What Makes a Good Token? | Roundup

Transcript

I think one of the most challenging things about crypto from a mental model standpoint is we are combining the mental models of public market investing where companies are primarily in their later stage by the time you've gone public versus very early stage investing. And so one thing that I feel like I have consistently seen is this idea of hey we have these publicly traded tokens. We can take these mental models and frameworks that we have from investing in public market and apply them. And I don't think that that maps one to one. I think that there's a life cycle of capital investment and you know um you know return on invested capital that you want to see before capital is

handed back to shareholders and the company statistically dies and so I think that the reason just because there is a reward for buybacks in public markets which empirically exists does not mean I don't think that you can copy that onetoone on earlystage private markets. This episode is sponsored by Canton, the only public permissionless blockchain built for institutional finance. We'll hear more from Canton later in the episode. Blockworks Digital Asset Summit is back in New York March 24th through 26th. We'll have top speakers from leading asset managers, financial institutions, DeFi protocols, crypto companies, and policy makers all under one roof. Think Black Rockck, Coinbase, Robin Hood, and more. Follow the link in today's show notes to buy

tickets and make sure to use code bell 200 for $200 off at checkout. See you there. Hey everyone, quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode. Nothing said on Bell Curve is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Our guests and I may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed. All right, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Bell Curve. You got all the fellas here. Miles, Zave, me. >> Good to be back.

>> Good morning. >> Oh, it's a good morning. Um, we did our bare market episode, so I guess we've established that we're in one of those. So, someone has to restart the uh uh DGEN Spartan bare market tracker. I don't know if you guys ever remember that. >> What happened to that guy? Just just fell. It just just signed off. I respect, didn't he? >> Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, >> he he was very bullish on Lido and Coinbase. So, I think he put half of his net worth into each and it just kind of leveled out. They each canceled the other one out and he just rode off into the sunset.

>> Didn't lose money. >> I don't know. All right. >> Feel his pen. Feel his pen. >> So, um, we're going to be talking about, we actually had the the idea of this episode was to talk about buybacks, but we wanted to make it more expansive. And we we had the idea of making this actually about what makes for a good token. And so that's encompassing of what are the different types of tokens that exist. Um, that is how should you think about, you know, valuation. We are going to talk about buybacks and value acrruel as well. So, we're going to tackle hopefully all these subjects. But before we get there, I just want to do a quick shameless show here. We've got digital

asset summit coming up. Both of you guys are going to be there. We're going to be doing live bell curve related topics. So, this is there's a discount for all you lucky listeners. Uh Bell 200, you do 200 bucks off. Um but yeah, we got chairman of the SEC and the CFTC both there. We got the uh CEO of Western Union. We got the CEO of Binance there. We've got uh Steven [ __ ] who sits on the, you know, Fed uh board of governors. So, it's going to be a very institutional event. Very good. And then we've got all of your your favorites, the Athenas, the Sparks, the Aves. Um Stani is going to be making an appearance. It's going to be really good. And of course, Miles and Safe. So, >> that's that.

>> Must be must be really fun to like track the history of Dask because it was always like the institutional event, right? And it always felt like kind of like these uh you know guys were so far away from the action, not you know years away from actually doing anything and just kind of observing and sharing thoughts on like where this could go. And you know now they're like kind of they're actually on the playing field, right? Um and so yeah, I I'm very curious to hear like the difference between what the stuff we hear like this year versus even like, you know, two or three years ago. Um but it'll be a lot of fun. come ask questions or heckle us or grab a beer.

>> Yeah. No, it's my first event for the year, so I've been saving it for this one. So, looking forward to being back in New York with everyone and yeah, look forward to an epic event. >> You know what? Um, it's fun. What DS used to be when we did it in 2019 was basically going to the one, you know, like 25year-old guy who works at JP Morgan is like, "No, guys, this is super serious. Like, please, it was like hear from from him." Um but now those people are running teams and yeah actually there's yeah chairman of the SEC and CFDC who actually you know they they're teaming up for project crypto and doing real stuff. So it it is you know this moment in time is interesting too because you know we're talking about this bare market if you were to talk to

institutions you know actual banks big asset managers fintexs completely different vibe um for them so it is biggest divergence and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. So I don't really know what that means but >> but it's good. I mean it means that we're maturing because like do you remember the amount of institutional interest would always basically be correlated to the price of you know tokens right and whenever like we started a bull market it was like oh they love crypto and then we wouldn't hear from them for years you know in a bare market right um and now they're you know building products that are not just predicated on selling these tokens or allowing people to access to these

tokens they're actually using the chains and So, you know, the interest is much less like volatile um and stickier, which is great. >> Yeah, I think as well like it's a great time to understand that market, the institutional market, like what are they actually using and paying for. I think still the crypto native crowd sort of assumes some things that they're using and paying for without actually knowing exactly where the flows are happening on chain. So, that's what I'm personally the most interested to learn more about at the event. So maybe to build on both of those ideas and segue into our topic of the day, I I think it would be interesting to, you know, talking about questioning assumptions that we've had

for a long time in the industry. you know, when we talk about what makes a good token, before we get to the buyback debate and the value capture versus value acrruel, you know, discussion that I'm sure everyone's heard quite a bit, thought it would just be interesting to start with a taxonomy of the different types of tokens that exist um and historically how we've defined that and then question if it's really quite as expansive and broad um as you know as the classifica the classifications that exist today. So you know if you were to look at the different types of tokens that exist there are stable coins which I think we all know what those are. Das are network tokens um so this is like ETH soul AVAC which are actually required to use the network. Uh

governance tokens so these are um like the the the through line for all of these tokens is the label is how their value is derived right like that's the utility function supposedly of the token. So for a network or gas token, you're you need to hold this. Um and so there's kind of this like latent there's this, you know, demand or bid kind of like an industrial commodity or something like that. Um utility tokens, it actually you unlock specific product features like BNB or link um are good examples. So basically to have a bunch of and this is kind of the um the Chuck-e-Cheese uh analogy if people remember this from 2017 which is you know we're not preunding a company we're selling Chuck-e-Cheese uh you know

tokens. Um so that's I mean it's hilarious that we literally called these things Chuck-e-Cheese tokens. Um they're revenue sharing or dividend tokens. So obviously not exactly like this but this is a tokens that give you a claim on cash flows, right? So this would be the most equity like um construction or or way of viewing a token and maybe you get that paid back in a burn or buyback and then memecoins which are just pure social uh consensus and narrative no cash flows. So Bitcoin edgy this podcast um it's an edgy podcast but those those are the those are the categories. I'm curious when you guys look at this these this category list in the cold light of day in 2026.

What do what do you think? Do all of these need to exist? Should they exist? What do what do you think about this? Uh I don't think it my my initial reaction when I read I was like thinking about this is that this is really no longer relevant like or nearly as relevant as it used to be. I think back in like you know the early stages of I don't know 2018 to 2022 like we were there was so much more like wonkiness in terms of value acral governance and all of these things and regulatory like just noise and we had to make up all these new like sort of concepts um and now I think in reality like there's not the the

framework through which investors evaluate something like an L1 token is not that different than the framework through which they evaluate you know let's say an app token. Um like there's value acrruel tied to usage of the product and that product can either be a development platform or it can be an app on those development platforms, right? Um and there's like so many considerations to get that go into like okay is that going to grow in the future and what multiple should be assigned to like the current level of value acral right and yeah there's like nuances that um we can get into between like the you

know L1s versus app tokens but I don't think it's that different right I think it's basically at this point like we're not making up new frameworks. We don't need like we basically just map over how we evaluate equities to these projects or how you evaluate you know startups to these pro to these um to these projects and that's it. Like I don't think there was a a good argument for like a commodity based valuation for L1 tokens a while ago and that maybe is the only thing that I think still like holds as you know okay maybe we shouldn't just look at all of these like equities but yeah Z go for it. Yeah, I think maybe just a comment around the evolution of

some of these types of tokens where uh let's say four or five years ago way before regulation was introduced you had a lot more governance tokens especially in DeFi and DeFi historically has been one of the categories in crypto which has actually generated a lot of value and also been something that people want to get involved with. Back in the day, there was a kind of narrative sold to holders of the tokens that they would have a role to play in governing the treasury of some of these protocols that lived on chain. For example, like unis swap, you know, lido, also compound. Uh, in general, postregulation, as a lot of us are aware, uh, we've moved more towards kind of like buybacks, revenue

sharing. I know a lot of us try to avoid the word dividend, but there's a lot of different ways to to spin what that actually means. And so, you don't really see as many governance tokens anymore. Utility tokens, when I entered the space, this was a really massive topic for tokens and probably most actually tokens were utility tokens like paying for different things to use the network. For example, with chain link for, you know, to pay for oracle payments. these days as well postregulation even things like utility tokens are moving more towards kind of like just paying in USD no longer paying in a token and I think a lot of this is because of the regulatory climate so I guess like the big question is right now how pro is the current regulatory climate especially in

US to buy back tokens to give value back to token holders or is there still a risk really where they some tokens are still avoiding paying back some of the sort of value they're accuring to their treasury and the protocol and I think LTO is a great example here which I'm sure we're going to dive into deeper later in this podcast. I guess the one thing I would push back on is there is that there's any difference between a governance token and um like a revenue sharing or dividend token at least looking forward to the next 10 years like whether or not that value you know is acred to a treasury and then reinvested to pay like into growth or to pay for operational expenses or whether or not they just you know decide to

allocate that capital back to token holders is just a it's it's it's a management decision, right? Um, and I and I do think that that like is increasingly going to be like, you know, kind of the the the status quo, which is great. Um, having governance tokens that acrewed no value was, you know, only rational if there was a reason for them not acrewing value, like the reason that Facebook didn't charge early in the days, you know, of its growth. So, that's my one push back on that. Like I think this delineation is kind of like a thing of the past and it and that's a good >> Before we get back into the episode, here's a quick word from our sponsor, Canton. The only public permissionless blockchain built for institutional

finance. TRDFI wasn't built for 24/7 [music] markets. DeFi wasn't built for regulated institutions. But Canton [music] is where the power of finance meets the promise of blockchain. The only public [music] blockchain with institutional-grade privacy, true composability, real assets, [music] real markets. Why reinvent finance when Canton [music] makes it work the way it should? Canton, where finance flows. Can I um so I I think there's also a to draw the through line of this whole episode where we say, what do we mean when we say what makes a good token? I think the answer the

answer to that probably be is that it has to go up. Um and I think that people have looked for different ways to accomplish that in a way which doesn't get them arrested. And here here are actually two different forces that I think have confused people. And if you guys know, you know, the three body problem, the idea that there are three bodies of mass in space and two bodies, you can kind of predict where exactly they're going to be, but as soon as you introduce a third, it gets all complex and wound up and you can't understand at any given point if you turn the crank where one body is going to be relative to another. Here are the three bodies, right? There's there's a valuation methodology. There is something genuinely net new in the form of Bitcoin. Um, so I think Bitcoin was a

we've talked about this on the open source. I actually would put L1's as a net new thing that didn't exist before this and then there is regulation and there is what can we say right so all of these three things interacted with each other and you got these constructions like a utility token um and you got a governance token and the governance thing is kind of related to how value gets created in equities and and these things just got all so tangled up that it's very difficult to rewind the clock and understand do we think this way because we're copying Bitcoin? Do we think this way because we are trying to get a certain regulatory treatment and infinite combinations of all of these things? And I I think personally what I

would boil this down to the way that I would explain this is that and actually the SEC has been saying this is that what I don't think we've done is really invent anything on crypto rails is just a wrapper for an asset that exists. And I think mostly you can bucket these things into you know this is a commodity and this is how we look at and value commodities. This is an equity and this is how we look at and value equities. And I I think the regulators are saying that and I think that's very reasonable and fair. So that's my explanation for why utility that it we're just we got all wrapped around the axle because of these, you know, a net new invention, but then people having to speak out of um, you know, two sides of their mouth.

>> Yeah. >> I still think we're in a bit of an awkward phase though because not all utility tokens and governance tokens have moved towards this kind of like revenue sharing token model. Um, and so I think a lot of that is still because it's still not 100% clear, I guess, what this regime looks like long term. And again, want to take it back to Lido where like this is a good business like earning a lot of revenue per year and you know, potentially growing that over time. And the token is down like I don't know maybe 80 or 90% from all-time highs. And I think if I think back to pre-regulation, why people held these tokens in the first place, like you know, governance tokens have been called kind of useless by many people over time. But I think a lot of people held

these tokens with the thinking that in a more regulatory favorable environment, they'd actually have a claim on future cash flows. But you're seeing now even in this environment, some tokens aren't allowing holders to have a claim on those cash flows. And I think they're being punished. And I think the financial markets are really rewarding tokens that are being bought back. For example, Hyperlquid. There's a big outstanding question there around like when do you buy back the token? And I think because this is a new era for crypto like having even the opportunity to do that in the first place without feeling like you'll be subpoenas. Um I think this is interesting to explore in terms of like what is actually working right now in crypto. Does it work at

all? I know all of us here have differing opinions on on buybacks, but it's certainly the thing being rewarded the most right now, financial markets, and it's also a big trend right now in the space to be doing this and move away from utility tokens and governance tokens, >> right? And I think like uh the the you know value capture and then value like distribution to token holders like it goes back to like a trust problem that was you know like the trust between token holders and protocols has been broken so many times, right?

um when it really should just be more like you know public equities where it's a capital allocation question like there is if if token holders like by default have rights to the you know over the cash flow created by like the by the product or by the protocol or by the company then it's just a question of okay for every dollar that we get in do we think we can reinvest that into growth that creates $2 of future revenue in the future right and that versus like do we think it's more valuable to either distribute a dividend right now or to buy back our own token because we think it we're you know it's undervalued right so we're going through this weird like period where we have to reestablish

trust we have to get clarity on like what rights token holders actually have and then there will be so much less noise in this you know question of like well if they don't do buybacks or dividends are they actually acrewing value like Lido has been acrewing value to a treasury for like four or five years now, right? Um, and they're one of the few protocols that actually moved their operational expenses under the DAO completely, right? And thus to the token holders um, and very, you know, like they were just a little bit too far ahead of that, you know, their their time there. And so it just hasn't really looked like values being acred. They also couldn't tell anyone about it,

right? They couldn't be like, "Hey, look at this great thing that we've done to acrew value to our token." >> Uh, yeah, maybe. I don't or they just like, you know, took the bath of, okay, if we're going to have a single asset that represents all interests in Lido and it's going to be a token, there's not going to be any equity, right? then we're just going to shed all parts all equity components you know that touch the protocol and move them under the you know the the the like I don't know the umbrella or governance of the DAO um and that is I think what you do want to do and that's what we'll see going forward um I think that's what we'll see from like you know the metadow projects that

are like actually doing this right from first principles from an early stage Um not speaking to whether food that was such an interesting debate. I I don't want to derail us much but I >> no no no but but it is a reflection that and the revenue meta that you know all of this is a reflection that we're just kind of like finally starting over um and trying to shed like the clearly like wrong lessons learned that turned out to be wrong, right? because people stopped getting rewarded for like, you know, these weird, you know, uh, dynamics where you could just launch a token, push out a narrative, and you'd be like worth5 billion. Um, that's no longer the

case, right? So, >> it's it's a multitude of things though, to defend some of these teams. They there was a very legitimate threat that you would go to jail if you did this the wrong way. that I don't think anyone on this call I certainly if we had been a token project I wouldn't have been like come get me I'm gonna do this the right way and no I don't want to go to jail and I want to live in the United States so I wouldn't have done that so I but I also think that that opened the door to I mean just close your eyes and put yourself in the shoes of these protocol founders right I mean oh the lawyers tell me I have to do that or I go to jail and I don't have to share any of these revenues cuz I cuz I cuz I can't I

mean it's so understandable how it happened and now you'll see the good founders move some of that. But here's an interesting thing that you wouldn't have necessarily thought. On top of not being able to have the correct construction, the narrative the the narrative actually fit this bad behavior in a way. And that's why you see so many teams push back on the idea that we might have to generate revenue and they they all want to be valued in this this special snowflake type of way. And I like arguably like Bitcoin did get that valuation, right? Like that's the market has said you don't need to generate any any fees. This is how we're bucking you

we're bucketing you as gold. >> Um and so I think from a combination of looking at Bitcoin success literally not being legally allowed to acrew value or generate value in the other way that the the narrative started to fit that reality and and so now what a lot of teams I have an enormous amount of empathy. They have these comp convoluted complicated structures which don't make any sense and they have to make legitimately hard choices. So to talk about Hayden Adams here. So unis swap is probably the canonical example of you know they had early product market fit category lead right they've surrendered a little bit of that lead but they still have this unbelievable brand and you know the front end was generating 200 million in fees. I have it would have been so easy to just say you know what

we're not going to go first on this and they he did there were real challenges right like they they raised money in the equity entity right and they turned the $200 million fee switch to zero I I can't imagine what those convers that took bravery and guts I think and I would not underestimate one the combination of a bunch of people were hired onto these teams with the expectation that they'd never have to make any money like that is the legitimate on the ground truth So think about how difficult that is to, you know, undo from a team standpoint. Then you've set up legal structures to with totally separate teams that might not even talk. I I I just I wouldn't underestimate the sheer unpleasantness associated with

unwinding these structures. And I think that's why it takes so long. And I'm not and I'm not I'm I'm more saying that like I don't know if it's that useful to be like taking in all those considerations to a forwardlooking view of how to think about tokens because that is there's so much contextual like baggage that just should never have happened. Like Uniswap didn't even want a token. like SPF launched [ __ ] sushi swap and forced their hand out of like a defensive in a defensive move before they had any of this figured out, right?

And so like what can we learn from that? Like pretty much nothing because that is not like the you know the the current circumstances on the field that like founders are dealing with now they can actually think about this stuff more from first principles. My guess is that we get some sort of like exemption period for these projects that will give them flexibility in the like early days not to have to like play these decentralization theater games. Um and and be able to operate like more, you know, like a normal company, but also have a token. Um, we'll see. Like there may be, you know, we may be in a period right now where this is the only time that you can there's still gray area like where you can just operate a token

project like a company. We'll see. >> Yeah. I think yeah, in terms of like timing of all this, like realistically it was kind of when Trump uh got into office where a lot of the kind of buyback conversation started. And I think in terms of a team that has executed the best in the space that I think all of us are reliant on is is like Hyperlid. They kind of came out at the exact time when everything was more favorable to do these things like buying back the token and burning etc. Uh before that it was really unclear and on top of that hyperlid didn't really have this Dow structure that a lot of like the other kind of teams like Ave and Unis swap had. And I think with all

Dows, as we might explore at some point, there's a massive coordination problem. And so, how do you go from like a utility or governance token to like a buyback and burn token or whatever model you choose that acrews more value to the token holder? That is really hard. You have to coordinate many many token holders all at once and you have to move everyone in this direction. There's a lot of politics involved with that. Uh, Hyperlid came out with a clean slate and timed it really well. And you know before that they were building building building bang more favorable regulatory environment and they've been very successful ever since. The legacy teams in crypto I think have struggled more because like you said before miles which I think is a really good point like unis swap sort of was forced to launch the token in order to compete. I think what

unis swap is doing now to acrew more value to the token in the unification proposal. This is more of like an aggressive move in order for them to compete again with something like a hyperlquid because the financial market is rewarding teams that are actually acrewing value back to token holders and not teams that like do not do that. So they have to do it. They have almost no choice. I think if unis swap didn't do this the token would continue falling and you know it'd almost be like trending down for as long as possible until they actually pivoted and changed their path. So I think in general it' be interesting to see like you said as well Miles like forwardlooking versus backwards looking. A lot of teams we're talking about right now on this podcast are teams generating revenue which are legacy teams. There haven't been that

many teams outside of hyperlquid. Maybe pumped up fun is another example of like they've just come out with no DOW baggage and just buying back the tokens, you know, as much as possible. And you're seeing the financial market continues to reward this. So I think unfortunately for legacy teams and Dow structures they've got more to overcome and more challenges to get on top of as opposed to like pumped up fun hyperlquid and probably future tokens that just go straight for the buyback approach at least right now that that's what the market is rewarding and the reason why they're rewarding it is because they want to see products and revenues and actual business models that make sense.

I think this memecoin era really kind of like was the last of it for many people in the crypto space before regulations when memecoins were just popping off everywhere didn't make sense like people were just speculating on the next coin with like no value acrew no product no nothing it's kind of like in your face almost for Lido and a where like they have real businesses where their token is trending down now having the opposite I think like that pendulum is swinging but it's going more back to the sort of defi native side where like buybacks and value of cruel is actually now more important than ever because we we can do it. So I think we should be doing it.

>> Everyone in crypto loves to talk about transparency, but would any serious business publish its payroll for the [music] world to see or hand competitors its contracts? That's not a feature. That's a bug. And it's why most financial institutions can't operate on today's public rails. Canon network is different. It's the only public permissionless layer 1 blockchain built with privacy at its core, sharing data only on a need to- know basis. That's why Goldman Sachs, NASDAQ, and Broadridge are already building on the network. Only Canton [music] delivers the network effects of a public chain with the privacy and control real finance demands. Learn more about Canton by following the link in today's show notes. Well, okay. So, here I want to Okay, maybe we can start to talk about buybacks um buybacks in this context.

And um you know I I think that one of the things and we're going to get into this if we have maybe some time we can talk about futuri but I think one of the most challenging things about crypto from a mental model standpoint is we are combining the mental models of public market investing where companies are primarily in their later stage by the time you've gone public versus very early stage investing. And so one thing that I feel like I have consistently seen is this idea of hey we have these publicly traded tokens. We can take these mental models and frameworks that we have from investing in public market and apply them. And I don't think that that maps one to one. I think that there's a life cycle of capital investment and you know

um you know return on invested capital that you want to see before capital is handed back to shareholders and the company statistically dies and so I think that the reason just because there is a reward for buybacks in public markets which empirically exists does not mean I don't think that you can copy that one to one on early stage private markets and here's the analogy that I want to give you for I've tried this on both you already. So, let's see if this resonates with the audience. But imagine you were trying to value two different boxes. You're like, and these boxes each do different things. In one box, you can put in $1 and you get $2 out. And it's infinite. As many dollars as you can find, you can give it to the box and it'll give you $2. How much would you pay to own that box versus a box where

you put $1 in, you want you get $1 out up until $500 million, and then it just gives you your money back. I I know that's kind of a silly analogy, but that to me is why like the reason why you get rewarded at the early stage of a business, the value you're creating is being able to allocate capital at scale to get high returns. The reason Elon Musk is the richest guy in the world is because you can give him a hundred billion or $200 billion and he'll give you 400 or 800. It's it seems to be almost infinite, right? versus if you could give someone a million dollars and they could give you 10 that's worth far far far less. And so I I understand the reason why we want to do buybacks today

because we need to prove to the market that there's some value acrruel here, right? The market's crying out like please just you know it's it's a low trust environment. We have so few success cases, but from a first principal st I hate to use that word, but from a first principal standpoint, it's very hard for me to make the case that it makes sense for an early stage project. >> No, I couldn't agree more. >> It's like first stage one make revenue. Stage two like make more revenue than you have operational expenses. Stage three is basically to like exhaust all reinvestment of free cash flow into like higher ROI opportunities. And then stage

four is like once you've gotten past that point, you have a surplus of, you know, revenue that you think is there's no like, you know, really high ROI opportunity to like put that to work, then you give it back to to shareholders. And that's um typically been the way equities have always worked, right? Um, so I'd ask like Hyperliquid's the darling right of the market today and a large part of that has been because they've won investor trust and a part of that is because they have, you know, been consistently doing buybacks and burns. Um, is there an argument to say that that's actually at this point kind of lazy, right? and that if you were like truly a long-term holder of Hyperlquid,

you might wish that that team re, you know, took in the couple hundred million dollars of revenue that they're getting and invested that into turning Hyperlid, you know, allowing Hyperlid to compete with like the actual like biggest incumbents in the world in 10 years. Um, I don't know. I think >> I think like I totally understand where you're coming from, Miles. When it comes to crypto in particular and also putting a spotlight on Hyperlid, um I just wonder like, you know, with the amount of money, the sheer amount of money they're generating, like how could they even reinvest that into growth right now. I kind of think growth in crypto is capped almost at the moment.

Like we're trying to continue growing it. Talked about DAS earlier with institutions coming in. Like if you're earning hundreds of millions in revenue per year, like where do you even put that almost? And their team is so small, uh like maybe they could make some acquisitions or something like that, which I think could make sense. And I know they're trying to compete with Binance, but I also wonder if this regulatory tape is still something in crypto where if you grow too aggressively, regulators get fearful almost of what happened with someone like SPF and FTX. I don't think FDX was giving back too much in buybacks, although I'm not exactly sure what their token model was back in the day. Maybe they were, but I I imagine that SPF was highly investing in growth and really aggressively and really got in, you

know, bed with politicians and everything and did a great job and grew super super fast. That's fantastic. But I almost think maybe crypto there's still a fear in the wider market of like a team that's growing too aggressively too fast, reinvesting so much in the business, so much in marketing, so much in regulations and getting in bed with politicians where it might actually not even be a great look for the industry in in general. So like I'm actually quite pro buying back when it makes sense. I think with Hyperlid in particular, it makes like a lot of sense, especially like right right now. their product is has so much product market fit where theoretically they could always change it and if they wanted to start reinvesting more they could actually switch it a bit. There's more there's a Dow now in Hyperl so it's probably going

to be harder for them to change their token value acral. So that would be interesting to see if they ever change it. But um it'll be interesting to see at some point if they do want to change it what they then do with all that reinvested cash and if it's acquisitions or whatever else it is. But I think when it comes to something like an L2 or something like that, you're seeing a lot of examples right now of like layer 2s maybe trying to buy back their token and it has no impact. Well, that's because if there's more emissions than buybacks of the token, then of course that's not going to make any impact whatsoever. And unfortunately in crypto, most teams have way more emissions than they do revenues. So like there's no way that buyback's going to make an impact. There are very few teams where they do have

more revenues than emissions. And I think those teams are more mature anyway. They have product market fit. And so I think because they are more mature, they have already invested a bit in growth over time and they are already successful. I think it actually does make a lot of sense to buy back the token and acrew that value to token holders. I think it's fair. Um on the emission side like that maps over to equities as well, right? Like Coinbase gets hammered by Wall Street for um you know their stockbased comp. It's just you know much higher than than their peers. Um, and yeah, I do think this the the counterargument to my steelman is like Hyperlquid has operated with an 11 person team or like whatever it is. It's tiny and that's how they're that they're really good at that and that's what it's

been working. So why would you go and like create a massive organization, you know, through hiring spend and and lose your edge? So like I I think that's I think that's all very fair. Um, no. like should they have invested in a Super Bowl commercial like like Coinbase did? Um and maybe that's where like yeah like that would get the regulators a little nervous. Um and you know I think that's that's yeah go for it. What are you what are you showing here? >> Um I was going to I think there's good steel mans for both sides of this argument for what it's worth and there I'm showing this is unrelated to crypto. This is AI related capex um as a percentage of uh just yeah they

they're showing as a percentage of GDP and the the total raw amounts here. So in buyback land and equities for a long time there was an almost moralistic argument around buybacks which is American company CEOs are not doing their job. The job of a CEO is to find those organic opportunities where you can invest capital and get, you know, a return on that above the cost of your above your whack, your ro above your whack. Um, and instead what they just did is they bought back their stock, right? And there were there were these crazy incentives, right? Because they mostly have stockbased comp, but there was this there was this attitude that you CEOs are not doing your job. And what the CEOs said was there's nothing good to invest in, and if there was

something to invest in, we'd invest more. And the reason I'm showing this is because I think that actually is kind of proven out true. As soon as as soon as a great new technology came along in the form of AI, these companies massively increased their capex and their R&D and all of that stuff. So it is true that or opportunities and opportunities to invest at scale are not even. They're not evenly distributed. And it could be that there aren't opportunities for a hyperlquid to invest right now. But where I would push back, Zave, is often there's a um there and I feel like it's mostly a criticism of like young teams and investors that

are worried about empire building and they say, "Well, we don't want you to allocate that like we don't really full like what I hear in that is we don't really trust you to find these opportunities." Like I don't really want you spending on this just give it back. Just give it back to me. And what I would say is I don't think that to me is kind of sorry but that's kind of what I hear there is kind of like skill issue like I I I kind of refuse to believe that there's nothing that Hyperlid could be doing with that capital that that wouldn't be better off right like yeah I mean getting potentially regular like and again this is where it's I could argue both sides it's very possible that it's not it's just 8020 I'm like there's nothing you could be

investing that money in. Um and again when you go back to the box what I would say is and this is one of the draw like this is just I just fundamentally feel differently than everyone apparently if uh the 11 person thing is is great if you have the infrastructure to reinvest capital at scale but I would say if you don't have the internal you know uh bandwidth or talent or whatever it is to allocate that capital get more people so that you can allocate the capital better. I mean that's to me that's kind it's kind of what I hear a little bit.

Um >> yeah I uh with Hyperlid in particular and yeah great graph Mike and definitely understand where you're coming from. You could make an argument with Hyperlid around sort of ecosystem development and using incentives to get more builders in their ecosystem. It's really about competition I think with someone like Hyperlid. What is Hyperlid competing against? for per deexes of course and so they could be reinvesting to try and build better moes either via integrations etc with different players which I'm not sure exactly to what extent they've already done that and maybe they've already maxed that out another thing they could be doing is focusing more on spot market if they want to compete more there which is definitely another argument to be made around what they could be doing obviously geographic expansions into

certain countries for example where they actually might want to end up competing with the sex I think there's a question around the growth strategy in general of hyperlquid like body is hyperlquid in 5 10 years time. I'm actually not 100% sure. Is it like the world's biggest exchange? Well, if it is, probably they should be already investing in growth and maybe like limiting the buybacks. If it's like the biggest perex in crypto, which is already a big market in itself, and maybe they've already found product market fit and they're happy in that lane, okay, maybe the buyback does make sense. But I I do think there's obviously room for growth in Hyperlquid if they wanted to use more of that capital to actually grow the business.

even maybe like an insurance fund in case it all goes wrong or something like that. There's like many things you could think of, but yeah, maybe it's unclear to their team right now even what that strategy looks like and it might be a watch and wait. They've had a lot of success in a short amount of time. Like maybe we're speaking too early and they might actually end up growing their pie at some stage. But that'll be interesting to follow. >> I couldn't agree more. And like going back to the point of just us carrying so much like um baggage that's should be irrelevant going forward like it would represent an identity change right to Hyperliquid if they were to say you know guys we're actually going to decide to keep this revenue and we're going to allocate it into growth and maybe they've earned enough trust you know

with the market at this point that that they that would be totally fine right but you know there's not many projects I can kind of say the same. Um, and so yeah, I think like the all of this sort of like muddiness will go away once if you you know token holders just trust the teams to invest the capital in their best interests. >> Yeah. And you know these things are difficult. I don't think you can do one-sizefits-all. I will say in maybe 98 out of a hundred scenarios, it probably is just best you hit this gusher of cash, right? Maybe just give it back.

Maybe just give it maybe maybe you hit this gusher and but there are the reason why Mark Zuckerberg is Mark Zuckerberg is because he found creative opportunities to allocate that cash into Instagram and WhatsApp and those are some of the best acquisitions in the his in the history of finance and business. So, you know, my honest reaction when I hear some of this stuff, I think what tends to happen here, I think what people are reacting to that I have a lot of sympathy for that at least I've seen is hit a cash gusher of some form, right? There's an enormous amount of pressure once you make money like that to put a bunch of process and people. We should do marketing now and

you probably hire a bunch of like middle manager types that don't actually do any and we should be doing ecosystem incentives. You probably don't need ecosystem incentives. I'm actually I'd say that we don't I would kill incentives in general, but but I think that again it the devil's in the details and execution because a young Mark Zuckerberg found an opportunity, right? Yeah. I gave you capital incredibly and it saved and m made what it is today. So I don't know what that is, but I would say that that's what you're paying a CEO for. And partially this also comes from I'm just not bullish on this idea of one man companies. I just I'm not a bull

on this idea. Um because I there there's a there's a question that a guy from Bailey Gford uh used to ask like why are cities so much more enduring than companies? Like why why is a city so much more enduring than a company? And I think the reason for that is the amount of people that you can get on the same wavelength ends up being highly durable. Um, and so like some of these companies like Tether, Hyperlid, we'll see like I think I think Tether is the one glaring like we'll look at Tether and we'll see. We'll see if it's able to enter the institutional. Like one other way of saying if Tether wants to enter the market of the United States, suddenly it's going to have to

hire. You could it could go from oh my gosh, look at how successful they are with 70 people to holy [ __ ] they need to hire 500 compliance people overnight. I I don't know. That might not be the case with AI. I don't know. But in general, there's something instinctive that I'm just not bullish on these that the future of companies being 10 people. Not bullish on it. Um, so >> yeah, I I think uh I'm taking the other side there, Mike. I'm incredibly bullish on solo founders. I think we're in the very very early innings of that. We should definitely explore that in one podcast because I think that's something that I'm noticing in the venture landscape right now. I'm speaking to way more solo founders, which I think are better chances of making it and move a lot faster than ones in small teams. But

outside of that, want to take it back to the buyback kind of pros and cons. So, you know, we came up with a few points pre-podcast on the kind of bare case with buybacks. And I think some of these points are worth mentioning. Um, there's one like exit liquidity argument where, you know, buying back can provide a bid for insiders to sell into, especially when combined with ongoing investing and unlocks. And there's a question there around like are you buying back as tokens emissions are going live? And obviously, they get a better sort of uh thing to sell into and maybe it's actually not the fair market price and you're kind of like actually making that like Yeah. again artificial. Um some other two or three more arguments. So Coin Gecko, this is Coin Gecko data. 14 out of 23 major buyback programs have

only repurchased less than a percent of total supply. So like I think buyback programs outside of Hyperlid like sometimes they're just marketing PS almost like they're saying they're buying back the token then people buy the token thinking that the token is going to go up and like actually makes no impact whatsoever. And I think a few examples of this, one, Helium, they actually came out in January last month saying that they spent millions, but there was basically no impact, especially on the token price, and now they're going back into growth. And two, Jupiter, which I think is also interesting, they spent a bit more on buybacks and, you know, unfortunately, they had a lot of token emissions and so really the buybacks couldn't absorb that supply going into market. And now, from what I understand, I don't think they're doing that anymore as well. So, there is

some push back. Pump. Fun as well. There's a I don't know the exact numbers, but I don't think that they're holding uh in terms of like they've made a profit on what they've bought back. I'm pretty sure they bought higher and now a lot of that is in loss. And then yeah, finally I guess one of the protocols which we haven't talked about very much in this podcast which I think does a good job which might be worth exploring. I know Mike you probably spend a bit of time on this protocol in the past is actually like Sky uh previously Maker. I think they've done buybacks for the longest time and maybe really could be the shining light in what does work long term in crypto. I think they've done a great job over time and maybe not talked about enough in this conversation. So yeah, but the

other ones I think have all underperformed in their like buyback of the token. So maybe Sky is the one that we should be looking at in terms of what actually makes sense long term. >> Two other points to consider. One, I will also grant that there is a reflexivity feedback loop in crypto that might be stronger even than in equities where the price of the token going up is amazing marketing. And it's possible that buying back the token to generate number go up could actually lead to a huge influx of genuine organic business activity in a way that I'm not you know George has talked about reflexivity in finance but I'm not I think it's even more souped up in crypto

than it is in equities for whatever reasons. I mean with Sky like they had like fundamental investors VCs buying liquid tokens in size and you know 2021 2022 this is when it was maker um because the upside was just so massive right this was literally you literally had a chance to like get a piece of what could be one of the biggest you know decentralized currencies and banks you know, in the world. And I do think like, you know, they've done a lot of things right, but the token price not reflecting that is more a reflection of like all the craziness of, you know, the

end game uh and frankly like the growth prospects of for the future going kind of being re-evaluated um and being much smaller than what was originally like envisioned, right? Um and I have no idea if those investors are still holding at this point. they might as well or maybe they've like sold. But yeah, I think that it's it's less about looking, you know, like all of that stuff is not visible to the public necessarily, but you can kind of gleam it from just following the project as if you were like an investment analyst. Um I don't think anybody was like hugely bullish about like the endgame and then all of the governance drama that went on there.

Like it just hurt basically the reputation of the project and thus the asset. But yeah, I don't know. That's my fundamental view. Maybe I'm dripping it. >> Um, no, I I think you have a a good point there, Miles. I think in general, um, you know, you're seeing right now again like the financial market wants teams buying back more than ever. Then there's a question around like the actual sustainability of the revenue. Is it genuine etc. products like you know sky and you know others ave it is actually sustainable and genuine and it is kind of like mature now I think the question is really like if you have a token now like how are you thinking about it because I think there's a real risk to founders right now coming out to

market being like you're seeing these success stories it will also be quite interesting seeing poly market token I think that was announced very recently I've got no idea if any value acrews back to that token or if it's going to be more like a governance token I've heard in the past it's more of a governance token so that could actually completely unwind behind a lot of this conversation and maybe hint more towards the governance token sort of side. Also, interestingly enough, this ties back into a podcast we did a few weeks ago which is the token versus equity and where value occurs. I think like this conversation around buying back for the token unification proposal Dows like operation or expenses being paid through Dows instead of through companies etc.

like these are all sort of blurry still I think like some companies have equity and token some just have a token and I think a lot of the buying back is trying to make the token behave more like equity whereas like I don't know if there are any examples right now that exists where both the equity and the token are trying to behave like equity and buying back and how that re revenue is distributed across both equity and token but I think there's just no perfect model so in general I think last year like the space did mature institutions are here. I think everyone in crypto admits that crypto is now a more mature asset class. Like I would sort of make the statement that like there are less high growth things at least right now. I think they'll be

built like very very soon in this upcoming cycle. But right now a lot of the tokens that are working, we already know what they are. We know how to value them. And especially not just us, but institutional investors know how to value them. Think back to like 2017 cycle when all these utility tokens were popping off. like they were just retail people buying it off like a Reddit post. I don't think they were doing their DCF models and being like what does this actually mean and like how do I actually value this? Now it's like 2026. I don't think the retail on Reddit is like coming in to buy like the next random coin. It's kind of like institutional investors that manage funds that need to tell LPS why they're investing in something. They're doing massive analysis and financial models into like why to buy something. And I think it

makes their life very easy if you're just buying back the token as a way to actually model that. And that's why I think a lot of teams are moving in that direction as opposed to like something where they're not buying back. They're reinvesting in growth because there's still like a massive trusting in crypto which I think we're still learning about. We work in an industry where the technology provides trust. I think that a lot of people in the industry maybe we don't have that trust in those people yet to actually believe that they're always going to take the right actions with that capital. And I think maybe until that trust is earned, it might take us a bit longer until everything is just Yeah.

>> I just feel that that like that's to me kind of a I I agree with that logic 100%. That's just kind of bearish tokens for me because that that's just like a drag on your cash flow, right? Like if you just literally if you just literally think about what it takes to operate a business if you're allocating it's like a tax every year, right? just I got to prove this to the market. So, I'm going to spend 25% of my operating income buying back my shares. I doesn't this get kind of solved by the introduction of like um right now we have venture investors and we have retail investors >> and for years we've been saying we've been missing you know the institutional liquid investor.

>> Black Rockck bought unis swap today. >> Okay, great. Well, like they're not holding diver like widely diversified portfolios of like alts, you know, and like app tokens. Some are [ __ ] nightmare of a business to be a liquid token investor. Like it is been h tough for years, right? And and that to me is like it's a very important critical missing piece because like that just you know if if a lot of investments into tokens in the future are going from retail giving money to an asset manager and the asset manager making decisions of what tokens to buy. Like you can get stickier investors is I guess what I'm saying like longer term investors who

aren't going to be as emotional and volatile about like I need to I don't trust you guys. I need money back. right now. Um, and it's going to be investor relations will be a lot easier for the the the protocol like you know pro uh teams right because they'll just have fewer you know uh people that they need to like talk to appease. Um, of course like direct retail investing is like what I think and holding these assets directly in a self-custody way is like the promise of of crypto generally. So that will never go away. But I do think like, you know, things have just kind of gone like they're just way too emotional, way too volatile, and like the the lack of trust is there because retail is for the most part very uninformed and like the there is no

transparency like you know and there is no investor relations functions really. Um, and it's really hard to like defend capital allocation decisions to like hordes of angry Twitter anons, you know, like you you are going to screw up if you're not like occasionally on a capital allocation disc decision in if you're not like giving back dividends or buy or doing buybacks like you know going back to Facebook like the whole metaverse thing not didn't really play out right. They made the bet on VR when they should have made the bet on AI. Um, and you know, people are not like screaming at for for for Mark Zuckerberg to be fired.

Um, but yeah, I don't know. I I do think a lot of this gets easier with that, you know, um, market participant, you know, actually coming in and staying. >> Definitely. I think the Black Rockck unis swap news is like literally this podcast in a nutshell. They're buying a token that is now acrewing value directly back to the token, which in the past was just a governance token. And maybe that's the reason why they didn't buy it all those years ago. So you're literally seeing the institutional market is rewarding this in terms of like you know buybacks, revenue, value acrruel. So I think this trend is going to keep continuing.

I might pose this question to you Mike uh as one of the last questions in this podcast which would be like has there been any team which you think hasn't wor back the token which has done a really really good job at reinvesting into growth inside crypto like a protocol or something like that where they've grown like a massive amount from not buying back the token but actually from reinvesting into growth. >> I think Morpho has done a good job. 01 I mean I think layer zero has clearly done a good job >> like that's >> they they spent so much money on R&D um and now they have you know at least an L1 that's actually like somewhat differentiated looks a lot like Dela but very differentiated um so like that's an

example and and and if you notice yesterday they got you know Kathy Wood um to go and say we bought this token and they said they got Citadel to say we bought this token, right? And that's going that that is a way like a high lever way to instill grow like trust with, you know, by the transit of property with investors, retail investors who already trust and respect those, you know, institutions that are buying it. >> Yeah. And I mean, I would also like I would also say the all of the centralized exchanges like I don't know.

I mean, I I see everyone showing like the hyperlquid versus Coinbase chart. I could eat these. I this is not something that I have a super strong perspective on. Um but I think there are more examples than you might think of uh but they're mostly companies that have done this. Um they're companies and >> they're not it's really it's really hard to do this in a DAO structure. I've run those grant programs. I've done the BD. It is really really hard. Um and back in the days where we thought we actually had to have Dows for regulatory reasons where everything was going was something that looked more like you know corporate equity governance where token holders are delegating decisions right further

and further up the line so that you know you can be nimble even in a DAO structure. Um maybe that comes back if regulatory you know clarity does say like you do need to have one of these DAO things. um was like, "Okay, well, we're not going to, you know, do the token holder voting again. Let's just pick back up where like we were kind of headed on that Dow path." Um but yeah, I think it's it's challenging. >> Yeah, I don't know. I it just it um yeah I maybe I just I I think in the world I think it's a consistent belief by the way as they have to say like if um you know in this world of if there small number of people um that are able to generate billions of dollars

consistently you know I just I think that when you're in the there's also part of the story for me right like when I when I think logically about the whole life cycle of a company right like the way that I think about it is you look at what's getting all the investment right now. Just think about the story. I think why are all these AI companies getting a gajillion dollars of investment? It's not like anyone's putting numbers. People aren't investing in AI because they're like, "Oh my god, these numbers." I mean, they're showing great numbers, too. But it's because I think at the early stage of equity, you want to hear a great story that's something to the effect of, wow, big problem. Oh, really complicated, hard to solve, huge, undefinable market. Win it. And like that's a better story in the beginning

than here's a dollar amount that I'm gonna in the later stage of investing once the market has been proven out and people do have a rough sense that you could back into how big the market is and what the profit pool looks like. Then you want to see actual dollars and real statistics you can back into and how many dollars am I giving you this year. It's it's just it's a misfit for me. Um, unless you're But again, the way that I square the circle is unless you're at a really, unless actually you're about this is your market. Unless I'm looking at your market right now, right? In which case that's there's not growth. There's >> like that's that's where I'm >> That's That's a good point though, Mike.

I think like crypto verse AI right now AI is growing massively. There's huge amounts of adoption. It's taking over the world. Like crypto needs more growth and more adoption. I do think actually right now crypto needs this extra leg up and I think a lot of projects and protocols unfortunately at the moment some growth is capped and I do actually think teams like Moro like you rightly mentioned Mike are doing great jobs reinvesting capital and like actually getting distribution like teams now the constraint in crypto is distribution so if you're going to be reinvesting the capital growing you need to be reinvesting it in that I think more than anything maybe some UX as well if you're reinvesting it into like incentives where like capital is mercenary get like short-term TVL like historically this is what it's been reinvested in and I think

that's not really working anymore. We need to do a better job of growing and growing not just the protocol itself but then the industry itself and I think AI yes people investing in this right now without expecting any value acrew or buybacks or share repurchases or whatever because it's growing so much and like the long-term outcome of that is so huge and the TAM is so massive in crypto I think we need to expand the TAM that's what the industry is crying out for right now. >> Okay. And and the challenge is like I think uh the market is looking at cryptos TAM having like you know gotten smaller since maybe 2021. We looked at like you know is read write own thesis is that still you know valuable or is it really just an asset le these things are

asset ledgers that are good for payments and you know trading. >> That should be a podcast episode actually. >> Yeah for sure. For sure. >> Well last question for you guys. Um what do you think about how would you So here's another usually what people talk about when they say what makes a good token they're looking at the tokconomics and it's the division of how much how many tokens should go to the VCs versus the team versus the community. How do you think that should change going into the future if it should change at all?

>> 100% to the VCs if you can. >> [gasps] [laughter] >> Um, >> no, no. I think like you just want fairness and equity. Like that's really the the goal that every team should be striving to achieve. And I think the team should feel like they're incentivized with enough of a portion of the tokens where they feel like they're fairly compensated for their work. Investors should feel like obviously they're taking the risk and they have enough ownership for the risk they've taken. And you know I think in the past I do think like 50 to 60% to investors is too much. Like there has been some projects like that in the past which have given out that amount of tokens.

It's a completely separate question altogether. I think like a third a third a third to me seems kind of fair. Like a third investors a third team and a third community because they're like really the key stakeholders in any startup. Uh I haven't explored this like very very deeply in recent times if like what's actually the status quo but yeah again I just think it's important to reward everyone contributing to the project early but community as well is I mean this could be a podcast topic in itself like how many tokens do you aird drop to community like hyperlid obviously did another amazing job there. They bought back the tokens but they actually got the people with the tokens in the first place with the airdrop through distribution. So it can be a great distribution strategy if people rely and hold longterm but also obviously they

can dump and then if they dump the token price goes down the team loses hope investors start I mean it's like a virtuous cycle talking about reflexivity Mike so yeah I don't think there's a perfect answer to it right now >> I mean will there even be three buckets like if you think about the what does a community mean like that is for the most part the same function as the VCs like people give you cash right you give them this asset. Assuming when we say community, we mean like for the most part public sales, >> right?

>> And if you know the the investor market just actually trusted these teams from the beginning if we didn't have all this scar tissue, >> like it would be a lot more you'd have a lot more flexibility. You could do a public sale early on alongside maybe, you know, after um a a private VC sale to like actually build the product and then you could hold back, you know, an amount that you can then decide, okay, should we go sell this in a future public sale or should we, you know, sell this to private investors? like the the airdrop piece is the only thing that's a little bit different and like what you pay out in incentives, but I think it's crazy that like we make those decisions um before TGE like and they're kind of

set in stone forever like um you know equity companies equities don't have to do that obviously. Um so yeah, I don't know. I see this all just getting a lot more simplified over time. I think um I would encourage founders what if you're launching a token to so one I I I think that giving tokens to the community doesn't make any I would just I would just kill the whole airdrop meta. Um I think you're just encouraging sell pressure. Now here here are the the big differences you know the big um exceptions to this are like bit Bitcoin to an extent Ethereum Jetto got the benefit of this with an amazing airdrop

hyperlquid I I would say there are examples that fly in the face of this but what I would say in general is that it's been overall massive net negative um for the industry and I think that if you're going to compensate what it also allows you to do is anyway there's there's a bunch of issues with that. I I just don't think the juice is worth the squeeze. Um I would just compensate your your own employees more highly. Um on the I think there's an interest I I just the playbook needs to change, right? Like I think I feel the same way as you guys. Like I kind of feel a pit in my stomach when I see protocol launch and it's like the market cap is, you know, 15% of the FTV and it's like great, this thing's just going

to go down for two years. I mean what you know um so generally I'm this works in equities because actually the amount that gets released that gets put into the circulating supply um the amount that gets put into the circulating supply is like roughly equivalent to the na like when you uh the amount that gets released when you IPO the difference is those businesses are far more mature. So, what I would say is one of two things needs to happen. Either we need to wait far longer for the token to go live um if you want to keep the supply the amount the same or I would when you go live I think actually I'm kind of moving more

in the scale of like just uh just get the unlocks out of like release a greater amount of the supply so you have a lower because what you're trying to do is engineer the token to go up, right? So, if you if you went theoretically, I'm talking out loud here, which is really dangerous to do. But like, let's just say you went live with 100% of your token supply and it bombed, um, it would be up only from there, you know, and that actually you might get the benefit of getting people who bought in then and and go with you. Um, I don't know. I But but whatever I I would just say that whatever the current status quo is isn't working, the most obvious thing to do is wait to go live to go live with your token later. But I think it would be a

net good for everyone. Like again, I've used this statistic on here. Dell Dell IPOed at $150 million market cap. like that is that is a net good for society if we can get uh I think it sucks that you know you wait until a company's got a billion of ARR before they can go public these days um rant over I but I I think I I would just change the playbook um because what what what's happening right now is not working um all right gents I think we've we've uh any any stones left unturned here >> on that note [laughter] On that note, um, all right guys, this has been a really fun one. Um, hopefully we have defined what a a good a good

token is. And I'm not sure we answered the buyback question, but I think we had a good debate. I think we had a good debate. So, um, listeners can make up their own mind. And yeah, um, keep it keep it simple if you're the project, focused on the product if you're the investor. >> Kisss, keep it simple, stupid. advice. >> Yeah, actually look look at look at lessons that we should be like, you know, applying from the past and try to delineate those from the lessons that no longer applicable or were just bad lessons to learn in the first place, right? Um, so I I think it will be it will be better going forward. I don't know if >> allowing your investors to like liquidate the treasury a day after, you

know, you launch a token with Futard Key is like actually that just sounds so [ __ ] stressful as an operator, but maybe we can cover that, you know, at a different time. Um, probably an in this is a kind of a funny way of describing this, but how do you engineer because there is some amount of engineering I believe. How do you engineer making the token price go up? I whatever we're doing right now does not work like it obviously doesn't work. We're engineering them to go down. So it's very it's it's it's difficult. I I I don't know.

>> I mean I think for the token price to go up, you have to have a good business and a good product and people actually need to use it. That's uh that's my take there. And I think in crypto there's not enough of this and we need to experiment more. >> It needs to be all of it though, right? Like it's all of it. I I think that even if you just had a great product and a business, you still need to like advert like Jim Pillo came on this podcast a couple years ago and said this like as soon as you launch a token, you have two products, your product and your token. So I I agree 80% of it is just a good product that people want. But but there is some dark arts like engineering buyers and I used to like I used to definitely

align with that thesis. I think that the token is no longer the product. I think if teams are spending too long thinking about making the token the product, they're going to lose out the gate. You need to make the product a product and the token I think should be follow. >> This is a super interesting though. Um this is a very interesting difference too between like public and private market invest because when you're a CEO or CFO of a publicly traded company, you absolutely need to spend your time on the the stock. Like you you can't just be like, "Hey, I've got a great product that's killing it." You need to go and spend time, talk to sellside analysts, talk to buyside analysts, bring people along like you do, you need to sell your product and you need to sell your stock.

And I don't know, I I think I we've we've flip-flopped a lot where like just we did too much dark arts, right? And now it's like it has to be the product. And I agree it has to be the product, but in in a stable long-term equilibrium, I think it's both. Anyway, anyway. All right. We got over an hour here. Um all right, guys. This was a really fun one. Uh, I appreciate you both. Uh, I'll see you next week.