Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Crime, and the Ethereum Foundation | Weekly Roundup

Transcript

this episode is brought to you by scale the next evolution in layer one blockchains explore the gas-free ecosystem at scale. space ecosystem and follow their Journey on X scale Network thanks to scale for making today's episode possible hey everyone just wanted to take a second to tell you about our latest conference taking place from the 18th of March to the 20th D New York we'll be hosting some of the largest allocators asset managers and financial institutions in the industry such as Kathy Wood Michael sailor Mike novag Gratz and many more plus me and Santi will be recording a live episode for Empire listeners you can use code Empire 10 for 10% off just click the link in the show notes to take you to the event

page all right let's get into today's [Music] episode and we're back what's up what's going on how's it going good what what's going on is this is it like we've been at it for five years like is this still the awkward like hello how are you I don't know I'm trying to figure out what to talk about this week it's it basically feels this Market is just like you know it actually you remember 2016 and 2017 when Trump took office for the first time and everyone basically just like everything just hinged on his tweets and it was like the market like Dynamics like company earnings like they mattered but like they didn't matter in a weird way it feels like we're back to that where

I'm like you know I've got a list of like 15 new stories from the week we can talk about any of them but like it really feels like everyone's just kind of waiting to see what happens with this strategic Reserve are we going to get a Bitcoin option A we get a Bitcoin strategic Reserve option b we get a crypto strategic Reserve option C we don't get any of it it's like that will drive the market more than any like you know I saw I saw bitwise had an announcement they moved on chain they're deploying to Maple I'm like cool but like the the the news story the thing that everyone's paying attention to is just like what happens with this Reserve strategic Reserve so everyone always naturally our engagement is much higher when we talk about the markets I have our engagement is higher when we talk

about what you are wearing so let's first talk about the sweatsuit that you have on today are not privy to what I wear other than my neck like that being said so let me just describe to folks that if you're watching on YouTube You'll see a really nice blue sweatshirt let me just tell you that he's got on the same PLO the exact same thing but on the bottom so for the record I love being in a comfortable attire if someone out there is very much inclined to sponsor us I love wearing sweatpants I love wearing a hoodie I am having 90 like 90% of my time is having calls I want to be comfortable I want to not feel like itch

you know see comfortable you know by the way we we you have a podcast setup why aren't you in the setup why aren't you in the chair I know but I'm no but there's another professional setup with a professional mic what what happen that listen about these things all right I want to I want to reference a great tweet from Rob dragonfly who had I think a probably one of the most cogent views that I think about what that describes the state of the market um so I don't know if you want to share it he posted that a few days ago two days ago um and here I'll share it with you so that you

can do your magic and we that this will be a good anchor for the conversation and and a good part of the Pod just talking about what he what he means and maybe Rob you're listening uh if you're not you should but um you uh maybe we can have him on this one you're saying a few musings my beliefs oh my God I think really good blueprint that just um goes into more detail we just describe which is people just kind of waiting and I kind of agreed with most of the things that that he said there all right so let me read some of what Rob said so and then we can and then and let's actually have a conversation around this so the the Trump all right so Rob hadock is a GP at dragonfly the Trump admin is likely going to push us into a recession or

close to the brink of one seemingly on purpose because bessent and Co are not dumb and understand what they're doing number two this is likely all in the name of trying to use it as an excuse to massively cut entitlements foreign aid broad government expenditures Imports Etc which doesn't make sense because those are of course growth drivers but they'll be marketed as unfair to American taxpayers and they believe believe the headlines will work with the American people in aligns with the end goals they want to accomplish this will need to happen at Congress though as doge is more of a PR stunt than actually able to enact these changes you can see in the Doge headlines Etc they're grandiose etc etc number three the admin will then try and Juice the economy on the other side with QE golden visas large tax Cuts Etc the sticking point

will be inflation because for this to work infl uh interest rates will need to come down I also believe a complicating factor is that we'll continue to see the up ending of our relationship with allies our supportive regimes like Russia AI investment will continue to stop the market from completely falling off a cliff but if we see softness from Nvidia like we've seen with the hyperscalers we're in some we're we are in for a lot more hurt all the idiosyncratic good news for crypto won't be able to withstand all the uncertainty and macroeconomic backdrop which is that uh and token prices won't reflect the strengthening fundamentals but once the market turns around and the macro backdrop flips crypto will come roaring back ahead of the rest of risk assets stable coins will continue to grow extremely quickly long Vol is the best

public liquid Market play in the near- term long-term we're all going to make it okay so then my question on the back of this I think this is really sound this is really this is I I I tend to agree with a lot of what Rob said um my question on the back of this is what Rob is saying is short-term bearish medium-term optimistic long-term bullish so let's say we're bearish for the next so so do you agree that like these crypto Market markets next three to six months as Rob lays out uh it's going to be maybe it's going to be tough through through the end of the summer I yeah yeah I I look I'm not I'm not an oracle um I do tend to agree that that's the way I mean that's the way

things have been going I I don't I think the market is skittish we've had a phenomenal two and a half years in the markets and it just feels that the market goes through certain times you see in crypto more but the market naturally has a tendency to want to go down people people are nervous they want to you need like a clean break a clean solid narrative and I think like the the first you're more of a political pundit than I am but um there's like first 100 days in office set really the tone for people observe the first 100 days as what is going to happen in the next four and I I think that that you know we're just gonna have to kind of wait and see right yeah so because because it's such a big detraction from the

Administration and to your point earlier like there's these grandos grandio headlines but you need to see the evolution like like going in in the election like you go back to the podcast we record in November a lot of commentary like you know there's there's what Trump says and then the private like Wall Street and financial markets like have been heavily discounted for a while what Trump says including even Doge right and so I think but there are important things that if you were to ask me what I'm paying the the most amount of attention to is um at a geopolitical level I think it matters like the Ukraine situation is is important um and also just um continuing to understand um I'm putting like

obviously the crypto stuff is very important there's a crypto Summit that is happening today and tomorrow right tomorrow yeah you know stable coin legislation all that's like really important for crypto markets um for traditional markets like I think this year given the Deep seek announcement I still think a lot about that and I do think that uh in in you know this quarter's earnings next quarter's earnings it's really just quantifying the AI impact like and what does that backlog of orders for NVIDIA look like as a proxy into corporate spending and optimism and just everything else that flows through I mean CAPIC is like the first signal and then you say okay what's like the appey for companies to spend on on this type of stuff is going

to be important because that I I read a lot into that into like the economy and and you know hiring has always been like a component but you know of course I think just AI in this particular case the the the Quantum of AI expenditure last year was like impressive I want to see how it tracks this year do you have a sense of sorry for the heat bang in the background we'll we'll be out of winter soon um you mean the rats blowing through the pipes yeah look at uh look at what 2021 so 21 people forgot that we had this huge drop in the middle of 21 right so may through really like September I mean it was it was a grind out there so that's May June July August right May June July August that's four

months where Cris got that was D5 summer no no yeah def5 summer was was here like right uh 2020 Dy summer kicks off this bull we go up we hit 60k we're all you know we're all going to make it super cycle confirmed we then pull back from 65 and pull pull all the way back right we we get cut by 50% we pull back to 32 we go up we go up to 50 we pull back to 40 and then we double top and then cycle over so if you now zoom in on where we're at today rates went up November of 2021 rates went up November 2021 so so that

was the right or 2020 yeah so like that's a double top right there so when you think about what this looks like right this cycle chart looks like what I think you're saying is we could be in for like you know the py the you know we topped last month you basically three weeks ago at like 110 I think it was 108 and maybe we're in for like three or four months of kind of just either down or consolidation and then Trump takes takes takes us you know shows us some pain maybe he's basically trying to Strongarm Powell into uh reducing interest rates maybe it actually works maybe we get the interest rates reduced more than actually expectations say maybe we're able to do

QE um maybe we're able to do you know simmies or something like that and boom we're we're Back Off to the Races and the cycle continues yeah I mean in the near term like the most important thing is like you know M2 right um is what you know like near term it's like like the amount of like you know M2 like money supply right I mean2 M2 what's like the CH the central banks what are they doing right are they printing money there's more money in the hands of the consumer and is that consumer inclin upon risk assets like it's always like the the the meme at the end of the cycle is you all you have to do is like track M2 and like you would have like done pretty well for yourself

and it and it correlates closely to like the performance of risk assets this episode is brought to you by scale the next evolution in layer one blockchains with a gas-free invisible user experience instant finality and robust security scale allows for Limitless scalability and has already saved its 50 million users over 11 billion in gas fees scales High throughput zero transaction costs and Powerful web 3 infrastructure make it the ideal platform for gaming Ai and other High throughput apps to explore the gas-free ecosystem visit scale dospace ecosystem and follow their Journey on X at scale Network thanks to scale for making

today's episode possible this episode is brought to you by ZK sync in 2024 ZK sync took a step toward a multi-chain future by transforming from a single L2 into an ever expanding network of ZK chains the elastic Network to onboard the whole world into crypto many specialized chains must be able to coexist work together and share liquidity institutions and Global Financial leaders choose ZK sync for unmatched security scalable infrastructure better onboarding gasless transactions and privacy first design join Over 20 chains including abstract sofon and Kronos in the elastic Network today behind ZK sync is the ZK stack it

is a One-Stop platform for building private blockchains on ethereum the stack solves all the typical privacy regulatory user experience and deployment concerns of blockchain without compromising performance or security join the elastic Network today at ZK sync. iempire thanks to ZK sync for making today's episode possible let's talk about Trump and this strategic reserve and the summit so fir first thing I I commend them on a very whoever's picking the name of the summit digital assets Summit you did a very nice job picking a good name of a summit I'm glad that you chose the exact same name of our Summit which is the week after is that work wonders for SEO for you guys by the way if it if you mean work wonders like goes

we get we go down and Notch than sure no they added they actually added the way that they added an S so it's digital assets plural assets we just care about the one asset digital asset Summit um but no so they're doing a they're doing a um I mean by the time you're listening I don't know when you're listening to this Friday morning or Friday afternoon the Summit is all day Friday um I think Trump will speak in the afternoon probably around 3 p.m. is what I'm hearing um the conversation is I I mean let's let's talk about the Strategic Reserve do you think that so Trump came out and said it'll be Bitcoin eth salana xrp and cardano what do you think should happen should we have a

Bitcoin Reserve should we have a crypto Reserve with all these things and maybe other coins too or should we have no Reserve do you have personal takes on that can we clarify for the listeners when you say reserve and it will become important because uh effectively the government is buying these assets we don't know if it's the government is not selling the assets that they own or if the government is buying the assets I think it matters to get clarity on that because it's when the taxpayer money is being put to buying something it will I think determine a lot of the you know what you end up buying of course like all made in the USA coins have had a pretty substantial interest in the market because people are

anticipating you know if it's going to be funded with us tax dollars well you're going to buy coins that are made in the US um of course the the big con like the big question is well when you think about the composition of it you I I think you can draw inspiration from like bitwise indexes right of of there was a good tweet by Eric I believe or hunter that talked about okay here's our here's our index you know here's how the US government could do it and the waiting is attached to that um but yeah I mean we people should go listen to podcast with Aiden from asset reality it's like okay well the big the biggest holding will be Bitcoin I think will they buy it will they use some of the seized Bitcoin TBD right for the other

assets I I think well there there's a couple of constraints like imagine if you're the guy that is going to determine the allocation there's coins that have been like what is that filtering criteria there are coins that are made in the US by us American Founders okay how important is that then you overlay that with how much can you actually buy what's the aggregate amount that you want to buy is it signaling is it just a posturing stuff or is it actually serious because that also from a portfolio construction standpoint you can only buy so much of these assets yeah some of have a massive Market cup um do I but to answer your question concretely I do think that they should

have a strategic Reserve am I'm in their position of course I'm biased I think there is something really powerful to say plant the flag and there's I don't think a better way to plant the flag than saying we have a strategic Reserve as a signal to our commitment to these this industry and I think they they should emphasize having a very good policy and procedure to explain why they bought the assets what was the decision process to buy the assets and I could Envision that basket to have other things like Robin Hood and coinbase stock oh so you would go the you would go that approach you would say all blown out like like you're saying build you're saying build a sovereign wealth fund of the already talked about

it like why doesn't the US have a sovereign wealth fund have a sovereign wealth fund have someone like you have all these great you know the the Trump cabinet I find is is really comes from industry so you have David Saxon there he's an investor you have other people that could Steward The Sovereign wealth fund and like heck Go full out like buy buy companies buy coinbase buy I I disagree with this I disagree with this I mean you wouldn't advise a company to you wouldn't at a company level you're not saying hey like block Works do you guys own Robin Hood stock uh do you own well I guess maybe you're I we do sit on a bunch of crypto actually tokens we own a bunch of tokens yeah and Bitcoin and yeah yeah I mean from a

balance sheet perspective like okay so here's here's what I think about I think the US so the US has reserves of has strategic Reserves this idea of a strategic Reserve is not a new thing we have a strategic petroleum Reserve right because we need to we have a strategic gold Reser I do think we should have a strategic Bitcoin Reserve I do not think you should include anything else on it I liked I let me show you a combination of takes that I thought were good takes I I mean look we go the complete dgen way include Robin Hood stock I'm not complaining with that but um I thought toly there's a combination of three takes here that I thought were good so I thought toly had a had a had a good take my Reserve or this is totally my Reserve

order of preference first off no Reserve because if you want decentralization to fail you'd put the government government in charge of it I disagree with that take because uh I think I think if something is decentralized you can't actually stop anyone can buy us I don't care I don't care if like I don't care if the go which government buys it I don't care if an individual buys it so I disagree with that take or States run their own Reserve a as a hedge against the FED making mistake that I do agree with I think this I think all states will eventually have their own Bitcoin reserves and that they should be in charge of it just like they have their own pensions right I don't know how familiar people are with the the pension system but like you know if you're a

police officer or if you're a teacher in California or a firefighter in New York you have pensions and pensions are run by individuals pensions Calpers is the largest pension in the world right I mean they already invest in hedge funds and and Venture funds they have a really Rob they're one of the major contributors to like hedge funds and Venture funds and P funds so again what's the difference between the state and the federal government like the federal government can also hedge their their own exposure to the dollar and to their deficit by having like I I just I just think like two is kind of like you're saying if you do two why don't you just do one at the federal level you believe in two you do one something about it to me is something related to taxes maybe I have a mental block but

you know a very small amount of my taxes go to New York a very large amount of my taxes go to the federal government so something in mind yeah and then number three totally said can we go back to one one makes no sense one is a is not a good take if you want de decentralization to fail you'd put the government in charge of it I don't think anyone is saying a strategic crypto Reserve is putting the government in charge of crypto uh definitely not I think what he means more of that is like the government's not a good Steward of capital and then you have a more uh theoretical discussion around resource allocation and centralization of resource allocation but no uh I think the government can find competent people

to run the Strategic Reserve like you would hire a PM This and like what one of my personal takes I forget if I put put this in the predictions was that the Strategic Reserve actually would happen but it would take longer than people expected and so we would end up buying Bitcoin at the top of the cycle and have to endure you know a year or two of owning Bitcoin into a bare Market market and they you know it's fine if a hedge fund manager has egg on their face what if the US government had egg on their face and then maybe you get a new regime like you go back I don't know like that'd be a tough thing for someone's stomach the third thing that toally said and then I'll lead this into someone else's uh tweet that I thought was good is um he said or if there has to be

Reserve it's based on objectively measurable requirements I don't care what they are they can even be constructed such that only Bitcoin satisfies them they just must be objectively measurable and rationally Justified um and that I think is the best that's the best take and the reason for why that's the best take is because um it's not okay half the people are freaking out that xrp and uh xrp and cardono were included but because you know crypto people like oh these are Bad Assets the real reason people are freaking out is because everybody knows why those assets were included which is it's a pay-to-play game like outside of coinbase

Andre and Horowitz and the wink ofos twins I think Ripple and cardano gave more money to to I'll just bucket this as the trumps the Trump campaign the you know the the inauguration party so Ripple and cardano gave more than anyone else or Ripple yeah Ripple and cardano gave more than anyone else and I think people are just upset it's like oh it's a it's a clearly a pay-to-play game so that leads me into uh Bill baright who is uh sued out sued out of a or not sued but um lawsuits out of Oblivion in the bare Market by the SEC and States coming after Abra like just the regulatory apparatus just came after ABA really hard his take was 10-point plan for crypto policy Bitcoin strategic Reserve

is relegated to proof of work assets only with an fdv of 500 billion or more assets are relegated to a sovereign this is what you're saying kind of a sovereign wealth fund based on a strategic value to the us as we adopt defi the new banking system and and he's I can share the tweet in the um in the in the show notes if we want but there's 10 there's basically 10 criteria for what should happen this is I think a better framework because it tells companies it's like look we we're doing this Reserve but here's how you could get into it if you want to get into it instead of just like yeah look hoskinson gave me 20 million bucks under the table like we'll we'll we'll pump Ada you know yeah this reminds me so much of like these theoretical discussions around

like I think when people make these recommendations it's like a little bit like thinking about risk like it's like there's always like a I don't know how to say it but like people are like very black and white with these things for me like you draw inspiration from Sovereign wealth funds like Singapore the Emirates like you you put really competent people in charge of that you create like like everything like it's no different than a hedge fund like I don't think I don't understand why someone that is in crypto wouldn't like the government to hold these Assets in their balance sheet it produces more skin in the game it delivers such a strong message to entrepreneurs to other

governments because it because it biases you towards doing things that are better for the country instead of do okay so let's say you held Amazon stock or right you you just human psyche will do things that favor Amazon over the the two other Cloud providers right like uh or let's say you or let's say you held Amazon stock are you going to then favor Amazon or Walmart but if you don't own the Walmart stock you're gonna own you're gonna favor Amazon so I just like let's say there's a DOD government contract for a cloud provider like if you own Google stock you're gonna give it to Google instead of uh instead of the other two that that's why I don't like it um I there's there's um

I don't necessarily agree with that like there's there's already a always there's always bias now you you it all comes down to the process like a hedge fund can own two different positions like a hedge fund can own Amazon and can own a competitor can own Nvidia and can own a competitor you can have two different PMs and they can have different positions that compete against each other pm at a sovereign weal fund is no different than a PM at in a hedphone which is you have produce your responsibility to produce the best risk adjust returns for that Capital do you think the doj or some government agency is going to be biased because there's Ripple or cardano in the balance sheet I I think it's I don't

think so we're not even there yet now I think like I don't think it computes to be honest um if you're if you're a project that doesn't have scale well work hard to be included in the Strategic Reserve so do you think cardono and ripple should be included do you care that do you care that the American first agenda and big donations to trumps were weaponized to Pro to provide exit liquidity using taxpayer dollars I think as part of this process the government should formalize information disclosures for teams and projects because if you're smart and

you're going to allocate this amount of money you can be a you can I would love the US government to use that as a mechanism to introduce policymaking clearly we talk about wanting regulation you want regulation you put a sovereign wealth fund and you create a strategic Reserve because if you define the process by which they bought these assets it creates regulatory Clarity why why' you go and buy cardano what about cardano okay you buy cardano you formalize that process if there's a standardized blueprint by the way the US government could be a pretty big anchor in saying I want access to information for these protocols you make that publicly available the the public can be more

informed is it exit liquidity I don't know depends on what Charles is doing and Brad doing their wallets are Ted let's let's let's get the information right binance is already doing this to some extent now it doesn't share all of their findings when we go back to that Richard no you're saying in the same way that I can see when Brian Armstrong sells coinbase stock I I got to be able to like yeah give me some disclosures yeah create an agency or work with blockworks a data platform to create a standardized unified view for people because no one is like block explorers are great but we can do so much more of an industry to introduce information fairness it sets the stage and the tone for everything

that we've been asking for an industry you know what I mean like it almost PES the government like yeah create a right the alternative is you have factions within the government that are buying like you know World Liberties buying like stuff on chain I'd rather have a formalized strategic Reserve that does that as opposed to this what people think is kind of like the government buying coins but it's really not and yeah I just I come at it from that standpoint is there a poly market for this someone should cre really curious to see what do you mean well there is a poly market for Bitcoin right there was one for Bitcoin Bitcoin there we goal

65% chance there should be a market for up from 40 okay my prediction for what happens um I'll probably be wrong I know nothing I was reading lck's comments the president definitely thinks there's a bit thinks this this is a quote the president definitely thinks that there is a Bitcoin strategic Reserve now there will be a question of how do we handle the other cryptocurrencies and I think the model is going to be announced on Friday when we do that a Bitcoin strategic Reserve is something the president's interested in he spoke about it all during the campaign trail and I think you're going to see it executed on Friday I mean if lck's telling us this why is it only 65% so Bitcoin is one

thing and then the other cryptocurrencies the other crypto tokens I think they'll be treated differently positively but differently that's that's great and by by the way letnik like I don't know like we've we've um yeah let Nick gets it let let Nick let Nick does get it this episode is brought to you by scale the next evolution in layer one blockchains with a gas-free invisible user experience instant finality and robust security scale allows for Limitless scalability and has already saved its 50 million users over 11 billion in gas fees scales High throughput zero transaction costs and Powerful web 3 infrastructure make it the ideal platform for gaming Ai and

other High throughput apps to explore the gas-free ecosystem visit scale.png from a single L2 into an ever expanding network of ZK chains the elastic Network to onboard the whole world into crypto many specialized chains must be able to coexist work together and share liquidity institutions and Global Financial leaders choose ZK sync for unmatched security scalable infrastructure better onboarding gasless transactions and

privacy first design join Over 20 chains including abstract sofon and Cronos in the elastic Network today behind ZK sync is the ZK stack it is a one stop platform for building private blockchains on ethereum the stack solves all the typical privacy regulatory user experience and deployment concerns of blockchain without compromising performance or security join the elastic Network today at zync doio Empire thanks to ZK sync for making today's episode possible uh can can we talk about your I'd like to get your take on the stable coin stuff and drama that has been ensuing like obviously now you mentioned L Nick and you know he's has a big position and he works closely with

tether he's like an advisor or something so so what do you make of the can can we talk a little bit about like your thoughts around the stable coin legislation your thoughts around sh like should the government be as opinionated on like right now like there's foreign governments and buy treasuries right and that has always been like when we talk about us China relations like uh or you know us Middle East like Saudi Arabia relations like these buyers effectively these governments hold a lot of Treasury they think China they've been off floating some but it's always been a something that um foreign policy pundits which I am not one point to is say hey you know they can twist their arm you know you have basically a big buyer of

treasuries and they could you know be influential in policy decisions do you think that's really factors in much like you tether has become a pretty big buyer treasuries uh what is it top 10 now top five top eight top I think top I know it's top 20 top 15 at least I think uh I don't have a problem with that but I think some companies might for specific reasons I'm curious if you have a position on that so just to reiterate the position basically there's te so there's tether and there's Circle and I think tether te yeah tether banks with caner Fitzgerald which Howard lutnick is the CEO of uh Howard lutnick is one of the

main advisers to Trump um the someone on the tether side of things would say that circle is coming into DC right now and trying to do regulatory capture um and circle is lobbying to make it so that tether can't play in the United States as nicely as like I think maybe someone like letnik would want them to play um I think if I were in Jeremy shoes and I was in circle shoes I would say um Everybody agrees that America needs to integrate stable coins into the financial system like we all everyone listening to Empire is probably yep America needs to integrate dollar uh dollar stable coins into our financial system um we also probably agree we need Federal rules so that it

can be accepted it can be an accepted product in every part of the Global Financial system um and we need standards for stable coins for like safety and soundness I think we all hear those things we nod our head um I think what we all also want is for the United States to give everybody every founder and every startup and every company um the opportunity both on onshore and offshore and international companies the ability to register in the United States so to to to bring this home to your question I think if I'm Jeremy aair and I'm Circle I'm basically saying hey we now have the you now have the ability to go register in the United States the United States is about to pass all these positive stable coin legislations um

there are laws in the EU Japan UAE um I think Hong Kong and Singapore about to announce um sing stable coin things you are this like offshore intern ational issuer in these jurisdictions and you've never registered with these folks and circle we we ran we ran towards the regulations and we we got registered we got everything we got the you know Big Four auditing firm all that kind of stuff we engaged with The Regulators we did the really hard work I bet they have a bunch of compliance people and you tether you haven't done any of that so it's like should you get a free pass from safety and soundness rules um because of your historical success MH

that's the that's the that's the question I think that people can't decide on look it ties back to strategic Reserve discussion I think the the the problem is not so much the problem is just that the we need to get more standardized information discloses from every company that operates gr and I think that's just the most important thing like let's let's create a blueprint let's create whatever it is that they need to recum create a a standardized easy process to register uh common blueprint of things that anyone that is involved in crypto should just you know disclose so and I thought that's the most important thing

if you have issues around with te all right well what what is the issue and so I think it's this the Strategic Reserve acts as a way for the US government to clarify the most important thing yeah because because in all my conversations with capital providers Wall Street firms it's it's always the the hey there's no regulation for this thing and you're like there kind of is and I think if we have that then it's important yeah all right next uh next topic moving past the Strategic Reserve I mean yeah we'll see what happens we'll see hopefully it's just a Bitcoin thing that's my take all right sui Network breaking we are extremely excited to announce a partnership with World Liberty fi a Donald J Trump inspired pioneering defi protocol rooted in a shared vision for more open and transparent Financial

world as part of this collaboration World Liberty Financial will include sui and their strategic token Reserve designed to bolster leading web3 projects World Liberty fi and sui have begun exploring product development opportunities let me remind people of this story that blockworks published last month where scoop World Liberty Financial is approaching teams with an offer buy at least 10 million of unlaunched world Liberty Financial tokens with a 10% fee and they will buy the same amount of your tokens um I think this fits into a broader conversation about there's a um I will use the word

crime but it's not legal crime it is like um play to play Mi misplay corruption um shenanigans on chain funny dealings backdoor backdoor deals um I had lunch with I got lunch with a bunch of Founders uh at the Penn blockchain conference all of whom are building l1s and l2s and they basically said they're like look you you got two games you can play right now if you're one of the new ones like I'm not talking about like a Solano or like an arbitrum or an optimism like they don't have to play these games but if you're one of the new people launching right now you either play the backdoor games bunch of

things that you know to keep the token prices inflated um or and and and you play those games and your token will will go up or you don't play those games and you you rest you you you stand on your morals and your ethics and I'm sorry but your token price isn't going to go up that's what they that was the topic of the was the whole thing that we talked about they basic because they were there are four people whose tokens are going you know flat or down and they b or or pre-launch and um they said like the thing it it's the the crime is served to you on a silver platter right now there are all these back door deals you can do World Liberty Financial is a perfect example there's many other funds that are doing pretty shady deals on

chain right now like where they'll get Kickbacks of tokens to buy the tokens on on the open market I don't know if you've been seeing these but um it's like it just actually this got sparked by like this guy air guy or gal I don't know um maybe gal um finally like this is this tweet it's like finally so this is a quote tweet to suie if you're not watching on YouTube finally crime thank God send this thing to 10 and this is like the this is like the thing this is the um you know the comments crime is what suie needed the most and uh put aside the Donald J Trump um so let can we unpack this a bit

like World Liberty for anyone that hasn't known or seen this name what is World Liberty what is the association of world Liberty with the president I will tell you what people thought World Liberty is and what I what what what it actually is and nobody summarized it better than Mike dudis who person who invested in World Liberty he said I was originally optimistic about world Liberty fi and personally invested it's become increasingly disappointingly clear it is a pay-to-play scheme at this point not what I was told it would be a defi gateway to introduce new users to crypto sad what it was pitched as and I don't know if you looked at the deal too but it was like you know all of defi is this like internal kind of like you know crypto insiders um we you know are backed by the Don by the by the Trump

family and uh we are bringing defi to the world basically and we're going to put defi in the back end and make it really easy for people to access on the front end and we're going to integrate with all these things like a and Unis Swap and stuff like that make it super easy boom like cool Vision we've we've heard the pitch before kind of D5 mullet type of game and uh what it actually is is just in my opinion some big scheme that will end end terribly and in tears yeah well I think I looked at it when Trump meme coin launched I was like okay what's this thing and I I didn't participate in the sale they quickly sold out right after the meme the Trump meme coin launched um yeah it's uh it's it's noisy I think it's there should be

more transparency around these processes to verify that again it's just it's just God D if we just like can someone please create the Edgar SEC of crypto whether it's the government or you guys or someone but we need it like you know like if if suie entered into a partnership with Liberty okay we swap some tokens for their tokens okay what were the terms common disclosures like there's a way to do this that doesn't involve the the the back door SK like it's not so much that if this happened then it's fine it's like one company swapping TENS for another to my knowledge that's not crime where crime comes in is when you don't properly disclose the the payment component and just make it seem like right if suie had

look I don't want to I don't know what did we bought 10 million of world Liberty because we believe in the project we are diversifying our Treasury and then Liberty said we believe in this sui in soie their vision for y y y okay correct me if I'm wrong that's not crime companies do this all the time that's you just got to disclose it I just care about the lack of closures yeah exactly and I just want listeners to like understand that like it is the lack of a times unified and clear disclosure of conflict of interest of of you know companies often times don't disclose the exact terms but when you're when you're like a crypto is one

of these things where it's like a very public you know PE people not right now might be looking at this and be like okay there's like a lot of token holders that have Sue all right well you know they need to know right like were the terms like what price like it's like a pipe like a pipe te right uh a pipe is like a when when a hedge Fone buys like a big position uh in the public markets for a company but they negotiate the price and it gets done right it gets disclosed yeah it should just be stuff like that you know 100% so that's it that the crime would be not disclosing the the payment component uh or the and and that should be that should be addressed yeah yeah um I thought Noah had a good take from

Theo Capital Founders I hope you understand the message you're sending to the market by doing these deals quote we paid Trump's Associates to Market our token so if you did that and you thought that was the best use of capital I don't think it's as bad as people say if like Santi said you tell the market that you did it so I mean people spend hundreds of millions in in sponsorships and like ultimately you can dump the token you can buy the token like that's at your discretion but I do think that you have to be at least have have knowledge and access to some sort of standard unified disclosure and everyone should have the ability to to access that information at the time it was issued in a unified

information Channel like you see public companies do this all the time in Edgar you issue an AK that's a press release you issue you know any sort of you know you issue reports you issue change of directors like Insider sales you know from tb51 plans you know like all this stuff should just kind of be communicated the beauty of it is we have a lot of this information on chain it's true that's Nuance it's not the I would love someone to challenge and I'm gonna go on line by saying this but the the crime is not so much that like suie is in their discretion to optimize their treasury if they felt that buying World Liberty or paying World Liberty what's the best use of capital it may be I don't know but they um

yeah that's not problematic what is is just maybe insinuating some things that might not be correct unfortunately the world Liberty thing is now most people think of it as like oh this is like they probably are tying it to the Strategic Reserve too like there's no surprise this came out the day before the summit and talks about the sum the Strategic Reserve yeah yeah yeah I with Zan from uh Zan oh yeah go ahead go ahead the only point I say is if this announcement happened you would hope that no one in the suie team is selling tokens right now if they are selling it's because they had agreed on a plan to sell tokens in a programmatic

way that's the whole thing right I mean it's just common sense good good call earlier in today's episode I mentioned Ledger latest products the stacks and flex and I wanted to take a few seconds to tell you more about them these wallets feature the world's first secure touchscreens which don't just simplify your digital transactions but also keep them extremely safe these wallets are virtually impenetrable to online attacks because they store your private key in a secure offline chip you can manage more than 5,500 tokens and install up to 100 apps choose the most trusted name in Hardware wallets and take control of your digital Security today at ledger.com or hit the link in the

description of today's episode to check out their latest wallets hey everyone Jason here wanted to uh just take a quick break and highlight everything that's been going on in the mantle ecosystem in just one year mantle has seen its tvl surge by over 1,100% now reaching 1.69 billion that's just such a crazy amount to think about more than 225 protocols have made mantle their home while the platform's Eco fund has invested $38.5 million in 51 p pionering projects through strategic Partnerships with bybit including MNT as collateral supporting Athena to scale and the first

ethereum L2 to integrate Ono Finance they just continue to be on the bleeding edge of l2s be sure to stay up to date with what's going on by giving them a follow on X at 0x manle special thanks to the incredible mantle team for sponsoring today's episode AO the hyper parallel computer is here a decentralized supercomputer built on top of rwe's permanent data storage AO offers infinite parallel processing and leverages web infrastructure HTTP for unprecedented scalability addressing limitations of existing blockchains AO smart contracts support large programs including llms and can execute autonomously enabling new classes of decentralized applications utilizing

tees for secure computations and features a 100% Fair token distribution to our weave holders and Bridge depositors emphasizing Community ownership thanks to rwe for making today's episode possible you can find out more by clicking the link in the show notes speaking of people who are not committing the crime and the number is not going up the ethereum foundation announced maybe they maybe maybe the EF needs some more crime or something because God damn um they announc need a things but they they don't need they um they announced the ethereum Foundation C Sila culture Society what does that word mean look up Silva culture oh made up

word all right a loose collection of individuals from outside the foundation who provide informal counsel to the EF intending to the Dark Forest in the infinite Garden of ethereum to make sure we sustain the core values of Open Source privacy security and censorship resistance the roots of the infinite G no silure is actually a real word it is the practice of did you say this the practice of controlling comp composition as well as quality of forest to meet values and needs missed that missed that one in my SAT prep Timber production I don't know silver culture silver culture all right good good knowledge the root of the wait let me keep reading this don't don't don't interrupt the EF the almighty EF the roots of the infinite

Garden are nourished by soils rich in these core values ethereum success depends on having talented and committed developers building with these values in mind and Es ethos and work always has been centered around them so let me tell you what this reminds me of the democratic party just came out with a choose your fighter commercial and uh let me just show you this 19-second video so it's

pain I sent this to I sent this to some friends who worked in the Biden Administration was like I was like it is like they never want to win again I was like this kills me and they said yeah just talking about this so brutal and this is what I thought this is what I thought when I saw the the EF thing I was like I was like who the oh let me go back to who the hell are these people like wait a minute I don't recognize anyone can can you go back maybe Matthew can you go back like how much money do you over under a million dollars created this this this ad I mean definitely over million over a million dollars in like the Committees that put this thing together you know oh so this this is like the worst it's almost like

the re like read founder mode or the Paul Graham thing like founder mode or like um only the paranoid Survive by Andy Grove or like uh uh the Ben Horwitz book that's really good they have all read those books and chose to do the exact opposite of this and so that's what I think when I see this EF announcement I'm like literally who who are these people and then I don't know if they plan this but etherealized the day after announced that they had they etherealized brought on Danny Ryan and yeah yeah I saw that so and someone else I'm for complet complete opposite like tone yeah listen man how much can you go up how much is EF spending a year

300 million 100 it's like over 100 million right I don't know the exact number but I love when you I when I love when you scroll over like these accounts and you don't follow them you're you're a very dis it's hard ladies and gentlemen if you get Yano to follow you you should be Pro wow look at this I don't follow a single one of these people oh no no no but you don't even follow the etherum foundation what a boss tell me you don't own any eth without tell you don't this is just this is just social they don't follow anyone why would I follow someone if I'm not GNA get that follow back you know I gotta get that follow for follow game God that you just sure revealed all of your personality right now which is which is good look I love you I'm I'm a

cring I'm a cringe k k influencer that is that is it by the way yeah I mean uh how much does a EF spend a year I I I mean I don't know but like this just pains me it I don't know just pains me what do you think of this I mean so sorry we're talking like platitudes but what do you think of like ethereal ethereum Foundation um like what do you think of everything that's been going on here um I think it's a good restructuring it is something that I think about a lot as it relates to as other networks smaller networks continue to grow and I think we can learn a lot about the the decentralization of a network does not NE necessarily mean

decentralization of a main organization that spearheads product and allocation of resources now the ethereum kind of had this evolution in the early days where he had consensus who Joe Lin as as what he does and I'll give him a lot of credit in full disclosure I'm an investor through Pary and consensus and I think Ben it's has a pretty big Ward seat or anyway so full disclosure but I do think that like so it was consensus and then you had the ethereum foundation and now you have these other bodies that are springing up you can imagine the same evolution of like in something like salana but I do

think it will happen Pro like I'm I'm pretty sure all the foundations are are paying attention to this because right now they're more centralized like salana is more centralized Avalanche is more centralized apto sui say all these networks even Ripple is like very centralized right and I think uh it just so happen to be this way right but if if if I were in charge of one of these foundations I would be very careful in making sure that I don't necessarily feel compelled to decentralize the product and the BD component and that I think should be very much centralized now of course like the closest to where well I think we'll get a lot of insight is like how salana progressively decentralizes especially as they have another client like fire dancer and you have like these

big fa like these big bodies within a network like you can think of like goo is like a pretty pretty big um force in the salana ecosystem you then have like other players right this that they're going to weigh into like the salon Improvement proposals right that one of them actually happened now in inflation that was proposed on multicoin so I'm paying a lot of attention to how that Evolution happens of how these networks as they grow naturally there's there's some like decentralization but ethereum is interesting because it's pulling it back now it's trying to kind of what I feel that putting the ethereum foundation the side which I think will over time become largely irrelevant I think more likely

than not someone like this etherize is the name of it yeah etherize more likely than not like someone like a theorized and consensus like band together and say all right let's uh let's bail this out like let's actually get our ducks in row um but like um you remember synthetics like Kane left and then he came back and thenal kind of has done that now and become a more like wartime founder so to speak but he he doesn't like he carries weight but anyways um I think it's it's going to be just an interesting thing to see how other blockchains as they continue to grow and um you know how does that happen and I think that we

should never if I were them I would be very cautious in in going to a place where you have all these different factions that just make it messy to really align in the vision and the allocation of resources yeah they're spending I look I don't I haven't seen the full audit I get the sense that there's a lot of wasteful spending and a lot of inefficient spending yeah and from all a lot of Foundations and I think there just needs to be more again information disclosure is a process by which we get an understanding of where people actually spend the money yeah this this is the compare uh compare this with the Ethereal

IE that's that's the dude I want running running this war time baby D Danny Ryan um Okay I uh okay some some smaller stuff from this week that I thought was interesting um uh salana activity dropped a lot in February um real uh real economic value rev down 64% month over month app revenue on salana down 56% month over month uh Dex volumes down 54% over month and stable coin Supply actually pretty flat down 2% um I thought that was interesting I thought and you can just interrupt me if you want to talk about any of this stuff I

thought Vlad had some very interesting comments um uh so I'll read this uh I'll read some of the highlighted things uh this is Vlad tenev who is the obviously the founder of Robin Hood and CEO and chairman and all that kind of stuff um he says and now I think that it's it has been a little bit of an unfair criticism of the crypto industry because the problem is we've not been allowed in the US up until now to connect crypto to real world productive assets because that's where the Securities laws come in in particular crypto bites Nature's 247 it's running on blockchain technology that doesn't close on the weekends and then skip skip ahead a little bit so you get fractionalization for free which was a complex build you get 247 trading and you imagine if this was permissible two

or three Engineers from MIT who have knowledge building these tools for example can build something like Robin Hood very very very easily and have stocks and a whole bunch of other assets available on non- custodia wallets and defi infrastructure and I think my team and I think I and I think I tell my team that should be like a scary thought to you but also a huge opportunity because we're incredibly well positioned actually to be the first to adapt this new technology to traditional assets and we should be putting private companies startups on the blockchain there's no reason why you should be able to invest in a meme coin freely as much as you want but SpaceX and open AI are too risky that doesn't make any sense so I think we'll have to fix that and I think there's huge advantages in crypto technology being the underlying

infrastructure behind all types of assets Securities and commodities other real world assets so that's one of the things we're going to be working on to make sure that the US is the leader in I I loved that I loved that quote like I think that was on their earnings call maybe um it's good to see hly when people draw ask me a when people ask me a lot about what I'm doing an inversion I reference to companies but primarily Robin Hood because vad has been extremely vocal giving us Insight um insight into what he sees from his organization as a builder and the cost efficiencies and how his business is structurally better on the crypto side than the traditional Finance side and I think he will be the one that will Usher really the that like proving and tokenizing stocks like some of these

things them in Black Rock of course like but but Robin is really interesting because it's a founder and Stripe Right but I guess and and Robin Hood are like really like founder-led organizations and Founders really get this technology and it's like they carry a lot of weight and I I wouldn't be surprised if those two companies just end up producing a ton of value because they were at the Forefront of really from where they sit really appreciating stable coins appreciating tokenization and I just think that that's really like let him cook you know and I think they they I think both of them were invited to the crypto Summit I believe yeah so that's great yeah um other things I'm thinking about uh the SEC approved a yield bearing stable coin for the first time ever um which is

which is very interesting um which one just general figure figure so Mike hagney who's run so started SOI now running figure um another thing I'm thinking about is uh investor relations in the industry so I forget who posted this but they said BD as a general Ro General role will not be as popular as it is instead IR will be focused on as people realize that investor relations Is sorely lacking and being able to do good IR goes a long way so so I disagree with the first part BD is just as Industries grow like more sales people and BD people come into those Industries but IR like a lot of these teams don't have any investor relations team and I think they're going I think that's the

next role to really emerge in crypto at these foundations and networks is uh are uh really robust investor relations and actually there are two other tweets this week that I really liked it was Cosmo um a great great Trader great investor at panta said crypto maturing and converging with standard practice in trafi protocols need to invest in investor relations ultimately token holders are your stakeholders if you don't have a compelling fundamental pitch to tell liquid funds You're Dead on Arrival and then Jason Troy said uh if your team hasn't spoken to at least a dozen liquid funds ahead of tge the token will go to zero when VC's unlock it's like boom that's awesome new role if you're like listening to this

like trying to figure out how to break into the industry like think about think about what you can do in the investor relations place and if you're listening to this you work in investor relations like B big opportunity in the industry I think uh I'm actually going to hire someone that has this really good expertise I mean they're they're going to do a lot of things but this is one area that I hard like I like the fact that she had this particular expertise nice um give us a quick uh inversion update then we can we can call it uh what to say uh I'm hiring so it's been really encouraging to see just people that I never thought would want to work because they were either doing

something really cool or just have done a lot but it's been really inspiring honestly uh I would highly encourage anyone that is on the fence of building to take the leap because if you have a really clear Mission I think people it's amazing to see people very competent people like align and buy into your mission and I mean you probably seen it block worksite how many people do you guys employ now 80 to 85 maybe is that like one of the most rewarding if not the most rewarding thing 80 people believe in the crazy thing that Mike and I had day won in a foldable chair uh you know in our apartment in New York it's crazy yeah it's crazy that's so I'm spending most

of my time hiring right now um and so we're going to be in Das there's going to be an event uh so uh yeah there's going to be a lot of updates uh continue to a lot of work on the Playbook and the thinking about acquiring uh really proving out the Playbook I think the next 12 month for us are super important to to take a traditional business transform it with our Playbook prove out how crypto rails can meaningfully transform a business in the same way that kind of Robin hoods doing it in their own way and then like bringing those users on chain to our chain yeah it's a you I'm building in the open very intentionally there's a ton of podcasts I don't want to bore you uh with details but I'm going to continue to go on that um to really just I hope that like by

doing this other people do it as well uh a lot of people ask me what's the mode here I'm like honestly the mode is just like opening it's so much of like I would love that for 10 private Equity Funds and pretty much a lot of people all over the world start realizing this and you know do it in other Industries do it in their own way ultimately if we get to a billion users on chain if you build a really good product like you believe people are going to use it and and that for me is um I spent I was very intentional it took me a bit of time to formalize the mission but now that I've been saying it over and over in these podcasts and with people investors Partners um you know it it I feel like we've hit that point where everyone

understands it both people that are we're hiring people that we're working with and it's just it's just I don't know maybe you felt that a block worked at some point right did you guys as an events company and then like was there like maybe a year in when you said but I think like you maybe felt this like it multiple times in the evolution of the company because you've launched out data you've like you're just doing things but like the mission is still very much pretty much the same right of day one which is there is a media Empire here for an industry that will continue to grow we're just going to go the mission has remained the same since and the belief since day one but the tactics to get there change on a year year bye basis so that's right um awesome folks

well it is Friday when you're listening to this maybe it's Saturday were increasing D ticket prices on I think Saturday so get your tickets we have code Empire 10 uh we just had our first like really blowout day basically like the the the last two weeks before an event are so stressful because all the tickets come in right there so you never really know if it's gonna be good or not until the LA and we just had our first massively blowout day and we're recording this on Thursday so um yeah get your ticket Empire 10 and then um Santi and I are uh hiring we're hiring a senior producer so we've had two producers come through here the first was Garrett um Garrett was our first producer Cole DM on Twitter he's now head of BD at squads he was phenomenal

um light speed pod which was he went from Empire producer to he then created the light speed podcast was the a host there and then he went to go become head of BD at squads and then uh our last one was Joseph Joseph is retired on an island off of his mem coin gains and now we're under the third so it's a cool career opportunity get to work directly with Santi and me um and yeah we'd love to work with you we we've been at it for so many years and and I think you get inside access to some of the smartest people that are building and investing in the space and so as a producer you get to see you have a front row seat in that and helping us uh I mean be I I wouldn't be as articulate or thoughtful if it weren't for the great notes that

our producers put together and helping line up the guest and a l making it all of that happen we get to sit on a chair but there's so much that happens behind the scenes and it's re I think it's a great um we call like a springboard right we were going to have like 10 producers over the next 10 years all those producers gonna go and build greater things 100% we'll just be stuck sitting in the chair all right content for the week I will leave you with this I am looking at my feed and Tucker Carlson just released a podcast with a grimy grimy looking Sam bankman freed and that's our que to that's our Q that's the Pod thanks everybody everyone listening uh we'll be back here next week have a good weekend [Music]