypto back then simply because I was like what what the hell is going there? I really need to figure that out. Um because just like feel that something is going on

when people just like immediately got that much so quickly and then um people are just attracted to that. At the same time um there is there are so many like bad actors who just uh outright scam people sometimes, right? or like rug. Uh and uh for that uh the best kind of remedy is like to have a more kind of information uh like reduce the information asymmetry uh reduce kind of the entry uh barrier and I believe that LLMs like in general AI is a perfect tool to democratize the knowledge. So >> basically you can just like chat and like set the wipe. Okay. Like say okay I

want to get Den but just like give me something that at least uh has low probability of rug or like at least like exit when you feel it's right. So basically like do the heavy lifting for me. uh because uh even if you're lucky on Salana and you get in and like some decent token uh with very very high probability uh it will just like go down and you're going to be right anyway. So >> yeah. Yeah. when you're looking at at SQD's kind of uh product value um as you guys expand to more and more chains and protocols and and provide them with indexing and different types of data services um you know when you're looking at your current suite is there is there

more tools and is there more uh interest and excitement around some of the the more like AI agent capabilities excuse me what is the what is the state of SQD's agent uh you know capabilities collaborations who are you working with you know what is the what are the val like why do people want to use agents uh where are you seeing uh any sort of demand like basically what I'm trying to understand is why why like why and and where is this kind of crypto AI intersection actually happening right now we get a lot of buzz about it but like from your lens in the in the developer seat where are you seeing real traction and with which projects >> yeah great question so um I think it's

safe to say that the initial hype of uh AIX crypto is kind of um waning and I think the main reason was that a lot of uh what is called AI engines were really sort of GBD rappers and uh there was not that much substance substance behind it simply because uh if you just feed LLM with some information uh the trades a pure LLM uh does uh actually like suck really uh really much. Uh at the same time uh in order to build something meaningful that uh outperforms even like basic benchmarks, you really need to have uh kind of serious uh models and uh

in general old school machine learning performs better. Um when it comes to uh like our thinking uh at SQD uh we we see AI uh and like in particular AI agents more of a tool rather than a means in the end. Uh and uh at the same time we think that um in general on the infra side the the dynamic uh is similar uh to what we have uh for example on L1's and chains. So there is like a long-term kind of base infrastructure uh and at the same time there are application that are built on top and uh

everything that is closer to the user and to the end consumer uh actually captures more value short term but long term the like the the base layer becomes uh the the mode. So this is what happened on Ethereum where uh like defy protocols and smart contracts captured uh a lot more I would say like fee in value but in long term we we see that like Ethereum is like out growing and outperforming this. So we essentially like built an ecosystem of like data and like data critical applications uh with infrastructure powering them.

Yeah, that the the AI data that you you're talking about like when when you think about the evolution of the space, right, and and you're thinking about, okay, we kind of have like this balanced approach. We're coming at it from the right curve, the the high-risk uh this is the memecoin trench aspect, and you know, this is kind of the super den route. And then you see all these institutional financial traditional financial companies coming in and you're thinking about this AI platform, right?

Maybe this is is a little bit more of a technical question about uh Squid rather than Squid Den. Are you do you think that these same data sources are applicable to both sides of the risk curve? H how do you think you're going to you know take and and make the most of this AI data so that you can provide the best insights for your for your ultimate your audience your customers. >> Yeah great question. So uh the data is definitely very much customer specific. So uh at S we have uh everything that happens uh on uh each blockchain and then we have a tooling to essentially prepare that uh to different kind of

applications and consumers. Right? So for SQD gen we have this uh DEN side of the spectrum. Uh we have another full institutional product called open stream where we package uh RWA data uh information that is uh important for cryptonative funds for example uh about like defy protocols crypto yields and so on something that they can actually uh use directly in their strategies and like improve their performance even for example on a half of a percent but then having like say 100 million AUM would make like them a huge difference simply because they have just like a like a better or sharper tool here and then of course there are everything in between.

uh so uh people who are say like semi pro traders or like for example um just applications building on top so in general I would say uh it's uh more like a complete cycle but everything goes down to a uh raw data uh that you can then distill and like transform uh in different formats. Awesome, DZ, thanks so much for coming on, man. I think you you help articulate kind of both sides of the risk curve here, the evolution of the memecoin trenches and generally how how these markets and DGEN gambling, the casino are really starting to collide. We're seeing it all over the

place. Memecoin trenches, uh, AI is being used in both of these markets. Um, so thank you so much for coming on and, uh, congrats on all the success of Squid. >> Thanks a lot and thanks a lot for having me. >> See you, Dimma. Cheers, brother. >> See you next time. >> Byebye. >> All righty, sir. >> Very cool. >> Lot of trenches conversation here today. >> Yeah, man. Up next, we've got Ian from Ledger. >> Oh, yeah. >> Should be a good convo. Uh, looking forward to it. And, um, >> yeah, I think my my my cam had a little had a little crap on me.

>> A little hiccup there. All good. We're going to get Ian Ian in here in just a moment. Should be a little bit more uh switching gears back to the other side of the risk curve. Stable coins, regulation, tokenization. Ian seen it all from Ledger. Obviously, one of the one of the leading uh operational security firms in the space. Uh I've got a Ledger, also got a treasure. >> Um but I think the ledger is of the utmost security. So these guys touch it all. Uh, and I think we're going to hear a little bit more about stablecoin UX.

These guys are helping to solve that as well as uh, staying at the tip of a lot of the things that are happening in the more regulated institutional space with regards to crypto. So, Ian will be back here in just a moment and then we'll get him on. Andy, what do you think about when we're when you know we're doing this show and we kind of have both sides of the risk curve on trenchers and and uh you know launch pads were on a little bit later today now or earlier today now we have uh the other side of the risk curve. You have a preference. How do you think about this balance?

>> I know. I was just thinking about it. I was thinking about how like if we get a bare market sometime in the next uh three to six months and and we're just going to go right back to in for the tech. So, I'm just enjoying the ability to talk about things that are not just pure pure pure tech because as soon as it's time it's going to go just right back to the tech. So, um yeah, I mean pretty >> I I can enjoy both sides of the spectrum, you know what I mean? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> We got Ian in the back. We're gonna get him up. Uh Ian is the uh CXO at Ledger um and uh has a lot of experience with uh building a large company that that secures a lot of the crypto users who

prioritize self-custody. Also, I have a feeling is a man with a lot of interesting network and talents and things based off the email threads that we were on. So excited to to chat with him. Let's get him up on the uh on the screen here when we're ready and uh we'll get it rolling. Ian, man, >> welcome to the show. >> Hey, thanks for having me. >> Absolutely. Thanks for being here. Um we uh we've had quite a few conversations with memecoin trenchers and launchpads today. Um none of them >> not the usual show for us.

>> Not the usual show for us. And neither of them had uh had the hair that you have. So you're a nice refreshing guest today. Hey man, thank you. I'm this old. I still have this hair. So, I figure I gotta I gota A lot of my friends don't. You know what I mean? I gotta gotta keep it keep it going. >> Man, I got a feeling you found Bitcoin in like 2012. Am I right? Am I wrong? >> Not quite. You know, I I knew about Bitcoin 20 2009 2010, but but was like so I looked at it through the lens of I had done digital music and I looked at it through the lens of watching, you know, Nutella and anyone who had been in the in the peer-to-peer business get sued out of existence and I said, "Okay, well, this is super interesting

technology, but you know, they can't kill the technology, but they can kill businesses that are around the technology, which is what they did with Nutella and file sharing, right? You can't kill the ability to move one file from one computer to the other, but you can get rid of Kazah, Lime Wire, Bearshare, etc. And that's what happened. So I looked at Bitcoin and I said, "This threatens state sovereignty." So they will obviously come after this. But by around 2015, I was like, "Wait a minute, this is too big." You know, this is now the game theoryy's on where if let's say that one country bans it, another country is going to welcome it. It had gotten to that size. Um, so that was when I started really paying attention and then I joined Ledger in 2021. really it was it was during COVID where you know I was

I Tony Fidel and I who Tony was the the podfather created the iPod and co-invented the iPhone and he and I spent a lot of time our family spent a lot of time together during COVID and we were looking at crypto at that time going this is it you know this is um you know the technology is here a lot of these ideas that were sort of a promise like smart contract uh for example that was like an idea four years ago is real today. Um, and you've got two trillion of stimulus in the US, a trillion of stimulus in Europe. Um, this is what this technology was built for. Um, and that was when it was really go time. And and I I came to my friend Pascal who was the CEO and still is at Ledger and said,

"All right, what are we doing?" And that's how I ended up joining the company in January of 21. >> Very cool. There there was a clip that I saw just today and it speaks to something that you're talking about where they actually it was Tucker Carlson and and another uh it was a co-founder and they said they thought Bitcoin was like created by the federal government but it kind of got out of hand and so we can may maybe there's something and they also said that like Rockefellers, Rothschilds, they would never let let their power go to to this new this new world, this new era. Um, but I'm curious because I've heard this connection between digital music and Bitcoin. I think Andy and I were actually sitting in an airport. We were on our way to ETH Denver one year and

this guy started talking to us about it and I was curious about the connection because this isn't the first time that I've heard it. So, when you were kind of doing this digital music thing, where did Bitcoin come in? How did you kind of stumble upon it back 2009 2010? >> It was a guy in my office at the time. We're running a company called Top Spin back then. Um, so my my background for your listeners, I I studied computer science in the early 90s. I dropped out of grad school to go on tour with the BC Boys in 1995. We did Win Amp in the late um in the late 90s. Um, which when that team at Winamp is who also created Shoutcast and and Nutella, but then I did Yahoo Music for a bunch of years.

I'm making a long story short. And then we had this company called Top Spin. And this guy Parker Todd Brooks worked for us at Top Spin. Um, and he was like, "Bitcoin, Bitcoin, you got to check this out. You got to check this out." And, you know, I'm just a nerd. So, I'm like, "All right, well, what is it?" You know, and I I, you know, I do do the deep dive and try to get my head around it. So, to me, it's more of a I think it's more about the kind of people. I mean, digital music was the tip of the spear with the internet, I think, for a very specific reason. >> If you think about it, you go back to the 90s, like >> audio files are pretty small. Like, video files were just too big to deal with in those days.

digital music is a really simple database problem, you know, artist, album, track, genre, you know, like um every like young coder loves music. You can listen to music while you code, you know? So, I think that there's a, you know, there's an old joke that like every college student has this idea for a company that has to do with either music or bars, you know what I mean? So it it it there's some there is some I think it's just a tip of the spear because it's it's a kind of a a nice entry point and that's why music was really disrupted by Napster 1999 2000 where a lot of the you know internet disrupted a lot of other industries more around 2010 and I I that's why I also I think that digital art is is a tip of

the spear and the reason is because it's just really simple you think about value and exchanging value between two individuals if we have to come up with a conser C with a currency getting enough people to buy into the value of that currency is like that's a massive that's a scale problem in a way whereas like I make this thing do you like it? Oh I like it. Oh cool want to trade it? Oh yeah let's trade it. You literally need two people >> right? You know, and that's why in if you look in the world of digital art, sometimes you'll see an auction that goes for, you know, tons of money, but there were really only two biders because if you think about it, you know, that that's the way even in the the contemporary art world, it can be the case. There are famous examples of

particular pieces going for huge amounts of money, but they're really only two biders, right? And that that to me is why digital art is the tip of the spear because you can a market can literally be one or two people and and whereas you know to get to a true ecosystem you know takes much more than that. So I think that you know music was a tip of the spear for the internet for those reasons and I think that you know digital art holds a similar place in the world of digital value for that that other very specific reason. No matter what you think about digital art it's a it's a physical fact or fact.

Just like one last thing on this and then we'll get into some of the ledgers, some of the stable coins, some of the self-custody concepts. You know, you've worked in uh music um in kind of early internet, some luxury brands, now crypto with ledger. Is there any common thread that kind of ties your experience together in these ecosystems? whether it be the types of people, the work, the values, um just any kind of experience that you can tie a thread through that applies to each of these industries maybe in their early days. >> Yeah, I mean I think I think that there are a few things. The the the probably the number one thing that that I would keep in mind is is that storytelling plus time equals value,

>> right? You know, and if you look at it, that doesn't matter if it's the Beatles, if it's Christian Dior, or if it's Bitcoin. Storytelling plus time equals value. Um, and I think we really discount that. You know, we we look at, you know, we we try to look at, you know, fundamentals. Uh, you know, of course, they have to be there, but the fundamentals are what creates the story. I mean, in the case of Bitcoin, you know, we could easily bemoone the ETF and say, "Hey, that's not like that's not the spirit of Bitcoin. You know, if not self-custody, why crypto?" Like, there are a bunch of things that we could say, but the reality is if if it's not for what Bitcoin actually is and the story of Bitcoin and the ability to do

self-custody, it doesn't have that value. >> Yeah. There there's no there's no value in the ETF if Bitcoin isn't Bitcoin, >> right? Um, and so I think that to me, this is the thing that holds it all together. And I think the other thing that I'm really comfortable with that a lot of people aren't is just that that storytelling has value. >> You know, there there and that's what I have loved so much about um, you know, Bitcoin and and digital assets broadly is it's really forced me to look at this thing that I never really thought about before. Like what is value? How is it created? And I realized that I was already thinking about that because like, well, you know, why why does a particular artist have an appeal to so

many people and another one doesn't? And why are there these inefficiencies? Like what I always what I always wanted in music was just to be more efficient. I feel like we're all bombarded with music we don't really like all the time. There's a bunch of music we would like that we're not getting. Super inefficient. I always wanted to fix that inefficiency. So then you become a student of how tech technology changes culture, but the reality is that value is a part of culture. And so for me, you know, I watched um the the digitization of all information, and that's really what the internet was, you know, a revolution of information. And now, you know, we're living through this once in humanity digitization of all value. And that's really what what blockchain is, the digitization of all value. Um, and

so there's there's some sort of a thread in, you know, in in that. And then I really like, you know, I I I I did I was with LVMH for five years, then I consulted with LVMH for four years after I left my full-time position there. And I just love that business. I love that. Um, you know, most people don't get it. Like so many people would say, "Oh, why would anyone spend $50,000 on a watch?" >> You know, and and I think that my you know, but the reality is is that they do. If you live in denial of that fact, then you don't understand um the way humans work, you know, and there's a lot of value in like understanding that. And you know, to be honest, people who

understand why someone would spend $50,000 on a watch are very well placed to understand why someone would spend $250,000 on a crypto punk. >> You know, they're very similar. You know, why would why would why does you know, understanding why Bosat has value is very related to why does a cryptounk have value? Because storytelling plus time equals value. Every year, more people know the story of Bosat and there is no more supply. >> Yeah. >> Storytelling plus time is value. >> It's that simple. Th this is similar to the Lindy effect where the longer that something's around, the more likely it's going to be around in the future because it h starts to build that that insulation around it that that >> That's right.

>> But you know what's really interesting about that, Robbie, is that that like that really applies to brands. Like if you think if you start to reposition things and think about brands and if you realize that Bitcoin is a brand, the Beatles is a brand, Christian Dior is a brand, Christian Dior died a long time ago and Christian Dior as a brand is more valuable today than ever. Louis Vuitton died a very very long time ago, but Fel carries that torch and builds the storytelling and and adds to that time. And if you and I started a brand today, um then we need we're gonna it's going to take us 15 years, you know, there's no overnight success in brands, >> right?

>> You know, um there's just it can't happen. It can only grow organically. I'm watching watching my friend Bree build this running clothes brand called Satisfy. And I'm watching him build it brick by brick and it's the best land, you know, lesson in brand building I've ever seen in my life. And I feel it. You know, I I'm I'm friendly with the um the really amazing person who's the CEO of Golden Goose, the shoe brand. And what's interesting about that brand is, you know, the first 15 or so years were were organic growth, you know, slow slowish growth.

>> Now, the hockey stick growth was in the next 15 years, you know, and that makes perfect sense. It's a Lindy effect, as you said. It's like you have to have it's almost like in a in brand building in culture we can we can like point to it because we can say okay golden goose had to be around long enough that Virgil Abau could say yo that was my [ __ ] when I was in high school >> you know what I mean like you have to be around that long and if you're not around that long then you then you haven't built to your point any of that insulation right and that's why last year I was going like this year is Bitcoin's year you know why people be why is it because 15 years >> that's it it's just >> it doesn't stand the test of time and

without time it doesn't have it it hasn't shown that it has it hasn't earned that >> hasn't earned it and think about 15 years of everyone trying to kill it from every angle from every angle the technical angle the security angle the like the the the shit-talking angle like people try for 15 years to kill it and Bitcoin is just still sitting there going >> guess what >> I think that's that's a good segue to legend because >> ledgers That is a good segue >> because it's it's a security. It's a it's a brand that's built on trust and security and it takes time to earn that trust. And so um when when you were looking at this and you were kind of looking at your portfolio of work, music, luxury brands kind of going from

from one thing to the next and you heard about Bitcoin. What was it about Ledger's story that drew you in? >> So I didn't get it. When I first met Pascal in 2015, I was like, okay. I mean, by the way, Ledger started in 2014, right? So, it was sort of like, okay, I I guess like why do we why aren't we just going to do this on our phones? You know what I mean? Like, our phones seem real powerful. >> Um, so for me, one hurdle I had to get over was that question, just technically speaking, why can't our phones and our computers do this? And so, and that one I'm technical enough that that didn't take me very long once I spent some time with the founders of Ledger. There's a couple things here. One, it's based on the chip and pin technology, right? And

the other is just the simple fact that phones and computers are built for performance, not for security. And they've got layers of technology in there. It's really like if I gave you the task, I'm like, "Hey, I've got a billion in gold bars. Can you let's build a building to protect this?" And you're like, "Okay, let me get into that." And you start planning it out. And then I come to you and I go, "Oh, yeah. Um, sorry, I forgot to mention. I'm going to put a shopping mall and a kindergarten and a nightclub in the building too." and uh and you'd be like um please don't like can we just focus on the gold bars but that's literally what and if you're keeping value on your phone or even worse in your browser like that's what you're up against right that that's not what it was designed for it was designed

it's a very powerful tool but it was designed for something else where Ledger was designed for this very specific thing um I think the other thing for me was just realizing that as this value grows as it becomes less niche and becomes more something that everyone's doing then the the the attack surface gets gets broader, not you know, you know, not more like it doesn't become more hardened, it becomes less. Um, and you and you have a device that your kids are playing Candy Crush on and you're also going to try to protect your like your wealth on that. Like that just seems absurd. But the real thing for me that made me kind of get Ledger was 2017 boom boom and bust the ICO craze because um during the ICO craze I was just like

I don't know like I'm looking at this I'm like this is docom madness. I've seen this before. I remember 1999 really well. I'm that old and this is just total madness. This this does not hold. Um, and I was like, also, who knows? Like, I thought maybe it was Bitcoin and Ethereum, but I don't know. Like, you got Kodakcoin and your mama coin and everything else. >> Kanye coin, man. >> Yeah. I don't I don't know, you know. And then it all came crashing down. >> And I was like, oh my god, Ledger. >> Because what I remember from the late 90s was the late 90s was the same. It was a blood bath. Everybody was gonna kill everybody. Was it Yahoo, Excite, Likos, Alta Vista, Google? Um, you thought Netscape couldn't be killed, but

Microsoft comes in with Internet Explorer. There's a book called World War 3.0, AOL, which is like what? They buy Netscape. What? Like, you know, it was just And then what I and what I remember from that 99 era is that Cisco was just sitting there on the side going, we're good. Why? Because they have one question. Will there be more internet tomorrow or less internet tomorrow? Uh, we think more. Okay, we're gonna be fine. They don't really care if it's Google or Alta Vista or somebody else. Cisco is just Cisco. So, I called Pascal, my friend Pascal. I was like, Pascal, I think your company's going to be huge. He's like, "Okay, well, you finally get it after we've known each other for three years, you know, like what? Why? Why do you finally get it?" I

said, "Because you're Cisco." Like, I just watched a thousand coins get created and 999 coins fail and Ledger doesn't care. Ledger's like the honey badger. doesn't care. Ledger's like, "Will there be more internet value tomorrow or less?" >> I think more. >> Okay, guess what? You're going to if digital value, you must have self- custody or else what are we doing? We're building another Visa, another PayPal? No. If not self- custody, why crypto? Well, if self-custody, then security. >> It's that simple. And so, Ledger is the only company, it's been around for 11 years, saying exactly the same thing. We are maximalists about self-custody and security. We have standards of self-custody and security that we don't

go below. Every cycle people come in and they tell you why they need to compromise on security. Why they need to compromise on self-custody. It's usually got onboarding the masses and their rationality. And it all and it always blows up. And Ledger says, you know what, we're going to keep high standards of security and self- custody and we're not going to go below them and therefore we'll be here tomorrow. >> Yeah. >> Because if not self-custody, why crypto? And if self custody, then security. Period. And and also coming out of luxury, I'm very happy to be that that premium choice. Seven and a half billion smartphones with some kind of a value management app on them from PayPal and Venmo to Coinbase, Robin Hood, Revolute, right? I'm very happy to be the one where if you're serious about finance,

if you're serious about security, privacy, self-custody, counterparty risk in the form of like not getting FTXed, Ledger is your choice. Seven and a half billion with a billion people with a password problem. How many of them have like good password hygiene? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Not very many. But enough that one password is a great business, right? Same thing here. You're going to have seven and a half billion with value apps on their phone. How many of them are going to have good security, real privacy, no counterparty risk? Okay, it probably won't be 50%. I'm the first one to admit that. But it's still the right way to do it and a great business for Ledger. That's like who we are and why we're here.

>> Ian, one last thing for you. Um, with regards to the the shift towards how Ledger's been approaching the more kind of institutional uh like like let's just say the adopters. I don't know. We dropped like I do I do have something more capital coming in >> and I wanted to talk a little bit about stable coins. Maybe maybe this is a good opportunity >> when you're when you're looking at that one. How do you pitch income type of people internet value that's happening right now today? Stable coins from these institutional providers. I mean the treasury secretary Bessant says this is a trillion dollar industry. It's going to help the US issue T bills and

treasuries. That is all happening through like custody like custodians. They're using Bitco and Coinbase custody. And then on the other side, it's the convenience that you mentioned. Like it's these guys that maybe they don't have good password hygiene and they're using it and and it's kind of you they want exposure to dollars. Maybe it's in the third world and they don't have that luxury. Uh they're not taking it seriously. It's just it's incrementally better than their own native currency. And so where does where does Ledger carve out the the audience that you're talking about its customer segment between these in institutions and then these you know uh these other countries citizens that are using it to get exposure to dollars uh and not

taking self- custody as seriously? Why why should they? >> Yeah. >> It's a great question. I mean just kind of acknowledge what you're saying like we are at this crazy inflection point where you've got this like real merge of tradi and um and and crypto right which is a great it's a great moment for all of us I think and I and I think that I think this is where the my my internet history experience comes in handy um because I think there's both um hope and caution if you look back at the internet history like first of all you know we have this we do have still have TCP IP and we do have you know a free and open internet in many places now at the same time there are a lot of things where it's converged around big players right the gaffa and you know how many we we

used to have a billion email providers that's an exaggeration but you know what I mean like people used to use their like local ISP as their email provider and now everybody's on Gmail right and so you do get these central centralization points as well so I think we could you know we can look at that and expect some of the same things but the reality is is that there were many people who thought that the internet wasn't going to look like the internet as we have it today with a lot of interoperability. Um they thought it was going to look like America online or um you know or CompuServe and I think that that's very much sort of like the CFI way of looking at things and but what we ended up with is an open internet you know with with you know with open

protocols uh that are interoperable and they and they talk to each other. So again, I think that we will always like have these sort of scary points of centralization. Um, and that's somewhat inevitable, you know. I mean, if you look at like in the stable coin space, what Circle announced last week by announcing their L1, you know, you're like, "Wow, are we just kind of moving toward like a more bulcanized world again, >> you know, but also I think it's a bit naive to think that we're going to onboard, you know, grandma to the, you know, sorry for your loss world, right?

There's gonna There's there's going to have to be there's going to have to be like flavors of this which have guard rails >> um you know for the average for the average population and I think that there are you know people building tools for that circle's one of them canon network's another one you know there are really interesting things happening in in that space also though you know all of those whether it is USDC or um or like a a Canton network or you know or or um you know a private blockchain, you know, privacy centric blockchain, you know, you still do have self-custody at the end of the day. Someone has custody.

Even in the case of a custodian, the security of that custodian matters. And at Ledger, we have two sides to the business, a retail side of the business and an enterprise side of the business. And as a user, the security of the custody matters, whether that's in your hand or in the hands of the custodian. You know, the amount of times that like Pascal tried to tell Sam Bankman Freed that he should be using Ledger Enterprise. You know what I mean? Like, and Sam's like, "Oh, not my department. I got people on my team who worry about that." Well, you know, I we can talk about that now because FTX imploded, but they're we have that same conversation with exchanges that your users use every day. You know, your users should be asking what is the security of the custody of those tokens on an enterprise

side. you know, are they and you know, the Binance is on record saying they use Ledger Nanos, you know, as their uh, you know, as their custody solution. Okay. Well, what's the governance model around that? You know, that's why we have Ledger Enterprise is for governance. So, my point is is that if it's not self-custody, it's not crypto to begin with. What we have stable coins is dollars running on crypto rails. There's going to be and and that also is going to lower the cost um of of of building fintech. you know, we don't need to use credit rails for digital cash anymore, which means that merchants don't need to pay 3% at the, you know, in the US for those those transaction fees. And so, you do end up with just a different infrastructure layer and a a different

marketplace uh with different like forms of competition between the players. You know, they're going to need to compete on different things. Um, so I I think at the end of the day though, this is going to be very uh invisible for the customer. You know, at the beginning, remember, you know, the initial pitch for Spotify was it was a P2P network. >> Yeah. >> Is Spotify a P2P network today? >> No. >> I mean, or the answer really for me and you is who cares? Maybe. Yeah. >> You know, I don't think it is either, but for the user, who cares? It works, right?

>> Right. Um, same thing when I'm using a solution like Satis Pay to pay in Italy. Um, is that crypto underneath? I don't know. Probably not. But who cares, you know? Like what the merchant cares about is that they can get the money really cheaply and they can get it immediately and they don't need to pay 3% and they don't need to wait 30 days for settlement. Like that's what the merchant cares about. And what the consumer cares about is do I have a good user experience? Am I getting a good product at a good price when I want it? Right. >> Yep. >> The rest of it is for us nerds. >> Yeah. you know, um, and so I think, you know, we do need to care about these things and I think there are definitely some pitfalls that, you know, collectively we want to avoid, but to be

honest, the toothpaste out of the tube, you know, and and you can't put it back in. Like we've got stable coin regulation in the US. You have competition around offering the best user experience around digital dollars and that opens a whole new world globally. in this move from God to state to network that Belgi talks about this is uh this is a big big big moment and so yeah I think there's pitfalls but I think overall you know the the ball rolls downhill from here and it it will I I think it will surprise us I mean for those of us who entered the the internet because it was this you know open you know free software free as in free speech not free beer like that's where I

come from like you know free software foundation roots And you know, we're obviously disappointed with an internet that's owned by Google and Facebook. So, you know, don't be naive is my lesson. >> Um, at the same time, the internet did change the world. No question. So, you know, in in in ways that we never would have predicted. >> Um, so I think that you can expect the same here. It's that thing where you always overestimated in the short term and you underestimated in the long term. And I promise you that'll apply here. Yeah, totally. Ian, thanks so much for coming on, man. It was an absolute pleasure. I think, you know, this this was one of the more fascinating conversations because it stretched all the way from, you know, your your early

innings when you first heard about Bitcoin and blockchain as as this record for uh trans transmitting digital music and and and any information digitally all the way to the internet of value. And and we're just like you said, the ball's rolling downhill now and this is just getting more. >> So, man, it's the most exciting thing I've ever been involved with. I love the I I love the mental calisthenics on this one. Bring bring me bring me back anytime you want. I'll jump in. I'll jump in anytime. Anytime. And just have some fun with you guys. >> Absolutely. >> Appreciate you. >> So much fun. Ian, see you next time. >> See you.

>> All right, buddy. Cheers, man. >> Yeah, man. That is a that is a complete 180 from the from the Iris $10 million series A raise and then following following up the uh the launchpad new token and kind of AI meta conversation. And we have another reverse UNO card uh coming with Sherpa up next. Um up next, Sherpa is a trader investor. Um the KO of Kos's want to say I think thread guy would call him GCR KGCR.

Um and yeah, man. I mean, we got to figure out what's going on. We got to talk about easy. We got about Bitcoin. We got to talk about when the market's going to top. we got to understand his thesis for how he's playing this this next Q4, what he's doing on on the side of things. So, >> and I think you had a great question about Nash equilibrium, and I'm curious to get Sherpa's take on that as well. >> Yeah, I think that's a good place. >> He's in the back. He's he's behind the scenes now. Let's get him up here. >> And um and yeah, man, what a what a last couple of days with this or last 24 hours with this Yeezy launch. I know Sherpa saw my uh my news breaking tweet breaking Yeezy 200 mil to two bill

Sherp. I saw your post about it man. Um you said you you you called it a lose lose Yeah, if if just kind of felt like the market brushed it off like ah I've seen this before. It's not interesting. Which is crazy, right? Compared to how Trump was was uh basically just pumped. But it was a different environment then too.

>> Totally different environment. And then also like you know people kind of knew about the Yeezy coin before. people knew that he was going to like sell his Twitter account. Like this was kind of a known event, much different than Trump. And also Trump is just obviously way higher tier than than Yeezy. Um and I think that people also just knew that you know it's like probably the same teams behind Libra and like you know the same type of like overall like you know dynamics behind it and like people like you know fool me once you know shame on me type of thing. But um yeah, I was happy to see that like people didn't like the majority like it wasn't as bad as as as Libra um from what I saw. And I didn't think it was going to be either just looking at the group chats last

night um when I was looking at it live. >> Yeah, I mean to me it's kind of a zero already. Like I don't think it's going to have another run to 10 bill or anything. I I I wouldn't be buying it. I don't know though. I mean, I don't know what you guys think, but I don't think that it's a I don't think it's got a 10 bill push in in it, but it very well could. I mean, I don't know. >> Unless unless there's some real online money, some new economy like his claims really stack up to be true, which are pretty unlikely at this point. >> No, I agree with you too, Andy. I don't think either. I mean, you need either like one of two things to happen. either one like all crypton native people just to full port like they did for Trump and

just like sell everything and just buy that and all that liquidity just goes into Kanye coin or um you need a lot of outside money to come in in order to like you know prop that that price up and um I don't see either e either of those happening personally. >> Sure. But do do you think this is pretty pretty accurate and consistent with where we are in the cycle? Like top is this a top signal relative to some of the other things we're seeing or is this kind of out of place? What do you think? >> I don't think it's really a top signal. I think it's kind of a a I don't know. I think it's pretty much a non-event personally like cuz like it might have been a top signal if like you saw lots of money pile in there, but I mean as I

said like you know as we already talked about it's a pretty non-event. Um this is an event that we've all kind of known about or we've like yeah >> heard about for months now. uh it's like pretty known and the fact that also that you know the market wisened up quite a bit like there wasn't like nearly as much damage um from what I saw on Yeezy as there was Libra right >> and some of the other big ones uh you know I I don't personally think it's like a a top >> and so do you so as a kind of temp check on the market is this indicative that like there's really not the fear greed index we're actually not very greedy the market's not very euphoric right now because we weren't automatically piling

into this thing with with fervor like it it it kind of shows us that the market isn't as overheated as we thought. >> It also just feels like the timeline is like kind of bearish like everyone's trying to call the top. Like it's it's a weird dynamic. >> I think it's a weird dynamic because there's a only like five to 10 good altcoins that are like pumping it at any at any given time and the majority of people like aren't hitting those trades unless you're very plugged into the market. you know, you're stuck in like I don't know like Tao or something and like you know, you're just like looking at that bag just do nothing. Whereas some other coins, you know, are like pretty active and you know, those people are pretty vocal. Um, as for what Robbie said, like uh, you know, in terms of

like the event of the Yeezy, you know, being a kind of temperature check where, you know, people aren't really aping into that. No, I I don't really agree. I mean, I think that it's just that like like like Andy said, the environment is much much different, you know, relative like today relative to January onchain itself. Like, you know, you really haven't seen too many like huge huge huge runners. I mean, there's a lot of like there's a lot of seedlings to these coins lately. Um, and that's just a like product of like what how much extraction has happened over the last like you know, six to eight months or what have you. um where there's just not as much money on chain right now. I mean, will

it come back? Probably. It always does in some way, shape, or form. But, um I mean, I I just think that like, you know, a lot of the money is just it's just being stuck in either like boring coins like, you know, Ethereum or or B&B or something or um these other random alts that just aren't moving, you know, kind of typical alts. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've been following this guy levels level 941. I don't know if you've seen him. Like the pigeon guy. >> Yeah. I think I've seen some of his tweets before. Yeah.

>> Yeah. So, he's been pushing on this idea of like this of like the current environment being um like a like you're in the later stages of a multi-table no limit Texas holdem tournament where you know there's let's say you start with 10 tables now you're down to three tables. you've obviously accumulated a nice stack and he's saying his strategy for like basically from now until you know I would say just throughout the end of the year is like keep a lot of your stash basically safe. Um so risk off a bit and then with the remaining stash that that you have he's just going full buying calls buying memes just full maximum out on the risk curve as a way

to maximize your EV this late in the cycle. I I think there's two schools of thought right now, which is one is that this is going to end like sooner than we think. Like we get one more really good run here across the board. Maybe a maybe a pullback, one more run maybe over the next 30 to 60 days and it's over before people, you know, earlier than people think. October, let's you know, let's say. And then there's another school of thought that is like, well, no, this is just going to kind of not have a parabolic blowoff. this is going to basically go higher for longer and and we and you know it's a different cycle now in institutions DATs etc. Um so like I I'm just trying to think about how to

how to think about the the current framework of portfolio management you know in the late cycle like you know from from your experience like like what are you doing right now late like you know if you consider it late cycle you know is there a certain strategy that you have like how do you think about where we are versus how you're managing your capital? I mean, personally, I think ever since the ETFs, I'm like of the opinion that there's no longer like these insane runs that we had in 2017 and 2021 where it's like pretty much parabolic up only for, you know, two years and then it's just like down only for a year and then chop for a year and then, you know, the cycle just continues. I I think that most of that has just been like kind of not not

necessarily invalidated, but you can also see the price action in the charts where, you know, Bitcoin has just kind of consolidated from the majority of 2024. You know, big leg up and then it it moves back down a little bit, then another leg up later. I'm of the opinion that these days uh you know for at least the foreseeable future we're just going to see um these kind of mini cycles where you have like anywhere from one to two months one to maybe one to three months of good price action good kind of environment for trading followed by like you know anywhere from like one to four months of chop depending on the context.

So, you know, we saw that back in kind of like like Decemberish in 2024. Uh going into the new year of January of 25, you know, we saw like, you know, that was kind of like the top, so to speak, followed by, you know, several months of of just downtrend and chop. You know, we didn't really have much uh fun, you know, for the most part. I mean, sure, there were some pockets here or there, like, you know, maybe like a month or two of of nice moves, but um but as a whole, like, you know, we haven't really seen um you know, the the bottom was actually found in like kind of May. So, that's kind of like what I expect here. Like, you know, these overall like boom cycles are going to be

shorter, but alternatively the the bus cycles as well are also going to be shorter. So, like I I generally agree that like you know, we are at kind of like the tail end of this current run. I mean it kind of moved like pretty strongly since May and we had like a little bit chop in between between there. Um it wouldn't surprise me to see like you know a little bit more fun you know for another few weeks and then like maybe like a long cooling period for another few months until like maybe like late December. Um another you know big move up and then we just rinse wash repeat you know a few a few few months on like a few months off basically but but more months off generally speaking.

>> Yeah. And that's kind of on the on the time dimension, right? Things are a little bit shorter. >> When you're when you're thinking about the price dimension, does that mean that these these pullbacks might be less severe uh because they're happening more frequently? >> Uh so I wouldn't necessarily say that. I mean like there is something to be said about like so much crazy price uh like altcoin delution. There's like one of my favorite charts is the Pepe chart where um if you look at it, >> Pepe went on strong runs all throughout 2024 where you know it went up like 10x then it went down 60%. Went up another three or 4x from there down another 60%.

You know went up another three three or 4x from there then down like 80% back you know in kind of that uh January to December period. Um you know went up a few like a few from there. So, like what I'm trying to say is that I don't really see there being situations where like, you know, an altcoin does like, you know, 30x like it did in 2021 or 10 15x insane numbers and then like it dies like negative 95% and then it chops for like you know another year after that.

Um, like those are extreme extreme cycles. And like to be clear, you know, you can have a view on one altcoin and and and a different altcoin is going to be totally different. Like, you know, there's several other shitcoins that like probably will never like ever move again, you know, and that's just the nature of of the shitcoin market where um, you know, a lot of these coins just like won't ever really pump. Just there's no organic demand. Um, they're just too old, bad tech, you know, zombie companies in a lot of ways. Um, yeah. So, like, you know, one size does not fit all.

>> So, so, so to be clear, you don't think we we've topped there. There's probably some more upside left before a shorter but still aggressive period of of downturn in some capacity. You're going to have to start to think about these markets as like risk on versus risk off periods within larger cycles, which is obviously up and to the right if you really zoom out. But like from a trader perspective, you still obviously want to be capturing the meat of the move, all of these risk on periods and then really trying to avoid a lot of the riskoff periods. Um and and and I mean yeah, I mean you got to pick your tokens far more strategically than before, right? I mean we've seen this already.

>> Yeah. I mean I generally believe that we are like closer to the end than the beginning for sure. Like we're not like early innings fighting, >> but it's not topped already. Is >> I I I mean it could be. I mean, I I I I don't believe so personally. I still think there's going to be like some treasury companies coming onto the market, you know, in September. We have rate cuts coming. Uh that's probably already priced in to some degree. I'm not like some sort of macro expert, but like basically what I'm trying to say is that there's still some good coins that will like continue to perform well. Um but the rest of the market will perpetually just be down only with some small blips here and there. Um that's just the nature of of crypto uh shitcoins. you doing any uh like angel

deals these days or just fully on the liquid side? >> I'm mostly passing on on on everything? I don't know. And like >> Yeah, fame here. >> Yeah, it's it's just kind of kind of hard honestly these days like um >> Yeah, like >> we kind of had like the heyday in 23 22. I mean really it was like 2020 was the heyday for that. >> Yeah, venture investing has definitely gotten like much more I guess efficient in some ways. >> Yeah. when it comes to kind of picking out I guess picking winners is the best way to describe it. Not to put you on the spot and like pick any any in particular, but in general like you know you said most of these are going to be down to the right with some blips. Are you trying to capture the ones I guess

this is a two-part question. Are you are you trying to get those blips or are you trying to pick out the ones that aren't down and to the right and have you know some sustainable business model? Generally, when you're kind of sifting through, you know, the thousands thousands of altcoins, what are you looking for? >> I generally look for ones that have some sort of attention and don't look like zombies. I do I mean, everybody has a different trading trading strategy. Some people like there's a lot of different strategies you can use. Some some friends like to like buy these like totally dead ass coins that will have like these crazy liquid spikes like >> you know they're super liquid. like you have to like spend a long time accumulating them and they'll just like buy these [ __ ] and then just like sit on them and then like wait for it to

spike like 5x randomly from some like rogue market maker and then you know everyone dump like he'll just like set his limits like >> there's so many dead coins on centralized exchanges. >> Tons of them. Yeah. I mean the majority of them are like if you look at the charts of all of them. Um but to answer your question, no. I'm I'm generally looking at coins that like actually have some life in them, have some >> have some volume, have some actual real buying. And you're right. I mean, at the end of the day, like, you know, as I said from the um like beginning of this kind of uh podcast, I guess, in the sense that there's only like five or 10 real coins that you can buy at any given time, you know? Um that's just the the the nature of this current market

environment. >> Sure. You got any questions for us? I feel like it's just been all us asking it. This this takes me back to the old uh old old pod that run. >> Uh, no, not really. I mean, I guess what do you what are you guys um what are you guys seeing that's like interesting in terms of themes? You guys interview like a lot of different guys from all sectors of crypto. Like what are people like kind of most like excited about in terms of like the new newer themes that we're seeing like in terms of like where the money's going? I mean, dude, I think people are really stoked on Hyper EVM, actually airdrop farming it and the new protocols there. Um, but man, it's it's a really it's honestly the hardest question to answer because I do feel like a lot of the a

lot of the interest in the narrative and I put out a tweet about this is like this year we've seen so much less narratives or like metas happen. Like in 2024 it it was like there was like L2s there was like it was like modular L2s then there was like other infernaratives then it was like this crypto AI thing and then there was um you know now it's just been like debts or who's buying these large amounts of like there hasn't like there's been like this revenue narrative I suppose but like it's it's kind of interesting because if you ask people like what they're interested in it's more of like what's hot and and I don't know there hasn't been like a really hot like I mean I guess we kind of like internet capital markets for a couple weeks there. Um, but dude, it's

been a weird year in that we haven't had like the same rotational metas that we that we're used to that like you get stoked on something for like a couple months, it passes, then there's something else cool. It's kind of just been like everybody watching how much sailor is going to be buying and then now it's like like these DAT codes. It it Yeah, it just I don't know. It feels like that like the air has been sucked out of the excitement for like the real coins if you will due to like VC stuff due to just like their price action. I don't know. Yeah, it's a tough question as as far as like what's exciting but I think like people have came on and talked about Hyperlid Hyper EVM and like they've been pretty stoked on it. I think it's the suits the suits that are

excited like there that's where all the mania is and I think >> yeah the tokenization and stuff >> tokenization rwas even the revenue meta is appeals to like someone who's going to uh try to value a crypto company by some traditional cash flow analysis model that that makes sense to them. I I think it's I I think what you're saying like that's why it feels like we're late cycle because there's no nuance anymore when we're deep cycle. We're in it for the tech. Like we we see, oh, this is something kind of cool, something kind of new. And you kind of have these like sector things that tend to outperform and do well for a week, two weeks, three weeks, and then that narrative kind of

moves on as as there's some fundamental shift. >> Yeah. >> But it feels like all of that's been blended together. You can't really there's so many things the market moves so fast-paced now. It's just the biggest number. >> It also just captures all the attention. >> Like everyone's zoomed in more. Sherpa, I feel like everyone's so like it wasn't like I I know that you're a trader and you you trade on different time frames than like you know what we would probably do. But it does just feel like everyone's looking at the charts like a lot more. Maybe I'm just projecting what I'm doing, but it just feels like eyes are on the charts a lot.

We stopped everyone stopped dreaming and everybody now just believes or sees crypto for what it is. Just uh just >> Yeah. Which it's a weird setup, man. It's a weird setup. Um dude, so what do you think about the the sole underperformance for the last couple months? Are you do you think that's going to turn around? I know that these dats are coming. I've been tweeting about them or at least hearing about them. Um you know, what's your is that thing, you know, do you think it's going to turn around? Um, yeah, >> I think the rotation makes sense. I mean, back in the day, the easiest rotation was always Bitcoin to ETH and ETH to Bitcoin, you know, like you didn't really even have to trade anything else. You could have just held Bitcoin for most of the year and then

you swap it out for ETH at the end of the year and then like, you know, you swap it back to Bitcoin and like that was a good way to like accumulate more Bitcoin. At least that's what I used to do back, you know, in 2017, 2018, whatever. Um, but I I would say that like soul I mean it really depends on where your view is in terms of like you know overall macro top or market top like you know if you if you strongly believe that like you know we're pretty much topped and you know I'm not saying we're not like you know there's definitely some arguments for that. Um but you know there there is still going to be a lot more money coming onto the market in September in my opinion.

There's more um we haven't really found like a sailor for soul uh so to speak. >> Yeah. >> Um ETH kind of has one now, but like uh I don't know. I think I think I think Soul should probably catch up. I the hard part is the the timing of it. You know, we don't really know how to time this type of trade. Um, and yeah, it's it's it's a tough call to because like you know, if Bitcoin keeps like grinding down, then I I I I don't know if it really matters because like I think it's just going to pull everything down irregardless of like um you know, lots of buying and what have you um

thereafter from from other vehicles or what have you. I still think that you know, if Bitcoin goes down to like you know, 100K or sub 100K, then like you know, these other Yeah. we're screwed. Yeah, we'll be nice. >> Yeah. Um, last thing for you, Sherps. Um, you uh you think these DATs are going to end poorly? I put out a tweet saying that they're going to mark the low of the next bear. >> Uh, I I honestly don't know how it's going to end. I mean, in theory, like it probably should blow up somehow, but I mean, >> but it is complicated.

>> I gen Yeah, there's a lot of mechanics behind it like that. I I actually don't really understand like >> so I mean like from a theoretical standpoint it does seem like yeah like this is not very sustainable like given some of this stuff. Um but I don't know maybe maybe like maybe it'll go longer than we think. I don't know. >> Yeah, sure. Bro, thanks for your time man. Uh we'll let you go and uh keep it up, man. I'll see you in the trenches. >> All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Happy to come on anytime, too. This is fun. >> Thanks. >> Cheers, brother.

>> All right, brother. All right, Rob. Good stream, man. Uh fun uh fun fun fun sesh. A lot of uh different types of convos, that's for sure. Uh uh I'm ready for some breakfast. >> There you go. I could sit here and talk markets for another hour. >> I'll let you go get breakfast. >> You talk to yourself, man. Uh good good fun stream. Thanks for the producers. Thanks to the crew. Last one of the week for us. And we'll see you guys next week. See you guys. Thank you.