100 - How to Survive in Crypto | Cobie

Transcript

because if you spent like the last 18 months um actively trading and investing and you could have just held ethereum it's like you just wasted they could have been outside having like a nice time with the sun welcome to bankless where we explore the frontier of Internet money and internet Finance this is how to get started how to get better and how to front run the opportunity this is Ryan Sean Adams and I'm here with David Hoffman and we're here to help you become more bankless guys fantastic episode the title is understanding crypto we get inside the brain of a crypto Trader one of my favorites on crypto Twitter this is Kobe coming at you we talk about a few things watch out

for them five what it takes to last in crypto not for the short run but for the long term Kobe's been at this for 10 years he goes through that second does decentralization really matter we get a conversation perhaps a bit of a debate on that topic third what does Kobe actually think about and it's thesis he puts that to the test fourth we do a fun exercise like character alignment people in the crypto space are they lawful good are they chaotic evil are they neutral good uh we talk about a few folks there and number five we end with Outlook and predictions for 2022 is it going to be a bullish or bearish Year stay tuned for a fantastic episode David what do you think about this one yeah I think calling Kobe a

trador is uh under selling him uh and I think if you ask Kobe what he is is he would also unell himself too I think that's kind of part of his character uh he's definitely a part philosopher I think he's a he's a traiter he's a Traer philosopher type if you will uh and uh there's a dynamic a pendulum back and forth I think where like oh he's in Traer mode or philosopher mode uh and I think that's one of Kobe's great strengths is uh he can trade on he he he uses philosophy to trade and it's definitely worked out for him uh and and overall he just has um very long form answers in-depth answers that pull in so many different bits of Knowledge from different corners of the

crypto world to you know provide evidence for his his answer and it's just an impressive feat of brain power I think and so I just enjoyed picking Kobe's brain uh as somebody that uh is as somebody that a lot of people look up to in this space for just leadership and uh just an example of how to how to survive in crypto uh I think if there's anyone that's survived through the most SLO the biggest slog it's it's Kobe uh and so and he's still around kicking um just kicking ass and maybe he's around for another decade after this who knows I believe that man that that look that's another good episode title how to how to survive in crypto because that's really what we went through and uh you you mentioned the word depth I think uh that

was a key insight for me too Kobe does have a tremendous amount of depth and though um we called him Trader he's a Trader in the outset he definitely narrative trades in a way that and I don't but he also has a long-term thesis for this space and so it's really cool to see him um push against our thesises and challenge some of our ideas and there's some fantastic back and forth there about the value of decentralization how much that really matters both from an investment perspective but also from the future of what we're really building in crypto so guys stay tuned to hear all of that of course as usual if you're a bankless premium member David and I will be talking doing a full episode debrief of all of our thoughts on the episode that is available on the uh premium podcast

feed so if you're a premium member you can tap into that as well all right guys this was a really fun conversation I think you guys are going to enjoy this one some people said that Kobe would never show up on Bank list yet here he is today on the show so let's go ahead and get right into that interview right after we talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible arbitrum is an ethereum scaling Solution that's going to completely change how we use Defi and nfts over 250 projects have already deployed on arbitrum and arbitrum dii and nft ecosystems are growing rapidly arbitrum increases ethereum speed by orders of magnitude for a fraction of the cost of the average gas fee when interacting with arbitrum you can get the performance of a centralized exchange while tapping into ethereum's level of

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trades are matched with other humans uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on ethereum that lets you trade any token at the current market price no human counterparties or centralized intermediaries just autonomous code on ethereum input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy the Unis Swap Grants program is accepting applications for Grants do you have something of value that you think think you want to contribute to the uniswap ecosystem no matter how big or small your idea is you can apply for a unique Grant at uniswap grant.org and help steer Unis swap in the direction that you think it should go thank you Unis swap for sponsoring bankless bankless Nation we are super excited to introduce our next guest it's the guest you thought would never happen is now

happening we've got Kobe on the podcast formerly known as crypto coane you probably know him from Twitter maybe you've read his substack maybe you listen to up only which is his podcast he's been in the game the crypto game that is since 2022 we're going to talk about what he's done since 2022 his philosophy on things any beefs with bankless he might have I don't know we're g to just blid out here not really a strict agenda we're just going to talk about whatever comes to mind Kobe welcome to Bas how you doing man hello mate how you doing uh I trolled you on Twitter before I joined sorry I just like to create entertainment for people it's not B well it is entertaining yeah so Kobe before Twitter I was like hey hey uh we're having Kobe record on the podcast

uh what questions you guys have and and Kobe's like uh I'm going to be at the beach guys was that was that actually today and for a split second I was like okay I don't know if he's coming or not David but it's just Kobe that's that's what you do I feel like entirety of crypto Twitter has got a handshake agreement that we all continually being mean to each other as a joke but I've recently realized some people don't realize it's a joke they're not even joking themselves sliff and serious some people are really mean yeah some people just don't just don't see they see the Twitter and then it's oh that's just them being toxic God damn why are they always so toxic all the time and then they don't realize that like oh we're just [ __ ] posting having a good time I

do think it though it's it's um look it's it's a rough game out there I mean surviving in crypto takes a lot right and you've been at this game for like what is it like 10 years now Kobe yeah like a little bit less I think but it's getting to the point where you may as well just say 10 okay so a decade in crypto what does it take to survive in crypto how have you made it so long I'm talking volatility I'm talking about like crypto Twitter you know pain I'm talking about you know very everything everything that comes with in this industry dealing with idiots dealing with everything you have to deal with the information uh like flood into your mind every single day you go you miss an hour in crypto and it feels like you

missed an entire week all of that how'd you last so long what's your secret yeah I mean the the idiots thing that was not a problem 5 years ago I think that like uh the politicization of everything over last decade has 10 xed probably three times um like Twitter used to be I'd never thought about using the block button but like now the experience is virtually unusable unless you press it a few times a day um but crypto specifically um I think when when people ask this question it's very easy to um to like use this like sort of hindsight bias and we're like oh well I did this and I thought this about the world and blah blah blah but it's it's sort of

similar to that you know that photo of a plane an old war plane that they used to like try and figure out where they should reinforce the armor so that the planes would survive longer and then they were putting the armor in the wrong place because the only the only planes that came back were the ones that survived and they go well we need to reinforce where they're getting hit and really plan that didn't yeah exactly and you can like think about like I can think all these things like oh what did I do differently to other people um or like what did like I have in my character that meant I could survive and and I don't know if it matters too much I think it's more useful to observe all the people I know from that time that didn't um like get to this point in the

market and went and did other things some of them very successful other things and um some just left the markets entirely um and then the people that did from uh from my my like cohort or um graduation class or whatever and I think the first thing was that most people that uh survived through the markets have or hard is like a healthy balance of skepticism and like curiosity because it's really easy to poke holes and everything right you can I can tell you a million reasons why Bitcoin could probably fail ethereum's not going to do well why salana is like [ __ ] and stuff it's really easy to come up with those things and I understand that mindset it's also really easy to turn something

into uh like a religious sort of group and be like I'm so convicted on this thing I'll you know this is going and and then you disregard everything or criticism as like f or you know whatever and I think the people that did really well and and made it through um multiple cycles of it going to infinity and then going to zero over and over um were somewhere in the middle where they were able to think really skeptically and say okay what could go wrong here what other things um uh uh might invalidate why I believe in this thing but at the same time they were able to be optimistically curious enough to go okay maybe I'm a natural skeptic and these things might happen and that's all bad and yeah like

um these are the things that could go wrong but also on the other hand if the world changes in these ways how can it be different in the future um and I think those people were the ones that saw past mount g dying and centralized exchanges blowing up and seeing um okay does this matter in the bigger picture like maybe it matters today maybe it matter for the next two years but maybe not in 10 years and they saw ethereum's ecosystem change from the 2017 area of like people just doing like felonious Kickstarter projects into being okay that's actually a type of product built on ethereum yeah maybe it's an illegal fundraising platform at the moment but

that is one product that you can build on ethereum and then they saw other products start to get built on ethereum through 2019 and sometimes the new products look like the old one but they were curious enough to understand the differences um so I think that's like one thing that like a lot of people that were able to make it through the markets had and the second one is like people don't like to talk about it so much CU they like to think that they're smart and stuff but it's just like luck and not like won the lottery flip to coin lock but it's a a sort of like Cosmic right place right time right life circumstances kind of lock where they didn't have to become a forced seller of this thing they believed in because they had a kid or because they had um a

health issue or or something instead they were you know um the right age so that they didn't need to you know rely on their Investments to pay for a house um or they had it like for in my case I was at University and the amount of money I put into crypto was so small that when I got job it didn't matter I didn't need to ever cash it out to like do something I could increase my lifestyle and I could have that lifestyle bloat by getting a promotion and getting a new job and I was lucky enough to have a few like well-paying jobs in in Tech um which meant I didn't need to ever sell my crypto in order to fund some part of my life and I think most people that didn't make it that

back then believed became forced sellers somehow um either overleveraging life circumstances or something like that and I think a lot of it down to that um just the right age right place right time right like life circumstances right education or whatever um that people don't like to admit so much what about a like a North star or just guiding principle when you learned about crypto was there anything like you know distant in Theisen in in 2050 everything's going to be on crypto or was there any sort of like thing that really resonated with you about crypto that you discovered early on yeah um not I never thought about 2050 and I still don't think about 2050 we probably

all be underwater not just in crypto underwater I mean like the entire world's underwater but um I I was at University when I first got into crypto um and I went to like a a university in the UK called University of Bristol it's kind of like where you go if you don't get into Oxford or Cambridge it's like 50% or maybe more than 50% like people with trust funds and they're like very parh and um they don't worry about money so much and they're having a nice time University and then the other half of people that I knew were all very deeply in debt the banks like hook you in by giving you the student overdraft which in the UK do you have overdraft in America yeah

definitely yeah fine that's why you know Bank list we hate Banks yep yep yeah okay so like they give you the student overdraft which is just like free debt you they give you like three grand you can do whatever you want with it you don't pay any interest while you're a student and the first two years after you stopped being a student and all the people that I knew at University or my friends that didn't have like family money they instantly said okay cool I've got £3,000 for free like that's my money now and like zero was no longer zero it was minus 3,000 they just went cool that's that's my money I can do what whatever I want with that and then they left University and all of a sudden you've got interest payments on this and everyone's like you know I I met those two types of people at

University and then in my family like people in my family they lost their pensions in the um like 2008 financial crisis and stuff like that so I was I had this sentiment around Banks but also just like the financial system which seemed to overlap with the political system in general uh and I was very like emotional about it and like maybe a little bit naive about it as well but I was sort of looking for a way out so seeing crypto as seeing Bitcoin at least as this um impartial uh non-state money that there was there was no guy in a like an office tower Block in Canary Warf or wherever in New York I don't know the geography

of New York well enough that was going to make decisions about their own p&l that would impact you know my family and they don't give a [ __ ] about that they just care about like unwinding their position cuz they [ __ ] it um if there was a money where there wasn't a guy with that power I was more interested I was interested in that and I I wanted that to be um like how the world worked I wanted there to be a system where there wasn't someone um dictating you know how much of uh the how much rent they get to uh like cream off the um like normal um population um so I I felt emotionally like super invested in this idea at the very beginning um and that's

like what was the initial spark for me but yeah I didn't know how stuff was going to be in 2050 mate I'll be dead by them the I think this story resonates with a lot of people because this seems to be just the uh the system I'm in disenfranchise I'm not part of the system there's no way that I can get wealthy in the system therefore like I might as well look elsewhere um this this thing's not going to work for me and so there's this new thing that's going on and I'm going to just gravitate my my attention there I think a lot of people have that a similar story um just that the the old ways of gaining wealth just not going to work so might as well just put wealth literally anywhere else yeah I think it's like twofold it's like partially that right like and I think

that's why you've seen the rise of Robin Hood and option like retail options Traders and why Elon was so uh was able to resonate so well with Dogecoin because there that is the story of like normal people now they don't they think the system is uh is impossible for them to break out of it and they see house prices well they're up like four or 5x in the last 30 years but wages are stagnant and they just see their goals slipping away and becoming unachievable um but the the part of it that um I think was more triggering for me was that it seemed intentional it wasn't just like oh this is the system and I can't like the the there's no lever I

can pull to like win it was more like wait the people who seem to be responsible for the like financial crisis also seem to be the ones that did the best like what how does that make sense like they seem to some of them made a profit what like how come none of them lost their job how come they're just like doing the same [ __ ] like five years later so it it was more that if there are Central parties and there are people in charge that humanity is often corruptible in uh in search of private privatized profits um and just the fact that there was like yeah may like sure Satoshi the ghost of Satoshi or whatever maybe still around but um the lack of that was what was

attractive to me I think so is that is that still a big driver for you than Kobe kind of like f the system um I don't know man cuz like I was early 20s back then I'm getting old now so I I was just in I was just in my like you know uh wear eyeliner phase listening to rock music and stuff but um like I think a little bit but I think also I've capitulated a little bit on um uh how easy it is to fight back cuz like you've seen a lot of it it's like very relevant now not just with like the financial system but um with everything like the dissemination of information and uh you know public trust in institution government big Tech

corporations uh even game Publishers I've been in arguments with people on Twitter about games like for the last few days it's like it's alltime lows that people really really don't trust large centralized power and that sort of um f the system thing feels like it's been bubbling I don't know since like the 60s or 70s or something and then it's reaching a point now where it their incompetence or um lack of respect from the people in power is so large that it just feels like they don't care they're like you can't do anything anyway like like everyone knows now that there is massive corruption in the UK we have like all

these Tory peers the like um the government party the peers just like giving themselves covid relief um contracts for like hundreds of millions of pounds and stuff it's like they just don't give a [ __ ] it's not like they're trying to hide it it's not like the you know they're like oh no if if they find out about the cryptocurrencies they'll take us down they're just like n we don't care we we'll just keep keep doing it no there's no like Forum of accountability anymore um so um I think in some ways it's like it I feel it feels still important to me but um I feel like I've capitulated a little bit on uh or at least become complacent in um like fighting the fight it's like

half the time you're figh against your own people these days so so yeah you talk a little bit about that that capitulation right cuz like I think what we really want to do in this in this episode too is like also understand how you think how kind of a Trader thinks right because I think um yeah somewhat David and I have discussed this before but we sort of see you know Kobe and uh yeah up only as kind of like um you know a a Ying to bankless as yang right it's like it's like the crypto world needs both of these perspectives very much it's sort of like narrative Trader versus what we try to think of ourselves as like a bit more fundamentals investor right but we try to stay open-minded and realize that we also don't have the like

end all thesis on this thing and like no one actually knows what fundamentals are um but like we really appreciate your perspective on this but so let's get into that into the the idea of um you cap capitulating a little bit on on that ideal right so our philosophy or like the bank list thing would be like hey we acknowledge and we see denialism right like [ __ ] sucks man institutions totally failed us this is worldwide this is in the US right you know the banks baby boomer generation uh they've all screwed us and we might very well be underwater in 2050 and guess what they don't care they're going to be gone they don't give a [ __ ] about us They Don't Care About the Next Generation so we see that right

and that's like a existential uh you know existentially that's a hard place to be in because you're like okay well nothing matters none of this matters anymore and so then you go and you're like okay how is the game played let me go figure out the game and I'm going to play a game that I can actually win for a change right so maybe get into crypto maybe start figuring stuff out but like for Bank lists it's a bit more than that because we haven't yet I feel like capitulated on the thing that we are trying to build which is a new disintermediated Financial system for the world right like we actually we we don't believe all of the hype around web 3 okay so like I mean

I hope we're not naive I don't think we're naive like we know tons of ways this could go wrong but we hold out hope that we actually have a shot in our generation to actually get this right and rebuild the system from the ground up so I like to think like we haven't yet capitulated on that now there's days where like I'm like oh [ __ ] it's over like I fully capitulated like we're never going to make it like this is not going to work uh what am I even doing here there's definitely days like that but I feel like we haven't given up are are you still there yet or do you feel like hey this crypto thing I don't know if it's going to work out or not whatever the institutions always win in the end so might as well play the

game yeah I feel um sort of like crypto itself is uh inevitable and not so much a capitulation like I don't care so much about what happens um it's all pointless but more than um the individual contributions um are much smaller than I previously calculated like I don't think the world revolves around me um I don't think the what like we put on up only um makes a difference in the world whatsoever I think it at best can entertain a bunch

of people and allow them to remain interested in something but I definitely don't think we should be telling people you know what to care about or how to think um I think that bank like I think it's it's great that you're very principled about um what you care about and it's clear that you you know make content about what you're interested in but I think in that there's also an another uh like set of biases which is um like being in unequally critical depending on what crypto project we're talking about right and in the grand scheme of things Bitcoin people would tell you by promoting ethereum you're um you're

actually capitulating because ethereum has much more of a like a structural similarities to the old system than the new one and then bankless might tell you that by talking about Avalanche you're capitulating and you know like I think there's a big spectrum and in general think at the moment for most crypto projects minus a subsection of you know the market that I think we could probably all agree on and identify pretty quickly I think most serious intelligent Builders have similar goals because it all stems from Bitcoin right they were all inspired by the same

Mission uh Bitcoin was or ethereum was and they thought oh I can do this in a different way or I can do this better and I think if I'm totally honest with myself I believe that most serious Builders are not just trying to enrich themselves and anyone in crypto is generally on a similar type of mission and I I think crypto is um probably inevitable I think it's inevitable that there is uh a permissionless and trustless system um that uh underpins how Society transacts um because the old system worked so so poorly um and there's obviously groups of people and smarter

um increasingly smarter people that uh can see a future that will work in this way um but I don't necessarily believe the chain that we all live on 100 years in the future even exists yet it might not I don't know if it will be uh etherium or salana or uh Bitcoin cash or whatever um so instead I've transitioned I think a little bit towards um like what I like to call reality maximalism where instead of applying my personal politics and what I want to happen or what I think is the best thing to happen um to the market or to my investments instead I just like to observe what is happening and try and understand why

that's happening and um and kind of take it from there because if you go back to my Twitter account not my Kobe one my normal one before like early 2017 I think like I was early to ethereum because I was a bitcoiner they sold to all bitcoiners um we like bought the Ico and then by 2017 I was hugely disappointed with ethereum because I was a big believer in this decentralization and obviously we had the Dow hack we had the roll back the chain moment um and had the thk and then ethereum seemed to be becoming this platform for illegal fundraising um and no one seems to give a [ __ ] no one seem to care um so I had this personal and political antium stance and a personal

and political very Pro privacy coin privacy token privacy technology type stance um and if ID applied those things to my investment thesis more than I did it would have been a huge mistake because ethereum did really well and zcash went to zero slowly went to zero right it's on its way um but uh like from that point I tried to instead of applying like these personal um politics onto my investments instead just go okay what is happening why is it happening and what are the underlying growth mechanisms behind what is happening and what can I learn from what is happening right and that's why though if people were

um like incredibly politically motivated by the concepts of decentralization throughout the last year they got totally screwed versus Market participants because they owned Bitcoin and ethereum as the most decentralized Assets in the whole Space um I think Bitcoin maybe an ethereum too definitely Bitcoin ether ethereum I think is gray area and you could argue and I think we'd probably agree on the argument but I think those are the two assets that only the only ones whereas if there was a massive State attack today on censorship they're the only two that would reasonably survive right like salana you have the memes the chain goes down I think it's down again today like there's a very Central core team who are very important if uh toi goes who knows

what happens to salana right and the thing is that's the same place ethereum was not so long ago like as crypto projects are born they start out very centralized Bitcoin did as well you remember that I don't know when you got into crypto but there was an inflation bug in in Bitcoin and a billion Bitcoin were uh released or something I don't remember when it was it was slightly before my time but I remember reading about it um and like they had to come together and fix that very quickly and then at some point Satoshi left and at some point it didn't matter so much anymore and at some point it became resilient and ethereum is going through a similar thing in that vitalic still has a very important political role in ethereum but less so over time now he wrotes writes

sort of you know these road maps for the future to inspire the people doing the real work and it's not so much him um you know sitting in a a bedroom in his pants anymore just doing um some blockchain coding but I think ethereum and Bitcoin are the only two that would survive a state attack today in 10 years that might not be that might not be the same that might not be true there might be more things that have crossed this Chasm um uh because the people behind those chains have the same set of values um as the people building uh ethereum or the people building um Bitcoin did so I think inter crypto cap capitulation on those things is sort of void I mean unless you're you know like promoting

like hard centralized platform tokens which are like sometimes good trades but you know not not necessarily for me um then I I don't think it matters so much where um like where you place your interest within crypto because decentralization as a thesis is a bet that in the future it will be incredibly valuable for this system to be decentralized there are also other bets within blockchain about why something might be valuable and one of them is like usability like ethereum for the last year has created a massive comp like competition Vector for other blockchains because people care about

using blockchains more than they care about decentralization right now and betting on decentralization suggests that you think that will change in the future um and I think it will I think decentralization is hugely important but I also know that I shouldn't tell people what to think they'll make their own minds up and right now clearly it has been less important than them being able to participate in the ecosystem at all or being able to afford to so I I see this the the big difference um between your disposition and Bank List's disposition is like you I feel like are a leaf on the wind right like uh crypto will do its thing and you're just going to ride it and see how it falls uh and uh the bankless side of things is like we kind of want to cover

and talk about and discuss decentralization and decentral decentralized related things of that nature uh and we have certainly as an as a media entity gotten plenty of just blowback for not discussing like the rise of the alt layer ones as much as the crypto markets have turned their attention towards it where the crypto world has you know started to focus on things like salana and Avalanche and you know insert your new uh new smart contract blockchain here uh banket has kind of continued to do the thing we we were doing prior which is kind of just focus on the I think deeper fundamental Technologies and the the the the conversation of bitcoiners pointing at ethereum being like Oh it's a

centralized scam chain and then ethereum pointing at like the next chain down the line go like oh it's a centralized scam chain like we're on like iteration number three of that right now like uh we have we have the all the new l1s where all the other the incumbents are pointing at the disruptor chains and saying the disruptor chains are a bunch of like centralized scam chains and like who knows maybe there's iteration number four of that and maybe it actually just keeps on going for the rest of time but the I think the justification for why talk about decentralization and decentralization and only things that are decentralized or related to that those subjects is that like crypto is supposed to be an infinite game we're supposed to be playing this game of

crypto for hopefully the rest of time uh hopefully our kids are playing the crypto game the their kids are playing the crypto game and hopefully that just becomes the new normal and I I think me and Ryan think that if we let centralization if we if we're just a leaf on the wind and the wind just blows us wherever we go it might actually blow us into a an outcome where the game ends because it ended up centralized and it's kind of like uh um Chris Dixon has that line where like if you ask people what they wanted in like the 1800s they would have said a faster horse rather than a car right uh and and so like we think that we have some sort of responsibility to um only talk about decentralized things because then our kids can also

play this game and their kids can play this game and there and and it can and it continues uh and so like maybe maybe the strategy here at bank list is like only talk about decentralization and when salana and Avalanche do cross that Chasm maybe we do talk about it then but I think we'll continue to decline to talk about that until the day comes and maybe that's our role in the ecosystem maybe maybe if if you know salana wants an appearance on Bank list like well they're going to have to work on their centralization and as soon as they do maybe we do invite them on yeah I think I got like three main responses in my head while you were talking the first one was like imagine if like this leaf and the wind blows and lands in this centr centralized power world I feel

like it would be arrogant of myself to be like ah if only up only TV had covered more been more sensitive in their coverage of decentralization we might have ended up somewhere totally different like I'm pretending to be Kirk Bane on the internet for ages and if it relies on me um not talking about salana then I think we already failed maybe um the second was what you said it's like a spectrum right there's a decentralization spectrum and um people draw the line in different places and I understand Drawing the Line at ethereum because I think it's the probably the only other asset apart from Bitcoin that could withstand State attack or you know um uh large coordinated attacks but and I understand it also because if you draw

the line after salana and Avalanche and Luna or whatever then all of a sudden people from like Harmony and near come knocking on the door and then if you include them then all of a sudden it's like further down and it's like where does it stop and B chain yeah exactly exactly it it starts to get blurry for an audience so I kind of get that perspective because you say oh well they talk about salana and this looks exactly like salana but there are fundamental differences that retail investors can't understand so well um so I understand Drawing the Line there but my third my third thing is like as we've acknowledged in earlier in this podcast a lot of re a lot of the reason people get into crypto is not necessarily because they're looking for a trustless

permissionless way to interact online some people do you know I'm sure some people in El Salvador and Cuba and Venezuela I think they do look for that um but one of the reasons as we said earlier that people get into crypto is because they see this system that is rigged against them and they can't afford to buy a house and the billionaires doubled their net worth or tripled their net worth in the pandemic and they're looking for a way out and if you show them Bitcoin they just hold Bitcoin it like what it's been up 5% year today or something like it maybe it was even higher this time last year and if you show them ethereum they buy some on coinbase and then they try and buy an nft and they spent more on the gas fee

than they did on the nft obviously not now like in the you know peak of mint season um last year and they can't really do anything and then you sort of lose them as audience and they're good people they're not like you know they're not looking around trying to like scam people or they're not trying to shill other chains they're good people who uh were also just looking for a way out of the uh circumstances or the system that feels rigged against them and they end up on salana because it's what they can afford to use or they end up on Avalanche because it's what they can afford to use and if you tell them they're on a centralized scam chain they're like I no longer really respect you as a broadcaster because you you're

rejecting my experience of not being able to transact on ethereum at all I don't care it's decentralized I can't use it I can't afford to use it and I think in in their eyes you go it's like what was it like for you when you joined crypto and for me I like you know put a couple of hundred quid in to crypto and that was my entire inflow ever and if ethereum was in its current state I would not have been able to live on chain very well maybe I could have used some of the l2s which have their own ux issues and stuff um but um back then it didn't matter because we just use crypy and mint pile and the exchange fees were just transferring like which blockchain you used and you could just use Litecoin so it was fine um so I do I

don't I totally understand it and I ECT it and I think that there probably will be podcasts for each of uh those blockchains too right like there's a what Bitcoin did there's a bank list maybe there'll be a soulless for salana that's a terrible name I was talking to Ryan earlier like we get so much Flack for not for not covering all of these l1s they need to just make their own podcast in that case like we're leaving the door open for them please go forth I think so I guess a couple things as you were speaking Kobe and like um things that I I feel like we're probably 100% aligned on right so like 100% aligned on the fact that maximalism chain maximalism is a trap like it's a toxic

tribal trap from an investment perspective but also from like a a mind cage perspective like it's just kind of dumb okay um I I would say that our thesis is a different right it's not chain maximalism it's decentralization maximalism and I think that is definitely an investment thesis but it also might not be especially shortterm the highest Roi profit maximization investment thesis so that's one piece of it the other hard agree that we would have for you is like from a user perspective hell yeah users should use whatever chain they feel like using whatever chain is cheapest we just had

uh vitalic on the podcast and he was talking uh about uh a trip to Argentina he had and he was like hey who what do you think was the the top used blockchain okay right it ended up as binance bance Central is exchange binance though that's fantastic and why is it fantastic for people in Argentina is because binance as much as you have to trust one guy's database as vitalic said um like it's better than the status quo isn't it and it's cheap and it's better than ethereum obviously for that same conversation exists about the Chinese Central Bank digital currency too it's going to work wonders for empowering a bunch of people to be included in the financial world it's also going to be the Chinese Central

Bank digital currency but so like so here here's where we might have the dis so so uh decentralization maximization but like not chain maximization totally with you there and like users should use whatever chain they feel like using and they shouldn't feel there shouldn't be some like religious pressure on them from people like bankless or anybody in crypto to say no you should do that that's like that's sinful to use this chain this is a bad chain don't do that user our our message is are more to people who are designing these chains and pretend to be decentralized when they're not Kobe because we think that that is actually like um okay so the the outcome that you're talking about the

the idea that decentralization is inevitable I'm not sure that that's actually true I'm not actually sure that things do naturally decentralized over time decentralized over time unless you have a layer zero a group of individuals and people that actually fight for that decentralization you were talking earlier in the episode about um the Bitcoin inflation bug right at the at the root of things how did that get resolved it gets resolved at the social layer the layer zero like below the layer one where people are like no Bitcoin is 21 million fixed cap of course we're not going to let this inflation bug go we're going to fix this in code code is not law it's all backed

by layer zero and that's why I actually think maybe you sell yourself short a little bit with up only when you talk about the lack of influence that you have in the crypto world because we are pioneers we are early it's it's kind of like saying I'm not saying we're the founding fathers but like somebody like vitalic right we're here during the revolution sorry this is an American you know kind of thing but like uh 1780s right 17 1990s you know founding an entire country and the people that were there had a ton of relevance like they set the layer zero for an entire nation state and that's why uh David and I Bank list feel like we have a tremendous amount of responsibility to do that because ultimately the layer zero

enforces it so the question of whether we're going to have a good disintermediated uh decentralized crypto system for the world or not what does that ultimately rest on it rests on the layers there and because we're here first we actually have a responsibility to be like no these values are important to us we should embed them in the protocol we should embed them in the social layer to the extent that we can so that we can have the good outcomes that we all want later oh and you're new you just joined in 2021 and you don't know these things let's talk about why they are so important so that you can come like aboard this thing and that's how we grow a movement I feel like and I think the

people who are here first actually do have a ton of influence in shaping the next decade like I think you do I think bankless does I think people like vitalic does Satoshi definitely does like all of us here do it's so early that we can have an outsized impact and it won't just naturally happen we've got to be intentional about it what do you think about that maybe yeah I like my two main thoughts honestly like the earlier in in your in your speech very inspiring speech by the way ear in your in your speech you um you said you don't think things like tend to decentralize naturally over time and like evidence would suggest from crypto projects at least that they they do and evidence evidence would suggest in uh web 2 world

or pre crypto world that they don't like wealth centralizes power centralizes um Etc um until uh there is a need for um for that decentralization and then um it becomes super important and and um people are able to much more easily quantify its importance um if there is suddenly State attacks on uh on blockchains that layer zero are going to um going to react because they're human beings they understand incentive structures they understand what's important to the world um they're going to say okay we can't uh focus on user experience or scalability right now um because the most important thing to work

on is uh decentralization um whereas right now the the most important thing in crypto is perhaps not decentralization because there are very decentralized uh Assets in the space but they're uh not usable to uh like people that might need to use them um like you know most usdc has done on Tron or something like udy told me that the other day and I was like oh God Udi was sh in TR in Tron in like 2019 and he's using this as a reason that he was right even though everything else fell apart even J in left UD is like I was right look how much you tethers on Tron [ __ ] sake but um like so I think it does just decentralize over time and as humans

coordinate what's important using you know the the the current flaws or the current weaknesses in the ecosystem that's what layer zero builds for um which is why no one is trying to out compete ethereum on decentralization because uh they're doing pretty well on decentralization um but they they're really struggle on like uh like how usable it is for uh retail people and there's now there's a focus especially for the last couple of years from Builders who um know that that's really important so you see all these layer two teams now and um doing doing really great work um but I I do think the layer zero adjusts for what is important in the world and um I also believe if there

is huge State attack and all the existing blockchains Were Somehow erased from uh existence the layer zero would collaborate to create a new um decentralized way to transact with each other because it would be the most important thing in the world to have um and so I think that that was um one one of the thoughts I had while you were um talking um the other one was that if like personally if I believe decentralization is important which I do um I think the best way to onboard people onto idea is not to just continually shout at them I think it's like if someone came to me with an idea

that I didn't care about and just kept saying yo Jordan This is the most important thing look at this is the most important thing but all the evidence in the market or uh in like what people were interested in talking about and where people the intellectual Capital was being spent was not that thing I was like oh this can you please stop sh can I try to focus um and I I I think it's better to like acknowledge reality and keep these principles um over time and have them as guiding principles but not the most important thing like you know people are super interested in um how to make money in crypto what defi is defi on Avalanche has tons and tons and tons of users and they're learning what defi is they're

learning how an amm Works they're learning how um you know uh like what what Unis swap is but they don't know it's called Unis swap cu the code's been copied and pasted but like they they're being on boarded to those ideas and being comfortable with self- custody and and being comfortable with trading between crypto assets while sure Avalanche is may be a bit of a smoke screen and is not maximally decentralized and um they made a nice new consensus algorithm but then they didn't really use it because it had some problems or some like I like all that stuff I get it but the net impact on real people on boarded into the EC

system and using decentralized Finance or maybe decentralized only in name cuz they're copies of actual decentralized Finance but um that onboards people into an ecosystem and that helps them understand uh how these products work and I think that can have also a net positive impact um over time the same way you know being Guided by these principles or having these principles but it not being the most important or only principle um and instead being more like neutral and reality um maximalist I think is probably the um Superior way in onboarding people over

time to the idea that uh you know a decentralized world is better I don't care like loads of people got into Bitcoin because of Silk Road like that's clearly not we not going to do a podcast about how Silk Road was like the greatest invention in human history or anything I was like the drug Market should be decentralized and um use permissionless money but it was very good for onboarding lots of people and showing them the value of um uh a decentralized currency so I I I just think that it's a similar goal approached for in in a different way and you on board different people right like if there was only Bank CL over there was only up only TV people different people watched different ones and they go like

you know um I don't like oppon TV cuz he's always drunk and he take don't take anything seriously and he like thinks everything is joke and he go like early and now he got rich so he don't care about his principles anymore and like more recently I got people saying I'm a trust fund kid and like just like some fiction like clearly he's got rich parents or something um some people don't like that some people don't watch it because of those reasons and they maybe enjoy bankless or maybe they enjoy you know some something else um we got a much smaller audience than you so that we're in the long taale but um then a lot of people won't watch Bank too cuz like oh it's a weird religious group where they got ethereum diamonds tied on their head and like so uh I I just think

it it it's I think in general in crypto the tribalism and stuff is so silly because isomorphically all groups are 99% the same and inspired by the uh the same set of principles whether they're on whether they're Bitcoin Maxis ethereum Maxis the the red triangle [ __ ] people on Twitter whether they've got the salana uh like you know all the all the way down mostly those groups are virtually the same thing but because they've got a different ticker for their investment they're incredibly mean to each other and hostile on the internet and it don't make any sense to me because it's like if it's like it feels more like sports teams and like football than it does uh

like in general everyone really likes football as crypto but because they like Manchester United instead of man city they're going to punch each other in a bar where the bar is Twitter it doesn't make so much sense to me that all these people just have the exact same interests they have the same um or similar uh ways of viewing the world they reject um you know uh fat money in the same way um like sure there's some there's some Nuance between the groups but generally you're much more similar to each other than the no coiners or people anti- crypto or the anti nft you know sort of people so really kind on the same team um and instead it just becomes this weird like Civil War over

nothing really I I I know David wants to jump in here and and talk about like this argument over decentralization over time but like I I have one quick question first of all like I I hard agree that all of these other chains and everything else is net accretive for crypto in general it's bringing more users like another another hard agree on that piece but I I guess my question to you is like what about all of the profit maximalists who are just here to fake decentralization do that for a few years and then do the justtin sun thing where I'm leaving Tron I'm aband you know bye-bye project like we've seen this happen every single cycle so many times where it's too easy to to fire up

some chain or some white paper for that matter but for for a new chain in the cycle to talk about decentralization to copy and paste a whole bunch of projects and then to dump on retail like and leave VCS in the alert that that's why from our perspective too it's like it's also a matter of like yes these narratives are working now but are there actual fundamentals Behind These narratives and how is retail going to feel the next time this narrative kind of this attention from your recent blog post this attention on this thing evaporates they're going to be left high and dry because we've seen it play out before and I know you've seen it play out multiple times being crypto for the last decade what are your thoughts on on that the profit maximalism and like

who's going to push back against that stuff yeah I think that um I think that again the best way to push back against that stuff is to at least acknowledge um The game everyone is playing right like if you tell those people who are going to fall for those things who are going to fall for buying you know some project which only real goal is to enrich the founders and early investors and there's a lot of them now you know like we're late in the crypto historically boom bust type cycle so people who have spent the last 18 months and haven't made the amount they want start going [ __ ] well all these VCS have got tons of money so maybe I can

raise maybe I can build a project like I didn't make the hundred million I wanted to make so there's another way which is just to steal it so that always happens and that those those projects generally launch late cycle but those projects are normally not very successful over time time like in general I think the market is clued up to those things and figures it out I think there's enough knowledge of the importance of decentralization and technological benefits that over a long enough time period it washes out sure some people will lose money along the way and they always do um but they also lose money on things that are like like technically good ideas too right like zcash like no one's going to say that the zcash founders were to personally enrich themselves um but that

chart is the worst chart I've ever seen it is just just a straight line down especially when you chart it against Bitcoin or ethereum who themselves did not have the most remarkable year versus Market average um it is terrible um but Tech like the tech behind that was incredi like incredibly useful and um old zuk I like I know he had the grocery tweet like people mocked him but I don't think the point of building zcash was so that he could personally be rich I genuinely think he believes that um like shielded transactions and P and privacies missing from um a a blockchain um so there are always going to be bad Investments and Retail are particularly bad at um analyzing the fundamentals

because they don't understand like the tech like technological Nuance they're bad at analyzing charts because they don't understand complex you know um Financial Primitives nor do they understand uh tokenomics very well you see people you know rushing into cardano and cardano being the biggest YouTuber um crypto YouTuber type coin um and it has like a low price and people are tricked because oh low price what if cardano goes from $1 $2 whatever it is today to $100 like salana did this year what if it does that and they don't take into account market caps and stuff I think there's tons of Education that is needed but those projects that fake decentralization um they don't seem to

last long over time um like the projects that have obsolute Tech don't last long over time either uh I don't think it remains a um like a an enduring problem um I do think that if you're worried about people losing money um the biggest issue in crypto now is probably um the regulator's lack of clarity for Founders such that there is no um reasonable way to do ethereum's launch anymore because when Bitcoin was launched right you had this sort of Immaculate Conception moment uh which can never be reproduced now because it was a thing that went to

a mailing list of hobbyists who did not necessarily have a financial interest they didn't know what was going to happen in the future and as the information disseminated over time people were able to see something and go this is important to the world um and they were rewarded for that and people were able to to put in some work in order to get coins in exchange and then when ethereum launched it obviously crypto was it was 2014 the Ico on it um there were crypto had been through a couple of Market cycles and uh people understood there was a lot of money to be made in crypto now so offering to everybody in crypto on the same terms the ability to buy was probably fairer than launching a mining only initiative

on day one because um it like mining only initiatives have the same um structure as uh an Ico anyway and funding a team is probably useful um and as we've transitioned from those days into icos icos mimicked that um ethereum initial distribution and then the SEC started to enforce against icos so projects would start to raise in private um and as they raise in private uh now the only people that can buy a good idea on day one is um like VCS professional investors insiders people that are already rich me and you who have podcasts who like people listen to them so maybe they should put them in

the round you know like and Retail investors they can only buy on Market when uh you know people are already up 100x or so and I think that Dynamic is much more important to um retail buying scams because retail know they want to be early and the only people who have the risk tolerance an to do a fair sale to retail are the people who have the risk tolerance to do do a like a scam project that's enriching themselves like if I sell to retail they'll buy my [ __ ] I'll be rich maybe they get rich if this project as well but I don't care whereas the founders who are um have long-term Visions for their projects and may be

going [ __ ] regulation is unfortunately something that we have to contend with maybe we should raised from professional investors until we get it right and the the Dynamics that have been introduced by that I think um are more damaging to retail over time at the top of a bubble now like we have um lots of people who are already rich and they can do Fair launch projects again and they can accept that Reg risk because they can kind of say [ __ ] you to The Regulators they can move to uh I don't know wherever the new regab location is um but I think that that is the biggest problem for retail losing money is the unfair terms of Entry of taking risk and you got you get you know the parental

guidance of the US tells you you're not allowed um and then because of that the projects that are launched more fairly are um launched from not necessarily the best projects always um or they've taken uh a big risk to be able to launch in that way um but yeah I think it's interesting problem obviously people losing money is bad there's a lot to unpack there um we sorry no that there was no that that was great uh because that definitely leads me right into what I wanted to talk about um first you were talking about just the users right and I just want to reiterate that like users should just do whatever they want and they can go and do all the things uh this is not this is

not a question about like what users are up to but more what Ryan was saying which is like the actual designers of this system and I totally agree with you that the regulations are getting in the way of creating fairly designed fairly distributed projects the the concept of decentralization and regulation are oil and water you can't have decentralization if you also have regulation like regulation is kind of a centralizing force anyways because then you start playing the game of who can navigate the regulatory Waters better than others and that requires expertise and expertise is centralized um and so there's this there's and and you you talked about how like well you know ethereum started off centralized and moved towards decentralization and I think Ryan and I would would say that

like well that's also because uh of a very important role of decentralization in the actual culture of ethereum uh now we have this now we have this very unfortunate reality where a lot of these newer l1s the only way that they could have gotten started is by um spreading out the capital towards VCS uh and the other unfortunate thing is that in order to compete in the world of crypto defi smart contracts is you have to be faster than ethereum because ethereum's like got a monopoly almost gu has a monopoly on decentralization so like your Competitive Edge is now throughput uh and throughput at the protocol layer this is when some of these conversations start to get technical throughput is centralization uh and so you are now uh

now you are compromising on decentralization in order to exist at all uh and then maybe we can decentralize later but you have this unfortunate interaction behind how these fast chains need to be centralized in order to be fast in order to compete with ethereum uh but also in order to start up these systems you have to sell to VCS or or to centralized parties right because you because of Regulation and so we have like especially now all these trains are also proof of stake we have centralized Capital allocation towards centralized parties running centralized nodes and yes we have seen many many things throughout crypto's history tilt towards decentralization but I think it's I think it's pretty reasonable to say that

well this time we haven't seen that in this specific case we have VCS with an outsized portion of proof of stake assets where the nodes themselves are also centralized and it's I I find it I find it hard to see a path of that actually becoming decentralized especially with delegated proof of stake where so much inflation because of how these centralized chains are operated by inflation so much of this inflation stays in the hands of uh of the the people that already had the capital in the first place uh and so while historically throughout crypto we have seen things tilt towards decentralization the specific parameter the combination of Regulation C uh High throughput chains and also VC owned

token Supply that those those are three big heavy marks towards being able to tilt towards decentralization and we haven't I don't think we've seen that before in the crypto space so that is a a Chasm that I don't think uh we can just take on on on faith that that actually will be crossed by the Dynamics of how these systems got started and also like um it's very unfortunate that regulation create created this and it's definitely not the fault of the founders that regulation exists but it kind of doesn't matter it doesn't matter that like it's not the fault of the founders it these systems got spun up in the way that they got spun up regardless any thoughts on that yeah I mean I I I think you can look at the the staking design and say like the mistakes were made I

think you can look at ethereum staking design and equally say mistakes were made you know we've had a beacon chain uh roll out without a ton of staking diversity where the top stakers were all centralized exchanges that already have um you know huge important roles in the ecosystem have just been handed even more power so the beacon chain um suddenly has like these sort of Horsemen of like binance and Kraken and stuff where like not only are they the major like the the main on-ramps but now they're responsible for chain security as well um and you've seen the introduction of liquid staking as a response and get like huge huge market

share like very quickly I think Lio is now the second um uh largest Staker after binance or Kraken or something it I need to do my disclaimers because I was like a it's cracking yeah I was a founding member of Lio da worked on Lio for uh in like 2020 to 2021 uh not Financial advice uh I don't want to go to jail uh I don't work out anymore but the like people that working are all very handsome um but you've seen you've seen that happen um with ethereum and you know a lot of the choices ethereum made so that um solo stakers can participate and the chain stays healthy can also lend itself towards uh

centralization over time they made it like very scary to be a solo Staker you know like Kane from synthetics lost loads of his ethereum by setting up his [ __ ] wrong um so like I I I think there are a lot of design decisions that are made in all chains that can lead um to some centralization I do think that the way current l1s are launched are completely suboptimal like and it would be much better if they were launched in the same way um ethereum was launched and I think ethereum being proof of work for some period of time after the sale also helps with um uh with distribution and and um uh decentralization before moving to uh

proof of stake but I think like you know node requirements for salana um over time just become a non-issue Right like technology is ever increasing it's not like these are going to like maybe they're um a high barrier to running a node today it's not going to be a high barrier to running a node in 20 years um so and you have to think about how old these things are as well right like salano was 2018 2019 I don't know when the first uh nonblock whatever the they call block was mine but um the like I don't know when the first proof of History was printed that's like sounds really pretentious that's the main reason to not like salana proof of history is a pretentious name but I don't know when that first happened I think it was 2018 maybe 2019

but that means there two or three years into um existing and two or three years into ethereum existing it would like if the Ico was Inception was 2014 if it was um like first block mind a bit later but the the Dow hack Stole was it like a third of Supply or something was like a third of all ethereum I feel like if that happened today on salana or Avalanche or uh whatever it would be absolute scenes it would be comedy people would be like from the roof laughing at these centralized scamm like chains who've like totally [ __ ] it up L onethird of all Supply taken in a single hack haha

what you're going to do roll back the chain that's what it would the discourse would be like today and everyone participate in it it would be it would be fun I I'd enjoy Twitter that day I'd have some good jokes I'm sure um and I think that shows that the attitude over time does lend towards the centralization people do care about these things maybe it's just our uh sub community no matter like how you participate in it um but in reality that actually did happen to ethereum which has uh decentralized like decentralization as principles and I just think if like I don't think the coverage of a similar event today would be um as fair and I definitely don't think anyone would expect a chain

to be able to go from strength to strength after that I should also disclose that like when that happened I did do those same tweets and I was like ethereum cash is the future or whatever the ethereum classic ethere classic I was like it was me and Barry syet were like that clearly ethereum classic is the decentralized ethereum so like uh like applying decentralization Above All Else as the primary principle um it like failed in that specific case because the primary principle was people create value and vitalic and people around vitalic um create value naming name Provence as important um all those kind of things uh

were more important than decentralization in valuing ethereum versus ethereum classic despite my political and personal uh bias towards ethereum classic um that was just wrong as an investment thesis and is like historically wrong like ethereum Classics is zero right now despite Barry still trying to pump it I I'm I'm actually curious to talk about that so I I think we talked about a lot of like decentralization versus centralization your thoughts on that but you you you mentioned ethereum classic as being sort of a you know a loss and I'm curious to tap into kind of your brain over the last 10 years and some of the things that you've gotten wrong over the last 10 years that uh you can help us with because I feel like what happens

is we're all humans and we all make the M same mistakes every cycle so you meet someone new in crypto like class of 2020 class of 2021 and you're like oh I know exactly what mistakes you're about to make right and so maybe people listening Kobe can uh avoid those mistakes by hearing from some of your and then also would love to hear about some of your biggest wins so some of the things that you've been really right about but first let's talk about those those losses yeah so uh I've made every possible mistake you can make in crypto virtually like all of them as new ones are invented it means they're probably invented by me um like I've done virtually everything wrong often in crypto you do something for like you do

something wrong and you get rewarded for it so I've had those as well I think my biggest wins and my biggest losses were all by making mistakes um because my biggest portfolio wins were making like throwing risk management completely out of the window and uh like doing something that now I would no longer do because I didn't understand properly then I didn't you know uh I didn't know what I was doing or what was important my first two trades ever after buying Bitcoin my first like investment in other things were my biggest like portfolio multipliers ever I did like like 200 300 X in my first few months in

crypto by buying some altcoins that were just like completely trash but at the time I didn't know why they were trash like I bought something called quarkcoin which was promoted by a YouTuber called Bill still who's like 150 years old and he's like a dumer like like Finance guy he promoted quat coin and it had like seven different hashing algorithms and I was brand new and I was like seven seems like a lot so let's go all in that that seems like seven times better than Bitcoin um and like because loads of people saw this bill still thing and then other people started going oh Bill still might be on to something it went um parabolic and during the like time it went parabolic I researched like okay

why would you need seven hashing algorithms and it turns out you don't like it turns out that's not a useful thing and it was just like a like a small story someone had told an experiment someone had done um so I sold it and I managed to sell like virtually at the top and then I did the same thing again on like some something else um and all of a sudden I'd like loed my way into massive portfolio multiples and could take the game a little bit more seriously because I gone from having like zero money and being in debt to um having like something substantial um but I also did that on stuff where the opposite happened and you know I like lost like a third of my portfolio in a single trade and honestly over time you

can just look back and and at everything as like oh that was a really good moment for me that was a really good moment for me um of these like small compounding wins but the main thing that I would uh attribute to or like attribute to at least my investment style was like trade things and return to Value where originally I thought the only value was Bitcoin right I was uh played altcoins from as soon as I got into crypto but I my long-term thesis was Bitcoin is the only real value in this space so far and I'll trade attention or narrative or whatever I'll participate in the waves uh in order to get more Bitcoin because I need to get as much Bitcoin as I can

before everyone else figures out that Bitcoin is really valuable people don't know right now I know I need to get as much as I can and I don't have any money so I can't just like buy it um I'll I'll trade my way there um and then over time that evolved and I learned about ethereum and I thought okay maybe ethereum now has crosses Chasm into being value too and I think maybe there's a handful of five 10 things that fit that um sort of description today of like value that you should try and own before everyone figures out figures out how valuable it is um and by taking this sort of approach of uh like everything else is actually zero as much as you can trick yourself in real time or fomo or

whatever if you have this at the back of your head this is all worth zero apart from these value assets you're basically flipping uh penny stocks in order to like buy more apple or Amazon or whatever um then you're happy to take a 5x and something else and move on you never go oh I got this like really great trade where I held it for a billion percent because you don't subject yourself to those things you go I made a profit I get more value I make a profit I get more value systemically over time um and this also helps me like avoid the um massive uh L's as well because I to you take a sort of um HW Crux approach to investing where you split your soul uh into um like a million different

pieces across everywhere because you know the only thing you have to do is like uh like retain this value so you can't lose all of your Bitcoin in a hack you can't lose all your ethereum in um you know like some SM contract um is that what you still do by the way Kopi do you still like denominate in Bitcoin and I denominate in ethereum um etherum from 2020 onwards basically um and you still denominate in ethereum then you still dominate in eth all your all your wins yeah cuz like the way I think about it right is like you got to consider what do you think is the most liquid asset um that you could hold your entire net worth in so in 2020 like May 2020 you go okay if you think crypto is

going to get really hot now because the inflation narrative is becoming mainstream that was one of the early things that I understood like you know they're printing money and Bitcoin should therefore appreciate over time because the denominator uh gets is worth less and less over time um if you think there's going to be a bull run you should denominate in that asset that you think is liquid enough for your entire net worth um but that will perform the best so I thought in 2020 ethereum will outperform uh Bitcoin so I should put my entire net worth into ethereum because I think that will perform the the best but it's more liquid enough for me to enter to enter and exit in a moment if I need to and then I should spend the bull market

trying to outperform ethereum because I should be only deploying when I think something is going to perform better than ethereum um and I can't put my entire net worth into other things that I think are going to perform better than ethereum because when the time comes to sell I might slip the entire chart to Zero by trying to sell so you so you then position based on um like what you think liquidity requirements are and stuff so like I was not as early as everyone else I didn't buy any of the seed rounds or anything but I was earlyish to the all L1 trades but I miscalculated how liquid they become I didn't realize that you know Sam was going to go full like salana Jesus um and I didn't realize that three arrows were going to become you know the um you

know the the Legion of um Avalanche uh factions so I I didn't know that they would be so liquid um so maybe it was a mistake maybe in December uh 2020 you could have said actually you put full net worth in salana now because it's going to perform better than ethereum um and it will be liquid enough to to exit I actually don't know if it would have been uh I didn't didn't check don't like to look at my mistakes but yeah I denominate an ethereum because you I call ethereum effectively the like Market average like the market performance um that's the thing that you should be trying to outpace if you do this full-time as an investor or Trader because if you spent like the last 18 months um actively

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required which gives the brave wallet an extra level of security versus other wallets with the brave wallet you can buy store send and swap your crypto assets and can even manage your nfts and connect to other wallets and defi apps all from the security of the best privacy browser on the market whether you're new to crypto or Season Pro it's time to switch to the brave wallet Download Brave at brave.com banlist and click the wallet icon to get started Kobe you have so many like your your history in crypto is so rich and you when we ask you questions you pull in things from so distant so many distant corners of crypto in order to you know elaborate upon why you think the things that you think and something that um uh has I've coined in my in my own brain is

is this term I've been using Crypt brain you got you have like crypto brain uh just too much crypto going in the brain uh you wake up check the prices uh you check Twitter like you you learn about you read a white paper too much crypto and like you've been in here for almost almost a decade now uh I'm in my fourth year uh and my second uh bull market and oh my God is this bull market just like kind of draining it's just like it's so exhausting how have you dealt with crypto brain because like crypto brain is like it's like I have like toxic levels of crypto in my brain like I think about it like 16 hours a day all my friends are in crypto my entertainment is crypto Twitter uh when I'm when I'm done with that I go up and

pull up crypto YouTube how have you dealt with like crypto brain how have you managed the like depress the toxicity levels of crypto in your brain yeah so I got several answers for this but my first observation is in a way what you're describing is not a crypto phenomenon in fact uh everyone in the world is currently experiencing the same thing but with their hobby of choice and some people have chosen crypto some people have chosen GameStop some people have chosen video games some people have chosen anti- nft parading some people have chosen Corona virus vaccine uh like opinion groups or whatever um and I think it is a result of the world coming

increasingly digital and uh online communities um like formation um like how that's changed over time plus the pandemic and people being inside quite a lot and loads of stuff that people do to socialize um being closed uh for a year or so um so I'm hoping it actually goes away a little bit as um and if the world goes back to being a bit more normal um but um for me I tried for as long as possible to have crypto as a hobby and only a hobby um so I always tried to have another job even if I didn't need a job I had like an Investment Portfolio

and um that I like was working on building something and I tried to make sure that something was never in crypto um despite you know always getting job offers or um having like stuff I wanted to uh build in crypto it was it felt better to me to have um my entire net worth and attention and like spare time in crypto and then this hedge of real world where if this weird Drug Money uh stuff that I got involved in a while ago went to zero I would at least have a normal career and other interests and be like able to do um other stuff I think it really helps and like having a routine and having people uh friends with like normal uh Hobbies um that were

not related to like self- coding internet tokens in a massive online casino um it was that was very healthy uh I gave all that up so now I don't have any of that anymore um and um yeah I mean I think you just got to be disciplined like all things I the people that do best in crypto have like massive self discipline anyway um and uh for me I'm just like disciplined about spending time with family now and um going to the gym and uh like like playing video games and enjoying myself and stuff um because I think that it makes me do better at the crypto stuff anyway as if I'm not like

way too deep and um in a in a massive Hall especially now that like especially crypto Twitter curates you the winners it like your feed every day is the people that like won for the day or the person who's bored ape got stolen that's all CTO Twitter is there loads of people who like just hit them like out the park 10,000 x in a day and they're like screenshot here's my games for the last 6 hours and you're like well I'm doing terribly and then there's like a dude who gave his seed phrase over because someone offered to buy it for double as long as they gave the seed phrase like that's all CTO Twitter is so um if you spend too much time on there I think that you just you know mental gets a bit messed up you focus on um like people

having the worst possible time and people having the the best possible time instead of just like what do I need to do um today I do I I do think there is one thing that like crypto has really [ __ ] up in my head which is like I a lot of my friends now people I talk to and people have been doing crypto for 10 years or um you know uh are all like now like Deca billionaires right so like suzu messages me sometimes to get my opinion on the market and I'm like I don't know what his net worth is but I'd estimate it's like 20 to 50 billion or something maybe I'm massively overestimating people always do that to me um and then there's like you know these exchange owners and like I'm in these like group chats of like ogs who

in the bare Market would just sit and cope with each other and be like are we dead like did we believe in the wrong thing um and now they're all just so rich that in my head it [ __ ] up the like what a lot of money is or like what the value of money is and I think that's the like weird most toxic thing and even crypto Twitter does this right where you follow these people who are all buying these like million dooll watches and like insane houses and stuff and I live like like a much more normal life I think to to those people I did well in crypto I didn't do as well as suzu or Sam or the Alam guys um but I don't buy like silly watches and stuff and um like I find myself sometimes being completely

disconnected from what a lot of money is and like uh that's the thing I try the most to like reset often because um having been in the markets for 10 years and and doing all right but you in a massive place of great privilege but uh all of my friends and family did not listen to me they thought I was weird and that this thing was like I was getting scammed in a MLM scheme or something um so the people around me in Real World have really normal lives and normal they know what a lot of money is and you know um they have like money problems and stuff and then my friends on my phone are all like Deca billionaires wondering you know if

they're going to need to uh build their own I don't know waterfall or Forest so they can have clean air and water or something at some point so like it I think those two things are like really like difficult to reconcile uh I don't want to become like a weird person um no offense to Sue I don't think he's is a bit weird but whatever does does wealth weigh on you or or yeah does we on you I I don't think so um I mean I in in in some ways I think that it highlights how um much of a scam everything is like I knew it was before having any money I did WR in crypto

people always massively overestimate my net worth I only I get two things like huge massive ridiculous overestimations and then like uh like just some slight overestimations it's like there no one ever underestimates it um but um I I did all right and you know I'm I'm very comfortable now um but before I had money I thought everything was a scam and uh it was all rigged and blah blah blah blah blah and now having money and being able to help my family out for example and seeing um my parents personalities change because they don't have to worry about certain things anymore like making ends me or

like what's going to happen when they retire or um you know know these kind of things seeing their personalities change and getting to know them more as people because some number changed on a screen makes me a like everything seems like a giant scam but B feel like I was also slightly robbed of experiencing that while I was growing up or while I was younger because they had these burdens and had to worry about them so it doesn't weigh on me so much but I do think a lot about about that like it feels like um everything is a bit of a scam for some like weird numbers on a screen and it uh means that people like live their lives in ways where they

don't get to properly know the people around them because everyone's always worried about short-term stuff um but I don't know it's good question though let me ask you though Kobe so like where do you where do you find your purpose after you like reach that point we going deep aren't we my purpose at the moment is to get to Diamond and League of Legends it's been the same purpose for eight years and I'm still in silver um but but seriously so like I I I see lots of people and you know um once you get past that post scarcity mindset right and like it just it just becomes one of the first bank list episodes we did we were trying to um talk about money like what actually is money and I remember David said something uh in that episode and I don't know whether David you got it from your

brain or you just like you know saw that somewhere it's like basically money is just a point system it's we're it's high score man we're all competing for high score and that's a eventually what kind of the DECA billionaires get to it's just like this big competition for high score and so you see someone like SPF who's like oh once I reach my high score whatever that number is I'm just giving it all away right it's like like maybe that's become s spf's purpose in life um but it strikes me that that's that's a hard thing for a lot of crypto people to to figure out once you get to the post scarcity Point what do you do like what's the purpose it's no longer you got enough points you really want to compete with suzu on on on the scorecard

uh or what do you do with life yeah so it I think it certainly is a point system at the the high end I think on the the low end it's not a point system at all it's like whether people can uh like live in uh a comfortable and secure place and like whether they can eat and stuff but um I like fortunately for me I've always I find it very easy to be interested in stuff like I find it easy to um like be curious and explore things and um have fun uh reading about and doing different stuff so I kind of got into crypto in the first place um so um I don't struggle too much uh with with that like I um there's tons of stuff

that I I find really interesting I'd like to explore there's tons of things where um I want to build things or I like to uh know the people building those things um and uh like talk to them about their challenges and stuff um and I think there's loads of stuff in the world that is like at the end of the day while many of the uh crypto ogs that had the sort of um origin story that I described of like oh wow the um the systems a scam and blah blah blah um they invested in Bitcoin for these reasons and then like yeah they got rich but like the system didn't really change

so I think a lot of those people still have the same motives and they're figuring out how to apply them in different ways um and uh and how to you know um at least Network and stay friends with the people that all have the um have those motives I like a lot of my Twitter account and up only podcast stuff it's not like like obviously like it the it's just a bunch of thoughts and like it's not very sophisticated or well put together like you know you do research and stuff and you're you like real podcast people me and let lger don't know who the uh guest is going to be half the time like we

just turn up like what we doing oh God do you know who this person is no you that's like kind of what is like but the the purpose behind doing it is to have hopefully a an engaging and honest way for people to keep up with what they're interested in and I write stuff on substack because um hopefully it's interesting to other people who have similar interest to me and want to go through a similar you know um sort of set of experiences and it might make it easier um and um the stuff I'm funding not in the crypto World stuff I'm in like trying to find Founders that are building or um uh put teams together to like incubate ideas they all have a a similar kind of mission um but from a

different P perspective like I'm very well exposed to crypto now and I I hope that um crypto can continue to do uh good in the world um but I also think that there needs to be um a bunch of like well-funded capital and intellectual Capital spent on non crypto uh things that are solving the same problems um and I think over the last few years with how Western governments have handled the pandemic and exploited um the inability for people to know what's real anymore especially on

the internet um in order to sort of plunder um the uh current generation for like private um private wealth of like the mates um stuff like that is like I I'm not convinced that if it was on a blockchain it wouldn't have happened I think we'd be a to point the transaction and they still go I don't care yeah so what sorry we won't do it again um so I spent a a ton of my um my time now uh doing stuff not in crypto I spend like three days a week on crypto these days um I spent a lot of time in real world uh at other things um doing other stuff

mostly Ryan is going to pull up this alignment chart Kobe which I think you'll be uh familiar with this is out of uh Dungeons and Dragons uh and so people will uh people might be familiar with this there's a it's a 3 by3 grid uh and on from left to right it goes lawful neutral to chaotic and then from top to bottom it goes good neutral to evil uh so nine possible outcomes like lawful good chaotic neutral neutral evil etc etc uh so if you're listening on the podcast you can check this out on the YouTube but it's pretty self-explanatory you can just Google it uh Kobe um which are you I don't think anyone's GNA except I'm anywhere in the the left or the middle so we're instantly in the right we're in

the chaotic column um I would like to say chaotic good but I will concede likely chaotic neutral um I there's a guy that I my old boss at my old job Who I Really respect he's had a really um uh uh like successful um career in in Tech was uh built some of the most important tech companies that currently exist at like really pivotal moments in in their um sort of History um once he told me I was chaotic good and I was like that's just I feel chaotic good now and I feel on reflection I'm actually probably chaotic neutral but you got the chaotic part right I just liked it when I was

chaotic good so like chaotic neutral aspiring to be chaotic good but then there's like the other shoulder some like just do the evil thing I'm like yeah go on then what about your uh pod cast gohost Ledger where's Ledger oh he's lawful good isn't he leder lawful good yeah come on it can't be anywhere else Kobe is it true you've never met Ledger in person yeah we're never gonna meet you're doing a podcast without meeting your co-host in person wow yeah that's crazy who does that when have you met have you two met we've never met we live in we live in the same country so there's absolutely no excuse yeah how far away in the same country is it like different Coast yeah yeah it's not like David's next city over but uh yeah

different Coast but like we started it in Co and then you know we just I don't know if if you met lger would it destroy the podcast that's what I'm worried about we just agreed that would be the end it' be weird I don't know how tall he is I like to imagine he's like eight feet tall he's like a telet Toby so if he like shorter than me I think it' be really weird um but um yeah again we started CO as well so it was like um and we didn't really mean for it to be a podcast actually uh do you know bitlord the Australian guy who like got deplatformed when he was he was he was in China when Co started happening and then he posted this weird video of him like smoking in a hospital after catching covid in like January or

February of 2020 before Co was like a thing and then he just disappeared from Twitter like that was it he was gone and for like a year or so he was gone it was like super strange he was in China uh doing these real weird videos on Co I think most of them were satire um or like satirical commentaries on I I have no idea it was extremely internet like deep internet content um and they disappeared for a year and then he dm'd me a year later like I'm back um and I was like we've got to do a stream to say like what you what has been happening to you no one knows where you went oh my God and then I couldn't make the stream work because i' never done it before so leder was like I'll host it for you and we hosted it and loads of people watched

it and he was like do you want to do this again we like yeah all right cool sure fine I've got nothing else today I'm locked in my house so that's kind of how it happened I so I think we might you know I'm not done with this grid though like but you know I don't know we might have to cut this next part of the show out we'll see we'll see how it goes David should we should we name some other crypto personalities yeah for this do what do you reckon um uh Barry silbert I don't know Barry Silber all that well uh lawful I think in the lawful Camp definitely lawful definitely I'm I'm I'm tending towards the bottom left uh Square there rectangle like all products are all of

his products are neutral but I think when you combine them all together it's too it's too big it's too much of a oral oral baren type guy figure could be law he bought he bought $8 million of zcash with other people's money he goes in lawful evil not even a question for I think it's probably neutral or good but he gets to evil just for that one alone okay uh what do you think about three arrows Capital as an entity where where does three arrows Capital fall oh you got to do people not entities why not does it work for entities you can do entities sure I reckon true neutral true neutral yeah I think true neutral I think um I think they don't

have I think they watch how the world works and try and act on that and they don't necessarily try and dictate the future as much as people think they do um I think probably true neutral I think you'll have a lot bunch of people watching saying like they're definitely in the evil category um uh how about how about vitalic vitalic beIN neutral good interesting neutral good how about um Anthony cesano uh I don't know enough about San I don't know where you would put him on the lawful chaotic stuff cuz I don't know enough about him but he like makes

like really really really he like works really really hard on his content and like no one watches it so he's like I think oh he's going to feel that but I like I mean he can see it he can look at his view count like it's not it's not a secret that no one watches it but he does it anyway so I think I think that means he's like securely and good because like he has principles and he wants to share about the things that really interest to him um I don't think he's chaotic so I would go lawful or neutral but I don't know him well enough and I didn't mean to dis he's got very good content just people don't I think it's because of how he looks they don't like it I'm joking I'm joking it's the flat cap people don't like flat caps they

don't people people don't trust people with flat caps on who's another one what do you think about um Kyle Sani um oh God this is fun neutral evil neutral evil why evil we don't have to answer that neutral evil or also true neutral maybe maybe lawful evil I see no he's lawful neutral awful neutral lawful neutral yeah because like evil is like doing stuff against other

people intentionally right like it's like uh going out of your way to harm others and like there's no Chan he doing that um neutral is like just for self benefit right it's just to like uh like don't care if it's good for other people don't care if it's bad for other people mostly just interested in self um and good is like trying to do things for the benefit of others so I don't think you can get a VC and put them in the good category at the top because um at best I think you can probably get neutral and multic coin very lawful they' gone they've bought all the seed rounds very

fairly um sold them very fairly I imagine um so although they're in crypto so [ __ ] maybe you can't be in lawful if you're in crypto this is too hard let's just do with neutral evil how about um Michael sailor uh sailor um I think Bitcoin people that watch that will argue that he goes into good as well um but I would say probably lawful neutral um certain convicted criminal though any he is he a convicted criminal no idea I don't know about that history that would

be new to me I think he got done by the SEC for in in the in the in year 2000s I don't think a convicted criminal I think that's too strong language um but I think he got in trouble for some security stuff in the bubble um so I don't know I don't know honestly I I think what he's trying to do now is motivated um from a place of good so I will probably say lawful or neutral good um probably for sailor I think sailor's really really interesting um in that no matter what happens he is like it's a great story

right like I was thinking about this the other day and I watched back his clip on um you know you know morgage your house take all your assets sell them put it in Bitcoin like lend against all your stuff put it in Bitcoin and um like since he did that speech I think bitcoin price is basically the same um and on a long enough time Horizon over over time which is I think what he's intending um to say um I think he's probably right about that but imagine if he'd done that speech about like salana it's like salana was like $1 and now it's $200 he'd be like an icon it would be the it would be the most cool [ __ ] thing on the internet um that this dude

just was like put everything in go all in now um so no matter what happens if Bitcoin goes to zero what an amazing story he like raised multiple billions to like just mark it by um and if it goes like where I think we all believe it should be going over the next sort of uh 10 20 years again what a legend he's just borrowed the cheapest debt in like sort of History um to buy something that's actually worth more than the paper he paid for it so um either way I think it's like just just what like what a legend and did you see the picture he post the other day when he used to work at Donald's yeah I did yeah it was [ __ ] amazing I didn't yeah wait what did it

say on it it said something on the picture like U doing everything doing everything it takes or something like that yeah everything it takes something like this since since 92 yeah it reminded me of those uh McDonald's memes though like I'm getting my mcjw back because I you know failed in crypto but I I mean I like that he's able to post that because I think it means he can um uh he appreciates I think some of the like self- referential in crypto um more than I thought he might have done um he's an interesting character cuz if you talk about him in a nuanced way like what he's doing is like totally insane and like it's insanely cool but it's like that is pretty out there but there's OB obviously the people that

watch your podcast but for Bitcoin um Peter's podcast they get like upset if you say Nuance stuff about him so I find it difficult to talk about um uh by feeling on Sailor properly because of that um but like no matter what like what a [ __ ] Legend and um especially the start of the year when he was like hosting these big talks for other CFOs to like try and expose them to the um the the the the light that he has seen uh that was yeah I he's a legend all right uh two more and then we'll wrap this up uh Charles hoskinson you

know for this you have to question um whether um like what his intentions are I think um and I that's always really really difficult to know um I think what I like about Charles is this sort of weird lack of self-awareness when he has these interactions in public that are just objectively hilarious but he doesn't seem to see that like you know remember the metam mask thing is really obvious now um where he said like you're asking me to the founder of uh the co ofk the founder of ethereum and cardano us a support email um but like he's talking to like a support person the the

time like it's not like the CEO of metamask was saying please do this it was like a support person was referring you to the correct support person um like I think there are a lot of things like that where there's a lack of selfawareness that makes it objectively funny makes it um you know possible to meme about I think what he believes he's doing is for the good of the world right I think he believes what he's doing is to make the world a better place he's just taking a different road to get there that takes a longer time to get there than everyone else um and maybe in doing that ignoring wisdom from history about how to build things that interact with real people quickly and um you know

efficiently um but I don't think it would be unreasonable for people to take the opposite opinion and say actually he's promoting something in uh a dishonest way and he's selling it as something that it's not and potentially um risking uh both portfolios and opportunity cost of his YouTube subscribers by doing that um I think I'd lean towards the G I like to naturally try and see the people so I think I'd like to pretend or make myself believe that he's doing it to be good so I'll say he's neutral good but he might be NE true

neutral don't think he's chaotic don't think he's lawful fair enough that's a that's a very charitable take what do you what do you say um little see him you actually all the way into the evil Camp uh like neutral I totally agree with that I don't think he's evil yeah I I haven't seen him do any evil stuffs with it you know you know my favorite Charles moment was when um someone he posted a video because um very sad the coffee shop he went to had like a um gun attack there or something and some people died and he used to go to that coffee shop all the time and he posted um a video on the thoughts of it

and it was titled something that made it sound like it was about cardano and the first reply was like this guy being like not going to watch I guess it's going to be more delays or something like that and he just went off at this guy he like Unleashed you know been brewing yeah you know it' been brewing inside him like getting like these Jabs on the internet from all these people over the years making jokes about cardano and he was like I'm just G to let it all out on this one guy and I was like wow I really like Charles now like he's just let go and that's what I want from Charles I want to see the authenticity I want to see him go like shut the [ __ ] up I'm trying to build something in the way I want to build it and I think this is the

best way to build it and you're all [ __ ] chirping while you don't build [ __ ] anything that's what I want him to say but he do say that and because it just because it's like veiled and uh instead just talks about how great things are going um I that's where I I struggle more to um believe it's uh authentic cuz if I were him I'd be like yeah we have missed the year of the alternative L1 like all these platforms have had huge booms and it was a failure of ours to not be ready um at the same time they were ready um and not to on board millions of users during a year where millions of users were on boarded

into crypto um like our product wasn't working um and we had a head start on all these other l1s um but here's why it's that way and here's how we're going to make it in the future but instead it's just like you think def is hard def is [ __ ] easy dude all right I like to believe these people have good intentions yeah I agree I agree I do think that humans are inherently good so it's actually difficult to find yourself at the very bottom um all right all right last last one uh bankless where's bankless um probably lawful good like like goody two shoes kind of thing yeah teacher pet exactly yeah cuz like I

think what Bitcoin did right is probably neutral good lawful good and then bankless is like lawful good you know going with the like big chain that everyone's allowed to use like not the the spicy ones that where people can you know uh where there's a bit of nuancing whether you can make money there but um I think that that's probably where it lies I think opposingly probably chaotic on the right again don't know where chaotic neutral probably we just get drunk so Kobe this entire podcast has been a lot of fun but we're also recording it at a time where the crypto Market is not having much fun right it's like people are looking at their

portfolios and I don't know how far prices are down at this point in time but you know drone Powell said some things he sneezed and looks like crypto is headed towards a bearish uh start to 2022 do you think it ends there are you like up only what do you think for for the year like just zooming out and being like okay 2021 was fantastic for crypto um what do you think 2022 has in store for us is it overall going to be bullish or bearish yeah I mean if you look at um ethereum's chart it looks super weird because the last 10 weeks have been the worst price action for like three or four years just like a slow um grind downwards where like every was

just sold into every time it looked good it just got sold into um which is pretty interesting because even though you've had big dumps you had the May dump and stuff it didn't look as bad as this it was just a like a correction after a parabolic move whereas this walked its way up and then walked its way down and at no point really started accelerating so that looks pretty bad and if it doesn't bottom if we don't get like a wash out bottom soon I think it starts to look like pretty horrible if you look at the Bitcoin chart though I mean it's had while the price has been up all year it's had kind of a bearish year um like comparatively to Market but that looks more normal and a bunch of all layer ones actually look okay like atam looks really good and Nea looks good and stuff

like that where they they just don't seem to care as much about um this like downturn at the moment and I think that might be the story of this year which is a sort of dissemination of of markets or a decorrelation uh within crypto I think Bitcoin ethereum are just don't have the adoption yet so they're trading like Risk assets um they're like hypercolor to um stock market and stuff um but within crypto you're not going to get the same everything moves together anymore um because everything moves together when there is a net inflow into crypto right the crypto industry generally is growing because people are just pouring money into everything everything goes up together um and

uh I think throughout this year there will not be uniform flows into everything I think people are going to be more selective about where they put their money I think you have tons of uh unlocks happening this year in a bunch of um all layer ones D5 protocols game five protocols metaverse tokens um across the entire um like landscape of uh crypto and they're brutal they're like things that have $20 billion fully diluted valuations but a market cap of a billion or something so like the flow is super small compared to um what is being unlocked over the course of this year

and I think those assets have a very difficult time um and one thing that'll be important to watch is if that has a knock on impact on uh like stronger um stronger things um so I think there'll be a dissemination of capital some things might continue to do well um some things will literally go to zero I don't think this I think this is the first um the first time we've had uh unlocks at like the fro of a ball market right like because in 2017 everything was Ico everyone bought on the same day immediately unlocked it wasn't this is locked for several years um and when that fundraising star

changed and people were buying lock coins in 2018 2019 those are starting to come unlocked in a bull market for the first time ever stuff came unlocked before the bull market was frothy before valuations were really high um and now it's um uh unlocks are happening into retail populated markets and that didn't happen in 2017 and in 2017 stuff was able to go minus 95% so a lot of those tokens Can Go minus 95% and the VCS will still be up 51x so they can go 95% again and then they break even um so I think there's going to be a lot of pain in particular um parts of the market and when that happens I think there's

generally a lot of people who just go like [ __ ] this market I'll sell everything um so I don't think it's going to be as exuberant as um uh as the last couple of years um was but equally I am not willing yet to be committed to um to being bearish if the cycle ended here it end in a really strange place because we had a blowoff top and then recovered and made new highs and that's like never happened in history and I like to be like an anthropological um type Trader just looks at uh what's happened before to make find answers about the future um so I think it's going to be a weird year like I think anyone making like up or down bets from here uh they could just both get

embarrassed you get both so um I think think it all depends on like macro conditions like what I don't know because I think that's a thing that people currently have convinced themselves they care about a lot but macro conditions Prior um like Bitcoin and ethereum have like gone more parabolic through worse macro conditions in the past um so it's just this thing that's changing and people have agreed as important you know as they as they do like everyone agreed EIP 1559 was super important you know this massive runup to it and then it's like everyone was like oh that's over now we need to care about something new um and then it actually starts to matter because there's a slight change in the

economics of the supply demand um so I think macro will be important and I think the FED is showing they're going to um you know start handling infl inflation they're not calling it transitory anymore and stuff um but I think there'll be um I think there's a bunch of stuff that's undervalued and there's a bunch of stuff that's overvalued that will correct throughout the year um and hopefully um you can see recoveries in like major Bitcoin ethereum like the boring assets um but if they're unable to recover in the like first half of the year then I think it's like truly going to be Goblin Town could be Goblin Town maybe not

though uh Kobe this was a lot of fun man this was a blast thanks for coming on Bank list thanks for uh thanks for doing this with us we had a great time no problem when do I come back when are you available do layers just don't do anything I've played video games and then go talk to some people who are building cooler stuff than what I've built in the past enjoy your week man you know so I actually think Kobe you might be a bit more like I'm gonna agree with your boss on this one I think you're a bit more chaotic good then uh then first lets on uh but I me like like it it's easy to appear chotic good when you're being curated right you're on a podcast so you think about what you're saying much more easy to be a Chic evil

when you're in like a a bedroom by yourself and you're pissed off with someone and you're like so um so yeah uh either I'm happy to stay with neutral yeah well okay you you fit in whatever corner of the Box you feel like but uh it's been a pleasure to have you we really appreciate it and uh for bankless listeners of course you got to follow Kobe on Twitter he's a must follow from my perspective some other action items for you as well check him out on substack so this is kobe. substack do.com uh recently learned that Kobe is like also a phenomenally talented writer so some of the Articles he's put out and I don't know Kobe whether you went through some kind of like you just

punched them out over the holidays like five six articles all at once it's fantastic what else you gonna do ex well there you go so some extra time go check those articles out um also subscribe to the up only podcast maybe bank's sister podcast maybe the Ying to bank's Yang I'm not sure uh but fantastic podcast D and I listen to it often as well wrist and disclaimers of course guys we got to do the lawful good thing and give you these disclaimers eth is risky defi is risky all of crypto is risky none of this was Financial advice don't think for a second it was you could definitely lose what you put in but we are headed west this is the frontier it's not for everyone but we're glad you're with us on the bank list Journey thanks a lot

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