Yano on Permissionless 2025, Robinhood's L2 and market sentiment

Transcript

GM. Good morning. Welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that's feeling bullish again, like texting your ex at 2 am and fully believing it'll work out this time. I'm your host, Jay Hamilton. It's Monday, June the 30th. Markets are green. The bulls are getting loud. Robin Hood just launched an L2 on Ethereum. They had a big announcement in France today. We're going to talk about that. ETH had its biggest accumulation in history last week. The first Salana ETF with staking could begin trading this week. And one of the biggest crypto conferences, Permissionless, wrapped up in New York last Friday. Here to break it all down with us today is Jason Yanowitz aka Yano, co-founder of Block Works. Before we jump in, I've been

telling you guys this, and today is your last chance to get Milkro Pro all access at a massive discount. You can get it today for $25 a month or 250 a year. But tomorrow, if you wait until tomorrow, it's going to be a hundred bucks a month or $1,000 a year. So, don't miss out if you want to know what is in Milro Pro Access. I don't even have time to tell you guys. There's so many things in this, but it's everything you need to be a great investor, not just a crypto investor, an investor more broadly. Hit the link in the show notes. Check out more. Trust me, you won't be upset if you go pro all access. It's just it's too I can't believe we're giving it away at this price. Today's episode is brought to you by Nexo, the platform that grows your crypto without locking

it away. It's also brought to you by Letin. Get cash without selling your Bitcoin. Without further ado, Yano, welcome back to the Milk Road Show. Jay, what's happening, man? You always uh the intros are incredible. Thanks, man. Thanks. I just sold I just sold a subscription to the Milk Road daily. So, I don't know if you guys have a commission plan or anything, but I had a buddy from college, you know, Bitcoin's above 100K. He's texting me. He's like, should I get a subscription to Blockworks Research? And our platform is a little more for like enterprise funds, institutional uh folks. And I said, actually, I was like, look, I think it's a little too expensive for you, but you should get access to Milro Daily. So, he said he signed up. There you go. Wow.

Guys, I didn't pay Yo to say that. I don't think he got the discount, though. So, he's going to be upset with me, but that's all right. Well, give give me give me his name. I I'll hook him up with a discount. Uh it's, you know, we we don't need to do a love fest, but the the love between Block Works and Milk Road runs deep for sure. There's there's a lot of love to be shared there. So, uh because my team was at Provision last week and had so many good things to say about that. Um, okay. So much to talk about today. Uh, I honestly don't even know where to start. You want You want to start with permissionless or should we start with Let's start. Let's talk Let's talk permissionless. So, I will um I mean I we just we just wrapped up

permissionless. So, this is the first first pod. I haven't even done an Empire podcast since then. Um, but we you know first podcast since then. It it was incredible. So, I know you know I hung out with a lot of your team there. It was the uh we've been doing Permissionless since 2022, right? So, this was permissionless 4 and um I I would say it was by far, you know, permissionless one was crazy because it was right after DeFi summer and bull market and stuff like that, but um yeah, definitely the best permissionless in years. I the theme of this event for us was um was talent density. So, I don't know the takeaways that your team had, but it was talent density, talent density, talent density. And one thing that we've we've found, I mean, I'm sure you're in this boat, too, Jay, just too

many damn events. There's just too many crypto events right now. Every single right right now is ECC and then there's more and more and more and more. Just too many crypto events. And um look, we could say there's too many crypto events. You know, for us, we say saying there's too many crypto events is like saying there's too many books in the world or too many podcasts out there. There's too many there's too many bad podcasts. There's too many bad books. There's too many bad crypto conferences. So for us, we wanted to make this the most talentdense crypto conference in the world. And and I heard I heard from everybody it was it was that I mean this one of the things that Blockworks has been so good at. What were my my question always I was I wasn't there this year. Uh my question always is uh

from the investor standpoint, I always want to know what the vibes are like at these conferences because I feel like if you're at these conferences, you really get an idea of the market sentiment within crypto specifically, right? Uh and obviously you can go to crypto Twitter for that, but crypto Twitter is so warped that it's very difficult to actually get the real sentiment. What's the sentiment that you got from the conference this year? The sentiment was all right, let's let's take a spectrum. On one side of the spectrum was breakpoint Lisbon 2021 when Salana was at the pico top of that bull market.

That's a that's what we call a 10 out of 10. People are partying from, you know, morning to sundown. Uh on the on the left side was maybe permissionless 2023. Bottom of the bare market. Vibes are low. People are angry. Um I would say this is somewhere probably slightly above the middle. probably a six or a seven. Um, this actually, funny, funnily enough, reminded me of D, but not this D. It reminded me of D last year. And, um, so it reminded me of D 2024. And the the interesting thing about this cycle has been that the incumbents and the really the institutional crowd has weirdly frontr run the crypto natives this cycle, I would say. And that's the first time in 15 years of the industry that it's worked like this. So, if you

look at the the vibe and the sentiment of Dash 2024, it was what I would call guarded optimism. And there's this idea that like, all right, the good stuff is coming, but like I'm not really sure what it's going to look like. And that's what I would say permissionless was this year. there was um like a real lack of narratives, a real lack of like you know people weren't like shilling some new tokens or shilling some new themes or anything like that but it was like look everything seems like it's going really well and like the kind of bright days are right around the corner and that's that's how I'd broadly characterize permissionless for I mean it's how I'd broadly characterize crypto right now as well and the market but it's so it what you what you said is so interesting to

me and I think ties in I I want to get some more takeaways from permissionless but it ties into some I want to talk about Robin Hood as well and the I mean when you look at what's one of the best trades recently has been circle if you had bought circle I right at the IPO you've done very well on that and altcoins have not been doing so well this cycle and so there is this like really interesting conversation I keep having right now of like are public companies the altcoin trade of this cycle and you can even push that further into like Bitcoin treasury companies have also done they they have been great trades as well whereas again altcoins have continued to suffer. Now I I'll buy into the we're right around the corner

and that we're going to see altcoins do well at some point in this cycle still I believe. Um I don't know what your takes on that. I mean capital markets are clearly where the the so there's the CMS hot ball of money right and the hot ball of money is in capital markets. So circle I'd say there's two themes here. One is that the hot ball of money is in capital markets. Two is that um but actually we can talk about that right now. So so the hot ball of money we've got circle getting bid. We've got um yeah these Bitcoin treasury plays. We've got uh Coinbase. Um we've got Robin Hood. And I think what you'll see is there's several more IPOs coming this

summer. I think what you're going to see is that these get bid. These IPOs are going to get bid. How many how many I I think we have a lot of IPOs coming, right? I feel like everyone saw Circle and everyone's rushing and I know you talked to a lot of investors and VCs. We're going to talk in some point in the show about something you launched about VCs that's maybe getting you a little bit on the hot seat there. Uh so you guys will stick around at the end to hear about that. But it feels like, yeah, I think that everybody is rushing to get these these IPOs out right now because everyone looked at Circle and was like, whoa. I mean, any any new way any new thing that can get bid will get bid right now. And that actually ties back to it's a bull market, but people

don't know the narratives. So, historically, there were there were narratives, right, where you could like you would chase those things. Right now, because people don't know what the narratives are, anything that can get bid will get bid. So, this was the Circle IPO. These are Bitcoin treasury companies. I mean, Jay, you could snap your fingers tomorrow. You in Milk Road could go launch a Bitcoin treasury company and raise $250 million. I pro I promise you, I'm not kidding. It's so easy to do these things right now. And um but it's also like the Plasma fund raise. I don't know if you saw the plasma fund raise. They raised like a billion like stable coin. There's like a billion dollars in commits for it. um the pump the pump fund um ICO or fund raise or whatever we're calling this

thing. So they're raising a billion at four billion valuation. That thing got bid. I mean it was impossible to get into that. It was nearly impossible to get into that deal. That's pump raising a billion at 4 billion and it was really hard to get into that and that thing's going to rip out of the gates. I mean, four I think it'll go from four billion to like 10, 15, 20 billion. And that's just because the hot ball of money is chasing things right now. So, yeah, it's uh it but it's it's not in the it's not in the altcoins. It's not in the altcoins. And when I it's not the L1's and the L2s, right, which so many of us hold from previous It is in some altcoins though. It's in nonVC backed altcoins. So, if you look at Yeah, like

hype, right? And so if you look at I mean there are even coins and companies that I love. Um there's just so many unlocks coming still that it's really tough to bid these things. I mean I won't name names but yeah there's like there's folks who are unlocking 40 50 60 million dollars of this stuff every couple weeks. There's just no there's no one bidding into that. And that's why uh the solution to that I actually think what will kick off the alt season is these corporate treasury companies are going to flip from Bitcoin ETH and Soul into name your top 50. You think so? I know. So that's what's happening right now. So there's big fundraisers right now. Actually there even fundraises that just got wrapped up for I mean in insert your top go down the coin market cap

coin gecko top 50 list. And what these what these folks are doing is they're taking uh capital from their they're basically um taking capital from their protocol treasuries. They're putting it into a vehicle. They're then reverse merging that into a shell company that's publicly listed. That shell company goes out and buys those tokens at a discount in in the open market. So uh or excuse me, they buy from the treasury at a at a at a discount or they excuse me from VCs at a discount or they're buying in the open market. So that's going to start to drive these altcoin the alt prices higher. Right. Right. Basically because you're now going to have public market vehicles mechanisms to public market.

Yeah. And like let's say somebody let's say someone wants to bid let's say an institution wants to bid on um I don't know make up make up any token right Athena or something like that. They're like oh yeah I like this idea of Athena. seems cool, but like I can't buy ENA token on my like I don't know MetaMask wallet or even like I'm not going to have like Coinbase. I don't want like I don't have the mandate to buy Coinbase, but I do have the mandate to buy a publicly traded vehicle that just holds Athena. So I'm not I'm not actually talking about Athena specifically. I'm just using No, no. And and the and the protocols are the ones doing this though, like the project. Oh yeah. Every protocol founder right now has this strate is working on this strategy. All the all the smart ones are very

interesting. Wow. Very interesting. Uh that's great, Alpha. Thanks. Uh okay, let's let's go back. Give us the give us your top few uh permissionless takeaways. Um fir first takeaway is just that there are no narratives right now. The there are no narratives and the hot ball of money will get bid. So so that's the first one. The second one I would say is uh incumbents incumbents incumbents and for 15 years right this industry has been able to build new things and it's been primarily startups driving new new capital new talent new products and for the first time in history the incumbents are actually finally here and we see you know we're recording this on Monday and you know Robin Hood's launching their L2 I think

it is and they're bringing tokenized stocks on on on chain anybody body anybody who has compete brings tokenized stocks on chain or hasn't you know is bu is building some sort of trading app this is now your competitor right Robin Hood is now your competitor so um yeah Robin Hood chain it's being built on arbitrum like the in and you know one of the big sponsors of permissionless was Google right it's not it's not alchemy it's not infura it's google right and so the incumbents are finally here and they're here in a big way so that That that's one takeaway. Second takeaway is um the revenue meta and I hate that meta is even applied to the word revenue. Like

of course revenue should be driven. Um the re the revenue meta is is here and it's not going away. So this is this is not a short-term narrative. This is not a short-term trade. Uh companies, protocols, and tokens that drive revenue, real revenue, and make real money will do well and they will forever do well. Um, I would guess there's some point at the end of the cycle, some blowoff top where maybe those revenue tokens aren't the things that are performing the best. It becomes very narrative driven. Um, but yeah, revenue revenue coins are are here to stay and all of the investors that I met with are talking about real revenue. And that is that just is that DeFi like is mainly I guess deepin maybe, but like um not

not deepin. I would not say put deep in that. I would say deep defi. Yeah, trading experiences lend lend borrow like hype is generate right hype is trading um oiler maple like look at the price of syrup right now um look at the price of a look at the price of I think oiler's done pretty well recently too um morpho sky sky yeah exactly so um and these people really benefit from the stablecoin narrative too so yeah real revenue drives real price action on chain and that's primarily driven by you know the allocators of capital in the industry were venture capitalists, 98% venture. Now more liquid funds are coming in, right? People like Thea,

people like Modular, um a lot of the venture firms are launching their own liquid desks like Panta and Coin Fund, right? These people have liquid desks where they're actually not just trading series A, series B, series C, they're actually trading these coins and building models off these coins. So that's that's number number one is the incumbents are here. Number two is the you know revenue is here to stay. Number three is um uh there's a real discrepancy between US conferences and international conferences and the international conferences are much bigger like permission list was a few thousand people I think we had like 3,000 people maybe 20 somewhere between 2500 to 3,000 people if you are comparing that to um something like token 2049 that seems

like a very small conference right and it is a small conference compared to something like token which might have something like 10 or 15 or 20,000 people. The talent density in the United States is 10 times higher than the talent density internationally. So that was one thing that was very very apparent and um I shared my screen and I don't know if it's I possible to share screen but this guy Simon from Moonra Capital um yeah p you know he he tweeted out he said uh look this was hands down one of the best conferences I've attended in the past six years. The density of high quality people was unreal. Genuine conversations at the highest intellectual level with people who truly care about moving the crypto space forward. Very few grifters and

people trying to sell you the next pump and dump. No endless parties, etc., etc., etc. Um, the takeaway here is, you know, if you're listening to to Milk Road, it's that I would, if you're building something, I would build it in the US. And if you're investing in something, I would look to invest in builders who are in the United States. I mean, there are exceptions, obviously. uh Hyperlquid um Kaito right like there are people building outside the United States doing good things but like the future talent of crypto will be in the United States uh and then the sorry the la very last thing I'd say the last takeaway is people are really turning on consumer uh consumer crypto is is at a low I would say building social on chain consumer products on chain gaming on

chain that's at a low um usually when something's at a there is there's probably something to be done there, right? You probably don't want to just start buying like all the lend borrow protocols because that's what just got bought. You probably want to look some somewhere else. But yeah, definitely feels like the sentiment around consumer investing in crypto and consumer building is is really has really hit a low. 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

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spelled ln. Okay, I want to come back to a few of these. Um, let's let's talk first about the incumbents because this is a this is a very interesting trend that I think is going to slap a lot of crypto founders in the face and also is going to really challenge the ethos of crypto, right? Because basically what is happening is, you know, I've seen so many of this versions of this tweet and I'm sure you have the same is we spent the last decade building this incredible tech and and open sourcing it and now you have these massive tech companies, Robin Hood, Finex, Stripe, and then even just your, you know, regular tech companies,

Google's those type of thing coming in and they're saying, "Hey, I want a piece of the action and I'm gonna build here." Wh what's going to be what do you see as the the outcome of this? I mean I think we've this 2025 when we look back in 20 years we look back in 15 years whatever 2025 will be a line in the sand moment for crypto and yeah look a lot of the incumbent a lot of the crypto startups of the past 15 years won't actually make it through and a lot of the ethos and stuff unfortunately won't carry through. Now, hopefully some of that is carried out and hopefully some of the, you know, the old tagline is like instead of don't be evil, it's

can't be evil, right? Hopefully some of that carries through. Um, but I think you're being foolish if you think all of that is carrying through. And just like, you know, 2004 was kind of this line in the sand moment for tech, right? We had 1998, 99, 2000, markets ripping, pets.com, all this kind of stuff, and then boom, massive crash. And um a lot of those companies never actually recovered but and it wasn't so 2001 2002 2003 kind of bare market 2004 line in the sand moment right uh I think Facebook got started in 2004 I think Google might have IPOed in 2004 you have to fact check me on all this but um I think Google bought AdSense that year which brought ads to the internet

really. So I think 2004 for web 2 is what 2025 is for crypto. A line in the sand moment. That's a good take. And it sort of makes me think that uh it doesn't mean that this happens immediately, right? There is still a few years or at least this cycle. There is still a blowoff the top mania euphoria moment where I think quite honestly I think a lot of stuff will go well and there's a lot of projects that maybe aren't going to last and be here a decade from now but they could still do well in this cycle. But I think that where this leads is a few years from now, particularly in the next bear, a lot of the stuff gets washed out and

never comes back, as happens every time. But it feels different this time because now you're competing with these massive companies who quite honestly are better at go to market than most crypto companies are, which is a big area that we struggle with. We're so bad at go to market unless you're like a tech wizard who wants to understand self- custody and a wallet and MetaMask and all of that which a lot of people don't. So there's just I feel like you've you've got to really now is where you've got to as an investor you have to really be paying attention to not just crypto and be deep in crypto but also being paying attention to these tech companies and what they're doing and and maybe don't chase the the you know the 100x in

crypto and be okay with the the two to 3x that you might get from some of these public companies because the riskreward is much stronger. Yeah. And you said, well it's this what we're really talking about here is a fight between distribution and speed, right? The incumbents have the distribution and the startups have the speed. And I don't mean distribution like, you know, a million followers on Twitter. I'm talking, you know, Charles Schwab has uh 36 and a half million active brokerage accounts. They have two million banking accounts. They have something like 10 trillion in client assets, right? So, we're talking about a a a company that has 36 million accounts. Like, if you are Gemini and Kraken, you know, Coinbase used to be

your biggest competitor, you're now competing against Charles Schwab and TDM trade, right? Yeah. Yeah. The the competition is is changing really quickly. I just want to bring up so Robin Hood's announcement today. Uh let me just bring this up. So, uh we talked about this briefly before, but they've they're going to launch an L2 on Arbitum. Uh they're going to have tokenized US stocks directly in the Robin Hood app. And they're going to tokenize private equity like OpenAI or SpaceX. Basically, these these projects that you can't can't get access to unless you're a private investor. Uh let's talk about listen I want to use this to talk about ETH for a second. Uh because you know we're really focusing on these public companies as the big opportunity, but I know all of our

listeners have massive bags in ETH. What's what's your thoughts on on ETH and where it's at right now? Are you in the camp of, hey, the riskreward isn't as good on ETH and you don't know where it goes this cycle, or are you in the camp that, hey, like this is the low and ETH is going to rip and it's got way more to go and taking that side. I'm at the risk of getting punished on Twitter. I'm I'm I'm very bearish ETH. I mean, I'm You are Yeah, I'm I'm very bearish ETH. Um, yeah. I'm I'm not buying any right here.

That's it. That's it. I spent my weekend getting shredded on about from the ETH maxis already. So, I don't know if I want more pain, but like yeah, I mean, I thought they did the right thing, which was uh, you know, I thought for years they spent they spent years making wrong decisions. I thought they did the right thing um with this pivot, which is good. Um, but I have met many of the people in charge and leading leading the ship and I I don't think they're the right people. And I think that ultimately like you make investments in startups and companies based on the people running things. And aside from a few exceptions, I I don't think the people running in charge right now are are exceptional people who who will lead ETH into the

next into the next phase. So, okay, let's let's uh let's talk about the other the other big guy, Salana. I'm not going to bring up Bitcoin because we talk enough about Bitcoin. Uh I don't know if you've seen this news, but Soul apparently uh they're there speculation um from James Seaffort from Bloomberg, who's probably the best at this uh these ETF uh assumptions, and he's saying that the Salana ETF could go live this week and it will have staking, which would be crazy. Uh, what's your thoughts on I'm not I don't need your thoughts on this because I think that James knows what he's talking about. So, no surprise and it would be great to see a Solana ETF go live. What's your thoughts on Soul right now?

Um, Soul. So, I like Soul. Um, I like I like Soul. I mean, it's there's two things, right? You've got the ETFs coming and you've got these corporate treasuries as well. There's a lot more Salana treasury companies coming out right now than than Ethereum treasury companies that haven't been publicly announced. So that's interesting. Um I will say Salana I loved Salana for the last year and a half. I mean I think if you talk to anyone who actually works at Salana or in and around Salana they're very nervous about Hyperlid. Um, and so, you know, we're seeing like, you know, the the the Bitcoin maxis were really annoyed and scared of and like basically

like tried to run ETH into the ground. ETH said no. Went up like 250x and had their time in the sun. ETH basically said Salana was a scam and never to touch Salana. Salana had its time in the scan sun and now Salana people are saying like you should never touch Hyperlid. I'm sure Hyperlid will have its time in the sun and like nothing is new, you know. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, it's it's a great take. It feels It certainly feels like uh it it feel I I'm constantly reminded that when we talk about these smart contract blockchains that it's so early and we actually don't know which one is going to win. I I still believe that there will be one winner, right? powers

law would say there will probably be there will probably be a few main chains and one of them will have the majority is what I would I would believe. I don't know what your thoughts are on that, but I think it's still too early and we don't know if it's Ethereum, if it's Salana, or if it's or if it's Hype or if it's or go down the list. I still think I still think the best play is not to get too cute and to just if you are I would basically have a bucket where you just allocate to the majors and you just do a third Bitcoin, a third ETH, and a third soul. And if you have if you like that's going to sound so lame and like people want like, "Oh, what's what's my leverage? I'm like, what's my thing?"

and what's going to go up 100x but like at this point it's I mean unless you have strong strong strong con like strong conviction for most people one third Bitcoin 1/3 ETH one third soul and people will say well look at ETH ETH is flat over the last you know five years ETH is flat well yeah Salana's not Salana is up 15x Bitcoin's not right Bitcoin's up like three or 4x so yeah maybe you were flat on your 130 position but you caught the other things and sure ETH could rip I could be totally wrong ETH could hit 10,000 this here but and maybe Salana gets punished for that. You I think you want exposure to all three.

Yeah, I think diversification is the key. Uh but I would say to me I I think you put Bitcoin in its own bucket now. Like I think you put Bitcoin in its own bucket and then you have your like smart contract layer bucket where you're trying to basically catch the future of the internet as if you were trying to invest in the internet before the internet came out. And then I think you can go down to the risk curve and have more your your DeFi bucket or your other buckets as well. Uh let's talk about VC versus for a second because you did something over the weekend that was super fun that you're now getting uh absolutely uh slammed for apparently in your DMs. Tell us okay tell us maybe you could screen share. tell us what VC

versus is and then uh talk to us about what's going on here and why why every VC in the world is uh currently DMing you. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. So, can you see can you see this screen? One second. Let me get it. There we go. So, look, I was just playing around yesterday. Um there's this tool called Replet. Replet has a thing called Replet AI where you can just tell it to make anything and it'll go code it and build it for you. So, I was like, "Look, there's um there's this funny kind of meme which is like the S tier, you know, then like A through F, right?" And I was like, "Oh, I I saw this actually for VC and I was like, "Oh, someone just someone just made this." I was like, "I wonder what the actual community thinks. I wonder

what crypto Twitter thinks of this." And so, um I can show you here. So, what So, actually what VC versus is is it's kind of like Tinder for crypto VCs where you actually you can click on them and you just actually rank them, right? Defiance click you go next click verify click it's like hot hot or not for for VCs basically you're it's hot or not for VCs and so if you pivot over to this tab and what there's 30,000 votes votes cast crazy. So we launched this thing I mean we launched this thing let's see at 10:57 a.m. It's 1:30. So the thing's been live for three and a half hours now and we've got over 30,000 people who

have voted. Uh so if you actually this is how you build it. So anyone who has never used replet it's amazing like you just got to go into replet. I said I want to build a rank of cryptovc website name is VC versus I want to I want it to look like the classic S tier A throughF rank meme ranking. Users should vote on who would you rather have on your cap table. Then it shows two crypto VCs. they go on S tier if they get 95% A tier if 85 to 95% and so on so forth. Also add a space to submit a new crypto VC and then I went on Chat GBT and said give me the list of the top 50 crypto VCs. I put it in and uh yeah and then it built it and then look how long did this

take you? I mean you can just this was I don't know probably an hour to do this two hours and then probably another two hours to like add features and debug it. So this is incredible. It's like it's like talking to chat GBT, you know? I'm like some logo seem to be missing and then it fixes it. Um but on the left side just show logo is D and then it fixes it. Make this the social graphic. There are weird bubbles between logos after two rankings. Logos hang off the edge, right? So you you basically have this and then logos hang off the edge and then you just debug it in real time.

But you're not debugging. You're just you're debugging just by talking to this thing. That's pretty amazing. It feels like uh actually before I give my takes tell tell us what what what the reaction has been. So you gotten 30,000 votes because there's a sort of a funny side maybe not so funny for your inbox right now but yeah I mean look all the all the VCs are mad at me right now candidly I've got you know all all these logos on the screen are not loving it. Um you know we have even the ones that are ranked high I mean the guys ranked high. So co global. They I don't even know what that is. What's co? They botted this. So actually you can see they botted it. So I tweeted this. I So I actually pulled it up and I I called

them I called them out on Twitter. I said uh so actually in Replet you can I said it looks like Cinno has botted it and they said I can see Sinno has suspiciously high vote counts 260 wins out of 2449 which sa which suggests potential botting. let me implement anti-bot measures, clean up the database. So yeah, people are botting it. People were creating duplicates. People were like getting like kind of farms to start clicking for them and like downvoting their competitor. So uh you know, I forgot to add some VCs, so people were not happy about that.

Anyways, nobody's happy. Nobody's happy. Just a game. Just a game. Everybody take a deep breath. But okay, so to me, the the the takeaway here is two two takeaways. One is the speed of innovation that we're about to see as a result of AI and two is the world needs more entrepreneurs like that is we we can never have enough entrepreneurs. We can never have enough builders and we've had a challenge with that because of just the huge barriers to entry in it particularly in tech. We have had massive challenges and as a result the mag 7 has dominated because you've had the these big companies that can pay the

best talent and attract the best talent and own engineering basically software engineering engineering. They've owned that and so they have over the past few decades they have dominated and that's why they've separated themselves. To me, what this says is we're now going to see a shift where you're going to see smaller companies, billion-dollar companies with one or two employees. You're going to see innovation speed up, which we desperately need in crypto. We haven't had real crypto innovation in a while, honestly. Like maybe you could say that on the finance side we're getting stuff but beyond that no not really. So it this shift I don't I don't know how to necessarily invest in this

shift but it means that to me that I could see the mag 7 becoming less valuable maybe long term and these smaller startups becoming more valuable. Like I mean with AI there's just a question of like where is the value going to be? I I I really and I this is a bigger more philosophical question but I really wonder 10 years from now if you can say that public trade like these massive companies are worth what they're worth anymore if it's all AI. Yeah. I mean it's uh it will now there's never been a better time in the in the world to be a better entrep to be an entrepreneur, right?

Like there's never ever ever been we have a gross under supply of entrepreneurs and there's never been a better time. So I agree especially with these tools like people should really use Replet AI. It's an amazing tool. Vzero by Versel incredible tool. Cursor for coding. It's like it it it changes how you think about the world and how you think about you know producing and creating things. It's amazing. Yeah. The you mentioned Bzero, the the video ad that you guys made for permissionless was so fire. Like it was so great. And you guys made that. I mean, it was it was clearly AI, right? But that's that's okay. You knew it was you knew it was

going to be AI. That was your intention. And you made that in a few days. And I remember our our our marketing agency looking that and saying, "Holy like that's incredible that you can make something like that so quickly." Uh yeah, it's I don't know. I think when when I really think about AI other than the Okay, so I agree. Great opportunity, great time to be an entrepreneur. Everybody out there, if you're thinking about being an entrepreneur, go take your shot. Now's the time. And don't hire talent. Just build with AI. Remain a oneperson team. But on the investment side, I don't know. It sort of I think back to an episode we did with Jordy Visser. I don't know if you've ever uh sat down, chat with him, macro guy uh and you know, great real gray hair. He his take was that it's all all roads

lead to Bitcoin as a result of AI because Bitcoin becomes really the only asset that you could see that could do well in an AI dominated world where all these companies I don't know their value and this is long term. Don't trade on this today. Like this is we still have probably 10 years until we're in this like fully AI world. Uh I don't know if you have thoughts from an investor standpoint. Um, I don't I don't agree that I'm not sure the po I don't agree that like Bitcoin could be the one that does the best. Um, or Bitcoin is like the only investment to make in an AI world. I do think AI will drive an age of like extreme abundance. Um, and ex and also I think we're just, you know,

this isn't the point of the show, but like extreme money printing is coming again. Like there's just no way to stop it. We just the financial system of the US is just too flipped upside down. So the thing that will do the best there is Bitcoin. So you combine like irrational exuberance will come again. Extreme amounts of capital will come again. Um and like this prolifer proliferation of AI makes it actually like I was saying it's never been a better time to be a builder. It's never been a tougher time to be an investor, right? I got dinner at permission list with a bunch of investors. They're like we don't know how to invest anymore. We don't know who to invest in. Do you invest in the incumbents and buy equities? Do you buy like invest in startups? Are these startups even like valuable anymore? Do

I try to find like one person companies who are doing this? Do I just invest in people instead of company? So, um it's very tough to be an investor right now. But so because of that, yeah, Bitcoin I mean Bitcoin's the way to basically allocate to all of all of this together. It's a I don't I don't necessarily want to leave everybody on that note, but I think that is a good a good spot to end the show. uh because it makes the point that you got to you got to stay tuned in you know so uh whether you're whether you're listening to the Milk Road show uh whether you're you're subscribed to Block Works if you want on the macro side go check out forward guidance or go check out milkro macro uh because you got to stay tuned in in this market uh

it's uh it's it's it's a difficult market right now to figure out I do think though when you said money printing money printing comes on later this year I think we have we have another blowoff top crazy bull run, all assets rise. Uh, I think that's an inevitability. I agree. I agree. Jay, thanks for having me. Oh, I have a discount for our next conference, which is Milk. Milk gets you 10% off DS London, which is coming up in October. What is it? October. Okay. 10% off D London. Uh, we'll put a link in the show notes, everybody. Uh, and hit the code milk. Uh, Yo, thanks for joining us today. Appreciate you. Thanks for tuning in. Oh, I got to remind you as always that none of today's episode was financial advice. I'm not your investment adviser. Neither is Yeno.

should always do your own research and think before you invest. And one more time, I got to tell you, Fit Milkro Pro all access Access is only $25 per month today, but tomorrow it'll be $100 per month if you want to be a great investor in crypto and beyond. I highly recommend Milro Pro all access. Thanks for tuning in, folks. Have yourselves a wicked awesome day. We'll see you back again tomorrow. If y'all are making swaps or trades right now, highly recommend you check out Milkroad Swap. This is a deck that we built in partnership with Cow Protocol. Why did we build it? Not to make money. Just honestly, so we could have a place to do our swaps for the lowest fees that we could find. This is the fees on Ethereum, Arbitum, and Bass are only.15%

fees. Uh this is a huge difference from uh other centralized exchanges that charge half a percent or even up to 1.2% fees on their swaps. Also, you can swap on Salana all at swap.mmillgro.com. Check it out today. You won't be upset. And you can join me in my favorite place to make swaps on chain. As always, if you liked today's episode, please hit subscribe and make sure you follow us so you don't miss out on the next one. There's also a link in the description to our free 5minute daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you while making you laugh. And if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game, we're going to also leave a link for

Milk Road Pro. You get access to our portfolio where you can see exactly what we are buying. This is your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto. One final note, this show is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice. Investing in crypto or any asset is risky and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose. Thanks so much for listening in my friends. Have a wicked awesome