Trump Keeps Delivering on Crypto Promises | Roundup

Transcript

I I tend to find that crypto like reacts like very much like on this news of like like a little kid that didn't get 90 like 100% of what it wanted it's like hold on wait a minute let's backtrack here you have an order that says that they're considering a stockpile they've got they've got the ice cream they've got the hot fudge they've got the whipped cream they got the sprinkles they got they got everything in there and they're bitching that they didn't have a cherry on top today's episode is sponsored by geod net they're leading dpin protocol that's providing critical location and spatial intelligence Services needed for AI driven robots and drones discover how the Network's native token geod is powering the next wave of the robotics Revolution by hitting the

link in the description of today's episode today's episode is brought to you by unich Chain an upcoming layer 2 that's purpose built for the next generation of defi applications with up to 95% lower fees than ethereum and 250 millisecond block times coming soon after launch unich chain is designing the future of cross-chain liquidity stay ahead of the launch by visiting unich chain. org and giving unich chain a follow on X hey everyone Jason here there's a reason why Ledger is trusted to secure more than 20% of the world's crypto assets today check out their newest devices The Ledger stacks and The Ledger Flex featuring the world's first

secure touchscreens take your security seriously hit the the link in the show notes of today's episode to check out their latest devices trust me you won't regret it and we are live what's up folks Santi how are the slopes amazing just snowed we can only go out half the day but my God you know there's no friends on Powder day it was it was good so you just have no clue what's happening in crypto right now I have no clue I just come back to the real world and uh we did we did to be fair record like earlier today and then we had to interrupt it and Yano just informed me that things have changed as of this morning so um you will be seeing the things have changed things have changed

yeah things have changed things have changed my guy okay all right yeah we did we actually recorded like a good 20 minute segment Santi just I made sure to wear like the same thing so that I know you are wearing the same I not I did notice that I mean someone someone has commented before is like the guy wears the same sweaters over and over I'm like this is a new one though I like this one thank you wife yeah it's good logo all right I haven't gotten the blockworks merch we sent I we sent it to you I'm gonna go pick it up in New York in two weeks all right nice all right it's my promise to you nice how are you gonna uh how much time do you think you'll spend in New York yeah like uh a week every month or so nice yeah I miss

you too much man there you go there you go our um the fun news for you I haven't even told you this we're buil we uh we we're almost done building this really sick in-person Studio a full podcast Studio at our office yeah in that back room where like the poker games the bank sits back there that is turning into a um uh a full studio with like two two two really nice video cameras mics we can do inperson recordings oh nice be there yeah um all right what's going on in crypto should we rerun the first 15 minutes of our segment and then do the and then get into it here do I do actually want to I I thought what we talked about last time was important so it's been an insane week like there

there's so much to talk about we could do a full segment on most of these topics um probably one of the crazier weeks I've seen in in my several years in crypto and I would guess yours too uh so ethereum Foundation stuff is has has been crazy right the the big eth Maxis were dropping their do eths we talked about this a little bit on the um on the Trump coin recording but it got crazier this week right everyone's putting out proposals for how the ethereum foundation should improve and um a second ethereum Foundation launched that um I think it was lashuk launched ittin from Li yeah yeah constant validator yeah launched it um uh Justin son is weighing in on how to improve it um and then the it kind of

culminated in the launch of this thing called ethereal lie which we can talk about if we want um which is like this institutional BD arm of ethereum so that happened uh the number of ETFs launching are actually getting filed grew drastically Hester Pierce uh kind of crypto mom took over this uh Task Force at the SEC Circle made an acquisition of hash note um Larry Frink uh and the Bank of America CEO had some bullish crypto takes uh the founder of Vine and HQ trivia launched Vine coin World Liberty is buying a bunch of crypto iPhone apps top 10 I think seven of them are crypto apps um a lot of progress on strategic Bitcoin Reserve uh lumus Trump made some announcements

um Sab 121 I just saw this right before we hit record it's like 7 o'clock on Thursday night just got repealed I think so Banks can now custody crypto um but the thing I actually want to start with is um so anyways are you caught up there's your news of the week you feel good very much so I'm looking at the interestingly as you were saying all that I'm looking at prices and you would think that there' be more movement there it's actually a lot of it is down so um I actually did want to just highlight what I thought was one of the cooler things this week that I didn't just mention which um I will pull this up right now which is um Ross Alber got got freed so Ross Alber got got pardoned um and for

those who don't know who who Ross is so this is just a great picture of him hugging his uh I think this is his wife his his mom and uh his dad and his sister uh just definitely pretty emotional pictures here so Ross Ross is um Ross is the founder of this thing called Silk Road which I'm sure some people have used most have heard of and maybe some of you don't know but just to like just a reminder like he launched this thing called Silk Road in 2011 at one point in time he was responsible for 90% of all the Bitcoin transactions um it was doing I think it was doing like 25 million a year in sales they only accepted Bitcoin was the thing so uh they had all these different things that they offered right and I'll I'll I'll share a picture of this um

so if you if you see right here uh they had all these different things that that you could buy on Silk Road so you could buy right uh computer equipment and and all this kind of different stuff um books apparel but everybody knew the Silk Road for buying drugs so because of that people came after uh people came after Ross right and the folks who came after Ross unfortunately was basically every government agency in the world came after Ross and uh that kind of culminated in I'll share this one more time put it back up on the screen because it's a lovely picture that culminated in uh them taking Ross's Bitcoin right he had 144,000 Bitcoin he was one of the largest holders of Bitcoin in the whole network um but not only did they take the Bitcoin he was

sentenced to a 2X uh two two 2x life sentence two life sentences and 40 years no parole basically a death sentence um US Government auctioned off his Bitcoin that was a big deal went kind of mainstream um DEA agents stole 80,000 Bitcoin from from Ross they were like these really scummy DEA agents anyways crazy story um just very good feel-good story um and it was uh it's the start of this I think this episode should be titled president Trump follows through on his crypto things that he's on on his you know crypto actions right you've got repealing Sab 121 uh no no cbdc um and pardoning Ross so I don't know I don't

know if you have you ever met Ross I don't know I just thought this was a fun feel-good story to start with but no absolutely I mean it's um it's amazing to see uh obviously uh what is also really good was Trump's tweet um of acknowledging the support that he'd received from from the community and um you know making a comment around the same um you know hostility that he receed was the same that you know ra the same sort of treatment that Ross got and I don't know it was just really good to see obviously Trump continues to execute on on his promises and that's very encouraging yeah all right getting into the news um outside of Ross so uh this was big right Senator lumus um who has kind of been

the I think she's the one who proposed the this thing called the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that has become uh kind of the Talk of the Town right now when we were recording I think there was 30% odds on poly Market that an spr happened I was saying I think it's more like 70% 80% and we had to re-record this thing because well since then um Trump has come out with an executive order which we'll talk about in a second but lumus very important importantly lumus uh became is now chairing it got announced that she is chairing the Senate sub Banking Committee the Senate banking subcommittee on digital assets um she like I said pushed for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve she was also very uh helpful in pushing regulatory Clarity

with um kind of thoughtful legislation um instead of just like you know regulation by enforcement and she was also very uh influential I would say in exposing operation chokepoint 2.0 so very important uh appointment here of lumus the reason it's important and I think we'll just you know we don't have to uh bury the lead here let's pull up let's pull up Trump's this Trump tweet uh okay this is the uh White House strengthening American leadership in digital Financial technology so Trump signed this executive order everybody right out of the gate thought it was a strategic Bitcoin Reserve right this was the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve this is it we got it things start pumping uh

everyone's going crazy it turns out it is um it is not the Strategic Bitcoin reserve it is the language that they used is uh is a stockpile so I think we can probably here so the working group shall evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile have you seen this yet or were you on the slopes no you're on the slopes so basically they announced this executive order um National digital asset stockpile and proposed criteria for establishing such a stockpile potentially derived from crypto lawfully seized by the federal government all right what is important about this it's important that it says the word stockpile and doesn't say the words

reserve and it's also important that it says the word crypto currencies doesn't say the word Bitcoin and it's also important that it's assets that are seized not assets they're buying right so those are my three takes so in in my mind what this basically says is the US government sitting on a bunch of Bitcoin they're not going to sell it and not only Bitcoin I think it's basically Bitcoin eth bunch of stable coins like tether and usdc and some BNB I'm pretty sure um they're not actually this is not the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve unfortunately uh do you think it's like I mean obviously the odds and P Market are down like 19 or down from 37 to 19 the market resolves in April um is it are the odds down because of the

interpretation of that um because I think the the the specifics of the market itself were such that um I believe it excluded seized uh Bitcoin or currencies it it had to be a purchase here I'm trying to pull it up um yeah so Will trump create so I think what are you talking about this one will Trump create a Bitcoin days okay so the US government confiscating Bitcoin does not count as holding Bitcoin Reserve so for that reason I think the odds are down I mean this should be like zero right yeah so my take on this is that I I still strongly believe we're getting a strategic Bitcoin Reserve I really still

strong I know the odds are down to 19% on poly Market but the the key thing here is in the first 100 days so I think the reason I was bringing up lumus lumus is super important to this because I think this is about as far as Trump is going to go with this executive order I don't think we're going to get a trump executive order to launch a strategic Bitcoin Reserve but I do think we'll still get a strategic Bitcoin Reserve how that will get pushed through is through the reconciliation bill so I think what will happen the rec reconciliation bill is kind of this like I don't know the right word to put it but um way to put it it's kind of like this um Christmas bill it's like a Christmas tree where everyone's got their own uh I'm I'm Jewish this is this analogy is

going to break down quickly what are the things you hang on Christmas trees dude I mean dude you got to know this I'm also je partly Jewish you're partly Jewish yeah wow my guy welcome to the tribe shalom shalom what no no no no okay okay Santi we got I mean dude I don't know what people put on Christmas trees like stockings no what are um no stockings are on the fireplace no they're they're like little I don't know the things you know oh my God why does this even matter it's part of it's part of my story it's part of my story the analogy is not gonna make sense We're Not Gonna edit this Joseph we will not edit this the everyone knows except for ready

to have a family except for you and me what we're talking about everyone else knows what we're talking about so anyways the reconciliation bill is this Christmas tree Bill where everyone kind of P pushes through their own little thing it's like uh any see the story doesn't work without it anyways reconciliation bill I think we'll get the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve uh they need all of that's why lumus is tweeting things out like hey reach across the aisle get the you know be friends with the Dems because I think all the Republicans will probably vote for the reconciliation bill they still need they need every Republican they probably need some Democrats to vote for this thing too I haven't done the actual I don't I I I really don't know too much about the reconciliation bill but from what I've heard from several folks that's how this

thing's going to get through now there was a pretty interesting tweet from uh Pierre Rashard who you don't hear much from these days but he tweeted out um here do you know do you uh do you know what I'm talking about here we go listen um this is about Ripple so Pierre tweeted out the biggest obstacle for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is not the fed the treasury the banks or Elizabeth Warren it is Ripple xrp they're aggressively lobbying against the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve by throwing around Millions at politicians desperately trying to derail it so this is a very um over-the-top kind of attack at Ripple I would say there is um uh

Brad actually Brad garlinghouse actually commented on it there is a little bit of Truth and it's there's there's falsities and and there's truths to this so the it's it's not true that Ripple is lobbying against the spr and and and trying to basically like Ripple would Ben benefit from the spr but they what I have heard behind the scenes is that they are strongly lobbying to make this a strategic crypto reserve and not a Bitcoin Reserve so let's start to maybe right because obviously they want Ripple included in this thing they don't want it to just be Bitcoin so yeah if you start to the reason I'm bringing this up you start to piece together some of these things so right let's go back to this so they said

a digital asset stockpile not a Bitcoin stockpile they're going to buy a basket of of of currencies and you know then you have to wonder is it going to map to what world Liberty is buying and and or are they going to be us-based coins um and you know well one has to wonder David Sachs was you know an LP and multicoin and you know does that have any waiting into how the basket is composed I got to believe that yes and while we are recording prices are down so yeah make make whatever it is that you want to make out of it but the Market is um acting quite irrational here I think overly I don't know I I tend to find that crypto like reacts like very much like on this news

of like like a little kid that didn't get 90 like 100% of what it wanted it's like hold on wait a minute let's backtrack here you have an order that says that they're considering a stockpile two weeks ago we were thinking about like the man Market panicking we recorded that great episode with um what is it the alet reality guys yeah talking about seizure and forfeiture and the market was puking because everyone was so worried that you know the government was going to sell the Bitcoin now you have an order here executive order says they're not going to sell it so the market should be equally reacting positiv to that yet it's not because you didn't get exactly is so that is so well said s it is like it is like make money crypto just FOC the kid just got you just gave the kid an ice cream sunday

right you gave the kid ice cream sunday they've got they've got the ice cream they've got the hot fudge they've got the whipped cream they got the sprinkles they got they got everything in there and they're bitching that they didn't have a cherry on top that you you all you want you know what I'm doing on chain like for me it's like this is the temporary moments of irrationality that this Market is just like it's difficult to understand and everyone might say wait a minute dude it's been priced in like everyone thought that it was going to happen and you know there was a huge rally before you know from November till now bitcoin's still roughly at 100 ethereum's at 33k it's B basically a stable coin Solana's G up a bit because obviously everything that's transpired I mean it just crossed two what is it 200 billion

of volume like it's bananas and Trump deployed a mcoin there but Mar like the Market's just like really this like very finicky temperamental kid and it has been for a while but like it's just important to like zoom out if you were to ask anyone in crypto if how would they respond to everything that's happened over the last 10 days they would have been like I would like mortgage my house sell a kidney and go gigal like none of this is financial advice but that's what most people would say and that's true and yet now you're seeing this like noise in the market um and you know people are overly

analytical quote unquote around you know Trump shouldn't have launched meme coin and you know it's not the right thing to do and you know uh all these little things so it's just a reminder that zoom out focus on the overall trend and there was a lot of signal and things that also are really overlooked during these chaotic times right uh like sa what is it 121 being repealed right 121 like I mean I mean there's massive massive massive right Larry f tweeted and and I quoting this from Walter Bloomberg he says Black Rock CEO Larry fin says I want the SEC to rapidly approve the

tokenization of bonds and stocks like you mean like you now have by the way over the last couple days salana reach volumes that are not that far away from what the NASDAQ does and you saw the entire salana Dev Community come together and what I think was pretty much a Flawless processing of this massive spike in interest in usage you had top to bottom like just from wallets like moonshot phantom too like everything was just very positive and yet you know the Market's really noisy

but yeah you're going to play this video yeah I mean I I don't even know if I can I I don't have the technical prowess to play the video while we're on the podcast but the there's a three minute clip from uh from DAV it was Davos we or week whatever you want to call it and I feel like honestly people at this point go to Davos to have this classic interview with Andrew rorin in the snow like you don't go to Davos or anything else than this interview Davos is kind of dead really Davos is dead but anyways Larry fing said I want the SEC to rapidly approve the tokenization of bonds and stocks also um by the way can we can we also acknowledge the order the executive order that you just brought up there is and I'm seeing a tweet from Stan shout out to S you should maybe

come back on section one purposes and policies Clause I it references something that is um I will quote there we go protecting and promoting the ability of individual citizens and private sector entities um to access and use for lawful purposes open public blockchain networks without persecution including the ability to develop and deploy software that you know think about tornado and all the these you know like deployment software to participate in minting and validating to transact with other persons without unlawful censorship and to maintain self- custody of digital

assets stupidly but American defi that like you could you could I mean forget about American de I mean it's just like like this is incredibly powerful like go go listen to all the regulatory episodes with Jake and Rebecca I don't know how else to put it folks yeah the the the um I'm G use like the the hands you know like I put it the but you mean like uh I don't also this you also have to just toose like pull up Mike dudes' tweets because also this commissioner Pierce we've loved this person she's been the only not to mention she's now at the SEC the only Pro commissioner SEC

commissioner we've had for years she really gets crypto more than everyone else she's now leading the sec's new crypto task force like it does it doesn't get better than this folks listen yeah but there's um to jaapos that can we also talk about I mean I you want pull what did duus do you want me to pull duus this thing he's just been documenting his experience with coinbase and then like contrasting it with Kraken um it's just and we should like pull up a balance take and there's also like a response from like M because used to work coinbase and then and then like Brian armston comes out you talking about coinbase not supporting salana it's just been like a bit underwhelm not not only that but it's just like that plus also like the

new policies that went into effect of R send in money on chain like this traveling rule kind of thing I didn't see this I yeah there's been a lot of um you know coinbase has gotten it on the chin recently across a number of fronts um but can I tell you can I tell you my take on this though this this is every bull market they take it on the chin and then in the bare markets people love coinbase but we advocated here I I'm a I think for a while and and still coinbase doesn't get enough credibility for the entire amount of support that they've done top to bottom you know how much bull bullish I am on it but it's worth noting that like people haven't had like the experience that you used to having

with Solana like supporting Solana and I don't want to read too much into it but it's just a fact right I mean for what like you can't send usdc on Solana like through coinbase Prime like for yeah that I I would guess Brian tweeted I I would guess that gets fixed I think this will I I think this is a uh you got to believe like how much money are they living on the table I mean I don't know they've got base like I I I would I would guess there's a I think they'll fix this I don't I think this is a nonissue the the the the thing that dudas if you guys are viewing it um he mentions that he can't send he screenshots this he can't send crypto um to to self-hosted wallets

right it's basically what's happening I wonder if you go back to what just we just referenced in the executive order you know that's I would interpret it as something that would you know allow now to continue to do it yeah yeah Pro hopefully probably like the right to self custody yeah by the way here's what Brian said we have the salon of backlog triage and transactions should generate quickly if your transaction got canceled you can retry apologies for the trouble it's clear we need to step up our game on salana scale the infra and provide native support for common use cases like Dex mcoin trading our goal is to provide tier one support for salana with the same level of support as Bitcoin Ethan base uh which also saw delays recently due to large surges okay let me let me take it away from coinbase for a second

I because you're you're a big uh you know I know you're an angel in a lot of kind of the OG defi players um defi has not gotten too much attention in since I left Pari since you left Pari in the last couple of years um what do you think the impact of all this is on defi as a sector what what are you eating you were eating the exact same thing last time it's a collagen iced coffee thing folks I'm getting older my birthday was recently um your birthday foreverone wonder what my zodiac sign is it's Aquarius wow but you already but you already knew that by now by the way have you seen have you seen that Meme where it's like they're

dating it's like love Island and and and the girl is like so what do you do for a living the guy says I'm an astrophysicist and she's like okay I'm a Gemini for sake okay anyways uh I'm getting older wow Aquarius and Pisces special connection it appears are you a Pisces let's go yeah Aquarius Forward Thinking and optimistic there we go are we really turning into a um Do You Remember do you remember Marin the last cycle I was literally just thinking about we almost launched a podcast with Marin that show would have ripped yeah well there's an interesting thing evolution of

that geod net is a firstof its- kind dpin protocol that's revolutionizing satellite navigation Services they're actively generating onchain Revenue that's growing 500% year-over-year by providing Precision location services that are 100 times more accurate than standard GPS on Empire we always talk about finding how crypto can power completely new business models and they're a perfect example of this they're already trusted by over 30 Enterprise customers across Industries including Automotive agriculture construction and even robotics the network is powered by its native token G EOD and easily mined with their

satellite Miner by setting up a base station you can get involved with this uh groundbreaking web 3 ecosystem learn more by heading over to geod net.com or just by hitting the link in the description of today's episode today's episode is brought to you by uni chain an upcoming layer 2 Solution that's changing defi forever it's built with a vision to be the home for cross chain liquidity and defi Innovation as part of the optimism super chain uni chain brings you up to 95% cheaper trans actions than ethereum's base layer as well as near instant finality with 250 millisecond block times coming shortly after main net launch to make things even better seamless cross-chain

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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 what happens to defi I mean there's Trump is basic I mean American defi is back on the table I mean world Liberty's buying like a and a bunch of defi coins right yeah yeah um here's my take uh I want to zoom out I had a tweet about this the other day the biggest problem crypto has is just the go to

market problem uh obviously defi is incredible infrastructure that's there but like I just had another portfolio company that clo shop and for the same reason that nine out of 10 of clo shop which is we built something and users didn't show up and a lot of them did like you know it's good Tech it's just I just think that like defi there's only like very limited people on defi like onchain you know Super Active farming strategies and whatever we need to grow the number of users daily active users by like 10x this cycle like we don't have 10 years we have like four years to really figure

this out and I think in my conversations with everyone in the like as many people in the industry they're like well we're trying to convince businesses but they don't really care and you're like okay fine regulations clearing up maybe they do now well like def should always be invisible the best tech is invisible I think that's like the end state for crypto where you you're supporting a lot of uses use cases and services and they're just powered by decentralized infrastructure uh decentralized open protocols but I think we're just at a point where we need to like how do we expand the pie and like we're we're still facing resistance from businesses that's like a slow a maybe you can weigh in here but like when when you pitch to normal businesses about like you know

advertising or or whatever or selling the research stuff maybe there's some uptick but it's still like it takes a lot of time to convince people to use this thing so I don't know I just think that like the the bullish case for defi is it's incredible infrastructure it's very battle tested it is amazing to offer yield opportunities like blur like fintech you're already seeing new back you're seeing Robin Hood there's like all the breadcrumbs are there you know it's going to work I mean it's working the the real thing that we the opportunity and the challenge is like how do we can like bring more and more users on chain no one likes to think about their bank account or recursively

leveraging usdc across all these different protocols um but but you know Defi and other crypto Protocols are not really going to break out including deep in unless we grow the US base like by an order magnitude and uh you know you know how I feel about that but that's that's the biggest problem we have it's a go to market problem it's not Tech it's not composability none of that it's like get users on chain and lead with a stable coin everyone in the world wants a tokenized dollar we're not growing that meaningfully what is the I feel like are

you so I understand the problem what is the solution in your mind you know what the solution is like I mean here I'll give you one solution I'll give you the stats on one solution which is I know not what you were getting at actually but uh here here's some stats 50% of trump Melania holders had never bought a salana altcoin before altcoin meaning just not a stable coin or not Soul 47% of buyers created their wallets the same day they purchased the token obviously that's not all new users right like I I'm guessing you like I I created a new wallet to buy um and then 83% of holders own less than $1,000 of Salon assets so one way to onboard people is to give them an

opportunity to make money the other way is yeah that's always been the case and like there's only so many people and it's very self-referential and reflexive so you really so you think I mean I had this prediction at the beginning of the year crypto native companies will start buying traditional businesses I'm guessing that's what you're you're getting into yeah that's what I'm going to do yeah like I mean not we get can we get an update on inversion or yeah sure I mean it's uh I've uh I guess where to start I'm actively looking at one asset that has um if I buy it it has it will make me the

largest protocol by number of users um like there's only 30 to 60 million active users this business has more than 20 million users just one business single shot now how many of them are going to use stable coins and how many of them I'm going to convert I don't know I think a lot it's a business that is based in Latin America it's it's that user base doesn't know it yet but will love stable coins and I think the the comp here is like newbank which I think is like a company that people should pay attention to they started as a fintech in Brazil Brazilian demographics like super young um you know relatively young user base like

digitally Savvy they got a ton of success and then they launched a their own mobile service as an mbno an mbno means just a mobile carrier without like physical infrastructure um and now they're offering usdc and the stats there are crazy I mean it's it's they getting all this uptake they have so new bank's like a really good case study here of of how more and more companies might start leveraging and getting their user base in a crypto because it helps them retain that user base it helps them capture more wallet share and monetize that user base right if you're a new bank you all of a sudden you know are probably

retaining that user base far more than the competitor because you're offering them the ability to hold dollars and and you know capture yield and that's super compelling right and I think if if you're a fintech or neobank and you're you best believe that revolute and all the other Neo banks are paying attention to what new bank is doing um so anyways all this to say is like I think there's like really encouraging signs of like traditional businesses um you know paying attention and to to stable coins um but I think it's still going to take naturally time there is so what I'm looking to do is I'm looking at at I think that the the lines between mobile and ftic are

blurring people should go listen to the episode with Jambo which is kind of running this Playbook of like getting a lot of phones in the hands of people in Africa and then like activating them on chain I think they've sold over 700,000 mobile devices they're selling them at a pretty attractive price point and then they really are not interested in making money in the hardware they're making money on other services right and the software which is that Playbook so not to give too much details I'm like I'm very much focused um it uh it will uh I want to run it as birkshire Hathaway kind of is my mental model which is I never want to sell these businesses actually and so it's not not like a private Equity Fund it's more of like a

a Burkshire construct um but yeah like my goal I want to become and I want to on board um more than 100 million users like that's like and I want to become the largest ftic and mobile carrier in Latin America all right godp speed sir yeah that's like the long update if if Empire listeners want to invest are you taking small checks or are you just doing I are you are you raising are you um or we can punt this to another conversation too but I'm curious I can't solicit um but I think there are look I'm paying a lot of attention to Echo and what's happening there Wow Wow Let's Go you heard it here first big raise on Echo look I mean it's there's a great

pull up pull up Kobe's tweet recently I think there was a note by JP Morgan that like I don't know if it's I don't want to say but Kobe had a good tweet um about JP Morgan like alluding to like the the investing landscape in crypto changing because of um yeah there we go wow did did they actually that is I don't know that yeah JP Mor the quote of KOB like what JP Morgan predicts crypto VC funding will fall short but I think he mentions something like no what oh here it is uh you know how much pains me to share the blocks page killing me killing I'm sorry sir yeah there we go there we go there go according to the quotquot another oh wait what are you doing another factor that could impact the

growth of Crypt BC funding this year is a rise of community-driven fundraising platforms like Echo uh crypto projects increasingly avoid large token sales to VCS due to concerns over control and Regulatory risks the analyst warn that this shift could make it harder for TR she deals with promising that's amazing that's amazing that's amazing shout out to Kobe I mean amazing track I mean Mega E you have all these different projects now launching there really great to see um yeah so honestly like obviously I'm paying attention to that my my yeah yeah that's all I'll say there you go let's talk ethereum foundation so specifically um kous I mean I think people know the ethereum foundation drama which is people are really mad at the ethereum foundation for sucking and

they wanted to get better and the eth people well let's put some context right they're spending like $18 million a year yeah we just we talked about it a little bit on the on the Trump um Roundup so we don't even spend too much time on it b b basically tldr people are really mad at ethereum Foundation because eth has turned into a stable coin and ethereum Foundation spending like over 100 million a year you know annually and people are like what the hell are you doing and so everyone's really mad at it uh I don't know if this was timed or what what the deal was but this thing called etherealized launched on uh the 22nd which is Wednesday so introducing ethereal lie an Institutional marketing and product arm for the ethereum ecosystem our goal to accelerate

adoption by bringing institutions to ethereum the digital economy of tomorrow all roads flow through eth will show the world why um so actually just to skim this ethereal is a hub for Content um they built this dashboard out looks pretty good eth needs more apps eth is ethereal Li is working with Wall Street to make that happen is this is this Constantine thing no the con is the new is the New Foundation this is actually run by this guy um actually I'm not going to show my DMs um yeah uh is run by this guy VC who's here let let me go to a different page and find my DMs um this guy VC Raman um he is an X Wall Street high yield credit

Trader who's at Morgan Stanley UBS nura Yale I've been chatting with him a little bit today seems like a really sharp guy actually and um never talked to him but yeah yeah I um I like it this is this is my quick take first off anything that we can do for anything that ethereum can do uh to change the narrative around it a New Foundation a BD and marketing arm I'm for it they wait wait a minute is this another consensus like like where's consensus in all this okay so that was the that was the meme that was kind of the meme is is uh hey guys already is we already had this it was called consensus they spent

hundreds of millions we had they literally I think consensus right now manages the JP Morgan blockchain um yeah the what it was quorum quorum I think that move the the fork of yeah the fork um well this this is what I said I mean I I think I tweeted this about a year ago I was like the only thing ethereum has going for it right now is that they are the chain that institutions are really comfortable with because it's got and no right yes yes and no because like now increasingly like black or's like exploring other chains but I hear you they're exploring chains on a the anyways this is what I this is what I've been saying I don't think ethereum should explore should should lean into like money we are money and like we're

the most decentralized like I don't think anyone gives a about that I don't I I just don't ethereum is for institutions that narrative has always made sense to me and I thought they should have capitalized on this narrative a long time ago I don't think it's too late I think okay so yeah what do you think happens like I I think like if you're if you're in the room right and you're this guy what's his name I can almost imagine Vic going into these institutions saying listen guys we're the most legitimate we are by Mar cap and we are the only other crypto project has an ETF that's like probably what he's going to lead with right and he's going to spit out a bunch of metrics which is fine but like he's probably gonna say look we're

the only ETF there's a reason for that uh my question to you is in a world where we have uh more ETFs you just alluded to the fact that there's like increasingly like the the surge in ETF filings say we have more ET the the probability of a salon ETF just spiked because David saxs is you know there what do you think happens to this whole narrative around ethereum is for institutions by the way so on ETF approved in 2025 89% wow interesting everyone thought it was an idiot when I said that obviously I didn't have insight into like I'm obviously surprised of like Dave you know Zach's appointment whatever but

like remember I like a year ago I was like some's going to have an ETF and every was like there's no Futures all this crap you know like all these folks I'm like okay fine sure and you know I know more likely not we're gonna have an ETF not only of Solana we're gonna have an ETF of probably Ripple and other Dogecoin and all this stuff um okay so what do I think he says I I don't I don't know what he says but here's what I do know you've got um you've got Saar right Saar is building abstract I think abstract is one of the coolest thing coolest l2s on ethereum right now really consumer focused whatever they've got the pudgy Penguins connection and he's like look you should follow them by the way do I what you should follow them I do follow

him no no you're not you don't follow abstract hit that follow button why why would I I don't follow the chain oh I follow the people behind the chainn snap I'm getting no airdrop confirmed getting no airdrop definely not W denied denied from that one comment um canel basically uh I think ethereum is uh okay so I remember remember the cosmos episode we did like three years ago the first ever caki and Jack and Jackie and yeah I think that was probably three years ago now maybe two years ago

probably no I think probably three and they were like look you don't need to be a D team a protocol an L1 and L2 doesn't need a BD team the tech just needs to be good enough and by the way on that point go to zaki's profile right now okay please I'm scared of what I'm gonna find please no this oh oh there we go he said here's the thing change of tune obviously I'm tuning my horn here but he references my tweet he said says go to market is the hardest part of crypto for some reason I keep doing them the mistake that I alluded to and it was just interest it's interesting because he you know two years ago was saying we don't need a BD team and he's coming to the realization again that like you actually do like you need to have an

army of people evangelizing this stuff it's really hard oh yeah yeah okay so uh yeah yeah okay so Co so Cosmos on that episode they're saying you don't need a you don't need um a BD team or sales team you don't need people to handle the inbound because the tech and the doc should be good enough you don't need to handle the outbound because word of math is good enough that is a I thought from day one that was a horrible strategy and that's what I think um this guy vac and etherealized can can maybe help with even if you only improve it 10% and the reason I like that is because of saar's tweet which is insane to me no one from the ethereum foundation has ever reached out to me or anyone on abstract for context that would be like someone like Mo most institutions buy

like I don't know three five seats to blockworks research that would be like someone coming along buying like 300 seats like JP Morgan signs up for blockworks research they buy 300 seats and no one from block Works ever says hey guys you want to do onboarding can we help you do you want to train like Kane had this similar tweet like he was like Hey like we hav defi is like dead in the ethereum foundation's road map like we there's no funding there there's no interest it's like all p in the skyp you know use case is vitalic actually in his recent tweet alluded to the the fact that they're going to give defi more love and it's like we hear you guys which it's interesting like galvanization and like change of tune I think vitalics AR War mode again I guess um but but here's the

other thing like in in my journey of like evaluating a lot of tech as I think about like launching a chain for inversion like I've I've talked to a lot of teams in crypto and I will say like I'm I'm of the mind like we talked about this in the other episode like you have to run like like product should be centralized like decision- making like the teams that run that like salana Avalanche like they're more agile there's like one organization you go to you can get a grant you can talk to them the support that you can get is you know really strong and that's because like it's just it's just one organization in ethereum you have just more factions right it's it's just very you have the

ethereum foundation you have consensus you have like all these different units like l2s right and and like the fragmentation is something that you know ethereum's just the farther along as a protocol that this happens right and so you're left wondering what is it what is are all the other large l1's going to go in this similar Direction and face this similar problem which is you have more clients right you have fire dancer now you like you have like what's going to happen to salana is it is it going to retain its like centralization a product and as an entity you can go to right to get support if you're like PayPal and want to launch a stable coin on salana

you you go to the foundation or you go to salana Labs like there's support there you know I mean like I think that's like super important when people like I hope that like the The Clarity on our regulation allows us to like not like push decentralization for the sake of decentralization to like just for like for reasons that to protect yourself and you could like you could obviously like have security and decentralization and other parameters but like I still think that the product decision should be quite centralized because it like we're still very early in crypto and you never want to be in a position like where you know you can't to get stuff past

ethereum it's like this this quite challenging right and so the ability to move fast the ability to Pivot to adjust to market conditions to you know for institutions it matters right like if if you're a a a JP Morgan or whatever who's who's who at Black Rock Robbie or whoever is at the helm there who do they talk to in the in in in the ethereum ecosystem I bet it's like far easier for them to go talk to someone in salana like you know what I mean like or Avalanche like they have like very dedicated very buttoned up BD teams yeah so anyways that's why I think ethereal I

don't know if it works or not that's why I think ethereal like you go talk to ethereal Li and does Vic have any weight I think they I mean if the ethereum foundation was smart they would give this guy weight yeah but yeah good all right pivot actually last question on this eth has it bottomed as as an asset sentiment I would I feel confident saying sentiment for eth has bottomed has eth has the price bottomed why should it be worth what is it worth 400 billion I don't know it's it's like 400 billion H yeah actually here's a better question

what do you think Soul eth ends at it's at 30 36 what is it [Music] soul7 can we go yeah uh I'd like to think of it as a percentage of market cap yeah there you go yeah was 02 03 give or take do you hit 0.1 this cycle yeah oh yeah yeah yeah I I mean look I mean obviously I was very aggressive in my prediction a year a year ago that Soul would flip e um you know it's flipp on a number of metrics Capital efficiency activity

users like um anyways what what's a market cap ratio it's I think a third give or take like it hovers between 33 and 36% give or take on a fully dative basis explaining me why it's not like closer to 50 60 70% yeah yeah again just to tie the circle around why are these networks worth what they are I don't know man like a lot of 99% of this valuation of every single Network is based on like some terminal value like Pine the sky settlement layer the internet the problem is we don't have 10 years to get there like I I I don't know why like I feel a sense of urgency to grow into that valuation yeah and and prices go up and people forget

and you know oh it's all relative valuation everything's comped to bitcoin I'm like okay but that's not a good enough answer like if you're at the I think this is why centralized like organizations from from a BD standpoint are important but also I do think that from my vantage point I don't see I see some projects more Focus laser focused on growing the pie and onboarding more users I think that's the primary metric not tvl not anything else other than how do we get if you reference the a6c report that kind of gets into like a 30 to 60 million like active users I want that number to grow 10x in the next years and ideally in use

cases that are more Deep In Focus because the retention of that user is higher you know what I mean like if they're they're using helium they're there they're using stable coins they're not just here to buy the Trump meme coin it is an important onboarding mechanism speculation for sure is it ever going to go away no you don't you don't want it to it's important but I do think that that percentage should go down over time otherwise we would have done something wrong crypto but the tech is ready I think yeah like we have an excess of block space right now yeah way more block space that wasn't the case like four years ago man yeah um all right next topic okay pivot to 10 minutes left are we're on the clock now we're on

the clock yeah all right we got hit one hour on the dot on the dot on the dot it's bull market time Vine Vine Vine yeah good good good pivot Vine Vine pivot all right Russ Russ is the of Vine he's also the founder of HQ trivia um Vine if you don't know Vine you missed the Glory Days of the internet so schizophrenic scrolling I won't explain it to you it's uh it it had Tik Tok before uh Tik Tok had had before it had the algo it was Tik Tok without a good algorithm um okay Vine uh founder of Vine launched a uh launched a meme coin and uh this thing freaking ripped it pumped to 330 500 it ticked 500 million on the chart

it is now down to 161 uh when when was never worth more than like what Vine s Vine sold for here's your Tech trivia the day 30 million I want to say 36 million somewhere between 30 and 50 million in roughly 2012 or 2013 I would guess um but by the way back then 30 million 40 million is a good amount but here's so this guy sells his company 30 million he's got a meme coin worth 500 million um not a question about valuations it's more a question about so I saw this thing I tweeted about it when it was at I don't know 25 million being like some py tweet about you know the attention economy um

and but the S deprecating self-deprecating love to see it this I was like this such a lame tweet attention economy where the token is the thing to Value I was like God I'm such a scrub while tweeting you should have been but yeah yeah I also I also bought this because I but but here's what I want to get to so I bought it because I was like all right this thing's stupid but everybody else is gonna buy this thing and I was like okay that is the moment where I start saying okay that's kind of stage four Behavior right there and I think what you're seeing now is like the trumpcoin kind of basically gave the stamp of approval for anyone to launch a token you are remember remember last cycle everybody at the end was

launching an nft freaking star stucks everyone you know you know celebrities Justin Wier Wasing yeah everybody Gary Vayner had like 75 different collections of these things like anybody with attention on the internet was launching nfts it's gonna be the same thing now anybody with attention on the Internet is gonna start launching meme coins and the sad thing is or the fun part for a little bit is everyone's gonna buy them these things are actually going to work they're going to rip these things are going to go up and um this is It's basic remember like a year ago all the cabs were launching mem coins they were they were right they were just too early in the cycle though that that's going to happen again the the difference is they're not gonna go down 99% they're

gonna go I'm not sure about that they're gonna go up these things are gon no I mean I think I okay we should have a meme coin panel and discussion because the halflife on most mem coins I I will continue to believe is very shortlived yeah I mean you're seeing it now I guess the counter argument here is this thing pump it's it's all 160 million look I mean this thing pumped to 500 million it's down to 160 cating if you get if you get enough of these things going up and then down really quickly people are going to stop buying them I guess is is the argument wait can can you go to the supply like what's oh so fdv 155 Market oh so it's like fully launched fully it's fully launched yeah wow how much did he take himself I am too much of a deck screener

scrub to see how do I see this what's The Insider um percentage that there should be somewhere in there all right holders go to how do you see it so the biggest holder is like 5% yeah so the top 10 holders account for like one two like 20% yeah roughly no more than that five 10 12 14 17 25% yeah yeah 20 20 20 22% yeah it sound terrible yeah anyways moral the story is well I guess he could have I guess he could have used 100 wallets you know like a ton of the supply yeah I'm

surprised he has known more of the supply honestly but any more stor I think this is the this is I'm not saying we're near the end of the cycle but I think this is a glimpse of what late stage cycles look like where these things happen and remember cms's hot ball of money from the last cycle you're just kind of chasing the hot ball of money like in the beginning of a cycle like stage one in two and even into three like the hot ball of money like is kind of like a warm ball of money like it just moves from thing to thing like you got like you got like a month to trade hyper liquid you're like a month to long that thing you like a month to like long fcoin these to now it's like boom day day day day hot ball money is

just flying around the industry and um everyone's gonna make a bunch of money but this is a glimpse of how this thing tops well not everyone but yeah true not everyone can always make a bunch of money like that's just not how markets work but yeah I don't know I think we're oh thank you Mr markets thank you no no I mean obviously I don't know these things are more PVP than normal actually in the last cycle I will say the last cycle didn't it feel like everybody was making money yeah but wh why why is that it just it's a sent you feel it but it's not really the case I mean a lot of people lost a ton of money on nfts that were just really hard to get out of no I

know but when everything was going up last cycle I'm actually curi I want to get your take on this last cycle when everything was going up it felt like everybody was making a lot of money now it's h everything's going up oh actually the difference is not everything's going up it's all concentration there's a big there's a big dispersion coin and soul yeah yeah okay I guess that's your answer also I I would argue that um who is making money now is more of the Tik Tok folks um they're really glued and you know focused here it's also the Solana ecosystem more as a whole I mean I see things like uh I'm I'm only allowed to say this because he tweeted about it

publicly but freaking you know I see this tweet and I'm like you know Joseph our podcast producer tweeted just made two million on trumpcoin and I'm like uh that is that is a you know love you Joseph thanks for editing this podcast but you know that's a that's a it's a toppy it's a toppy thing right there yeah I saw my trump going when I saw [Laughter] that I love you Joseph um but yeah I sold it went then and there about to edit this podcast so poorly he's gonna screw up he's gonna change your voice he's Joseph uh much love um but um yeah I know it's

uh it's again you have I think you and I broke coming at it the same way which is we share two different things two two conflicting perhaps ideas it's more of a timing thing it's like the the setup for crypto has never been better but at the same time this type of phenomenon in mean coin land is feels very euphoric um it also feels very PVP and very like not value yeah uh yeah so pay attention to that right and and I think anytime you feels like it's too easy to make money just uh remember it's not you you're not that smart I probabilistically once you make a 10x in in in in a day then you know the probability of you making a 10x on that is very very low and so set

differently if you make if you make 10x like in three days and you keep doing that over and over and over you will become the best investor in the history of the world and I guarantee you it's not going to be you like with a 99.9% probability it's not going to be you so just take the win but you know moments like this just if you can change your life change your life you know to 2 million is a lot of money like if if you can take that great but you know just just remember like it's not it's not normal for things like there's gravity to things the markets just do their thing right and when an asset goes parabolic like even for some even for the presidential meme coin there is gravity markets are always going to do their

thing like things can't keep going up just be mindful of that and and anytime you think it's too easy to make money just just check yourself it's not it's not it's not the case check yourself before you before you what's what's it dude check yourself before you wreck yourself oh this is how you know I'm too old make me feel old this is a great way to end the podcast a good way to I just embarrassed myself we're 59 minutes in 30 seconds anything else as we round it up no last take here is uh there's the I screenshot of this iPhone apps thing is like the top 10 apps and I thought the

it was less interesting to me that these crypto apps are on the App Store it was more that was the moment actually taking that screenshot was when I realized oh fintech is not a real thing there's no such thing as fintech there's only trafi which runs on trafi Rails and crypto which runs on crypto rails and eventually all of I'm putting quotes around this word fintech will move on to crypto rails or they'll get stuck on trafi Rails there's only two sets of rails there's not uh fintech was just a nice UI rapper on trafi Rails and I you know I thought about that I'd heard it i' internalized it but it never really clicked for me krypto's more of a social I think of like social apps like Phantom and moonshot they're social very much

Social with with money which makes it like it's like going V did you invest in moonshot man I was kidding myself like I was kicking myself like I got intro to them by the sh guys at Alliance we who crushed it uh but at the time I think the round was kind of closed and stuff like that but man they they've just executed what is like why is moonshot why why are they crushing it from a discovery standpoint I it's just like a great app just yeah it's like the surfacing insides it's like a it's like a I I've haven't really used it much but it's just really easy to discover assets and I think they're tapping into the whole pump fwn kind of you know apparatus and so yeah interesting Santi good chat

thank you sir uh any books uh things or should just be glued to the screen and paying attention to the news I think that's fairly I just finished um what's it not Josh Kushner Jared kushner's book oh good self arrising but also interesting stories about um the first term um I I wanted to listen uh I I know very little about the Middle East actually like a big hole in my knowledge um so I just wanted to learn about the Middle East and he I mean he he led a lot of like the Abraham Accords and a lot of the Middle East dealings and now he runs a big fund where they've raised from you know all those guys and so I just wanted to learn some of those stories I thought

it was a it was a good I listen I listened to it on Audible I thought it was a solid audible nothing to write home about but like a but but good stories yeah his episode on invest like the best was oh yeah was was actually was really good I would listen to that episode of invest like the best nice that's awesome what are you nothing really I don't think I've just been one speed thinking about one thing no I'm I'm serious like very much founder mode I guess wow I know no never thought I'd say that all right folks good chat goodat good hanging with all of you yeah if you're not in the Empire telegram go

hang in the Empire Telegram don't know uh how to tell you to find it unfortunately but I think it might be a if you know you know type of thing I I literally don't know how to point you to it wink yeah anyways thank so much everyone you're so nice chatting um see you next week by hey everyone just wanted to give a quick thanks to today's title sponsor geod net by setting up a base station you can get involved with this groundbreaking web3 ecosystem learn more by heading over to geod net.com or just by hitting the link in the description of today's episode [Music]