What's Next for DeFi with That1618Guy

Transcript

I think what sets Robin Hood chain apart from all the other chains is that they didn't have to incentivize [music] users to come to their chain. Did Robin Hood has the best distribution of all. We I I don't think we've seen like the the peak yet. This is just the beginning in my opinion. >> Like how does Robin Hood keep the momentum going forward from here? How do you think ARC's going to play out? You know, with [music] all this fun that we're having in DeFi right now, where do you see DeFi in six months? [music] Welcome back everybody to this episode of Fully Vested. I'm your host, Defi Dave, here as always with my co-host Patrick of Defi Llama. Shout out Defy Llama for putting this all together and making it all possible. Uh, and today on this episode, we don't have just

anybody. We have not even just that guy. We have that 1618 guy, Marcus, the markets analyst at Deli. Uh, you can't spell Marcus without Marcus. So, shout out uh Marcus for coming on. I've been seeing you a lot on the timeline for the past month. People have been really uh you know singing your praises and uh especially I think that started back uh a few months ago when you were calling pawns early. So uh Marcus, it's great to have you on. We'll get into all the pawn stuff, all the Robin Hood stuff and everything in between. Uh and yeah, but to start off uh can you introduce yourself a bit? And I'm very curious, where did the name that 1618 guy come from?

>> Yeah. No, thanks for being here. Uh, I mean, thanks for inviting me. Happy to be here. Uh, so I started crypto 2017. First intro was >> shout out class 2017. Going strong. We're still here. We're still mentally ill. >> Bitconnect era, man. My some of my buddies were telling me like, hey, you know, you can earn like 10% in in a week. You know, you earn back your capital, blah, blah, blah. And XRP era, too. Yeah. So, that was my intro to crypto. Been here ever since. Uh I'm with Deli right now in the markets team, you know, doing research. Um but yeah, I mean my name uh you know I got some comments about that. So 1618 is actually the Fibonacci level that I love to use.

>> Oh, it's 1618. It's not even 168. >> No, it's 1618. And then that's >> Oh wow. I feel dumb. I feel it's like cuz Yeah. Some people ask me like what the name is, but then some other people who are like, you know, like deep in the weeds of like trading and TA, they're like, "Oh, is that the Fibonacci?" And I'm like, "Yeah, okay." So, it's like, >> "Oh, >> yeah." >> So, it's that Fibonacci guy. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I started out crypto in like a from a very TA perspective. That's that's where my my strength lies.

And um uh you know over the past couple years have been incorporating more of like the fundamental side of things which you you guys have noted that I you know wrote a lot about for pawns. >> Uh so happy to talk more about that. >> I'm actually before we get into ponds I'm curious about this evolution as a trader from going from TA to more fundamental analysis. Uh what how did can you describe that evolution? >> Yeah so it all started in 2017. my buddies were telling me to buy XRP and obviously I went on YouTube and and you know so many people were talking about like why XRP is a future finance and I remember at that time I didn't know anything about trading I didn't know anything about the charts all I knew was a bunch of people telling me to buy

something and obviously I bought it and uh it it dropped like >> 80% or something uh over the next like year and that made me want to you know like understand like how can I time my entries better when when should I look to exit it uh stuff like that. So then I dove in deep into TA and and I started off with Elliot wave theory which is probably the worst thing to start off if you're new to to TA cuz that that that theory it's like it's very subjective. There's no right way to count it.

Although there's like uh you know there's the best way to do it but you and somebody else could have very different counts. So I started off with that and then over the years just evolved my my uh my TA skills to incorporate different people's you know like ideas and and finally have something that I call my own. >> Nice. Nice. Um and now like leading up to today you recently wrote a report called the crowded book uh which explains the difference between borrowed conviction and funded conviction and how it relates to pricing flows. Can you go into that a bit more? the crowded book report you wrote.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, the general the general idea was, you know, I spoke to so many people this year about crypto and everybody smart that I talked to, uh, we we talk about what we hold and the same topic just kept coming up. You know, the same three names. I'm sure you guys probably hold some combination of them in your portfolio, too. Hype, Zcash, and VVV cuz these were the three outperformers uh most of this year, right? And you know, I talked to the first guy. What do you own? Hype, VVV, Zcash. Oh, second guy, what do you own? Same thing. Third guy, same thing. So then that got me thinking is is actually everybody owning the same thing. Is it a risk or is it just you know people positioning in good assets? So I wrote this report trying to explore the idea

of overcrowding. When everybody owns the same asset, what happens when the assets fall? Do do they cause, you know, some sort of correlation between the falls between these three assets or is there something bigger at play? So I started off with that thesis but then while I was doing the research what I found was that these assets although correlated their fall is more or less explained via Bitcoin's beta meaning whatever Bitcoin does it does you know higher beta to Bitcoin and that fall actually got you know got got pushed up during the Zcash exploit by the um you know it's not an exploit but basically what happened was uh on October 10th u research

researchers found that there was a bug in the Zcash code that that could be exploited right and because of that Zcash crashed like 40 to 60% in a matter of two days and during that time hype and VVV crashed as well so I used that that you know that that that uh evidence to to look at how correlated these assets are and what I found is that even though they are correlated but the fall was mostly explained through Bitcoin and the TLDDR uh to save you guys, you know, going into the weeds, but the TLDDR is that when we look at board conviction and funded assets, the fall usually doesn't explain much, but the rebound is the one that does most of the job because when people are holding

Yeah. when when they're holding stuff like VVV, right? When VV was on this crazy rampage, nobody actually stopped the question like what are the holders actually getting? like it was clearly in the documents that VVV at the time the revenue was not exactly flowing directly to the token holders. It was actually going to the equity holders and when I wrote the report VV just happened to raise you know at the equity level. So nobody was paying attention to this but then the token was going up and up because usage was going up right we saw those metrics like there were thousands of users using VVV and everybody was drunk off you know like wow this thing is going to the moon because everybody's using it nobody wanted to ask where the revenue was going but then when the crash happened October 10th suddenly

everybody's like oh wait where you know where where is revenue going and then people realized oh okay it's actually going to the equity holders not the token holders and then then the dip came so when the dip happened. What I found is that if you look at the bounds, that bounce actually helps separate out which ones are the funded ones versus the borrowed ones. That's the TLDDR. >> So, did VVV recover or no? >> So, VVV had a bounce, but the bounce after October 10 was very weak. So, >> October 10, >> is it September 15th now? >> Are you mean?

>> Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Not not October 15. >> Somebody has PTS somebody has PTSD from I don't blame you. I don't blame you. >> Yeah. You know, I I got it mixed up. October 10th was last year during the, you know, the >> August 10th. >> August 10th. Yeah. Yeah. During the time frame when when Zcash had had the dump. So, yeah. So, VVV bounced the least. Hype bounced the most because hype was funded because it had all the revenue streams coming in. The buybacks were still going on. So, people knew what they were buying for hype, right? You could track the revenue and you you could see the revenue numbers are great.

Zcash on the other hand, it bounced back hard, too. But that could be explained because it dropped 60%. So the rebound came when everybody realized like okay maybe you know maybe it wasn't an exploit. VVV bounced the least then but obviously over the past couple weeks and months VV had done has done really well because Eric the founder has has pushed a lot more flows into the token right and and that's the key part. >> Yeah. >> So yeah interest this is a really interesting concept. So it's basically show like are you is a token an you know an emperor or an emperor without clothes basically you're trying to say here >> and this is happening in Robin Hood chain too like um so this concept doesn't apply to just the big caps I

think this this applies to every chain this is more of like human kind of psychology in the first few weeks of Robin Hood chain going live everything's going up and to the right right like anything you buy literally you could look at all kinds of tokens u I can we can touch a lot more about that but But my thesis is that when when the music stops playing and when the the fall comes, then everybody starts questioning like where where's the bid coming from? You know, is the TVL going to actually go up? Uh and that and that bounce usually help separates the good from, you know, the funded versus the borrowed. Basically, >> it seems like to me borrowed conviction versus funded convection is how how diamond-handed is your holder base? Um, and what I mean by that is if your

holder base is diamondhanded, then it's definitely going to bounce back harder. And you can explain why with, you know, actual revenue flows, with fees, uh, with evidence pointing like pointing to that. But, uh, at the end, I feel like at the end of the day, it all comes down to your holder base. And I think that's why Zcash bounced back so hard because although it's not like a business like hype or it can be measured like a business, it's the it's private Bitcoin. It's been around for pretty much a decade. Uh it has a great solid narrative to it. >> One one thing to actually call it now we talk about Zcash. It's it's pretty funny because I remember so clearly cuz I'm a big Zcash bull and when this exploit news came out the first thing that crossed my mind was like wow um I don't

think this is possible because it just in my mind the game theory doesn't make sense, right? If there was an exploit buck sitting for so long and price was just doing nothing, you know, what makes it what makes me think that price can go all the way up to like 800 bucks for Zcash and and the buck still live if discovered. So my my my thesis was like the guy would have max printed Zcash and just dumped everything, right? So when when the news first broke, I was like, "Okay, this is probably not going to be a big deal." But then price started to fall from like 700 down to like 500, which is like $200 drop, 30 40% dump.

And I was like, "Wow, okay, maybe this is something." And then over the course of the next few hours, it dumped from 400 to 250. And I was thinking like, is there actually a bug? Because now that the exploit's out, could maybe, you know, maybe the guy's freaked out and and he wants to to exit. So, you know, there was actual fear even even I was thinking like, wow, is this is this going to actually go to zero cuz, you know, PTSD from all the other stuff. >> Yeah. Wow. Um so when you say fundamentals are you thinking of fundamentals as like sources of say like flows like buys and sources of buy buying and sell pressure versus fundamentals in the sense of yeah this

is like uh DeFi Lama podcast fundamentals in the sense of like business fundamentals. >> Yeah I mean fundamentals can mean so many things like if you look at pawns for example and you compare it to Zcash the fundamentals for what makes Zcash strong and ponds is different. Zcash doesn't have revenue. Zcash have usage adoption uh or orchid or orchard pools you know shield shielded Zcash is it going up or down but if you look at pawns pawns doesn't have the same uh fundamentals as Zcash ponds looks at revenues it looks at transactions how many holders are are holding it so fundamentals can mean a lot of things but for me specifically if we're talking about you know stuff like we can all understand revenue is most one of the most uh central like fundamental things

that I look Got it. Got it. And now we've been talking about bonds uh over and over again. We actually interviewed bonds a month ago, a month and a half ago before they really blew up. I mean, they were still blowing up in Robin Hood, but then they became front and center main character type energy in the CT world. But I want to go into pawns now. Uh I'm curious about your pawn story. When did you first discover it? What did you see in it? Um and yeah, how did that all play out for you? Yeah. So, uh, I first heard about Pawns when I saw Average Joe Crypto's first initial post about it. He was talking about this launchpad that was live on Robin Hood chain and I was like, "Okay,

this is pretty cool." So, I I did a bit of digging into uh, Pawns and that was around like a 5 mil 6 mil market cap and I was like, "Wow, okay." Um, you know, I think Pawns is on to something here. And I I personally thought that Robin Hood chain was going to be successful because you know Robin Hood chain has just the ethos of what the DJs love and what the uh you know people like me love like the fundamentals. So when I first discovered pawns with 6 mill market cap and I spoke to the founder I reached out and I realized that he was very community aligned. It's very rare to see uh a launchpad that actually gives most of it back to the community because if you look at pump now they're only giving

back 50% of the revenue. >> So when I first found that I was like wow okay if if this actually takes off and the you know the meta scales the flywheel scales they could actually start making a lot of money. So that's when I started to track pawns actively. I built I built a dashboard to track like the amount of burns that was going through and I I quickly realized like the amount of revenue and attention they're pulling in does not equals to the market cap that their account. >> They're like wait it's way more it's way more. >> Yeah. I I I did um the XREV which is small, you know, price to sales ratio for for Trefy companies and my matches told me that if they made this amount of revenue per day cuz at that time they were making like you know 30k 40k of

revenue a day and even at the 30k revenue a day the fair value that I I estimated put pawns at like a 3x higher at that time. So I was like is pawns going to be making 30k a day forever? I'm like, I think so because pawns has some, you know, it has staying power. It's the only launchpad then and it had the dominant mind share. So, a bet that pawns would do well is basically betting that Robin Hood chain would start to do me well and attract the flows, right? So, pawns was like a pretty clear-cut way to express bullishness on on the Robin Hood chain.

It's Yeah, it's you just reminded it's kind of like what air drum was to bass I guess with bass early on and it was a representation of the success of bass and bass growing and that's basically pawns right now. >> Yeah. Uh I think the founder is very the founder is amazing. I mean he he listens to what the community wants. just just based that I was able to see like okay you know the fact that he's taking you know he's listening to what the community wants and he's making adjustments even when pawns was way early just made me think like wow okay you know if if if he's acting like this at the start you know uh this has the potential to to grow into something much bigger >> and with Robin Hood in general uh yeah it's we interviewed the ponds guys a

month and a half ago we actually interviewed uh the head of product of Robin Hood uh a month into the launch and it felt like a time cast because we released it a month later. Uh, and I was like, "Oh, wow." Like everything they said came true and Robin Hood has been a big success. Uh, which is hard. Chains are [ __ ] hard. I feel like every chain launch for like the past few years has been a dump. Almost every single one. I can you can like probably count on a hand on your hand like how many chain launches have been successful. And the reason why they've been successful is because I say they have some daddy behind them. they have like somebody that is pulling that uh ecosystem's weight. Uh and with Robin Hood, like not only do they have Robin Hood as the

daddy pulling the weight, but they have this new primitive that they're playing with uh which is stock tokens. And the fact that since Robin Hood is a broker dealer, they don't have to like chip off 10 15% to Alpaca. They just cut that fee. It's a lot easier for them to come out with tokens. And so what do you think keeps the momentum going with Robin Hood chain going forward? Because yeah, we had this big runup that just happened. uh maybe things cool down a little bit but there's still experiments happening uh you have Arc launching eminently uh you have other things happening like Salana is like coming back with their [ __ ] so like how does Robin Hood keep the momentum going forward from here >> yeah um I like to touch on the point that you just talked about I think what

sets Robin Hood chain apart from all the other chains is that they didn't have to incentivize users to come to their chain that that is it by default that really sets them apart from most chains you think about Blast you think about like Sonic you think about all these up bar chain what they had to do was basically pay users to come and hopefully pay app builders to to build creative you know unique interesting apps for people to use and hopefully some stick >> so it's like you you throw you throw a dart on the wall and you hope something lands right and you look at these TVLs of these chains after the incent incent incentives go away users go away too >> yeah so these are mercenary capital it's it's like they come to farm and then once the farm is up they leave Robin

Hood chain didn't do any of that there was no farming there was No Robin Hood coins, there's no >> literally. Yeah. So any inflow that came in was because they wanted to come in. So that's why capital is pretty sticky in Robin Hood chain. Like I I don't think there's another chain out there that that has this amount of success by not incentivizing users at all. Like if you can name one I I I can name one that actually had this kind of success. Like most of them had this incentives going. So So I think capital is pretty sticky there. But then to to go back to your question, where where do I see Robin Hood chain playing out from here? I think you know capital moves in waves right like we saw over the weekend Solana took a lot of the mind share with

Stonk and their launchpad and because Pump you know got delisted off the app store and then Pump had all this drama too. You know Stonk fund Stonk took a lot of the flows and we have the sole eco like the leaders pushing Ston too. So you see these flows coming back and forth the app and flow but I think at the end of the day users will want to use Robin Hood chain because it is a chain that has the distribution at scale like all you need is that going on another podcast talking about why he like uh why he likes AI agents and Robinet chain and then all of a sudden you see capital flow back you know pretty crazy. So we're we're not we're not able to price in this kind of stuff because you don't know when Vlad's going

to go and talk about his chain or like you don't know when I don't know maybe Trump is going to shout out like Robin Hood and how Robin Hood chain is doing. You can price this stuff but what you can price is basically that this is the distribution chain like people are just going to want to talk about it because it's the hottest thing and uh so far there's no incentives. So so people are coming here because they want to. >> The chain is good in it of itself. >> Good luck. Do you do you why do you think it is that Robin Hood chain has I think been more successful with that than bass ever honestly like honest than bass ever was? Well, I mean I just before Jess before um you know before Jesse left uh now we have Kobe, but um if you just look at the listings

that that B have been bass have been doing just some of the stuff that they have been doing I mean it is questionable and in in in my you know point of view like there are some mistakes that were made obviously you know B have been doing >> were made in the wallet they controlled. [laughter] >> Yeah. Like listings were questionable. there were like legit products being built, but they chose to list, you know, like certain things. And then you don't even get me started on like the mistakes they made by like accidentally pumping stuff by changing their PFP for a day and changing back. Like I mean this >> Yeah, this kind of stuff is like, you know, you're you're kind of rinsing your own holders. So, I mean, it may be innocent, right? But like the people who who who who got that sting won't feel

that way and they probably won't come back. Um, but I I think the Robin Hood has the best distribution of all because it is synonymous with retail stock trading and it is synonymous with like the small guy versus the big guy. And now that they're launching, see so, so Robin Hood chain is not the first one to have RWA on chain, right? Because soul had RWA too. But but why is Robin Hood chain tied to RWA right now? Is because when people think of Robin Hood, they think of stocks. And when they think of Robin Hood chain, ultimately you think of, oh, I could trade stocks on >> the stock chain.

>> Yeah. The stock chain. So it's it's it's the branding. They spend like they spent eight to 10 years building out Robin Hood app to to get this amount this amount of users. And now they have all these users. They can say, "Hey, I have a chain where, you know, you can you can do stuff with your stocks if you want to." So I feel this is not even the this is way early in Robin Hood's um chain in in its growth, right? they haven't even started their push because they could easily incentivize people to to do more with stocks. Say for example, you're a stockholder in Robin Hood and the app, right? Not not the chain, you're you're holding maybe S&P and suddenly you find out like, hey, you know what? Instead of just holding stocks on my app, I could actually loan them out on chain and earn

a yield. So, these people are not aware of this yet, right? Most people are just going to hold stocks on the app. But what if Robin Hood starts to push that narrative out where you can borrow, you can lend, you know, you could leverage it by borrowing more capital on your stocks all on chain. So we I I don't think we've seen like the the peak yet. This is just the beginning in my opinion. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um, and what's interesting is with I feel like with base, um, when they were go when they were in their era in like 23 24, they were more following trends. It seemed like they were trailing Salana, whether it was with meme coins or creator coins.

So, all all of that and it just felt cringe. Um, but with Robin Hood chain, um, they literally came out with a new primitive with stock tokens. And you like, you're right, RWA aren't new. Stock tokens have been around for years. I think Ando has been the biggest one. They had like 300 uh tokenized stocks already on centralized exchanges, but it only took Robin Hood chains like, "Hey, we can actually build primitives around them." And now we get to see all this fun DeFi experimentation. You know, one thing I think that might explain it partially is Robin Hood chain feels almost like an extension, like a natural extension of Robin Hood where if you're trading stocks, then Robin Hood chain is like, oh, you can then buy those same stocks, but you can use them in DFI applications or there's some

entirely new types of financial products that use those primitives like crypto paired with or memecoins paired with um stock tokens whereas base like if you were coming from Coinbase, yes, you could try trade tokens on Aerodrome and things like that, but it wasn't to me, especially some of the things they were promoting that maybe had more of like a decentralized identity web 3 type feel to it. It didn't feel like, oh, if I'm trading on Coinbase, this is the next natural thing that I would be able to do. >> Patrick, I'll actually take that a step further. It's not only an extension of Robin Hood. Robin Hood chain is not just an extension of Robin Hood. Uh it's actually the perfect fusion and marriage between Robin Hood ethos and Ethereum ethos especially the builder builder ethos of DeFi of Ethereum that we saw

six years ago. Uh all this experimentation uh trying new things uh this time around in you know instead of we do have a different type of AMM we have unis swap v4 instead of unis swap v2 uh now with the added caveat of stock tokens and you see people doing a lot of cool stuff with the uni v4. Uh I feel like I've been hearing new stuff every day. I'm like, "Oh, like what's being done here and what's being done there?" Have you looked at that at all? Like all the stuff being done with Uni V4? I mean, Pollins is built with Uni V4. Uh I'm not sure if you've seen anything else that's caught your eye. >> Yeah. Um I So yeah, one thing too, um I think Robin Hood chain launched at a perfect time. Like >> we we talked about Bass and we talked

about Robin Chain, but we can't if we compare them apples to apples, I think Bass launched a little too early because you know the wasn't >> Yeah. Yeah. Give credit where credit's due. They were the first ones to do They pioneered for all the other corporations. So I don't mean to like >> give them too much [ __ ] but >> yeah, if [clears throat] Vay didn't do what they did, we probably wouldn't have Robin Hood chain. But Robin Hood chain just launched at the perfect time, right? Like V4 hooks just came out like you said. >> Uh RBay in in in topic right now. Clarity is being discussed like wow just a layup for for Vlad, you know, perfect timing the way the way they launched. So I think that they nailed that. So they got the easy part right.

>> Um but yeah, V4 um >> V4 stuff, man. I mean, I think what we're seeing right now is still pretty early into what's being done. Uh I, you know, there's this project called like Hooker H. Uh they have like a V4 launchpad. >> I love crypto people in their names. [laughter] >> Innovator. >> Um but yeah, I I mean I haven't been diving too deep into like what hooks can actually do, but um I I think that's definitely one area that that's going to be doing well. I feel like the V4 hooks part is still being explored. Um, but yeah.

>> Okay, fair. Um, going back to Robin Hood, uh, I'm sure you've been keeping your eye on all the different projects and tokens launching on there. I was actually talking to I was on the two Lamb Bros more than speculation podcast and we went down a whole list of projects of everything that's being coked over there. So, I'm curious. What are your favorite projects in plays right now on Robin Hood chain and why? >> Uh, well, I'm I'll just talk about like um the broader narrative. I feel like so a few weeks ago I was thinking that you know meme stocks are all the rage and I don't think meme stocks are going to go away. I think this is going to be a you know it's going to come in waves. The cycle is going to come and fade and come and fade. But what I was very bullish on

two weeks ago was AI on Robin Hood. Uh I I could see you could call it the writings on the wall because if you look at the majors near and were doing pretty well two weeks ago. So and then you get the you know the new cycle was really like sort of like giving us a layup right we started talking about like chat GBT and like how you know this new model had some significant breakthrough in AI. So in my mind was like okay we have the majors in AI showing that AI is going to have a a good you know move from here you have the traditional media posting about like what AI is doing and you you start to see some AI projects launch on Robin Hood chain. So in my mind was okay we have meme stocks and and the whole narrative of like AMC and meme going and

just cycling you know capital what's the next best narrative that could pop out from Robin Hood chain that would be fresh and also like inspire people to to start to to hold longer right so in my mind it was AI and over the past few weeks we've seen ZZZ which is one of the projects that launched X GMXDEV you know um the whole history of like GMX and he's the OG dev he launched this product called ZZ easy. Nobody knew what it was. Recently just dropped uh their first product. Sort of like uh a AI agent task board. You know, obviously the price didn't really, you know, that's the thing with crypto, right? Like sometimes you don't drop the >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. If you don't if you don't tell people what you're doing, you let people speculate and dream, people's imaginations go wild, right? I was looking through the comments and everybody was talking about like how ZZZ is probably going to be like this AI agent competitive arena for for purps and I'm like okay I mean that's pretty cool but I you know the first you know anyway so so yeah I was I'm still pretty bullish AI stuff and I think we're we're just scratching the surface there's still another one called Ubi which is the AI experts >> um project that they're teasing as well uh today they just launched you know this new shut up dick. [laughter] >> I'm I don't know. I I feel like um people's expectations run very high and

then when they when it doesn't meet their expectations, tokens dump, but then that gives the projects more, you know, runway to actually build up again and and to to really shake away the people who who who are thinking like this is just going to run straight up. >> I'm happy people are dreaming again. Happy people's imaginations are running because for a long time they weren't and everyone was so nihilistic uh and everything was very PvP and it's like oh like this is all trash but now we've entered this new era this return to tradition of positive sum let's stream again it's PVE now not PvP and actually you see them kind of the mixing of different classes like we're class of 2017 so we were around G5 summer four years later or three years three four years later and then you got your Salana trenchers who were super PBP and now

everyone's mixing thing and having a good time on Robin Hood chain or maybe not having a good time. I don't know. >> Yeah, it's still so so for me I mean if man so going back to pawns I remember when stock because I was in stock brokers too way at the beginning and uh I I got in around like maybe 10 mil market cap and I sold at like 30 mil. I was like okay you know what I'm I'm happy. Um and I just watched stock brokers go on this crazy rampage that ran from 30 all the way up close to 100. And at the time, Pawns was dipping pretty hard. And I remember Twitter was just, oh man, that was it was nasty. It was like, yeah, Pawns is going to go to zero, you know, like Songberers is going to be, you know, the best, whatever. And

I was like, did I did I just fumble? Like, you know, the next goat or whatever. Um, and then if you look at Songber chart right now, I mean, it's painful, but like it's just been down. And I feel like this is going to be very common for a lot of the Robin Hood chain projects sadly on on the chain because going back to our thesis of >> board conviction versus funded. A lot of these are being bidded up because of board conviction, right? They all think that, you know, they don't want to look at a TVL. If you look at the market cap, the TVL of a lot of these chains, you realize like, man, this the fees that they're earning and the TVL that they have right now versus what the market cap is is just so out of whack. So, I

was writing this piece on X about a week ago. I was saying like, you know, everybody's drunk off like the highs right now, things are going up and to the right, but when the music stops, and for me, the music stops when pawns put in like a local high. Because if you think about it, everybody who bought ponds at 6 mill and now it's it ran all the way to 960, you know, FDV before it burns. These people are are the ones that have a lot of capital to play with. So when when Pon is going up, they're cashing out and they're looking at what what to speculate on, right? The music stops when pawns put in a local high or when Bitcoin stalls, too. So two of these conditions. One, for me, Bitcoin has to break 82K for fresh liquidity to come in. Two, pawns has to put in new

highs for this music to keep going on. So what we've seen over the past week is that the capital new capital is not coming in. Whatever capital is in here is all the people who have taken profits on ponds and it's cycling through projects to projects to products, right? You just look at any projects chart. It looks it goes on this crazy run, pulls back 80% and then move on to the next chart. So we're going to get a lot of these, you know, things coming and going. Um especially when we don't see the flows come in. Um, but that that again it it joins back the the whole thing that we're talking about the borrowed versus funded because right now everybody's bidding it up you know because of social apps too right people their their favorite K buy they buy so that's B conviction you know you're

trading on some someone else's thesis >> especially with FOMO makes it easier than ever >> yeah FOMO is great I mean I I I think the social trading is great but just you know it's like when you buy something I I make the mistake too right like I I have a FOMO account and like FOMO account is just it just makes me do bad stuff. Like I just follow people into it and you know but but the ultimate thesis is the same, right? Like at the end of the day when the music stops you should know when when when the music stops and that would tell you what is borrowed versus funded.

>> Mhm. >> Absolutely. You get to see who like has like the what I forget the saying like who actually has their like clothes on or some [ __ ] like that when the music comes out. >> Who's wearing swim trunks when the tide goes out or something like that. Yeah, some some some [ __ ] like that. Like basically that's it. Like you know who has their [ __ ] straight. Um now I I want to move on to um Ark because yeah that's launching eminently. I'm curious how do you think Arc's going to play out? >> Um I've seen some takes online. Um I think what's interesting is that they have more launch pads now than than than products, right? It was it was a launch pad. Every user gets a launchpad. Every man, woman, and child gets a launchpad.

We will not rest. >> One click deploy to 10 launchpads. One click deploy. That that's probably somebody should build that. A launchpad aggregator. Uh >> I feel like No, I I think what people are hoping for on Arc is not going to play out the same way as Robin Hood chain because because the knowledge is there. So, and then I think this is pretty interesting too, like we all talk about like the next M, but there would never be a NYX M because M was an unknown at the time. Nobody knew how to price M. And and that's what's unique, right? Because when when when M was was new, >> price was going up into the right. You don't you have no understanding of what M was. So, your thought was it could keep Yeah, it could keep going up,

right? So, so all this new M stuff I'm seeing too when they talk about ohm is like we will never see another ohm unless something is very novel like to to a point where you you can't even think it's M because the fact that you say it's it's an ohm clone or like an M like mechanics you already you already price it as an M play and we all know how M played out. So taking the same concept and you look at ARC, people are thinking like okay maybe I can find a next pawns on ARC but there would not be a next >> be next pawns >> because because nobody was expecting Robin Hood chain to do so well and nobody expected a launchpad to start from zero with no you know VCs we're fully circulating whatever I mean because now people know that right when

you move that to ARC the knowledge is there and and it it probably would not result in the same kind of like effects that you saw on on ponds. That doesn't mean to say that Arc would do well, though. I I feel like there could still be very much legit projects building on there, but uh just based off my my Twitter feed and and you know, it's just a very brief perview, I just think like everybody's trying to to strike it the same way they tried to they struck it in Robin Chain, but um >> you can't do that. >> Things won't play out the same. Yeah, I feel like >> yeah, I hope they lean into stable coins and become not just a stable coin chain for dollar stable coins, but stable coin chain for all different types of stable coins. Maybe like euros, Korean Juan,

Singapore dollar. Like I could see something there because I would like >> forex chain or something. >> The forex chain. Exactly. I can see them being the forex chain. >> Um >> and art seems very institutional. It feels like very like prim and proper, you know, the branding is really like >> it does, >> right? It's not like Robin Hood chain where it's like people think of you know memes and like AMC and you know like uh GME and all this stuff. It's just the branding kind of matters too I feel like. >> Yeah. Uh you mentioned Olympus and Olympus forks. We actually had on the Olympus uh guys a few weeks ago uh and they were talking about all the forks have launched from netnet to the standard reserve which actually launched yesterday. Uh curious what your thoughts

are on netnet and the standard reserve. I saw Sisphus online describe the standard reserve as Olympus but with master nodes which I thought was funny. It brought me back to Dash in 2017. I just have this tweet in my head of oh like buying a master node on Dash is like buying the island of Manhattan or something. [laughter] But but I digress. Uh what are your thoughts on on uh these Olympus forks? >> Yeah. Uh I actually tried to mint yesterday but I I couldn't make it in time. Like it was super competitive. It it minted out in less than 2 seconds.

Like um >> there was a thousand. So I for for those who don't really know how the standard reserve works is that they have the first thousand Genesis bank charters and I think about 400 of them or maybe 600 of them were given out with to to whitelisted folks. Right. And I think that's the smart part actually because when you talk about these kind of projects, you want to curate a list of people that you think are not going to dump, right? Like I mean it's sad to say, but like even for NFT projects, the reason why I was so bullish Quotron was because I looked at the holder base of Quotrons and the people pushing Quotrons and I and I knew because I I loved NFT season. That was my favorite time, favorite era. And anybody in that era would would would know that the holder base is what makes

the NFT project successful. And the way that Crochons made was successful was because the people in it were not the people that would just be in for a quick flip, right? They were people who actually believed in what de was building and you know they would give him the leeway to actually take time to build it. So now going back to the standard reserve, the way that they curate the 600 people and in my mind is pretty smart because that provides the the core base of people that would not just you know dump whatever they get, right? And the mechanics of the standard reserve is that >> if you hold the bank charter every day, you get em you get emissions of the standard reserve tokens. And if you just extrapolate, if your holders are people who would actually want to believe in your project, they're not as likely to

start dumping their tokens as they come in, right? Um but anyway, um I tried to mint yesterday, didn't get it because it was so competitive. All of them were minted out and um you could mint it for one ETH, but then on the secondary market yesterday when things were going crazy, people the the floor of that one NFT was going for $30,000. >> Wow. >> So yeah, I mean you can't sell it because the NFT soulbound, meaning that it's locked to your account. So the joke that I talked to other folks is that because the Senate Reserve token is still doing pretty well, wait till the Senate Reserve tokens start, you know, pulling back a little more. And some of the folks that I see on Twitter don't even know what they bought. And I saw some comments saying like, you know, why

can't I sell my NFT? Why can't I, you know, why can't I sell the the the charter that I bought? >> You can't sell it again. >> Yeah. you you can't sell it until the team actually activates the uh they have to flip a switch for you to to transfer that that NFT. But right now you can transfer it. Right now that that NFT is the the it's soulbound. And what it allows you to do is that it allows you to open up different um it allows you to buy different licenses. I I I think the Senate Reserve is pretty cool. Um obviously I don't know where it's going to go today. Tonight there's going to be another opening of another hundred charters for you to to to go mint. And you I think anybody who's tracking the

Senate Reserve should track the demand for these hundreds because >> if the demand is very high um that just means that your token can actually appreciate more because to mint these 100 extra charters you need to first buy uh the token and then spend it to to mint that >> button and it's Olympus with NFTTS Olympus with Master. >> I think it's pretty cool. I mean I I I really like how they created that that you know the initial >> group of people. Yeah, >> I think I I think that was the right way to do the human element to it, you know.

It isn't just people like sandwiching, meving or doing whatever to to mint it. It was like no, this was hand selected. There is I think this is where human intervention is a good thing with social proof. Um yeah, so shout out shout out the thing. Shout out by check. But anyways, um I don't know if I have any other questions. Well, I had one more qu. Patrick, do you have any other questions? Go ahead. >> Yeah, I was going to say uh you know with all this fun that we're having in DeFi right now, where do you see DeFi in six months?

>> In six months? Well, it really depends on clarity whether or not it passes. >> We'll find what do we find out like any second now because we Yeah, I don't think it's going to pass. Looks looks unlikely. >> I don't think it fails. Well, while we've been talking >> it failed. Did is that confirmed, Patrick? Uh, well, let's see. Okay, the odds are 70 or 7% for this year. >> 7%. Wow. >> But I'm seeing >> I'm seeing a lot of tweets that say that it failed. Um, I you never know what to trust now anymore. Um, >> yeah, they tried they they they tried to do the Hail Mary, but you know, something I was reading

about with Clarity is that >> watching Guru was saying it failed >> even though that it failed or likely that it failed. >> Um, the all these agencies, whether it's the SEC, CFTC, they're going to put in their regulations. The the companies are they're going to do their thing. They're going to follow the regulations, create their buil businesses off of them, and then by the time administrations change, if they do change and the change of guard happens, the business businesses will be so entrenched that it would be very bad if they did make changes and made it illegal. And also, a lot of the attention instead of being at crypto, it the Elizabeth Warren of the world would be more focused on AI and slowing AI.

And so, you know, crypto might just sneak one out. Sneak sneak out a W that way. I don't know. What are your thoughts about that? >> No, I I think DeFi is um is a very bright future. I'm very personally bullish unis swap because um I think unis swap is the clearest expression of DeFi, right? Like they've slowly Yeah, they've slowly assumed most of the swaps across most chains. Like they used to be all these competitors, but slowly one by one they're just all fallen and unisop is the only one left. And you just look at just Robin Hood chain itself. They're eating on the fees for UNISOP's happy with Robin Hood chain and how well it's doing now. We're not even in a bull run yet. I would argue Bitcoin is still below 82K, which would which would if there's not even a change in trend on a

high term time frame, right? So if Unisop's already printing of just one chain, Robin Hood chain doing numbers in a pre-bull market. Now imagine what happens when Bitcoin breaks above 82,000 and you have other chains like you know B E or whatever all go bonkers and unis swap is printing on these fees right and we're underpricing future governance too like I I feel like when when when somebody look at unis swap I the the most common feedback I get is that like it's a good business [ __ ] token but then you're you're underpricing their ability to pivot and to to to drive more value towards token holders. So now, >> yeah, if if you just factor all this in, and this applies to a lot of D5 products too, like ENA, I was pretty bullish ENA

at the lows and you know, suddenly just they just pivoted, right? The fee switch got flipped and then prices went bonkers. So I feel like a lot of these OG D5 projects, people are underpricing their ability to to to flip the switch and uh and you know, finally reward the uh token holders with more um of the fee share. Yeah. Yeah, that merging that merging between the equity entity and the token entity, whatever unis swap did to unite them under one entity where there's no conflict of interest was hu that that was probably not just a make or break moment for unis swap. It was a make or make break moment for all of defi and all of crypto because there was no more conflict. You couldn't just do like oh we have equity here and tokens

over there like no once you're united uh that's when the magic started. >> Yeah. And standard chart has a price target of unis swap for $100 by 2030. So [laughter] >> that's their target. >> Yeah. Um on that note, uh let's let's end here. Uh that 1618 guy Marcus can where can people find you if they want to follow you and all your insights? >> Yeah. Uh you can find me on X same name that1618 guy. Um give me a a follow there if you want to learn more. Uh I'm also in live and deli chats, you know, talking to the members, writing research. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Uh and if you want to keep up with this podcast, make sure you go ahead follow us. Fully vested pod. Make sure you subscribe on YouTube, wherever you're watching. Leave a reply, leave a comment, leave a heart, like. You know what to do. Uh share this around with your friends if you like it. Make sure you follow me at Defi Dave. Follow Patrick at DynamoPatrick. I don't know if I got that right. I hope I did. Uh, and >> but that's okay. That's okay. And I I I don't I squat on that that username, too. >> Okay. All good. And if you want to go into the data more, if you want to use a little bit of a I use I use Defi Llama AI pretty regularly. Now, you're like, honestly, like it helps me a lot with my cap stuff. It helps me a lot when I'm

doing my research. Uh, if you're a BD person and you're looking for stats to shill in your announcements, go ask Llama AI. It does the work. You can sign up below in the link. Use the link below. Uh but yeah, that's fully vested. Uh thank you so much, Marcus, for coming on. Hope to see you soon. >> Thanks, guys. Thanks.