Why the dip is noise and what SEC Project Crypto means for builders

Transcript

GM. Good morning. Welcome to the Milkroach Show, the daily crypto show where your bank takes three to five business days and the blockchain takes three to five seconds. I'm your host Jay Hamilton. It's Monday, August the 4th. Today we are joined by Ash Pumpati, head of ecosystem for Aptos Foundation. We're going to talk about the current pullback, why it happened, what's next, where are we in this cycle, and also we've got to talk about the SEC's big announcement last week titled Project Crypto. Not enough people are talking about this, but honestly, I think that we might look back on Project Crypto as one of the biggest moments and milestones in the adoption of crypto.

We're going to jump into why that is and why it's important for you. Before we jump in, if you need any help with your investing, I highly recommend you check out the Milk Road 2025 investment guide. It's free. Hit the link in the show notes to download it today. It is very helpful for anybody trying to think about how to set up your portfolio, how to think about allocation within your portfolio, and how to understand cycles and cycle strategy in terms of when you should be buying and when you should be selling. It's really an absolute cheat code. So, hit the link in the show notes. Today's episode is brought to you by Nexo, the platform that grows your crypto without locking it away. Also brought to you by Figure Markets. Grow your cash like a bank. No lockups, just

real returns. Without further ado, Ash, welcome to the Milk Road Show. >> Thank you. Thank you, Jay. It's great to be here. True privilege. >> Thanks, my man. Pleasure to have you. Uh, okay. We we got to start with uh with the news of the day which is uh we were all stoked through July just ripping the markets were hot every token was was on fire uh and then uh we maybe got brought brought back to reality a little bit uh at the end of last week. Uh what's your thought on uh on the current pullback? Why it's happening?

Where do you what do you think for the current market? >> From my perspective I take a little bit of a longer time horizon than just this week. You know, that's the beauty of getting to invest 80 to 100 hours a week working in crypto for multiple years. But, you know, I think we've seen an amazing compounding effect of Bitcoin reaching all-time highs of institutional interests, ETFs that I think it's just general. It's it's it's natural for uh the market right now to catch its breath to put it quite frankly. You know, I I think a lot about cycles and what part of the cycle we're in now. And you know, I'm not a Nostradamus by any means, but the way I think about it is we've reached that point of mainstream

awareness, but also the appetite for adoption that I think we've been waiting for for more than a decade. And our market is maturing. There's deeper analysis going into different cryptocurrencies, how Bitcoin relates with altcoins, how Ethereum relates with altcoins, the future of smart programming languages, what does tech actually look like here on a public and private side that I think the market overall is kind of uh evaluating to see what that new playing field or chessboard is for innovation moving forward. So I think it's all bullish. I think it's just a natural catch breath thing uh catching your breath moment.

Yeah, I think uh you know the the rally through July was a little bit it was it was a hard rally to understand, right? Uh I mean honestly it's been a hard year as an investor to understand because um things have not been following the typical patterns but as you said the biggest thing right now is just it's it's so hard in in moments when it's amazing. It's like everything's green and everyone's happy and excited and then there's one red day and one red candle and Bitcoin drops like 5%, you know, and everyone's freaking out, right? And they the the my general belief is we are still in a bull cycle.

We still have higher to go. We've not reached all-time highs for this cycle. I don't know, it's difficult to predict how long this cycle lasts, but 6 to 12 months is the general time frame that I'm viewing this on. and that these are not moments to look to be, you know, if you're if you want to trade around these moments, sure, go ahead. But really, just stay true to your conviction and hold on tight because uh particularly August, I could see I could see August I could see us having further dips in August as we have uh low liquidity, a lot of you know, we've got a lot of institutions here now. Well, what do institutions do in August? They want vacation, right? And uh they're not they're not trading. and they're not

active. So, uh, just everybody just don't don't panic. Everybody stay calm. This is not, uh, some Armageddon moment. Uh, we're all going to be good. I don't know where the local bottom is right now. I get that question a lot. I don't know short-term exactly what's going to happen. I do know that we're going to end the year higher. That's as simple as I can put it. >> Yeah, I think that's well said. And I just think for those of us, you know, obviously your audience that's listening to the podcast, but all of us that get to work in this space, uh, what an incredible effect the last few months.

We need to like really touch grass and be like, "Holy crap." You know, like look at what we've done as an industry. We've broken through this mindset of, hey, is this a philosophy or is this a technology? Like we've broken through. Like that's huge, right? And so, as you said, like there's probably more to go, but even just zooming out a little bit, we're scratching the surface in terms of like the potential um for our for our industry. And um you know, I'm not a trader. So, I actually just like as I said, I don't look day in and day out at the at the at the targets and the prices, but um I'm just so happy looking at the data uh the past few months and and this year alone.

>> Yeah. When you talk about the uh the the incredible uh steps that we've made in such a short time period, uh the big news last week was the SEC announcing Project Crypto. And I think one thing that's when the when the SEC makes announcements like this, it can get really it can be difficult to read through the the the long press release and really like grasp like, okay, like what matters within this? And it's also it's them signaling that they would they want to be a leader in blockchain technology as you said moving from hey this is philosophical to like okay like how do we actually use this stuff and how do we bake it into our financial

systems which up until now has been just a total like mud pit of dumpster fire mess right like nobody knows what's a security what's a commodity like you know how do you how do you classify your tokens which is Americans can't even access a lot of air drops right like all these like just like a lot of issues on really the the regulation side that has led to founders having a difficult job and then and users and investors being very confused about like what's a scam and what's not a scam and where do I put my money and so uh I think the the SEC's project crypto announcement last week is really to me we were chatting about this this morning in ourh team meeting about

how it feels like a really big moment. Obviously, the implic the impact of that moment will come in the coming months and coming years. It's not like an immediate thing. Uh but the it it feels like a real turning point. I don't know on your guys' end, you know, how you how Aptos received Project Crypto. Yeah, I mean we were so excited and I think uh as you said in the beginning somehow we're all not talking about this enough. Um I think it obviously followed kind of the genius act uh and things like that which we were all excited about but this is equally if not more exciting right and the way I interpret

it is uh projects building in crypto that have a token have had to operate uh with a lack of regulatory clarity and you can only imagine the amount of burden that puts on a founder uh to actually build a great product but also exist in web 3 sustainably. Um, given the lack of clarity, it's it's like fighting with two hands behind your back. Number one. Number two, it's very confusing for users. So, you know, what you get is uh you probably get access to a lot of folks who are very bought into web 3, highly risk on, but you lose access to a bunch of folks who uh are just a little bit more mainstream in

terms of their usage and behavior and and user psychology. And I think that's limited user growth quite frankly for the crypto market for more than a decade. So this is huge. This is exciting, extremely exciting. And you know, for me, one of the reasons I fell in love with web 3, I spent over 10, 11 years working at YouTube and and Spotify, uh, you know, great consumer brands, great creator companies. Um, but why I fell in love with web 3 and why I chose to leave to join it full-time is I found it fascinating how closely products could in line incentives with their users, right? And I think uh tokens whe they be nonfgeible, fungeible are core element of that as well as decentralization and governance. And so

now I think about project crypto and to me it boils down to well how much more of the tech market and goods and services can now benefit from that can benefit from web 3. Um and that's what's super exciting. I mean it not only opens up uh h you know how many users these projects or companies can attract and how how much adoption we can drive as an industry but it opens up a bunch of new use cases of projects that can actually participate in the onchain economy. And then from my perspective on the Actas Foundation side, um we can be much more expansive in terms of startups we want to fund or founders who have a great idea we want to invest in. So it's incredible. Like I'm super excited for

everything that's to come from this. >> Yeah. I think one of the biggest things um that sort of I'm sure will connect to your view at Aptose is we just need more founders and more builders in in web3 and in crypto right uh it is the biggest challenge to tech adoption and tech growth is you need a lot of people to experiment with the new tech and we had that quite a bit for a period but crypto was so impacted by regulation and so many founders were impacted and it's been scary especially to be an American founder like let's be real right during Gary Gendler's you

know reign it was were you really going to sit there and say hey I'm an American and I'm working at a a Google or a Meta and I'm going to leave and go start a crypto company like there was a real pause I'm sure you can speak to this yourself right making that transition yourself there's a lot of people who were very worried about doing that so they did one of two things. Either they either left the US, right, or they they didn't go that path and they didn't explore this like incredible new technology. And so I think you can't understate and I I don't think the the um that that coming momentum of new founders and new builders I I don't think that's even happened yet really

like all this regulation all the shift in regulation is just you know just happening like week by week right now. It's only been a few months of us getting this clarity and there's still more clarity coming every day. And so I think that what is what I hope is happening is there's more builders and more developers saying, "Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm I'm in now. I'm going to go spend my time and I'm going to invest in this." And three months from now, six months from now, a year from now, you're going to see the impact of that as you see more projects launching that are uh hopefully going to be the next big app or the next big adoption wave.

>> 100%. And I think the flip side of that is the opportunity regular users have to be a part of the upside of innovation, right? Like if you think about the ways in which you or I outside of our day jobs would have to access new startups building in the internet of things or AI, we have very limited ways to to get access to invest to get upside in terms of those outcomes. Like crypto solves this, right? Um I think we saw with Figma all the controversy right in that IPO and I think uh this is an area where like philosophically fundamentally crypto can solve and with project crypto it brings clarity to make it easier but

you know more founders uh less scary for them to get in the water but users like crazy benefit right to like actually get earlier in the stack on innovation especially American tech innovation through crypto markets that's that's what's super exciting exciting about this. >> Yeah. And that's definitely what like project crypto uh I think that like there's a there's a mind mindset shift that project crypto establishes which is like hey we want to be leaders. America wants to be leaders in the future of blockchain technology. They want to be supportive of builders. They want to protect builders and they want to build and and they want to give opportunities to investors and they want to build the necessary regulation and frameworks to

enable that and that's the big signal here and that is whether it be allowing Americans to get access to airdrops right is a big one that has been you know a lot of Americans for a long time have had issues with rightfully so right or whether it be understanding as a founder like is my token a security or is it a commodity or how do I what is the process to do a TGE for my token and how do I do it in a compliant way like all these things which uh might like they're so obvious but we don't have clarity around them and that's really like the the frameworks and the clarity that we're going to get from project crypto is it's it's monumental it's absolutely monumental and I think a a

major moment that we will look back on >> it's it's insane and we're looking forward to publishing way more stuff around it. Um, but we're extremely excited and you know from a foundation's perspective, it's our job to help startup founders navigate these things, right? In the sense of, yeah, of course, we're a permissionless network from a tech perspective, but if you're building a startup on chain, what are all the things you need to think about, right? Um, and so this helps us help them, too. So, super bullish. >> Okay. Uh I want to shift gears slightly to you and I were talking about uh launchpads and uh consumer adoption and how you launch tokens and the uh you

know pump versus bonk versus zora on base and the different chains at play here. So I want to chat about that. Uh and I also want to get your thoughts on the other the the use cases that Aptos is excited about. Before we do, we just need to take one moment to hear from our sponsors who make this show possible. If long meetings and judgmental bankers are your thing, Nexo is probably not. Nexo is a premier wealth platform built for people who value their time and money. It's built for people who have idle cash lying around and want it to grow fast. Whether it's Bitcoin, Ethereum, or even forex pegged assets like USDT or USDC, Nexo offers up to 14% annual interest and access to cryptoback credit in under

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Okay, we're back. Uh Ash, let's let's talk about launchpads. Um we got Pump who did their their TGE recently. Uh we got Bon who's been getting a lot of attention. Zora absolutely flying here. uh what's your thoughts on all these various launchpads? Um who who's going to win? But more importantly, like why do we need these launchpads and what do they do for founders and for investors? >> Yeah, it's a good question. Um, the way I look at it is these launchpads were a natural progression to how token issuance could happen on chain as faster

and more efficient and scalable chains came to market. And so to me, um, you know, obviously on the bonk and pump fund side, um, you know, memecoins existed on ETH for a while, right? But why were they interesting on Salana? well, super low gas fees, uh, web two like UX, right? And which can scale to more users. And so now naturally you have a product or products that allow for, you know, thousands or tens of thousands as its peak and daily token launches. So to me, I I look at it as kind of a natural outcome of uh high throughput, highly efficient chains in terms of that product existing. in terms of what makes those products successful, it's the community in both both of those

uh not only Salana but also base and and and in terms of ecosystems. And so, you know, what's interesting to me is when I look at it from, you know, an outside in perspective, the memecoin craze on Salana was a natural extension of why NFTTS found product market fit there, right? Um it was easier to access. uh bunch of DeFi primitives built up around NFTTS and then memecoin specifically Bonk hit um and then kickstarted like memecoin season and then pump fun came and now everyone's you know kind of like uh Salana's won that war. So I I look at it as not something that happened overnight but tapped into a community that existed like you know a couple years before. Um, BAS to me is is super

interesting because um, clearly it looks like they were very focused on native token issuance, right? And they looked at what was happening on Pump and Salana as an area they wanted to make tremendous progress with. And so I think one, they had a strategic advantage in distribution on the Coinbase side. Um, but two, I think they had a very elegant or at least a um um interesting way to have an opinion on what would be the new narrative for token issuance with creator coins and working with Zora within their ecosystem of DAPs uh as well as the chain itself. So that was interesting and I saw even last week that native token issuance on base like

outpaced Salana for the first time ever. So clearly something is paying off. Now whether those tokens have any intrinsic value, it's not up for me to debate, but they are happening and people are participating. You know, I think who will win, it's really hard. I ask myself that question a lot. I actually think from an ecosystem perspective, the ecosystems that'll win are the ones that adapt the most quickly and are the most willing to iterate. I just I just think it's there's never a steady state strategy on the ecosystem side. I think it's hey what's happening now and how do we keep capturing attention that's what makes working in crypto extremely exciting is the game theory around it right it's it's basically saying like

yeah you may have a strategy of where you think this market's going in 5 to 10 years but if you don't execute on a quarterly or monthly basis you won't be here in 5 to 10 years um right so like you know so so I think for for me like who will win is the ones who adapt like most frequently but it's interesting to think about where it's going to go right so so Like the the for me the principle I always have in my mind is the uh an an inherent characteristic of the health of an ecosystem is um how often are new tokens being issued right on chain and um obviously memecoins creator coins are things that have happened so what is the next venue and I've been thinking a lot

about um especially with clarity around project crypto as that further develops and becomes more clear is how how do we as an ecosystem or network work with startups that want to go public uh in a way, right? Um that's super interesting to me and and an area that we're kind of closely looking at in terms of where that next narrative or that next uh uh positioning in terms of how projects come to TG. Yeah, let's let's dive into that a little bit further because it is I obviously a key stat for any L1 chain or L2 chain uh is token issuance, right?

And and then and you know not just like you know okay great you can issue millions of token on your chain but like token activity within that issuance as well, right? Um and that is that is obviously very challenging to achieve. So tell us a little bit more about like h how how are you framing that at Apptose and how are you looking to increase token issuance? Is there particular use cases that you focus on? Uh how do you take those steps and how do you achieve that end result?

>> Yeah, it's a good question. I don't look at it as a random event that you hope happens. I look at it as a practiced effort you put into place in sequence. And so for us uh our main focus early was we need a bustling thriving interesting DeFi ecosystem, right? Can people trade tokens? Can they earn yield? And why is that interesting on Aptos is super fast, super secure network? All of those projects should go to TGE, right? your native DeFi to protocols should have tokens and that is kind of your pillars of basis of an ecosystem right um then from there it's what are the projects that are coming onto the ecosystem that um are real businesses like they uh are earning

revenue on chain they have a good customer growth life cycle they have enough runway through thirdparty investments how are those projects going to TG right maybe they're outside of DeFi maybe they're doing gaming maybe they're doing you We have one project doing human verification for AI data training, you know, but they're real businesses that they have like good customer life cycle growth strategies. That's the next phase. And then I think then it's the bottoms up organic how does token issuance just happen, right? And I think that's kind of how I look at it as a sequence, but it's it's kind of a building block pyramid. I I don't think uh native token issuance just happens out of nowhere.

Yeah, it's it's a great point that you need the you need the the DeFi infrastructure within your ecosystem to support um the the token trading, the token every everything around that even just like things like block explorers and like those very simple things. Um let let's let's take a step back here for a sec. Um the if we look at the L1 landscape, you mentioned we you mentioned Salana owning owning memecoins, right? It was uh was set up to do that and not on purpose, not like Salana's strategy was like, hey, we're going to be the

memecoin chain. more so that their their tech allowed them to be very well set up for memecoin trading, fast, easy, low friction, one chain, all of that. When you look at I mean, Ethereum's having a moment right now more as a result of narrative, not necessarily that any of their like onchain stats have changed recently. Um, and and a result of all the digital asset treasuries that have uh blown come onto the scene around Ethereum. Uh lots of people talk about about Sooie as the next L1 which is very interesting because there's always the direct comparison of Sooie to Aptos because both those founder teams came from Meta. Uh hype has been on on a tear

and getting a lot of attention. How do you look at the L1 landscape? Where does Aptos fit within there? >> Yeah, it's a good question. Um you know, we ask ourselves, I'm sure as you do every day, why are there so many L1s? Um and I think that's a reality of the fact that we are still waiting for adoption to keep pace with the technology right I think our technology is outpacing the adoption uh right now and we're getting to the point where that will flip I believe in the next two to three years where tech will have to improve to keep up with the scale of adoption that's where we need to get as an industry right uh things need to break things need to be pushed and strained uh for us

to keep innovating based on usage um you know from an apttosas perspective the way I kind of synthesize it is our origins were at meta as you mentioned but like the um objective for our infrastructure and systems level thinking was to move money around Meta's billion user app economy so it had to be really fast right near zero fees as well as well as highly secure and we we created Move as a native programming language at Meta that we've adopted and integrated within the chain. Um, so we are built for billion user scale adoption. Now where are we focused? I think we're being pretty scoped in our

focus of where we think value and adoption will come from. The first is value exchange and that's really around trading. I think that's where crypto has found product market fit over multiple cycles. I would argue that it hasn't innovated enough over those past 10 years in terms of new users, differentiated experiences, what DeFi actually means. But now more than ever, we have an opportunity where really high uh throughput blockchains, highly secure like Aptos can actually compete with centralized uh experiences, right? So you can have a decentralized promises with centralized UX and that's because of projects like Aptos and blockchains like Apttos in terms of how they were

built. So now um we think about that which is great and then we also think about the types of assets that can be issued on chain that aren't only native to crypto right so equities commodities um insurance data you know there's tons of RWA types or classes that can now come on chain and be traded in interesting environments that only crypto can enable. So there's a value exchange area that we're hyperfocused on where we believe every asset can be traded in interesting ways through crypto rails on a really fast blockchain that competes with central exchange central exchange UX but also is highly secure like it's highly secure in philosophy process trillions of dollars

>> in philosophy. Um the second is value creation. So, you know, for us, uh, and and and I'd love to hear your opinion on this is, you know, crypto DeFi past 10 years cool, you know what I mean? Like cool stuff, you know, like has it turned into 10 or 100 or a billion user economy? No. >> Right. And so I think the other area for us is for value exchange to continue to compound and for APAs to continue to grow by focusing on it, you need to focus on value creation. And so we're very focused on there. We just announced a big project that we've incubated with Jump Crypto called Shelby. Uh it's a hot storage data network that allows for

things like decentralized streaming services to be built fully on distributed systems which allows for um amazing economics between creators and users and platforms um and even opens up other verticals as well. So um that's kind of the two areas we're super focused value exchange and value creation. >> The first thing Okay, so I want to go back to what you first said. I I completely agree. We have more infrastructure than we do adoption, right? And that's a very interesting thing to notice because of the fact that adoption is very tied to regulation and we did not have regulation. We we are

getting it very quickly as we said at the beginning of this episode. So what that will one big thing that I think is want is going to happen in for the rest throughout this year and into 2026 is I do see a large adoption cycle coming driven by institutions mostly financial institutions around RWA right and all these financial institutions they're sitting here looking at stable coins which is a form of an RWA right it's just taking a US dollar or another currency and putting it on chain and pegging it right and they're sitting here. They're saying, "Wow, look at that business model that has product market fit. The it it is an incredibly incredible a 10x upgrade of the current financial system and people want it,

right? There's user adoption of it." And so, and that's just that's just one form of RWA. You can go down the list of all the other types of real world assets that could be brought on chain. And I think we have the infrastructure now we have regulation and we're going to have all these institutions that can move will create adoption very quickly because of their scale and their size and the amount of users that they work with and they'll just abstract blockchain. Like I'm talking about like banks and fintexs just starting to use blockchain in the background. You don't even know it's being used but that's now how your your your money is moving. It's moving onchain versus moving in the old fiat system. So like that on the financial side, I see that coming in a

big way. And when I step back, I certainly feel like Ethereum is the leader there right now and is set up very well in that space. Um the the thing that I'm unsure about is and and you can feel free to comment on my thoughts there, but the thing I'm unsure about is like the attention economy and the attention side of the internet. I'm not sure where that goes. And that's it comes back to Facebook and Meta, right? Is like how are they going to like is and I don't know if you have insights on this, but like is Facebook going to one day it it would make so much sense for Facebook to do something on chain. I mean they

already basically tried when they uh when they built they had their the the Sooie and the AOS team working together back in the day and uh and they were working on that. And so whether it's like you know are they going to launch a stable coin and are they going to how will they allow value transfer are they going to use blockchain for identity on their platforms? Right? Like we all know that the the the AI problem on on these social media platforms is already exploding. Every day I'm on like Instagram or on X and I'm like is this AI? Like I can't even tell anymore. But you kind of like you know that that doubt is entering your mind. So that the like the web two I I feel like I'm clear

on how in financial institutions are going to adopt blockchain. That feels more clear to me. How web two is going to adopt blockchain and the social media companies and the attention of companies. That part I'm not so clear on yet and I don't know which L1 wins that and where that goes. I don't know if you have thoughts there. >> It's a really good question. You know, I I just want to say, you know, in terms of RWA's, I I do have to pound our chest on Apptos. We're number three in terms of volume and and TVL on RWA, just behind Ethereum and and one other. So, we're super bullish and like hyperfocused there. um in terms of uh your question, you know, amazing, right?

In terms of where we're at right now and us kind of disrupting the whole financial technology sector, like like unlimited bound like holy like whoa, you know what I mean? Like we're all going to the moon straight up, you know? Um, but I think what you're saying is interesting and and it kind of makes me think about like I I was looking at the Sam Alman uh Zuckerberg headlines of him poaching researchers for like a hundred million a billion. And I was like, man, those headlines are crazy. Crypto doesn't have those headlines anymore. We used to, right? We don't have those headlines. And I thought about it and I think one main thing that we also as an industry need to be conscious of now that institutions are here and we're going to re revolutionize financial technology services. We have

to keep the imagination super high, right? And right now AI has no upper bound or no ceiling in terms of the imagination, right? In terms of market potential, market cap, how much an AI researcher is worth. like um and I think for us like we have to continue investing in amazing founders who are going to build the next great DAP in terms of the intention economy how the YouTubes or the social networks get involved in blockchain. I think one very easy use case and I'm not speaking on on behalf of any of them. I'm just looking from a analysis perspective is um hey would it be more efficient for money to

move on rails through our global app economies than traditional systems? The answer is probably yes. Uh but the solution probably requires a lot of stakeholder you know management and incentive alignment but that's an obvious area and I don't think you need to create your own stable coin to do that right. Um and so I think that's one area that would be super interesting. Obviously meta you think about WhatsApp being like the portal for example all of India it's attachment to the internet you know like that's something where um you know it would be beneficial to have like boundaryless uh crypto rails moving money um and in terms of other aspects I think about NFTs a lot and I think about

NFTTS because um I believe that across our industry they were the closest ones to tapping into the mainstream zeitgeist. Like you could ask anyone and someone would basically if they're on the internet they'd be like, "Yeah, I heard this monkey sold for like a million dollars like WTF." You know, it it it it pierced. >> And I think that is about online identity. And I think that is about online identity that is abstracted from our bio data or where we went to school. And I think that is going to be even more important moving forward in terms of how me you represent ourselves on social networks and and so I am very interested to see where NFT technology

goes. Like obviously they probably won't be PFPs but how do they think about sovereign you know fully identifiable but built on your online identity um stamps you know and how does that change your experience on all these networks? That's that's what I'm going to be really excited about. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's a great point. Uh and I also like let me ask you this and I know I know you didn't come from Meta with the original uh founding team at APTOS but you you have you've you're obviously you've got insight here like is is there still conversation happening between Meta and and these founders and the APOS team or or between or maybe it's more on the SUI side like

are these conversations happening and is there because like the thing that stands out to me is I just want you I I I know you don't know exactly, but like they've got to be I want to know like what are these big web two what is what is YouTube thinking around blockchain and what are they doing? Are they thinking oh we're going to and and more so from a like which chain will they use and how are they thinking about that or are they going to develop their own chain is that how that will work? >> Yeah, it's a good question. I can't comment specifically on any specific brand but the way I would uh talk about it is what is the incentive for them to do this right I mean building a blockchain is freaking hard um maintaining it is freaking hard um and

also if you don't have a token what what is what do you how do you do distribution is it just infrastructure there are a bunch of questions right and I think uh one idea is you know can you help traditional services go on to 247 markets, right? By building infrastructure, integrating with a blockchain, whether it's money movement or trading, right? That's I think a motivating factor. But I always put it because I worked at a big company before. Every year you go across every vertical or product area and each one of them puts in five or seven gamechanging annual initiatives that we need to innovate on. And I can tell you the trade is always against that stacked order list, right? So if you're a large

company, you know, what is the benefit of you giving up some AI progress for this, right? I don't know. I don't know what the answer is to that. I think for me, what's interesting is Stripe uh specifically what they are doing, right? Like I think Stripe, they have a very clear point of view, right? Like we're payments, you know, we're the global GDP, we're using onchain rails. Like I'm like, whoa, what's going on there? You know, and that's uh incredible. like they're they're an extremely opinionated distribution funnel that thinks about architecture in a certain way for payments. That is super interesting. Now the question to me comes down to what stakeholders in our econ in our crypto economy are willing to interact with the

private blockchain like that, right? Can you see an exchange interacting with the Stripe L1, right? Binance with the Stripe L1 or will Binance want to continue operating in its public permissionless network. Um and then there's other pockets of stakeholders too, right? So that's where I'm fascinated to see in terms of the go to market evolution of you know big tech building blockchains and um you know big blockchains like us taking an opinionated point of view on go to market. >> Yeah. Fascinating. Super interesting. Uh Ash, just really interesting to get your thoughts today and have you uh break down how you view this from the from the foundational side and from the builder side as you look to uh to really

increase adoption and support so many founders. Uh everybody listening, I want to remind you guys as always that none of today's episode was financial advice. I'm not your financial adviser and Ash is not your financial adviser. But Ash, pleasure to get you on the show today. Thanks for joining us. >> Appreciate it, Jay. What a privilege. Thank you. >> Thanks for listening in y'all. Uh if you want to hear another great episode, you got to tune in tomorrow because tomorrow we have Michael Howell on the show to break down what is going on with global liquidity. And we all know that the global liquidity is one of the biggest factors in moving markets. As global liquidity rises, as there's more money in the system, there's more opportunity for assets to rise along with it. So get

the update on the global liquidity and what is happening on the macro side. Tune in tomorrow. Thanks for joining us, y'all. Have yourselves a wicked awesome day. We'll see you back again tomorrow. Crypto still has two major problems. First, a lack of privacy. Onchain transactions are public by default. Second, using your most valuable tokens for everyday actions feels wasteful. Midnight solves both with a dual token system. Knight is your store of value designed to hold. Dust is what you spend, a private renewable resource used to fuel onchain activity. You generate dust by holding night. That means your value stays intact while your actions stay private. No more burning your bags.

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