Why the Broken Pre-IPO Secondary Markets Won't Be Fixed Anytime Soon: Uneasy Money

14 May 2026 · 1:16:10

Kain Warwick of Infinex and Synthetix, security researcher Taylor Monahan, and Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz dig into Anthropic and OpenAI voiding secondary market trades on this episode of Uneasy Money, and why continuous synthetic pricing may end up covering every pre-IPO company. They trace the pre-IPO SPV fraud wave, break down AI-assisted hacking techniques including on-device model exploits, and weigh in on Circle's Arc token presale and an ongoing Aave-Kelp court case.

Speakers

Topics

Transcript

Hey everyone, I'm Kane Wark and welcome to Unneasy Money because what happens on chain never stays on chain. Before we begin, here is a word from the sponsors that make the show possible. Multi-chain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create 50 plus billion dollars in enterprise value for 80 plus clients over the past four years. They're the partner to help navigate markets. Build real traction today at multi-chainadv.com. Hey everyone, I'm here with my co-host Taylor Monahan, security expert and Lucanet, CEO of Pudgy Penguins. Welcome guys. How are we doing?

>> Hey. Hey. >> All right. Um, so our first segment is uh one that is a slightly different angle on uh the AI war. Uh so Anthropic and OpenAI are now saying that they are going to void the trades um that have been happening on secondary markets. So so for context for the last year there's been this like raging roaring trade of people um putting anthropic and open AI as well as other preipo

uh uh shares. But, you know, Anthropic has been one of the big ones, right? Um, and they basically put the shares into a special purpose vehicle or some other entity and then they slice them up and then they sell them and then the people that buy those put them into a different SPV and then they slice them up and then they sell them, etc. And so on. Um, SPVS all the way down. Um, now the interesting thing about this is I've been, as I'm sure everyone in the world has been, um, via email or WhatsApp or whatever, offered these, uh, opportunities, you might say, many times. And, um, while I am [ __ ] I

have a sense sometimes when something is a little bit off. And the the the reason why this trade felt not great to me. um is I I kind of had this sense it's like they're selling you something that will only go up, right? Like um now of course there's there's [clears throat] risks with any uh with any company, but like these preIPO businesses are not like the olden days preipo business. They're like post IPO businesses that are almost too big to fail in some cases. Like Anthropic like has gotten in a fight with the government. That's not how preIPO things

used to work back in the olden times. So, so like we have this weird situation where many companies are staying private for much longer than they used to. Um, people want exposure to it and people are satisfying the market. Like there's a bunch of people who want to own Anthropic and people are like ah now the funny thing is you can satisfy the market for something in many different ways. You can satisfy it by actually giving the people what they want, but it's far easier and arguably more profitable to satisfy the market by selling them rocks with anthropic written on it, which is I think I I have to imagine what is driving some of this,

right? that it's gotten so frothy and there's now like reputational risk associated with the fact that like everyone's grandmother is buying anthropic stock i.e. rocks with anthropic written on it. Um and uh there's just like so much fraud going on, so many scams, so many things that they have to actually, you know, drop the hammer on this and say like we're going to avoid these like stop doing it, right? Um so yeah I mean >> here we are.

>> Yeah and I think part of it is I mean as you said right the market is demanding this like people want this stock like there's been some crazy people out there who uh have been going to great lengths to try to get it right. And so of course someone's going to fill that g that that gap. The issue is that like it creates uh like in this situation it's created a whole spectrum of different sort of vehicles some of which are 100% just outright fraud like outright scams >> like very like yeah the WhatsApp ones >> I mean Luca you you are somewhat of an afficionado of gray market transactions

uh what's what's your take on this? How how do you if someone turned up and they're like, I have the handle, I don't know, uh He-Man to sell uh this movie studio that has like the He-Man movie. Like, how do you like separate the grifters from people actually doing a thing? >> So, I had a situation like this happen to me when we first bought Pudgy. uh we kind of consolidated the cap table accordingly to the $2.5 million purchase price. There was basically four co-founders as people know us today, but there's actually a fifth. The fifth one after our seed round went and started procuring sales for the equity at the

valuation that we had recently got. Um, >> and he was selling it to like a really predatory group, uh, that was like known for being an infamously anti-founder, anti-pro, you know, just dumpers, right? And when I had caught wind of this, he was trying >> multicoin, isn't it? >> No, [laughter] I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm totally joking. >> He was trying to do this He was trying to do this behind my back. And uh, when I had found out, I went pretty ballistic, obviously, as you could imagine.

And the flaw was actually in my operating agreement. My operating agreement had it allowed for such a transaction to occur. And my question to Anthropic and to everybody here is you know did Anthropic's operating agreement allow for such sales? Now typically they don't. Typically, it needs board approval, but today if somebody in Igloo tries to sell Igloo shares, it has to get my explicit approval. And if it doesn't, you cannot sell any Igloo shares. And I've had people come to me, you know, you know, I've had other people throughout the years like try and get, you know, 100 grand of liquidity or 200 grand of liquidity and I n it every time like you're either here with the ride or you're not. And you're going to

get liquidity when everybody else gets liquidity. I'm not >> a couple of uh emperor penguins show up at their door and rough them up a little bit right? >> Rough them up. And so the the it really comes down to this comes down to is it allowed in the operating agreement and if it is then I think anthropic >> but but I I think even let's assume for a second right that it's like totally allowed or even encouraged, right? Um it it seems like something has broken in this market where >> like you know there's so much demand and not enough supply to satisfy that demand that people are inventing demand and you you could argue that they might be like they might have to stop it even if they

wanted it to happen because they have no control over it and therefore they're in they're stuck in this weird situation where like the only way to actually legally easily satisfy the market would be to IPO which they refuse to do. >> Yeah. >> Yet. >> And and the interesting conundrum here is if it is allowed like you going and saying this like anthropic I think will be ultimately liable. You can't backtrack something that was allowed I think. But to your point Kane there is an opportunity here for an entrepreneur somewhere because that whole secondary SBV model is broken. And I can tell you even if I do allow it, like you do want to be able to KYC your shareholders.

Like last thing you want is North Korea buying $500 million. You know, even if it is like you don't want that, >> right? >> Unfortunate. >> And so it's an it's an interesting situation. My take on it is there definitely was a lot of fraud going on. And I mean WhatsApp groups, I'm I'm never I'm never going to be put into a group or make an investment based on a group chat if I don't know explicitly know the people and trust the integrity of the person on the other side. So that's just like me. Uh the handles business to the you know metaphor or to the to the analogy that you were making is a very much a trust business. So usually have some sort of intermediary like somebody it's very like almost

crypto cyber punk >> some other guy with a really good handle. Yes. you like, "All right, this guy's legit, right?" >> Yeah. Well, and you escrow, right? >> Yeah. >> Like, it's assumed that everyone's a scammer in a certain sense. And so, you escrow it because because ultimately you're going to do the transaction pretty quickly, right? Like, there's going to be an exchange of of two things in a fairly quick manner. The issue with some of the vehicles for these sort of like preipo stock situations, right, is it's a lot of times it's very unclear what the actual transaction is, right? Like you're buying future stock, you're buying future

access, right? Like a lot of times in secondary markets the original investor is going to uh like receive their a lotment right down the line. >> They will Yeah. And then has to >> and then there's like a secondary Yeah. >> And so that's how it works. >> The the interesting part about this is it's not necessarily the group chats that got targeted. It's like you have secondary marketplaces. Like I've used Forge. I've made investments on Forge. The fact that they're nullifying investments from places like Forged is very concerning, right? Because like in the spirit of what I said a second ago, which is like there's an opportunity for

an entrepreneur, actually entrepreneurs have caught this opportunity and secondary markets do need to be fixed. Platforms like Forge, which do you know billions of dollars in volume like are supposed to be the safe place for secondary transactions. If they nullify those, it's a huge shakeup just in general. like that's going to shake a lot of people up in a lot of different sectors and have a lot of big ramifications because there's no way that you're buying something as credible as Forge for example you know buying a like I would go and do I mean I would call my lawyer immediately if for some reason forged didn't fight this and just conceded and be like dude I got a couple hundred grand in forged secondary transactions like how legitimate is this

and who is liable it's going to have some really nasty >> it will be chaotic right well so but the problem is right my my my read on this is like okay you have a legitimate place right um that that is offering you know KYC all like all above board legal documents like it's a it's a you know proper marketplace right um two things can happen one someone can go onto that marketplace buy them buy shares and then rewrap them and sell them in WhatsApp right that's the first thing and be like no no no I bought these is on the like legitimate place that you know and and you're not really vetting the buyers. Uh no offense uh Luca um but you're not

really like you know scrutinizing the buyers of these shares like anyone can come on and and go through the process and buy shares and then turn around and and flip them on secondary right um or >> tertiary or whatever. Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh, and so, so I think that's the first thing, but then I think that there's like just a philosophical issue of like as soon as there is one even one legitimate place means this could be real and someone's grandmother gets defrauded because she's like, "No, no, like you can do this. It's allowed."

Like there's places where, you know, and it's like, "No, no, go to the real place." And she's like, "Yeah, but this is in Facebook. I love Facebook." >> Yeah. And it becomes plausible, right? Because you hear like it becomes like sort of this legitimate thing that you can you can do this, you can buy them. >> Yeah. Everyone's doing it. Everyone's doing like I've got a friend of mine who has put so much money into these secondary markets. I actually should probably do a check on him, make sure he's okay. But like every week, every week he's like, "Hey, I'm doing this one. You send me emails. I'm doing this one." And like he is very well connected. And I'm sure every single person that he was dealing with was like a legit holder of like direct shares or whatever, right? Um that was not the

issue. The issue is that like someone can come and just nuke you from space. Now let's talk about the crypto aspect because of course crypto is involved in this. Um we've we've found a way. Crypto finds a way. Um so there are uh I think a couple of marketplaces but the main one is pre-stocks on Salana. Um now my my understanding is pretocks was already a bit insane because it was already trading at like a 3x multiple which again just speaks to the like satisfied demand part of this equation right u but my understanding is that pretocks was trading at some crazy multiple of the actual anthropic raise that happened. It was like 800 bill and and uh the implied

market cap of pretocks was 1.4 trillion or something. Um, and now it's come back to the actual value um, of like 800 billion. Um, so yeah, I mean, you know, again, >> because you you'd be probably best to explain this, but the purp for example and a max long to the tits, >> right? Like is there a bucket somewhere and a piece of paperwork in the back somewhere of like Yeah.

>> No. So this is the best part, right? >> Yeah. What's that work? >> So synthetics uh and one of the original arguments against synthetics, right? Um was there were a lot of like OG people that were like ah this is like paper gold all over again. Right? So there there are um uh conspiracy theories that like there is and probably not even conspiracy theory. It's probably like it's fair to say there is something like 10x more paper gold in the world than actual gold, right? You can go and buy gold on a marketplace and it's like not real gold. Um, you know, and Matt Lavine talks about this like every once in a while they go into one of the storage facilities and try to like pull out some

tungsten and it's a bunch of rocks, right? Um, so so this is like a a known issue, right? Um, the interesting thing about a synthetic asset that is not tied, there's not an RWA, right? There's there's, you know, two different components here, right? If I say to you, I'm going to sell you an RWA, a real world asset that's been tokenized. Let's say gold. Um, Tether has like billions of dollars of gold in a Swiss vault that they have tokenized, right? And they're like, "No, no, no. We're Tether. We're super rich. You can trust us. We've got the gold. Like we've got the gold and we will give you the gold the same way that they have the dollars

in theory. And no, they do now. I'm joking. Um but like Tether has a pile of dollars, a pile of gold, a pile of pig bellies or whatever the [ __ ] else they're tokenizing, right? That like they're saying this is a legitimate real thing. You can't necessarily claim the gold, right? Um so so you can't redeem it. Um, I'm sure that they've got in in the case of Tether, they have people that have redemption rights. They can redeem for dollars, right? And get dollars in and out. That's why the market stays liquid. Um, but this is a purely synthetic asset, which is a completely different thing. You're basically saying there are um two counterparties that are making a bet with each other about a price that is

exogenous to the system that they're using, right? Um about what the the value of this thing is. It's a pure like bet either with with a direct counterparty or a bucket shop, right? Um and and a bucket shop is like an olden times thing from like the 1900s where you could go to trade shares because you know you couldn't really uh get access to like a a you brokerage account back then, right? So you go to this place and it was basically like a betting shop, but you're betting against the house. you would you would uh write a slip of paper or whatever. So So that was again a synthetic asset. You weren't actually trading the underlying shares.

You weren't buying like the Mississippi Railroad shares. You were literally placing a synthetic bet on whether Mississippi Railroad stock would go up or down that day. >> Um >> interesting. And who that like is is the like >> it's an oracle problem >> an oracle but how so I get the oracle part but who determines the float like if there's on hyperlquid is it is it you know does anthropic have 10 you know 10 million of these bets existing and then whoever is you know >> anthropic is not involved like obviously anthropic is not involved right so so imagine you and I right have a bet about uh the price of anthropic share Right? I think it's going to be let's say for

sake of argument 900 billion, right? Um so I buy and you you can think about this in poly market terms as well, right? Like I buy a bunch of yes shares of 900 billion and you're like you idiot. It's not going to be 900 billion. AI is a scam. It's going to zero. And so you sell the no shares, right, to me like or or you you're buying no shares from me, right? And so we we create this synthetic market where you and I are expressing a bet about what we think the price will be. But then Tay comes along and goes, I think it's going to be two trillion. Sorry Tay, you're the idiot in this. Or maybe not. Maybe you're the smart person. I don't know. Depends on depends on how it goes, right? And you're like, I don't care what the price

is. I don't give a [ __ ] what the price is. I just want as much anthropic as you will sell me. And just bids through the book. Every single person who's like, "It won't go over 1.1 trillion tastes like you're an idiot." Then the next person who's like, "It won't go over 1.2 trillion tastes like you're an idiot. It's going to 10 trillion or whatever the hell she thinks, right?" And she just keeps buying against every counterparty. And then eventually the price settles at whatever the last person was willing to sell her the other side of this trade, right? Like call it 10 trillion, right? So, so TA's now put like $10 million into this like crazy trade where she's bid anthropic up to 10 trillion and now we wait and we wait to see what happens when the IPO happens and when the IPO happens the trade will

effectively settle, right? And that's but it's not settled now. It's not >> it's not even in the future. It's not settled with real shares, right? >> It's you're just settling the bats. It is I think poly market poly market is a good example for these like this is poly like the the synthetic thing is poly market it's just the difference between poly market uh is it's two separate binary bets that are actually detached >> like it's only arbitrage that keeps them in in uh in alignment. Um but for for a purely synthetic perk market um it's just who's willing to pay the funding to bid the thing above the oracle price because there's an oracle price and you

know so they they will kind of anchor it to the last raise or whatever but it floats outside of that right and the higher it is uh you know or or it's based on the skew. So the old the old synthetic style was like the more you bid the the price up um the more skewed the market is um this was the bucket shop model right where like the market is taking the other side right but the market is like well you're probably wrong like over time right you're probably wrong and you're going to pay 300% funding to to bid this thing above you know if if it's so skewed um i.e.

you know, you've got $10 million bet on one side and there's only a hundred grand on the other side of the of the trade. You're going to pay a massive amount of funding to the people on the other side. Um, and so there's a bunch of different mechanics that you can use to keep these markets alive. >> Arthur, at least on the perk side, the the story goes that Arthur is the pioneer of these perpetual markets. Is that correct, Kane, or do I >> That is correct. Yeah. Yeah. the the idea of, you know, creating the the genius of Herps, right, was that you could take a spot price and you could create a continuous market that didn't need to be settled, right? And the settlement was this funding mechanism.

Effectively, it's continuous settlement via paying funding from one side to the other of the market. Um, so in in classical futures it settles once a month or once every three months or once a year or whatever, right? So we make this, >> by the way, it a lot of futures markets settle in the actual thing. Like you hear horror stories every once in a while of people who get into futures and make a killing and then accidentally get settled and they have to >> oil. Yeah. >> Yeah. They have to accept delivery of like literal oil or like eggs or like whatever. [laughter] whatever market they were they were on.

>> Yeah. So the their their cash settled and and uh and you know things that settle in the asset along asset themselves. Um but uh but most um >> most of the time you know uh those those stories are like apocryphal stories, right? They're not necessarily like >> but but there are times where the market detaches. >> Yeah. But it highlights that's where so if you get if you get the concept of like futures in that right you're you're betting basically on like the future price something it's going to settle right and you're going to have the eggs the price of eggs the bets right everything's going to settle out >> pork bellies are the best because it's like a ridiculous thing like what am I

doing with pork like who's even I don't even get it pork bellies it's quite funny >> um but with pers it's just forever it just but it's conceptually it's very similar um and again it becomes becomes this fully synthetic market, right, where you you just you're just betting, right? And it's and it's just becomes this market in itself. Um, and that's it's just like another layer of of stuff that adds complexity, I think, especially to situations like Anthropic and these preIPO stocks, right? because you might you you have all these different sort of like deal terms, let's call them, and markets springing up.

Again, it's not super clear which vehicle is which in a lot of situations. You have onchain stuff, offchain stuff. You have stuff that's just never going to settle, right? Like if you have perks for these, like you're not you're not settling the real >> the genius of of per right, is that you can always exit because it's super liquid. >> Yeah, >> that's that's why that was such a an amazing innovation, right? Is that like you don't need a like 30-day settlement period because you know it's so liquid that you can always get in and out of the >> Right. But like pretocks, right? the Salana preto stocks those have that's there's an actual SPV there with actual

stocks somewhere right >> yes >> no no no I don't believe so I don't believe so I think I think pretocks if actually maybe I'm wrong here um pretocks might be the one because there's there's one big one that is purely synthetic and one big one no it looks like pretocks is the SPV wrapped one >> okay so they and that's where and this is what I mean by the complexity and like it's just ripe for fraud Venuals. Sorry. Venuals is the is the purely synthetic one. >> So, uh, so there's Venuuals. There's also, um, uh, there's another Salana one that's been around for a while, uh, that's also synthetic. I can't remember.

Um, >> okay. So, do you think that anthropic I mean do you think that in the at the end of the day this is going to let's say like come to fruition where anthropic or open AI or whatever they're going to have to like deal with this or are they just trying to to curb the the frothiness and make sure that they don't end up on the with the short end of the stick. Right? Because that's where we're heading. >> Markets are [ __ ] right? So like if you if they aren't serious about this and people don't believe them like if there aren't like you know someone's going to sue them like to your point Luka like someone's going to be like yeah but you didn't say I couldn't do this whatever there's going to be some lawsuit um you know from like some

legitimate person who bought shares who then put them in an SV that now has counterparties that are you know someone's going like there's going to be a lawsuit for sure um and then it'll be interesting to see in Delaware or wherever you know for OpenAI it's even weirder right because OpenAI let's not forget was a charity and then converted into like you know so there's there's uh there's other issues there but like anthropic was like h there's people who are shareholders who've sold them now have counterparties that they can't deliver the shares to or you know it's not clear like the other the other interesting thing about this is and this happens in crypto all the time like people by you know uh let's

say um Athena this was happening pre pre-TG on Athena and it happens on a lot of pretype projects um people are trying to offload secondary um and the same thing happens and oftent times the founder has to like reach out because you know there's like seven investors right it's not like anthropic where there's like a million people it's like seven dudes and you're like well which one of you is selling because you know someone approached me and said someone's selling you know 10% of the the equity, right? And so it's not too hard to triangulate and be like, "Stop doing that, you know, whatever it is."

>> Well, and typically, I guess, as you sort of like edge closer to IPO, typically people are not super opposed to these sort of like quiet secondar. >> Secondaries are fine. Secondaries are fun, >> but you want the team. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Because this is the thing, right? is like if you have investors who've been along for the ride for that long, they're getting let's say antsy for liquidity, like really antsy for whatever reason, right? And if there's other people in the market who really really really want to get in, that's not the worst thing for like the founder for the company, right? If you

have someone that's like really needs to access it for whatever reason and you have people that want in, it's not the worst thing in the world. The issue is that we've gone so far past this, right? Like this, we're we're talking about like full preo markets, right, with fraud, with chats, with tokenized onchange it, with SPVS, like there's so much going on. Uh it's just like it's a real mess. And so, >> but so, so I think this is the interesting thing to me and and the argument for why uh you know, again, back in the day when synthetics first started doing this, we were the first ones on Ethereum to create a purely synthetic gold, purely synthetic Bitcoin that just traded, it had a mechanism to

keep it in line with the price of Bitcoin, but that was it, right? Um, and the nice thing about it is you didn't need to trust an external party. You had to trust the oracle that the Bitcoin price was right. Um, but the cool thing about that is, you know, you could look at the oracle price and the actual price and see historically that it had been quite accurate and go, well, I don't need to worry about this that much. What you didn't need to worry about was that is there the Bitcoin somewhere and is it safe? Like what happens if it's hacked or whatever. Um so you know this just the advantage of a synthetic asset and then when you add synthetic perks on top of it um you know when you have leverage it it in in a situation like this it is

outside of the scope of anyone to tell you that you can't do it >> right >> you want exposure to a thing you know if the market's liquid enough it will just be a better place to trade these assets. So, you know, there's >> also again going back to like what's the ideal outcome, right? >> Having uh so there's some people that really just like want in on the price and they just want to bet on the price. Those are not necessarily, especially for preIPO companies, not necessarily your best investors as crypto has learned over the years, right? Like the people that just want liquidity, they want to make their quick bets, they want Yeah. they want to make a bunch of money. They're not necessarily your best investors. Um, and so having a market for those people is

not inherently bad in my opinion. >> Well, I would I think it's really good. >> There is a down there's a potential downside. So, one is you remove the adverse selection of people trying to buy tokenized shares. >> The real Yeah. >> the real shares like going and bothering people and saying like sell your shares or whatever. And you know, funnily enough, this happens, right? Like when Poly Market announced their raise, um, you know, I'm a known investor in the seed round and I got like a 100,000 emails, most of them, I'm assuming, from scammers being like, "We want to buy your shares, right?" Um, and and you know, so I had to put like a filter on my email to just like filter out anything from Poly Market for a while because it was crazy. It was like multiple emails a day from people being

like, "I've got buyers. Like, please sell us the shares." Um but the the thing that just from a market structural perspective right the thing that would be concerning to an anthropic or an open AI is the one of the reasons arguably that they uh they don't want continuous pricing of the asset is it is far better to raise money at a hund00 million then raise money at 500 then raise money at a billion, then raise money at 10 billion.

Like, and it's a a number only goes up. Your investors are always happy. No one's calling you being like, "Why did the price go down?" Unless you do a down round, you you never have a concern, right? Um this is one of the biggest issues with crypto is like early stage companies have a continuous trading price that anyone can point to and be like, "You're a bad guy. you're bad and the company's bad and everything about you is bad and I hate you and like why did you do this to me, right? Um and and if you don't have that, it's not a distraction, right? But even more so, your employees also don't have a scoreboard, right? Like once every six months, >> they just get like 5% >> richer or 10% or 50% or 100% richer,

right? And so they're always happy. But if we have a world where anthropic has a continuous perpetual price that is believed to be the canonical price by the market, right? They raise at 800 billion. Let's say here's a hypothetical. They raised at 800 billion and then they get in another fight with Trump, right? And the synthetic market is like doing whatever. Let's call it like a billion dollars a day, two billion, five billion dollars a day in volume, right? Um, and when they get into a fight with Trump, the price goes down from 800 billion down to 400 billion.

And all the employees are like, "What? Stop. Don't do what? I'm getting poorer." Like, like that is a genuine problem that they would have to deal with because if people start to believe that these synthetic per markets are the price of anthropic, then you don't have this like slow ratchet up of pricing. Now you've got a continuous price that you have no control over. And unfortunately for Anthropic and anyone else who is preipo, you have zero ability to stop this. This is going to happen. It is inevitable. I'm so confident this is the way the market goes. Um hyperlquid will do it or some hyperlquid market and we will just have continuous pricing on everything.

>> That is the world. >> Well, not hold on. Not on everything though. On everything that is in demand enough, right? Like that's the thing is >> you might have liquid continuous pricing. Yeah. >> Like but you like it might not be the most accurate pricing but you will have markets for everything >> because the cost of launching market is zero, right? Like so you know um we like we could create a market for the uh the statue in uh Lucas's office the the little >> Yeah, let's do that.

>> Mouse hot guy. >> Like you do it like it might not be that many trades but it's there. Right. But nobody's going to trust that uh like the two bets on it to be like the canonical price. >> Sure. No one no one will. But if you have a market that's doing 10 billion a day, suddenly you're like uh the price of the anthropic did go down to 400 billion. Like clearly it did like the market saying >> just like >> don't fight with Trump. >> Not fighting with Trump, Dario. Like >> and this is this is this is I mean this is crypto. It's like crypto is leaking into the real world. uh because this is how crypto >> this is how crypto operates, right? Like you do something and then you don't have to just contend with the angry hordes in

your discord, but like your employees are also like >> your employees are like you pay me you pay me in the token, bro. What the heck? >> So, I don't know. We'll see how it falls out. >> Good times. >> Hopefully AGI kills us all before this happens lately. >> Only hope. All right. I mean the solution here is is to let them is to is to make it a better situation for them to IPO, right? So that they can just be on the real market. >> That I I think this is genuinely an issue. Is it is unequivocally not a better situation IPO because if you IPO, you have this exact problem except it's now even more real. You're now on the NASDAQ and the price is trading every day. Like right, it is genuinely better

to be illquid. Like there's a premium for being illquid and having investors that are always happy because the price always goes up >> and and having a trading price and having retail investors and all of that stuff is like it used to be that you had no choice, right? If you if you needed a billion dollars to do something, the only place that was liquid enough to give you that billion dollars was public markets. >> Yeah, >> that is no longer true. So why would you ever IPO, right? Um, unless you know the government mandates that you must IPO after like some like something will have to change in in this market because the incentive is to never IPO now which means you have these giant companies that are private companies like it's a

very weird >> situation like that hearkens back to like pre-stock market era of like the 1800s. >> Yeah. >> Um >> where everyone it's all private wealth. There's no way for anyone to invest in things. It's crazy. >> Yeah. But also, I mean, the reason they don't IPO, it's exactly what you said. It's a lot. It's just generally better to have like a handful of aligned investors who you keep happy because the price of your stock gets updated once every couple years or whatever. Uh, then have the the public market watching your literal every single move, right? Every single day, every single quarter, every single event is going to move the price and is going to impact you. And that's

good for early stage companies because you need that sort of like that patience in order to you can't have people bring your neck because you have to think more >> to be able to do things. Exactly. >> Yeah. To do things. But it does get very interesting down the line when especially for these these really in demand companies who are huge and the valuations are massive like you know it's it's >> I mean like genuinely you get to the point where the most valuable company in the world is a private company that will happen and at that point that will be like the market is clearly broken um you know we >> loan against you can loan against those shares now we got you loan against

everything any private companies gained? >> Yeah, the uh No, I haven't. I haven't. Um but like I I just think that the the the shift in the mark and again like Matt Leavine has been talking about this for like a decade now, right? That like the shift away from public markets as the primary place for liquidity that that was the only place you could get liquidity has broken market structure somehow. Like there there's something that you know the incentives are completely inverted now. There's more than enough money in private markets and to your point Tay like why the [ __ ] would you want to deal with private like public markets? Why would you want to deal with retail investors?

>> Yeah. >> Exactly. >> All right. Let's let's go to an ad break and when we come back we will talk about more hacks. >> Yeah. Multi-chain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create over $50 billion in enterprise value for more than 80 clients like Pith, Moon Commerce, and Wormhole. They've worked with some of the largest and most impactful companies in the space. They're the partner you want when you're navigating markets and trying to break out from the noise. They help navigate TGES, go to market, BD and partnerships, capital markets, advisory, PR, media placements, KOA activations, and more. Driving execution from launch to scale. Their results are measurable.

To learn more and start building real traction today, visit multi-chainadv.com. Who in the group chat has the absolute worst sports takes? You guys, it's got to be me. I don't even watch sports unless it's a global event. But Coinbase is giving me a chance to outpredict a pro basketball coach for a share of five Bitcoin. And honestly, I'm built for this. I have beginner's luck, energy, and absolutely nothing to lose. Coinbase is bringing in pro basketball coach Lethal Shooter to see if you can actually outpredict a pro for a share of five Bitcoin. Get more correct than Lethal Shooter, split five Bitcoin, and get a chance at a private coaching session in LA to perfect your jump shot.

Coinbase 1 is the ultimate membership to make the most of your money and has been amazing for me. Zero trading fees on thousands of crypto assets, 3.5% APY on USDC, boosted staking and lending rewards, and up to 4% Bitcoin back with the Coinbase One card. If you trade crypto regularly, the basic annual membership can pay for itself. Plus, the $1 million streak prize pool is still live. You can also get 20% off the first year of Coinbase 1 annual plans and a $50 Bitcoin bonus when you spend $100 on a new Coinbase One card in the first 30 days through May 31st. Make your predictions and split five Bitcoin. Get started at coinbase.com/unchained.

That's coinbase.com/unchained. Join today at coinbase.com/unchained to start your predictions. No purchase necessary. See rules and other ways to enter. Terms applied to other offers. Futures swaps via Coinbase Financial Markets. Risk of 100% loss. Payouts event-based, not investment advice, not available in Nevada. Coinbase 1 Card is offered through Coinbase Inc. and Cardless, Inc. cards issued by First Electronic Bank. Bitcoin back rates are based on card holders assets on Coinbase.

>> All right. Uh we are back. We've talked many times over the last few months about uh the hack spree. Um I think we have reached some level of consensus that uh many of these attacks are um somehow AI mediated or supported or or something. Um hey, I'm sure you've you've got some takes here. Um but apparently April was the worst hacking month in crypto history. 625 million 30 incidents. I'm not sure on what dimension we're measuring that because there have been higher dollar values or maybe like the number of incidents. It's like an incident a day which is wild.

>> It was crazy and I don't even I think there's more than that. I don't know what the real number is but like it was like every day there was every day there was like a sizable incident and then there were like five other incidents that just like happened. Uh and like yeah like just random. lucky to be the the guy that gets hacked for like 10 grand on a day where like someone loses $200 million and no one ever notices. That's >> it's Yeah. >> Nice. So, it's uh I think they're just going off like basically like the prevalence of hacks. And it was not just like random people getting fished or like private key compromises, but it was like there were big infrastructure

centralized exchange hacks, DeFi hacks. And then there were also like just this like big smart contract hacks, small smart contract hacks. Like there were a ton of hacks where it was like we don't even know what the heck that is, but it just got drained for a billion disappearing. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. >> Some unverified contract on arbitrum got, you know, or whatever. Um it just it felt wild. And then that's just on the crypto side. You go to the the regular world side >> to the regular world as well. So So yeah, it looks like through April more than a billion stolen, 68 incidents. Um the crazy thing is I was reading through our show notes, right? And it was like the first one was Drift for 285 million.

I had forgotten like legitimately forgotten about drift. There have been so many hacks since the drift hack that I was like I've been much more concerned about help and all the a stuff I was like oh yeah drift >> like it just completely off my radar. Um so uh now Google announced yesterday in their cloud blog and what they identified now I don't know if they identified this through like their own system. I don't know why anyone would be using Gemini to build software, but uh maybe the checks aren't as good or something. I don't know. Um but they found an LLM built Python exploit that bypass 2FA on an open source admin tool.

Um Google says it disrupted a planned mass exploitation campaign pre-launch. Um what do we have any they I don't think they released any details. What's your what's your take on this one? Okay. So, I think this one there was one interesting one. The rest are like whatever. Is it this one? Uh, okay. Okay. So, I think I might be wrong, but let's just go with it because it's cool even if I'm wrong. Okay. So I think what happened is that in the last year Google Android Chrome Google things have slowly increased the uh let's say like the way that Gemini can be accessed

and it's not just like you as the user going to like Gemini and like typing things in. >> Right. Right. >> It's like it's increasingly like built into the browser. it's built into the operating system and there's API like not APIs to like the cloud but like internal APIs. So like one thing that we have been asking about for a long time is can we when we're doing like fishing detection for URLs right now it's like a manual block list like and there's all these processes running to identify fishing sites and then adds the URLs to the list. Theoretically, if your local device or your local browser has access to uh let's call it AI, right? You could instead of having all these processes

running in the cloud and then pushing the outputs to the manual block list and then users being protected. Theoretically, every time a user visits a site, you could run a local. >> Do you get what I'm saying? like you could have it check locally and be like, "Yo, is this what's the chance this is malicious?" >> And it doesn't have to like leave the browser. It just like, you know, operates in this little realm. I think what happened was they found someone trying to use these APIs, not in the way that we're trying to use them, but instead to uh like call Gemini locally on the device and be like, "Yo, go find all the go find all the attack surface. go find all their private keys or like whatever it

was. And so it's sort of like this >> this uh using the local Gemini as like an an aid to uh construct the malware sort of on the fly, let's say. Right. >> Right. Or do the exfiltration on the fly. >> Um >> which is wild. >> That's cra That's wild. Yeah, that is wild. Um, I mean the like we haven't even gotten to like, you know, there's there's been prompt injection attacks and stuff, but like we haven't even gotten to a point yet where like there are sufficient a sufficient number of like continuous running autonomous uh

agents in systems that can be owned. Like that's going to be one of the next vectors in in my mind, right? that like people will find a way to like get into a system that has an agent. We're thinking about this because like we we are we're like moving so um quickly to this like agentic coding uh um kind of continuous autonomous coding infrastructure. Um but the our biggest concern is like how do you protect the guy who's writing the code from anyone ever talking to him?

>> Yeah. like you know and like it's it's it feels the same as like trying to protect private keys, right? Like we have a we have an agent that's running on like a VM, right? And we have to make sure that there is no way into that VM because that agent could insert some code and you would never find it. I [clears throat] mean, you'll find it eventually when someone activates it, but but like, you know, there there's no way if you live in a world where agents write 99% of the code for you to review all that code except with other agents.

And so, like, you have to have these checks and balances. Um and and yeah, I we're not there yet, I don't think, in terms of like um you know, the the thing that I've I've sort of proposed I guess is like you know, an open floor is is heading this direction. Not in a good way, but like you have an agent that owns an open source repo and it's like a continuous running agent that's running somewhere in some secure environment, right? that reviews every PR, reviews all of the things, um, reviews, you know, uh, every bug fix, whatever, right? Um, and is also in charge of deployment, but you have to like segregate the ownership of that and it has to run somewhere like really

securely that someone can't get into it because if they get into it, then they'll inject malware and inject zero days and inject all these exploits and stuff and, you know, uh, like uh, you know, supply chain attacks. there's just a bunch of different attack vectors. If you can the same way that if you like compromise the machine of a team member of someone write, you know, of a team that's writing critical code and you inject code into the code that they're writing, now all of a sudden you've got this like amazing attack vector because everyone trusts that team, you know, and if it's some some library, right, they're like, "Ah, these guys know what they're doing." Um, anyway, it's it's uh it's pretty crazy. So, um,

>> yeah, we're getting we're getting to a point where, >> again, we talked about this a bit last week, but we're going to have to get to a point where the focus is on basically containing the blast radius at all points instead of trying to like secure it up front because >> right >> and we are never very good at that anyways like securing it up front like >> we tried with the smart contract audits and everything like it doesn't we're not very good at it. Okay. >> So, I think the solution is to Yeah, you still want to like try to keep things secure obviously, but like >> the the blast radius and mitigating and having like these external things that can press pause or stop or whatever it is to prevent exfiltration, to prevent

theft, to prevent whatever, it's going to be mandatory. Um, and it's going to be, you know, everywhere. So that you basically like you're just expecting something to be wrecked at all times, but even if it's like wrecked, you have like at the very last second a dude like step in and be like, "Ah, just kidding. You can't, you know, you can't have that." >> Um, but yeah, it's going to >> it's going to take a [laughter] minute. >> One thing I think is one thing that I am bullish on though is like continuous monitoring with agents, right? So um we have this annoying thing right where um we uh we in like various ways sponsor uh ATAS for Salana uh tokens right um so

people have found over the last you know two or three years right like really annoying slow drainer attacks where they like set up this attack like fund a bunch of accounts and then like get like thousand bucks or like 2,000 bucks of like Salana on a like gas from us from like opening accounts and then closing them, whatever. It's like been the most annoying thing and it'll and they do it over like 2 days and happens really slowly and whatever. Um, and we had one that happened over the weekend and it was going on for like 12 hours and it just fades into the background in like normal activity, you know, like that nothing spikes, there's nothing like too crazy. Um, and we just don't have enough monitoring for like those those things.

And so myself and one of our engineers sat down for a few hours and we like sat down with an agent and said, "Okay, here is all of the data. Like take all of this data. Like here's what's happening. Um here's our best guess as to like how to have an early warning sign." And the agent came up with a scheme to like track this that is so much better than what we would have thought up independently. We were like, "Oh, that's way better." like like and we just sent this agent out to like do research whatever and basically it found that like the easiest way to detect is like a price discrepancy in the input output and we didn't even know we h we're tracking that in the database and it was like yeah the database like show and it's like you can just have that agent

running and now it's in Slack and it'll be like hey someone's doing something weird and it and it just like alerts you like within like and and then we were like okay go and back test this was the funniest part of this right so we're four hours in it's like you guys are idiots the way that you're going to solve this problem is not the right way to solve it. You should solve it this way. And we're like, "Okay, cool." And we're like, "All right, if you're so smart, go and back test it, right?" And he goes, "Okay, here are the four most recent incidents. Um, and I've sent an agent to like back test each of them." And he goes, "Um, so the good news is that, uh, this detects every single one. um you know uh there's no there's no false

positives like this this metric like finds every single one. He goes um unfortunately for two of them uh it took approximately 90 seconds >> and we're [laughter] yeah that's you're going to have to do better than that, bro. Like we're like it was going for 12 hours and no humans noticed it. Like it took us 12 hours to notice this and it's like yeah like I would have caught it but it would have taken me 90 seconds. It was just like you're on a different level. Um, so yeah, you know, like these these the the biggest issue I think with like smart contract hacks is like it's not like 90 seconds is actually too slow. Like you need to detect it >> in like the memp pool and and block it, right? Or like detect, you know, it's

often one transaction that's bundled or whatever. So you can't just like it's not like it happens in slow motion over over days or whatever, but >> it's not slow motion. It's yeah it's one it's literally one transaction and like yeah especially with like the flash loan aided ones it literally since forever now right those are all single >> single transactions >> um which means that we're going to also have to probably rearchitect things to not >> have a single >> do that >> point that [laughter and clears throat] >> right um like if you want to if you if if somehow you're hopping from here to here like you just can't have that in a single bundle. Um, but it's definitely it's not going to be easy. Um, we're

it's going to it's going to get worse before it gets better. >> But the supply chain attacks are that uh that you know more kind of slow motion thing where like someone gets in, they do something, it's only bad while people are like updating their software. So like there is a genuine window where the faster you detect it. If you detect it in 90 seconds, maybe only a couple of people, it stops the spread etc. So, you know, there are things that are like much more kind of amendable to this early detection continuous monitoring. >> Yeah. the supply chain ones like what's happening originally is that they're getting in like let's say that you miss and the AI and whatever the magical beans like they all miss the initial implant um which in like the latest

Tanstack case the initial entry point was via like a GitHub action thing that was quite complex but the next thing that happens right is that then it goes and grabs everyone's environment files API keys on and on and on forever. Um, and then it'll go and it worms via all their repos and all their things. Um, and it'll exfiltrate stuff. It'll take stuff from individual devs devices, but it also spread on and on and on. That's what we're seeing happening over like the last, it's been like two days now non-stop. just like this this slow worming out theoretically on on like your individual device. When it lands,

it lands on your device and then it runs all these processes and one of those processes is to like grab all your secrets and send them to the C2. The thing is is if there already like today there are already things like crowd strike right where it'll detect this down and then the processes start spinning up to to do certain things. Oh, it's touching your keys store. Oh, it's grabbing your environment files. Oh, it's grab right and it'll just like say like yo stop and definitely don't just stop but like definitely don't talk to the network. And so it stops it right before it exfiltrates which means that even though you got even though the malware dropped onto your computer, the hackers don't get anything.

The issue of course is that like you know not everyone is running the stuff and there's other there's like a lot of different obviously is a paid service, right? Like are there are there like open-source tools that like >> you can run >> um >> if you're poor? >> You're poor. So there's like objective C which is like um uh it's like objective and then SE is like one for max. It's just like a bunch of open source tooling that can like >> it's not quite the same as like crowdstrike but it's like there's all these little things that'll detect like persistence or detect uh like weird network calls for Windows. I think like Microsoft Defender or whatever, they

have somewhere you can like crank it up. Um, does like an okay job. Um, yeah, you should definitely be running these if and especially like companies like just get CrowdStrike. Um, but yeah, we're going to have to get way better at this this type of stuff. And I think that what we're seeing with open source and like these GitHub actions and these worms, I think someone's finally realized that like, oh, hey, the decentralized nature of open- source maintainers is basically the same as crypto people. They're just running around on their personal devices and not a secure like like crowd strike running organization with formal processes. Um,

like most of the stories coming out of a lot of these are especially like the open source maintainers. It's it's just like crypto. It's like bro was woken up because his friend called him in the middle of the night >> like your your [ __ ] >> your shit's gone and it's like warming in everyone else and you know everyone's reacting. Um yeah, so it's going to be tough. Those are definitely going to be tough because we we yeah we often forget that so much of the software today relies on these these low like just these open source maintainers >> who are just maintaining this open source software out of the good of their hearts. Um and yeah the incentives are a

bit a bit screwed there. It's yeah >> this is where the black swan's going to come from though. It's not going to be nuclear bombs. Yeah, some some crazy some crazy hack. >> I feel like we just also like we keep dodging bullets with these. Like I >> This one's like I know >> even this one could be so much worse and like should have been so much worse, but like luckily this happened. Luckily, you know, >> we just have to keep getting lucky. Tay, it's easy. Easy peasy. I don't know what you're worried about. tell you guys should make seal 911 agents and charge $39.99

all you guys >> just just run. Um all right, let's uh we got we got another like 10 minutes left here, so let's let's uh smash through uh another couple of segments. So um this one completely caught me by surprise. Um Circle uh did a $220 million um ARC token drop. This was not on my radar at all. Um, so yeah, I I don't know. >> I'm so confused. >> What? Like I thought the whole point of the IPO was to not need a token. Luca, what's your what's your take on this?

Are you >> If you can if you can, you will. At the end of the day, like the Circle buyer is not the ARC token buyer. And so go create some tokens out of thin air, add it to the balance sheet, beat earnings or show a a good quarter for balance sheet, asset value going up somehow some way. And if you can, why not? And I was Jeremy, look, he's he has a fiduciary responsibility to acrue value. And look, the crypto buyer is not the trady buyer.

I've underwrote this because one of the things that we're working on, at least on the abstract side, is just very clear. It's two different cohorts. And um look, I'm not surprised frankly. Uh obviously I didn't know he was doing it, but like what is the business sense of it all? Like the business sense of it is like you know circle is one cohort of you know investment and if you have leverage and pull in another cohort of investment like you know why not pull the lever if you can. >> Yeah. I mean, John uh Charpano uh said saying that Stripe and Circle building their own L1s is bullish Ethereum because their EVM is crazy coke.

>> These chains will just be bullish for Circle and Stripe equity holders if they're successful. Not everything is bullish our bags. Uh which which I agree with. Um it it is weird to see this like kind of proliferation of uh we because we saw this you know the the um like blockchain not bitcoin era of crypto um you know was like corpo chains and uh basically like consortium databases not even blockchains etc. like um we we've seen this play out before. Maybe this time it's different. Um but it does feel like this is competitive with EVM. Um you know, and and Salana. Um I'm still

bullish both uh Ethereum and Salana in in the sense that I think that they have a much more clear uh like plan for scaling and and how to how to make the chain like um you know kind of more globally useful than just like a a you know stable coin uh transport layer. I I just don't know if that's sufficient um for a chain to be valuable. Um, but we will see. It works for Tron, I guess. So um maybe >> it's Isn't this going to create a conflict at some point if it hasn't already >> cuz this the arc the arc token isn't

isn't even like Well, is it Can can I go buy ARC right now? >> Oh, I don't know. No, you >> I don't think so. >> Can't buy Arc. I think it was just a I think I think there's >> Yeah, there's >> just a raise. >> Yeah, it's just the raise for now. Like I don't think I don't think that the chain hasn't launched yet. So presumably the token will launch with chain. They're going to do some incentives or or whatever. So um >> bootstrap it's kind of like a way almost like a you know it's a way to incentivize more USDC. I mean just so bullish on the stock like I I don't know if you're a buyer of ARC token but as long as there's market makers in the books and you know some sort of bid somewhere right he can just take that

whole supply and just more USDC more USDC and then they start to hit you know break earnings etc. There's probably also another take here which is uh you know bag holder syndrome. you kind of see like there's a strategy amongst some token founders where it's like okay get people to align with your bags like this is just like another way to get more people on the cap table more people bullish Jeremy and you know what I mean like >> yeah good >> I just thought that I don't know I feel like we've I feel like it's a bit like we've been doing for a while now where you have like the equity right you have the company of the equity of the builders you have the dev team whatever you want to call them and then you have the token and they become disjointed and

weird things happen. This is just even weirder because Circle is already a publicly traded company, right? But that's the equity, right? That's the that's that market. >> That's equity. Yeah. >> And then you have now you have this second >> it's bullish the stock. I don't know bidding that token, but I'm bullish on the stock. >> On the stock. Okay. >> Yeah. >> And that's his job, right? Like he did that first. He's shown his card like that. like he's in the business of acuring as much value as possible. It's like Coinbase and Bass, you know, and they do tell different stories. Like I think a chain is a story of network effects.

>> Sure. >> Right. And like in a world where AI agents are really swarming in the trillions, like I can see a world where that catches a bid, right? And then you know versus like stock is also it can it can it's a double-edged sword. It can be a catch22 can play on both sides. Today it plays on the side of stock, right? But there is a world 10 years from now, five years from now, we get another 2020 altcoin season, right? It will bode, you know, it could bode really well. Yeah. Also the, you know, token holders. So >> yeah, >> fair.

>> Yeah, I guess it feels good right now because the token is just >> it's just a it's a fund raise. Let's be real. >> I mean, I think it's a fund raise plus it's a new chain, right? And so it's like the the theory is every stable coin needs its own chain now, which was not >> a theory a year ago, but like it seems to be like Tempo and you know there's all of these like you know if you go to Tradfi, right? Like one of the most profitable things is having a payment network. Like the the original idea for Haven, like my my you know what became synthetics was to build a decentralized payment network where people could transfer money like it's a very obvious

play. Um it it you know you can capture a lot of value if you own the rails that people are paying each other on. And so I think that this is like we own the token that is transporting all this value but we don't own the chain. Therefore, it's harder for us to capture value. If we own the full stack, then we can capture the payments and like it's it just makes sense. Like it's it's a sensible approach. It's just very antithetical to our like OG Ethereum roots, I think. But here we are.

>> Yeah. I mean, [clears throat] it does it presumes that you can make it valuable, right? That the the chain and what is built on it. >> It presumes that like valuable will acrue to the chain and you know, etc. >> Yeah. >> Um All right. We got time for uh one more segment. Um let's let's uh close out close out. That's very aspirational. The a uh uh help um situation. So >> yeah, our a yeah our weekly a update. So the court has said they uh that arbitum can send the money to a um for the RSSE recovery. Um

so >> yes so basically >> but but they are bound by the like future decision or something uh of the court. >> Yeah. So basically it takes the it allows the DAO and the all the arbitrum people who are in the process right because these things these processes take like days and weeks. It allows them to release the funds. Well, it allows them to vote, right, without thinking about the courts, which was the situation before, right? Was like you were asking the DA to vote on something,

but the DAO sort of had been served on the forum by these lawyers. And so what this does is it allows them to to vote. The DAO still has to make the decision to like move it to this place, but that that was in the process. That was already happening. And so the court's saying like okay all the arbitone people you can keep doing what you're planning on doing and figuring out that through the normal governance. Um but then a LLC and where those funds basically end up that is still bound by the court and so >> so if the court decides to give it to the North Korean victims >> that's going to be the battle is like

now but it it does it makes this the case a lot it makes it a lot simpler in terms of who all is involved in their standing and their interest Because before again you had this like all these different parties that were involved and then you had arbitum [laughter] who actually had the funds. >> Yeah. >> And but they weren't it was it was very weird in like legal court terms. It was very weird because basically the arbitum da theoretically was like the only one that could stand up and try to defend and fight this this absurd court case which is a hard thing to do because it's a freaking DO. um this eliminates this.

So now um A and their lawyers can like continue to fight the battle for all the people and uh and figure out how that what the hell is going to happen, figure out if DPRK gets actually as an ownership of funds that they steal. Like there's all these there's all these questions that are going to come up in in court. Um, and I think they're still trying to like the they're the the the A guys and also the Gersstein lawyers are both trying to move pretty fast it seems.

>> But, uh, I still think it's going to take time. Um, >> but at least they're now not stuck in this world of like all of the A people can't be made whole. >> Yeah. And it also like again because it was like this this the governance decisions that for arbitum they're like a long process. It's like 40 days or whatever. And so when the when the court when the restraining notes dropped it was like everyone has to pause the governance process.

And so then theoretically if like the court is like yeah this is an absurd thing and throws the case out you then have to like restart the governance process and carry on and you know um and then obviously it was just complex because like what is the arbitum dow how do they stand up in a US court and what do they say where now it's just um yeah now it's just a and their lawyers are going to fight this and and hopefully prevail. which I think >> and like you know if this were to go horribly wrong and the court says no that wasn't your property it was it's someone else's this effectively now um puts a on the hook for coming up with

that ETH right like they've already distributed like everyone's got it you know they have no recovery path to get the ETH back for it's not like they're going to I mean maybe they will like it would be pretty funny if they ask everyone who is going to get this distribution. Uh but like as it stands now, the ETH should just go back into the ETH market and then everyone can withdraw their ETH like we're back to like they're not going to ask you to like show your passport. Hope hopefully like you know in order to >> this is going to be a thing that comes up in the court because we already saw it in in the oral arguments that happened last week. One of the things that came up was the Gerian lawyers were saying like, "What the hell? You don't

even know who these users are. You can't make them whole. How are how they need to come to court and they need to prove who they are." And >> everyone in crypto was sitting there like, "Holy crap." No, no, no, no. Because >> it's wild, but it's true. You can do a perfectly fair distribution >> distribution without getting ownership like based on the same ownership that sort of got them into that position. You can do and we've done this many times.

There's been many emergencies that have done this. It is actually more fair than the court situation because if you try to make everyone stand up in court and prove their like trady ID, you're actually going to rule out a lot of true owners. It's not perfectly fair. Um and that I believe is going to come up in court and it's going to get very very interesting. And I think if the judge grocks how onchain recovery flows work, meaning it's a perfect one to one map based on facts and based on the ownership that got them into that position in the first place, I think it's going to be like very it could be very interesting because like you're it's it's really hard. It's really hard for people to imagine that that's

possible, but once they realize it's possible, >> they're like, "Oh, this is good tech." >> Yeah. Yeah. Because again, all of our recovery distributions on chain >> if you can prove the ownership sort of like the distribution based on the ownership right and it's like a perfect fair transparent >> like it's so much better than every other situation in the world um >> but yeah whether or not what the Gerine lawyers are trying to say like to be clear they're trying to say that no every single person that has a ownership claim needs to come to court and fight with us because we have an ownership

claim. Like that's what they're essentially doing. And that's why this argument is like so fundamentally absurd for everyone in crypto because we're like, "No, no, we know who the owners are. We don't know literally their names. We don't know literally their addresses, but we know their onchain addresses. We It's cryptographically verifiable, etc." Um, but the Gerine lawyers are are literally they're they're they're cutting in line and trying to like basically game the system and put their ownership rights, which they don't have, but trying to basically edge in as if they were an owner of this money and then screw everyone else because they want they're going to try to force everyone to come to court or whatever, >> right? Well, I will tell you I won't be

coming to court. So, >> yeah, exactly. I expect my money to be delivered on chain um in a timely fashion. I will be picking it up with Stanny personally. >> I mean, yeah. And he'll tell you to go take it off with Kirsty. >> Um all right. Uh I think that's it for this week. Um thank you for joining us for this episode of Uneasy Money. Remember, what happens on chain never stays on chain. We will be back next week. Until then, do your own research before aping in. See you guys.

>> Bye guys. >> Nothing you hear on Uneasy Money is financial advice. We're just three builders talking about what's happening on chain and we want you to always do your own research before aping in. You can find all our disclosures at unchaincrypto.com/unemoney. feel.

Hey