$250M & $500M M&A talks, Neo finance category update, lots of action in DC ft. Polygon

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[music] [music] [music] How the mother [music] the black >> [music] [music] >> How the [ __ ] [music]

JP Morgan, Black Rock, DTCC, Fidelity, the entire thing was just institutions It's [music] just it's next level. This industry is going to the next level. And guys, I I don't know what else to say. I'm bullish. You [music] said it. You finally said it. So bullish. It is bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish. [music] [music] I'm [music] about the [music]

>> [music] >> I'm the [music] hot [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> I'm above the [music]

[music] >> [music] [music] >> The rollup is headed to the top. If we're not already at the top, we're going to the top. We're on fourth floor today. We're going to be on floor one and then we're headed straight to the moon boys. >> To the moon. To the moon. To the moon. We're so back. I'm telling you guys that we're bottoms.

>> We're bottoms. >> It is Tuesday, January 13th. You heard it here first. This is the start of the next cryptobull market. >> I just bought uranium. Uh dude, so that book that I was reading about uh the rise of America, I I picked it up in 2020 from old mentor Mr. G. And uranium was literally trading at $9 in the ETF. It's at $51. And I just completely rug got rugged and I did not if I had bought uranium after I sold crypto in 21 I would have bought it at $18 like silver and gold and of course I didn't. So now we're here. We're buying uranium at $51 long-term part of the portfolio. But

man, I'm fully back. I'm reallocated. I'm in. I'm ready to go. um scared >> when you uh when you see like you know we obviously have a sweeping rising tide across across the entire industry. Bitcoin is up to 94. Um ETH is up BNB everything right the majors all the way down and then there's some secular things that are up a lot. You know, I look at that and I'm I then I try to rationalize, but there's so many conf factors that are all fitting and converging and all leading to this the the uprising in

metals now shifting new year, you know, happy new year, you know, end of year selling now that's coming off. Uh, Michael and Vance came on the Bit Mine call option, Tom Lee pay package. How much do you do you pay attention to just like any one thing that's going on out there or do you are you still like TA god technical analysis guy? You're just looking at flows. Dude, I just there was like I was trying to be bearish. Just bought more Canton Dat there today. Sold silver to buy that.

What's up, man? I feel you, man. Um, man, I was trying my hardest to hold on and to be bearish and just to like let this thing simmer out, but like first we got um what was it last week we got Trump taking over Venezuela. That was like holy crap. I need to be holding non I I I need to be holding sovereign hard money in my portfolio. Like I I can't be I can't be this is this is ridiculous. Gold and and then you had gold and silver just making new all-time highs the last couple days. Then you've got Trump going at the Fed chair Powell, which is just like wow. Like that is also just an insane thing to do.

>> Let's pause on that one real quick. >> Banks uh forecasting agencies sentiment is now that there will be less rate cuts or less aggressive rate cuts to start 2026. Uh for instance, we're now pricing the January meeting at 95% no change. There's no meeting in February. In March, the Fed decision is also 71% no change. Whereas before it was closer to 50/50 between no change and a cut. So why would you why why is why is Trump going after the after the Fed chair bullish, >> dude? cuz it's just it's it's like all

rules are off. Like I I just it's it's just Trump is literally trying to force his way into lower rates. Like he they're buying $200 billion of mortgage back securities. They're trying to lower rates. The oil prices that Trump's saying that that they're going to do everything that they can to keep oil down, um inflation down. They are literally just trying to do everything they can to pump assets. And all of these correspond with the fiat debasement trade. Like it is all so clear. And like to be honest, every time I've sold crypto to buy other fiat debasement assets, what has happened is I've just underperformed crypto for a

certain amount of time. Like like when I sold my crypto in 21 and bought gold, silver, and that house, I literally have underperformed Bitcoin since then by like a margin like I don't know, let's say Bitcoin I sold it around 60 70. >> Selling Bitcoin in 21 and buying gold, you've underperformed Bitcoin 21. >> No, no. And so if like for the longest time you felt like you you shouldn't have sold the Bitcoin like you should have like you underperformed. Why would you allocate to other assets? Why not just um stick to your biggest, you know, your best idea? And then yeah, gold goes on a generational run >> and it's at 4,600 right now. Silver's at

87. I don't I bought like maybe I don't even know like 10 grand worth of silver. Like such a small amount at like $20. So, I mean, maybe it's at like 40 or 50 grand right now of silver. Great. Uh, same with uh gold. I bought quite a bit more. Maybe like 25K uh around like that 1,700 mark. So, what maybe that's at like 75K. So, maybe I got like 100K of metals and it's like great. Like awesome. Um, but like I I just had I bought like 3x more gold and silver, it would be like kind of an insane part of the portfolio. And >> so I guess all I'm trying to say is that the fiat debasement trade is just keeps working and I'm just going to keep slamming it until it doesn't. And like obviously you have to be able to manage

the the emotions and manage the you know things do get out of hand. So there is a reason to like hold cash, but man, it's right now everything is just like changed [snorts] in such a way in the macro landscape that it's just hard to not want to just be heavily allocated to um basically anything that's going to debase uh anything that's going to prevent the debasement of fiat in addition to just the craziness that is this regime. And if you read Arthur, and we do, and I I I like his writings, and I think he's one of the smarter macro analysts out there.

And he also makes it real easy for us because he applies macro to crypto. There's a lot of macro analysts, not a lot of macro analysts, are applying their their research directly to crypto. Arthur does a really good job of it. >> Yep. you realize that the only reason to hold fiat is when a politician is running on a platform of austerity, which Trump was early in his in his presidency, >> but he's no longer, man. He is >> No, no, no, of course not. Of course not. He I mean, Liberation Day and tariffs and cutting the fat, cutting the corruption, all of that was as much austerity as we were going to get. They wanted to cut some spending. We're past that now. Him and Elon had the falling out. That was the end of austerity. So

now at once you get past that >> all of it is debasement. Then it becomes a question of outperformance which is what I think is a more enriching and interesting conversation is where we go from here. We have metals, we have equities, we have crypto >> and then even within crypto we have, you know, large caps, Bitcoin and Ethan, we have mids and and small caps. >> Yep. >> And so I think we've seen metals outperform up until this point. Equities I believe are next. I think once equities break out of this, you know, S&P is tapping on the door of 77 7,000.

I think equities are and we're already seeing it in some of the private markets, crypto or excuse me, M&A in general, not just crypto M&A, but M&A in general is way way up. I expect equities to do quite well and ultimately I do believe we're going to end up seeing crypto do well as well. So if it's a question of outperformance, >> yeah, >> I would imagine that the metals outperformance is sort of the beginning of the end. Maybe it has a blowoff top with gold and silver and you even see that because you're getting into the more esoteric metals. Palladium, copper are doing really really well. I would anticipate that those that asset class outperformance will transition first to equities and then crypto. And and it's

not that crypto is not going to do well. I think actually Bitcoin and ETH we're seeing it today are outperforming fiat and they're up and I think we do rally upwards of 100 if not 105 106 do we get all the way back to 120 125 not until we see the full rotation in my opinion I think what we're seeing right now in crypto is pure disbelief >> I think market was so apathetic for so long they're not just coming up and saying it's it's you know we're going straight back to alltime highs think that is still a bit contrarian. We're actually going to see a bit of chop chop upwards in my opinion.

>> Y >> as equities do well and the rally in gold and silver dies kind of tails off a little bit then we get the full rotation and we rally beyond all-time highs. >> STE says WPLS on disc dexreen look into it. That sounds scammy. I just bought gold silver as part of a diversified portfolio allocation. Have been selling bits of that now just like I sell BTC when it gets above the allocation. Look, I think that's the right way to think about it. And that's how I'm kind of like running my portfolio right now, right? Like let's say you want to have certain amounts of assets in um you know, 40% Bitcoin, 20% metals, 20% equities, 20% cash. I I think that's kind of the way that you want to you want to kind of think about the

portfolio when it comes to the debasement trade. Um, and then yeah, like when one gets to be a lot, you just kind or over your number, you just rebalance it back into the other uh other other platform. So guys, let's hop into the news that we have to cover. We got a ton of stuff uh to go over today. DC's running hot. It's crypto M&A season as well. Coin Gecko with a $500 million potential uh exit coming and more. So guys, let's let's hop right into our our um yeah, our just general overview of of what's happening in in the news.

>> Obviously, big week in DC as well. Writing code is not the same as controlling money, and developers who build blockchain infrastructure without touching user funds shouldn't be treated like banks. Okay, so this is like Roman stormcoded like tornado cash like um code is law and it's not the same as controlling money and they should not be treated like banks. I totally agree. I mean Senator Lumis would love to have you on the pod. Um this is like completely accurate. Uh there is absolutely no way in which uh developers should be you know effectively uh given the same level of consequence as somebody who's doing fraudulent custodial activity. Uh I

think it's very clear that smart contracts have this immutable property in which you create a contract people interact with it permissionlessly. I it it is not once you set it off into the wild in most cases given there are some admin keys there are some kind of small things that can be changed in the type of smart contract and that's the nuance that needs to be happening in these conversations which is hard to have happen when frankly um the folks that are writing the legislation don't understand what a smart contract is >> the education gap that we're trying to solve here.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean look at the end of the day if you are creating immutable smart contracts you are should not be held liable for the activity within that smart contract given that you are not maliciously interfering with the activity once created. Um and yeah man I mean >> yeah no I I think I I think >> you know if you want to take the the counterargument here is you know obviously that you know there are tools that are out there online uh and and in multiple uh sectors of the economy that are used for illicit purposes. We all hear, you know, the argument when it comes to cash >> um and Bitcoin for that for that matter.

But the more recent one has been Tether. >> You've seen I mean they're freezing large amounts of Tether because they believe uh this is tied to the Iran uh uh movement. There's sanctions on a lot of countries and they're using Tether in order to circumvent those those sanctions. and Tedor has gone and they're starting to freeze some of that uh capital so that it cannot be used for illicit purposes. So I think the the differentiation here is how handson or hands off some of these founders are and and some of these companies are. Are you putting a piece of software out there or are you running a financial institution?

Tether is a financial in institution. I think uh Tornado Cash and Roman Storm and these guys are running pieces of code. These two are not the same. If you're >> uh responsible for maintaining compliance, and this is where it is such a gray zone and look, if we had some clear black and white regulation, we would say yes, you have to be compliant. You have to be responsible that your software is not able to be used for illicit purposes. >> Yeah, of course, >> if that was the regulation, so be it.

You could go operate in in a different jurisdiction and release your code code elsewhere, >> right? But if you have regulation, >> this is a night and day >> that says no, you don't have you can release anything into the wild and let that thing uh permeate through both the economy and the digital online uh web, you know, worldwide web. >> Yeah, it looks really >> then so be it. But that that's black and that's white. Right now, it's still this gray zone. We still don't have clear regulation. A until we have clear rules of the road, we're gonna continue running into these very confusing roadblocks where some things are are thought of some ways, other people think of them other ways, but there's no clear definitions. That's what we need our government to do. Otherwise, why are

people in Congress? Why are they in the Senate if they're not right writing the definitions so that there is no confusion? >> I agree, man. I agree. All right, guys. Let's move on from the politics. We love you Senator. >> Then we're going to come back. There's more politics here towards the end. Obviously, a big week in DC with market structure. >> We're not moving off the politics. We got Eleanor, our lovely DC correspondent, the number one DC correspondent in crypto right now. Eleanor Tourett, new bye-bye, doing markups per chairman John Boozeman. The Senate The Senate AG Committee is punting its markup on crypto market structure to the last week in January instead of holding it as originally planned on Thursday, the same time as the Senate Bank Committee. Boozeman says more time needed to maintain bipartisan

support. Guys, if you recall last week on the show, we talked about this. We anticipated that this would be postponed. We understand that this is a a kind of drawn out process that's going to keep happening. If you're not following Eleanor, she's the number one person to watch in this space. I love her content. Um Rob, what's your take on the crypto market structure legislation? Um, you know, have you done your research? Where are we at with this? So there was a draft. It was uh it was a 278 page draft. I think if you scroll down a little bit here, there is a little bit uh that we can we can talk about. Um and so obviously Boozeman uh he says he remains committed to advancing bipartisan crypto market

structure legislation. They have made meaningful progress and we will get into that a little bit later and they have had constructive discussions as they work toward this goal. Boozeman says, "I appreciate the leadership engagement of Senator Booker and his team as we address these complex policy issues to finalize the remaining details and ensure broad support. This legislation requires additional time >> before moving to market committee will mark up this legislation during the last week of January. So, this is not a vote. >> Um, but they are moving forward." And so, >> actually, yeah, let's scroll down. Let's scroll down. What is Eleanor's take?

This is bad. Not really. The bill needs Democratic votes to pass the full Senate or it's essentially dead on arrival with only 53 GOP senators. [clears throat] Senate rules require 60 votes uh three-fifths majority to reach closure. Boozeman and Booker are likely weighing a higher chance of clearing the Senate. So, what they're doing here is they still they they believe they don't have the votes, which is why they're postponing this. We can scroll back up. And so, what they're doing is they're allowing more time. Do they need additional time to read the draft and mark it up and No. And actually look at the legend. No, >> it's total politics.

>> More time to play politics. There's gonna be concessions on Venezuela and Greenland and Iran and healthcare and they need time to assess what these people really want. Do they want more oil from Venezuela or do they want more health care to the aging population? They need to make concessions so that then they can go back and they can mark this up as they know they will get the votes because they made the appropriate concessions beforehand. >> Yeah, man. >> They shouldn't move this to a vote until they're sure that it will pass. >> Man, politics is so funny, man. I mean, look, they're going to mark this up more in the last week of January. Our take here is that, and this is kind of comes from Vance and Mike from Framework, uh, and maybe another person or two that we

had on the show previously, where look guys, if they get this thing through by before the new Congress, before the midterms, I think we're going to be in a really good spot. That's like eight months away, nine months away. And so, we have time. Uh, you'd be shocked as to how long these processes take in the US judicial system. uh and the legislative system. But uh the end of the day, we're going to see this come through. I I'm pretty confident on it. >> How soon do you think that next step will be? >> I I don't know what the ramifications of this are going to be. I did see that um the banks got a win in some of the Genius Act and Clarity Act uh markups actually where uh stable coin yield is

actually not going to be able to be passed uh back to users quite yet or at least that's where they're trending towards in specific instances. Meaning like if you're just holding your stable coins in a wallet, you're not or in your account without depositing it into some lending market or somewhere where you actually take some sort of like material risk for like using that stable coin, then you're not going to be able to get the yield. Now, that is just currently >> what I'm seeing. I'm not sure where that trends to, but something to note because if we get a world where banks are are subject to the uh rule that stable coin issuers can pass back yield directly to

their users from treasury bills. >> I feel comfortable. >> Banks are literally so [ __ ] like they are literally cooked because >> the bank right now gives you a tiny minimal interest rate. >> It gives you like barely anything and and you don't get the ability to um actually move your assets 24/7 and have this kind of ownership over them like you do with stable coins. And so that is something that I think is particularly interesting. I I've seen a bit of chatter about it, but not enough. Um, I I I think that really getting getting a big win there for stablecoin issuers would really flip the dynamic with banks on their heads. I think >> and uh let's move to uh another Eleanor

tweet. Uh Leo, we're going to go out of order a little bit. So, let's jump to the end. Eleanor and Paul Baron had a couple good tweets about this as well while we're on this market structure topic. But Andy, I want to comment on something they mentioned. There are stable coins >> periodically looking at the live room. >> The banking system is is cooked, right? And so we know this and this is part of the neo finance thesis that we building. Obviously, right now you have your money in a savings account that I know a quarter of a basis point on the high end. We know that there are sustainable reasonable places to earn yield, put your money, stash it away to get four or five, especially when the the federal funds rate

Y >> we believe not just regulation but innovation is pushing legacy finance to innovate. >> So that means that Coinbase uh [clears throat] A Morpho these lending markets places where you can sustainably get um you know a half dozen percent yield on your assets. We believe to the negotiation table >> finance thesis.

>> So bullish >> and we believe that uh legacy finance is about to get an upgrade. It is going to be the neo finance upgrade and this is where um a lot of uh crypto and onchain companies have already have a head start and so they're skating to where the puck is going. We believe Legacy Finance will try to catch up. Regulation is the final straw that breaks the camel's back and forces these banks to come to the negotiation table. They may have gotten a win in this initial draft. We'll see if it sticks around, but ultimately this is going to continue to develop. And we're seeing that they are making some internal uh research and developments in order to cope with the onslaught of

innovation that they're they're facing from the crypto industry. And so they're already starting to they're starting to uh experiment with stable coins. We know JP Morgan is experimenting with their internal blockchain based systems. These guys are working on these things internally so that when they are forced and the regulation ultimately comes about. They're not caught flatfooted and they've already had a program in place. All they have to do is turn it on. But they're going to be fighting tooth and nail to the very end. >> Yep. Yep. Definitely. Um definitely. Leo, let's uh let's go to the rest of the market structure. I believe Elanor had another tweet in Baron had another tweet here that uh we'll we'll go through.

>> I'm excited to see that you guys are >> Yeah, man. I mean, look, this is all really really good. I mean, like we've been waiting for this. This is what this new regime allows. >> Small little niche and it's like being redirected. >> This is kind of also just part of the growing up of the industry. Um, and it's coming and it's happening and we're making it happen directly in real time uh as we speak. And so guys, I mean, if you're a believer in this industry that all this market structure, political kind of work, it it it can probably feel boring. It can probably feel like I don't know, there's not much going on to pay attention to. For you, it doesn't really affect you, but I think it does.

And and I think that having having your your ear on the ground to this here on Rollup TV and just in general on on AX I you know I think it's going to help you manage your portfolio stay in the loop and just get an understanding as to where things are at. >> As we're uh as we're cycling through here, so I did take the 278 page draft. >> I ran it through chat and uh I asked chat to extract some of the key points here obviously. So let's let's take a look. >> [clears throat] >> So, we know that we're looking to establish a clear regulatory framework for digital assets across the SEC, CFTC, and Treasury and banking regulators.

That is the core purpose of the bill. Also, in this bill, it explicitly limits central bank digital currency use for monetary policy. So, we have provisions against CBDC's. One of the most important things here aside from laying out a tonomy and really understanding what the definition become super super rich and successful. >> It lays out this framework for network tokens. Okay. And it separates these from securities. And so it says network tokens are treated as nonsecurities if they are intrinsically linked to a distributed ledger system. That means again how distributed, how decentralized. The second point is

network tokens are not securities if they derive value primarily from network use and decentralized participation not issuer control. That means that a lot of these >> uh NEO finance yield coins that are issued as stable coins and their main purpose is to issue yield back to token holders. These could be considered securities. Again, it's not especially now that we have a more friendly regulatory environment at the SEC in particular, it's okay to be a security. >> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Bitcoin, ETH, um, a lot, and we'll get into like the ETFs that have their own coins associated with them, they don't want to be securities because they've been operating as commodities for a long, long time. Also, a lot of them um their early distribution schedule, it's important that they did not conduct an illegal securities sale when they did their initial ICO. So it's important that a lot of these companies and these coins are >> crazy that they are seen as commodities but the NEO finance yield coin landscape is okay that they are not sec it's okay that they are securities because ultimately a security what is it

>> it's meant to be a very safe vehicle that you can earn a secured yield on top of so [clears throat] okay um so >> yeah man look I think that that that the that the overall like market for uh what these things are is going to keep changing and evolving. This year is kind of the year that these that these things are going to get discovered. >> We still and >> what they are is significant for the issuers and and we have here like >> and what they are is not so much significant for us speculators, investors necessarily as much now.

Perhaps there's some different like tax. This is really important for the teams that are that are building in the space. Um and growing and trying to grow their product and understand what their regulatory bounds are. Uh it's it has been a crazy past few months. You got global markets making history today. We saw multiple million dollar onchain stock trades. learn what everything does and how to actually >> $1 million Google buys 400k Nvidia trades and six figure flows into ADB and SLV Nvenig trades are becoming the norm on those tokenized stock platform. So yeah, I mean pretty pretty awesome to see this um happen and um yeah, I mean

we we know that is one of the leaders in in tokenizing equities. uh we know that uh this is going to keep happening. I I so I know that tokenized equities are going to work because I know that when I go on my Schwab account and do trades, it is it is going to be it is just so much uh so much different. Um guys, one sec. Bear with us on the background.

Um, tokenized equities are going to do well. Um, yeah, like like what I was trying to say is I know that tokenized equities are going to do well because when I go on Schwab and I trade, there is a there is a one day settlement time for trades. Uh, transferring trades is really annoying. the actual whole process of managing the swaps and the fees. It there's a lot of education that's required. It's just there is so much um there's so much kind of nonsense with using traditional finance platforms and

legacy finance uh kind of uh brokerages. So it makes sense that tokenized equities will grow. Um and it makes sense that uh you know is going to keep kind of dominating this sector. The last point that I think is important on this is that as onchain capital grows in size, we we know that liquidity begets more liquidity. And so there is a critical mass in which the amount of value onchain surpasses the amount of value offchain. And all we have to do is get to 50% of the value.

>> You know, you're you'll hear a lot of people come on the show and say that all value, all money will be on chain. >> I think they're >> and I think they're right. But it it's not that we have to go for all of it all at once. All we have to do is keep chipping chipping away and get to about 50%. And once that happens, you'll realize that more. You'll get a lot more inbound. Like we won't have to go out into the legacy financial world anymore and try to bring it on chain. liked will come to us because it'll be more efficient. There will be better pricing.

It will just be cheaper, better, faster >> once we reach a certain inflection point and and we're already starting to hit that in some critical markets. We're seeing that on purp. I believe that equities will reach that point. And so >> again, the reason >> that we're here now is because there were some really really deeply convicted people that built this from the early early days. It's extreme. It is so much easier to be bullish on the space now that we've breached some. We've got >> critical mass, man. I agree.

>> Got a critical mass. We've gotten off of zero. It is so much easier to be bullish on chain capital markets now and be bullish Neo Finance now. >> All right, guys. Let's move on from Mondo. Shout out to them. They're doing great work. Um stoked for them to to keep growing. I'm glad that they had some big trades. Um there's a lot of equity demand right now for trading in uh in uh the overall market. Um so don't be a panic or panickin pan. I think he's missing an I in there. Panaceian. Don't be a panic and stay engaged in trust process. Clarity is near guys. So again just the the the the white house is signaling that there is uh clarity act is coming. Um guys, take

it easy, relax. It's happening. Um stay bullish, stay engaged, trust the process. Again, our goal from the rollup is to get this thing done by the midterms because it's highly likely like if you go on poly market and you look at midterms, it's looking really strong that uh the Democrats are going to there's a 35% chance that that that the Democrats sweep the 2026 midterm. uh there's a 79% chance that the uh Democrats win the House of Representatives. Um and so it it it's it's looking pretty rough for um the Republicans in the midterms. And they have a lot more leverage right now in

this market navigating it than they do in um you know other other uh like basically they have a lot more leverage right now the the Republicans do because they're in power to get this thing done than they will in 2027 or after this new Congress is in and this new house is in. uh because then uh that basically the Democrats will want to be pushing a lot of consumer protection things and we'll have far less far more power over this. So look, I'm not worried, but I I want this thing to be done uh by uh by the midterm year.

>> There's one more thing as you were rattling off some prediction market odds for the midterms. >> Yeah. The other thing that's happening, I think it's next week, is that the Supreme Court has a ruling on whether or not America has to pay tariffs back to the countries that paid them. I I think it's a 73% chance Supreme Court rules against Trump and says yes, America does have to pay these back. The reason that it was illegal, >> no way. >> I mean, we can double check those odds, but I'm pretty sure that's the last that I saw. Um, Supreme Court tariff traders price in trouble for Trump's tariffs on Kali.

>> Yeah. 73% in favor. >> Wow. 32% in favor of Trump on Koshi for >> uh with $3 million of volume. Will will the Supreme Court rule in favor of Trump's tariffs? >> Ex. Yeah. So, I don't know how this is going to affect markets. Obviously, the market is expecting this to not go through. Um, the Supreme Court on tariffs is tomorrow. It's tomorrow. I thought >> Well, here here's the way to think about it. Remember when they did launch tariffs and everyone was like, "This is terrible." Like, like the market nuked so hard on liberation day, Trump did that poster thing. He was like, "Wow, this is going to, you know, we're America the great again." Um, and then it it kind of just got walked back a and

and it got walked back slowly and slowly and slowly and the whole market collapsed and people globally were like freaking out. >> I mean, look, man, >> I've got a little bit of a different take. I think if they rule that he has to pay back the money, I think he has to pay back the money. Otherwise, it's unconstitutional. It goes against the Supreme Court and, you know, there's a whole political fallout as a result of that. One reason why we may be seeing the markets do particularly well today with this with this ruling tomorrow is going back to the debasement trade. If they have to pay back upwards of like hundreds of billions of dollars, I think it's like 180 or 160 billion dollars.

>> Yeah. >> Wouldn't it make sense to just kind of inflate that away >> just to kind of like >> inflate it away? >> Like they have to pay it back. I don't know what kind of timetable whether it's this year, next year, what kind of timetable they have to pay it back with between, but if they have a a hard you have to pay back $175 billion. Okay, what if we print $175 billion out of thin air and that is what we pay to these countries. They get their $175 billion. We're free and clear. We're totally constitutional. We paid back all the tariffs. We collected the money. You made us pay it back. We paid it back.

We inflated and debased the dollar as a way of doing that and making it less painful for us. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, well, look, we'll see where we get on the >> ter obviously the the debasement and the money printing is going to do well on the market. >> Yeah. I think it's uh I think it's actually Thursday. Um or is it tomorrow? >> I think it's this week. >> Yeah, it is this week. All right, guys. Let's move on here. um into some NEO finance work here. Uh really we're stoked to cover some of this. Number one being stable coins. Uh it's been a turning point for stable coins. Stable coin supply has grown 33% over the past year. 37 billion. Um we're expecting a

50% plus year-over-year growth this year. Um I mean guys, we got custom stable coins. I mean this is it. This is fullon NEO finance. It's going to happen. Stable coins are a massive part of this sector and of this category. Cannot ignore them anymore. The global financial system cannot ignore them anymore. We're at 300 billion. We're going to get to 4 to 500 billion this year. I firmly believe Tether and Circle, if not just Tether and then both, we'll be at a trillion dollars of supply each by the end of this decade.

So that's four years away. I think that's that's like a chip shot. I think it could be higher. Um, I mean look look like look look at this chart, right guys? Like this is insane. I mean this is this this is it. So this is the best chart in crypto right now. The unironically the best chart in crypto is >> how do you bet on this chart? >> You buy circle stock. >> You buy a sky. >> Yeah. >> Buy look this is I think there's a whole uh just back to the point earlier about this rotation uh you know from metals to equities to crypto. Yeah, I think there is a way to play that rotation with getting crypto equities, right, and and allowing th that they're almost a

category in and of themselves. And I think that is a category to pay attention to because a lot, you're right, a lot of this is happening offchain. It's happening in public markets, but it's crypto companies on public markets. Those are the equities to pay attention to. >> Yep. I mean, Circle is is I I I haven't looked at that chart in a while. Let's pull it up. on my computer real quick. Yeah, I mean it's it's flattening out right now at 80. I was just actually just surfing with their head of research here in Hawaii. Um it's basically back to IPO price. So it had that insane run and then dude I mean I don't know stocks that great but man circle stock could be could be a move

here. >> What about Coinbase? Give us a little commentary on Coinbase. >> Yeah, I'm still holding Coin. Um, also looks like it could be bottoming. Kind of just follows Bitcoin. Um, it's just it's it's lost its favor to Robin Hood, man. It's the thing. >> Robin Hood is another neo finance uh equity. >> Yeah. Kind of lost its favor. You've kind of got metals, tokenized metals obviously in neo finance. You've got this wave of equities and crypto and there's kind of this this ven diagram that you can draw around a certain subset of equities and subset of crypto and that makes up the superet of finance neo finance.

>> Yeah, 100%. >> All right, let's keep going. >> All right, guys. Let's move over to Aerrome. Um, Aeradrome is preparing for their Ethereum launch. Uh, we'll go ahead and get that up. Um they are kind of crushing it right now. Um and their their team goes at uh Uniswap's CEO and founder a lot. Alex does. Since launch, Aerome's all-time volume is more than every DEX on base combined. And next quarter, Arrow arrives on Ethereum with its biggest upgrades yet. Alltime DEX volumes on base is clearly all-time highs compared to the other platforms.

Um yeah, man. I mean, Aerodrome's crushing. They are a great example of the revenue meta. They're a great example of of generating fees uh and building something that that people actually want. Uh I think that that they're doing a great job. Uh their expansion to Ethereum should do well. Uh they're one of the tokens that will be a beneficiary of this more sophisticated financialized um you know DCF uh price to sales ratio type of investment that's going to happen this year. And and and I think they they still have some things to figure out with the Arrow token, but it's looking pretty good.

Yeah. Uh, not not much more to add from me. I think Alex is a really smart guy. Uh, he's certainly provocative uh, when it comes to the battle between Aerodrome and Uniswap. Uh, he goes at Hayden relentlessly and I think Arrow's doing a great job. So, I will welcome them to Ethereum with open arms. >> Beautiful. All right, guys. We got a couple more things to go over before the Polygon team is going to join up. We'll keep this thing rolling. kind of lightning mode here. Um, more on the NEO finance category. So, NEO finance is just going to keep growing. Yield stable coins are absolutely expanding massively. Um, this year we saw so much so much so much. We're going to flip

over to to yield stable coins. Um, they have record growth this year, 2025. 88 new major yield bearing stable coins launched in 2025. >> Insane. And guys, if it's a little confusing and hard to keep up with the NEO finance category because you'll hear us talk about yield coins, you'll hear us talk about equities. You'll hear us talking about lending and a lot of neo banks and a lot of these things are kind of coming from different disparate parts of the industry. We're going to put together a market map that should help clarify a lot of these things. That's going to release uh sometime later this week or early next. So, keep an eye out for the market map. Um, >> yeah. I just think this is crazy, right?

So, this is the this is effectively what you're looking at here is people saw Tether's business model. People were like, "Holy cow, Tether made what?$20 billion dollars of profits in 2025 or something or 13 billion in 2025 or or was that 2024? Some over 10 billion dollars they've made in like multiple consecutive years, I believe." And then they see circle and they see everyone else. And everyone realizes that, wow, if I'm an issuer, I'm just going to be a absolute money printer. That that's how this is going to work. And so what happens is all you get this rush into issuing. And then now what's kind of grown out of this is that sure there's

like a dozen stable coins like yield coins over a hundred million dollars of TVL. And then outside of that, it's pretty barren. And so you kind of get this like effect where you get this maximum saturation happening and then it kind of pulls back and the market resets because well there's not going to be 88 winners in a category obviously. And so that's kind of where we're at with the stable coin issuer, yield bearing stable coins, yield coins um market and and I I I expect to kind of consolidate a bit more. I'll tell you guys where I think this is uh still got some room to grow.

Yeah. And that is in this there's a subset of of these yield coins that are looking at exogenous sources of yield. Meaning that they're going outside of the crypto industry. They're looking like take USD AI for example going into the AI space lending credit to AI compute companies passing the yield from that credit back to the stable coin token holders that is an example of what we're talking about another one daylight is going out they're going they're a true solar power energy company selling solar panels selling batteries in which you can store energy from the solar panels they're a real revenue produc producing company, they're going to take

that revenue, they're going to turn it into yield and pass it back to their token holders. There's there's another there there's, you know, several more examples of these companies and >> that and so you've got this this category within yield bearing stable coins of exogenous sources of yield. They're going out and they're going and they're finding and bringing the yield back to the industry. And then there's another category within yield coins which is the same DeFi flywheel that we've seen time and time again. They're basically using pool to emissions.

They're inflating their token supply. They're passing their tokens back to you in the form of reward. That's not what we think is going to do well sustainably in 2026. >> Agreed. >> That is the old legacy DeFi. >> Yep. 100%. >> We believe in neo finance. New DeFi. Call it newi. This is yield coins that are looking and bringing exogenous sources of yield back to token holders. >> I love it. Exogenous sources of yield is based. All right, guys. Let's let's move on. We got a couple more things just to rip through here before our lovely Polygon guests come on. Talk about their ma their massive acquisition. Um yeah, this next one's pretty comical, man. I mean, this is just this city.

His first news conference leaving office later today. >> Do we have audio on this video? >> Yes. Yes, [music] we we do. >> Today, New York City is launching a new >> NYC's first ever commemorative coin launches today. >> New York City's resilience, diversity, and ambition to this lady's lips are hilarious. >> We're going to continue to invest in making our city. >> This launched at 900 p.m. yesterday. How long did it take for him to rugpool? >> Dude, he rugion. I think it was like within 30 minutes.

leaving [music] office later today talking about this new crypto coin to help combat anti-semitism. Today, New York City is [music] launching a new digital token called the New York City inspired by New York City's resilience to become the we can go to the next one. We're going to continue >> which is also about this I believe making our city a safer city >> like who on his team said this was a >> new Adams is set to watch news conference since leaving office later [music] I doubt he doubt will help combat anti-semitism >> let's move on to the next I mean that's just like unprecedented levels of crime uh and so yeah I mean here here it is

has he's removed the entire liquidity pool as of his new meme coin. Total of $3.4 million scammed. >> Sick, man. This is it. Wake me up from this nightmare. Jibus tweeted. Somebody was like, "Thad guy just moved to New York and then [laughter] rugged rugged the memecoin. The hell's going on over there?" Yeah, it's pretty bad man. >> I mean, he he did it in 30 minutes. He pulled all the liquidity. >> People did not like him as a mayor. He had like crime that followed him around towards the end of his mayorship.

>> And then he just goes and he does this. He had a net worth of $2 million before this. He just doubled his net worth. >> More than doubled his net worth. >> He's kind of poor. >> What the hell? Mayor Adams is poor. >> He wasn't insider trading like the rest of them. >> All right, guys. We're going to take a quick standby. We We'll have the Polygon team join us. I think we got I think we got two more one one or two more. >> Yeah, we got like three or four more things. We'll we'll uh rip it after we got the Polygon guys. They're ready to fire up. Um so let's get them up. We'll take a quick break, Rob. Get you fired up. Get you centered in that cam there, bud.

>> I'm I'm fired up, brother. >> And uh get get you going. All right, guys. We'll be right back. >> Ye is built for big moments. the most fun you'll ever have with your crypto. Go to yeet.com to yeet into your next game. Not your keys, not your coins. [music] From the team that pioneered cold storage, Treasure has just released its new wallet. Guys, if [music] you are still using hot wallets in 2025, 2026, you are missing the entire point. Secure your coins. Get [music] a Treasure at

treasure.io. Go anywhere onchain instantly with relay.link. Relay is closing in on 10 billion transferred. Go to relay.link to bridge your assets now. [music] Money shouldn't wait for Mondays. Following his Rio upgrade, Polygon is now one of the fastest chains for stable coin transfers and payments. Visit Polygon Technology to learn more.

Colshi is the [music] world's largest prediction market. You can trade on anything in all 50 states. Go to kshi.com to trade [music] today. Talk to AI like your lawyer or your doctor or your therapist. Yours, private and here today. Visit near.ai to have a fully private chat experience. [music] Havachi is fast and private per trading secured by ZK [music] with Celestia underneath. Go to habachi.xyz to start trading today.

All righty, guys. Welcome to Rollup TV. Mark John. Good to have you guys back from the Polygon side. Neil, the founder and CEO of Coin Me, Peter, the founder and CEO of Sequence. Guys, big news to talk about today. First and foremost, welcome to the show. >> Thanks for having us. >> It's a it's a full house here today, Rob. >> It certainly is. Well, we're we're celebrating uh because crypto M&A season is in full swing and uh Polygon has some really exciting announcements uh that they're going to share with us around the acquisition of uh Coin Me and Sequence. Guys, congrats. Uh I think this uh this is a call for celebration.

>> Yeah, thanks. We're super stoked. Obviously, I've known Polygon for a long time. So, it's uh it's awesome to be here. >> Most definitely. So, Polygon Labs is officially becoming US regulated for stable coins with the acquisition of Coinme sequence for $250 million. Um, this follows the open money stack which has been released last week and delivers three key components of the stack. Without further ado, I'll pass it to you Mark. Kick us off. What is the importance of Acquir and Coin Me in sequence? Kind of give us a bit of the lore and reasoning here and we'll go around the horn and get everyone's take.

Yeah, I think it really ties into the open money stack. And when you think of what the open money stack is, it really reflects our vision of how money is going to uh evolve over the next, you know, 10-ish years or so. And you know, we wanted to make sure that when we announced Open Money Stack, we could quickly follow this up with actually making it a reality. And two core components of making it a reality are uh bringing in the coin teams and and the sequence teams. And reason for that if we kind of back up on you know what is the open money stack uh I think that's kind of helpful context right so um when when we think of the open money stack we think of like an open and integrated system that's going to allow money to be moved anywhere in the world like

instantly and reliably and then be used you know onchain not necessarily needing to to bring it back offchain if you think of like how you do that today you're basically taking like a chain like polygon and then you're taking like these different components you're like stitching them together And you know, you've got to figure out like who you want to work with, what pricing is going to look like. It's actually really, really complicated. Anybody who you're like, hey, just use statements, it's like not as easy as it sounds. Whole idea here is that we can actually develop one API that brings all of this to um you know, anyone who who wants to move money globally. And so when you think of that, what's what's combined here is right a chain in in Polygon. um the ability to on and off ramp from and

and to that chain given given Coinme. Um the ability to have an account on a chain which is obviously just a wallet through through sequence. And we also have like take very seriously this idea of like being open, right? And when we think of of this openness, we expect there to be, you know, thousands of chains and and definitely like dozens of like payments focused chains. Um this is something that we've been developing the a layer on for a while right on the polygon side of things. But when we think of that we also want to make it really easy and and sequence has developed a product called trails which is an intentbased product that really makes this crosschain interaction really easy. So when you bring all of that into like one you know product one API that can be plugged in now you can move money

anywhere from any chain anywhere in the world and do that in a seamless way. Yeah, John, I'm curious from your perspective just to add on here. Um, you know, we talked about the three key components here from Mark, the physical cash, the digital fiat onoff ramps, wallet, infra, and obviously this crosschain orchestration piece through this intense layer. From your experience working uh, you know, at Stripe and other kind of legacy finance companies pushing the global global payments landscape forward, why is this so important to Polygon? How does this further enable from your perspective this idea of onboarding a ton of new users capital onchain, keeping it onchain and really kind of bringing this

into the real world as a lot of us in our community have been hoping for for quite a while. >> Yeah, for sure. I think Mark really hit the nail on the head here, but from a product standpoint, you know, Polygon is incredibly uniquely positioned to be able to build this stack up from the metal. one of the the only players in the space now that actually started at the metal at the settlement layer with the chain itself and then as you start to layer these pieces of the stack on top of that. So the uh the money movement side which we're really getting a accelerant through coinme here from a regulated ramp standpoint you know from a cash on and offramp standpoint you know from a financial services capability in terms of work we've already done around um uh yield

production from vault bridge uh and interop with ag layer and then being able to add trails onto that from sequence and then sort of all the way up the layers from that towards you know checkout and treasury management you know it's really tough to do this stuff and traditionally If you were going to do it, you had to sort of pick a middle layer to start at and then you had to push outwards. And it was really tough. You were operating, you know, kind of stacked into a 50 or 60 layer competitive environment. And it wasn't just bad for builders in the space, it was really bad for folks who were just trying to move money around because it meant you had to go and integrate multiple different APIs. You had to go and work with different vendors. You had to negotiate over and over again. You

know, I don't I don't know how deeply you've worked in the money movement space before, but every vendor relationship, no one wants to say their price, no one wants to say their integration path. And Polygon really has this opportunity through its existing relationships and now through its kind of technology roadmap to be able to provide sort of one interaction point for folks who are looking to move money, access money, benefit from money via the open money stack. And these acquisitions today are just going to give us a great accelerant um and just a leap forward in our product catalog and roadmap to be able to deliver that for existing and new customers.

>> And I'd love to hear a little bit more about how this all came together. Um I'm sure Polygon has been working obviously you guys have been working in the space for so long, but you've been working on the open money stack for a while as well. And and so when it came to uh these partners, maybe Neil, we can start with you and then, you know, we'll get to Peter, but h how did this all come together? When did it make sense to ultimately partner up with Polygon? And and generally, did you approach them? Did they approach you? How did this how did this uh manifest into this acquisition today?

>> Yeah. Um well, uh we've been in the space for a long time now. We got started back in 2014 actually one of the first licensed crypto exchanges in the US and since then have seen a lot of different regulatory environments and a lot of different [clears throat] use cases come and go and when the Genius Act passed and we started seeing a thawing of a lot of the IPOs it was very clear that over the next 24 months call it there's going to be the majority of deals are going to be signed that's going to set the president for the next 10 years of finance and from Coin Me even though we've raised $40 million and have been able to generate a significant amount of volume and revenue as a standalone business, we had to go faster. And so we started looking for partners to be able to go faster and

that's where we ended up uh in this transaction with Polygon. We not only have the resources to do what we do but a much greater scale not only just in the US but now on a global scale. We also are able to combine our services that our partners rely on with sequence with polygon and be able to offer them a complete solution and that's extremely exciting not only from the coin perspective but also for our partners. Um, our partners uh really build on us and rely on us for a lot of key services, not just physical cash on ramps and off-ramps, debit card processing. Uh, if there's a custody flow, a settlement flow, liquidity, post- trade settlement, AML, compliance, KYC, all the nitty-gritty things that frankly builders just see as delays and

headaches. Uh, they can now integrate with us in a simple way. We're adding capabilities to that and now they can go faster because from their perspective, they're competing too. and we're their back-end customer to help them compete in now a more competitive market than ever. And so now you look at innovative fintexs and merchants and banks that are all looking at web 3 and going on chain. Now they can compete with Coinb Sequence and Polygon. >> Yep. And Peter, you you you guys at Sequence have been uh less on the physical side of things, more on the digital side of things, working on smart contract and routing infrastructure. How did it materialize? what was your perspective when it came to uh this this partnership with Polygon?

>> Yeah, well said. I mean, I think you know, Sequence has always had a vision on how blockchains in the space would expand and evolve and for us it was clear that it would be made up of many, many blockchains. We knew it would scale from the earliest days of how is Ethereum going to scale at all and how do you deliver great user experiences and how do you solve problems around gas and how do you do parallel transactions? How do you make it feel like the native internet that everyone's familiar with? These are always our goals to accelerate the utility. Um, if you think about Polygon POSOS or blockchains in general, they're like the hardware. So, we're the software layer. We're the we're the layer that sits on top of blockchain.

So, there's always a close relationship between the chain and and the layer that we serve, which is really a modular set of onchain building blocks as sequence itself. And there's so many things from wallet infrastructure to transaction delivery to real-time uh data querying and indexing to crushing intents, which is our latest product trails, which we're super stoked about. Um it's about always creating a unified developer experience so people can build really cool things and then also be able to then um you know transact on them and deliver amazing user experiences and then ultimately allow them to build really robust businesses on there so they can monetize well. So although we have our own wallet you which we're all very focused on account abstraction we've been you know our company's been around since December 2017. Um you know it's over eight years we have an amazing

team of very experienced people who've been building even longer than that. Um you know a lot of deep things we have a lot of EIP behind our belts. you know that that's kind of our background. I mean I've also known Sandeep for quite some time. Um obviously huge respect for the team and and the group there and and Sandep being a very prolific leader. Uh I mean Polygon POS has done two trillion dollars of of volume uh value transfer over their network which is just phenomenal. And our indexer team knows damn well when we're indexing the chains polygon takes the longest indexes has the most activity literally um which is really funny. Um and but but yeah you know so for us is very natural. I think the a layer vision I think the way you could see Sandeep and team thinking and Mark and others thinking about it's not

one chain it's all of the chains it's all of the value layer there's a there's an ecosystem of chains here and how do we connect them all and unify them and the egg layer like very spoke to me obviously because it's it's exactly the vision of trails and it's just an it's what makes sense as you know for the vision and the path that we're on and of course I mean I'm also super stoked to work and collaborate with the broader team like John and Mark and Neil and every so many great people and mooded and others um but you know I always think a lot about internet native commerce internet native finance was which was what crypto represents to me as the next generation rails for so many things that we're be able to to tap into. Why I love MS about is it's about

sequences the crypto Legos and then you know Coin Mey and other things are the the the tradey Legos. We connect them all together. We have the MS and we have something extremely competent um and capable to just make it make everything seamless and easy. So pretty stoked. >> Yeah. Yeah. By the way guys, we're calling this Neo Finance. is kind of this convergence between legacy finance and DeFi. Um you'll see more of that from our side coming up. I think it's the the term DeFi in of itself does not exactly represent what's happening for example here and with a lot of the more interesting uh actual practical applications of blockchain in today's world. It's a lot of this kind of convergence happening and we're placing a lot of our material focus capital and

just efforts into this kind of uh cohort of of of projects, teams and ideas. So very glad to have you guys on the Yeah. >> And and and neither does fintech and legacy fintech. We we believe this is an upgrade to the existing the the legacy finance system the the legacy crypto system and you guys are a shining example of this. You know, when I when I was first reading through the open money stack and and you know, learning about this today, I was like, "Wow, is Polygon becoming a neo bank?" But the more that I think about it, this is bigger than just a bank. This is really an exhibition of neo finance in general because it is open and it it is a platform for all forms of money through the vanilla payments all the way through to the most complex and esoteric uh

forms of finance. And so kudos to you guys for leading the charge and really pioneering when you're when when you're thinking ahead too and in the open money stack blog post you guys laid out you know this will serve as the foundation for the next 30 years of finance. If you guys are forward looking a bit how do you think this is going to play out? What are some of the milestones over the next 30 years? Some of the key things to keep in mind as we evolve as an industry. >> Mark or John feel free to to take that one. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I love this question. I think step number one is going to be and it's probably the easiest one to answer is that you know all money is going to be on chain and and that's really the core of like Polygon's mission is to

make sure that all money moves on chain. Um once that actually happens um we now have liberated ourselves from so many of the uh restrictions and constraints that like currently exist and you know I think that's going to be in lots of forms right so like stable coins is one form of that I think tokenized deposits is going to be another form of that I don't think it's just going to look like stable coins but ultimately we're going to have it all on chain and once that actually exists now we're no longer talking about like on-ramping and off-ramping as being necessities um they're going to be the rare things that we do over the next 10 years. I think they're going to be things that we're mostly going to be doing. When we get like 10 years out, we're actually rarely going to do that. And the key to

that is going to be and and [clears throat] this is really core to the open money stack and I think differentiate it from from a lot of others is really doing something with your money when when you're there. And John touched on this, the idea of like yield products. You also need to be able to like hold for, you know, investment purposes any products, which is where RWAs end up coming in. you need to be able to like trade anything as well. But you ultimately want to have a world in which people don't need to move offchain. And so if you fast forward, you know, 30 years from now or hopefully much sooner than that, you live in this world where money is just moving like incredibly fast. And when you want to remove uh you move out of an investment, you're immediately moving out of an

investment. You're going to have like identity that's going to be on chain that's going to allow you to do that. And this vision of like I think what most people somewhere like deep down think of what you know blockchain should become from a financial perspective will actually become that. And I think that fin that finance that payments is really the the wedge to making that happen. You get in from that perspective. It's the thing that everybody needs every day and then you expand from there into all the other use cases that people want. >> Yeah. Neil Peter, anything to add there? Yeah, I think what's really cool about the stack is that it's it's not so much a consumerf facing application as it is a stack for a lot of the businesses that

hold accounts with billions of consumers around the world. And by going direct to them with a turnkey offering, they're then able to very quickly, you know, weeks, uh, be able to render user experiences for their users that is onchain. And and onchain, you know, why do why do I care if I'm just a consumer and I'm maybe not a a DGEN or a crypto enthusiast? Is really 247. It's your money. You should own it. It's also access to living a multicurrency life where people outside the United States are able to maybe bank on the dollar, you know, bank on the dollar and or Bitcoin or Ethereum or Pull, right? And be able to have that multicurrency uh ability to live your life uh in a

digital first way, I think is really exciting just from like the social economic impact that that can have on global finance. Uh when you think about that from like a consumer perspective, but then you get into all these different use cases around gaming and real world assets and identity um and the stack can support all of that while money is the the core focus and if you can solve the money problem you can solve all those other problems quite easily. Uh it's really exciting to see you know longer term what this can manifest into. >> I'll say that I love your guys term of neo finance. It's exactly right. Um, another point I'll make is interesting because we've served developers who are looking to build on chain for a long time and there's a you can make the smoothest experience. You make the best

wallet. You make the no gas. You can use any wallet. You do crosschain and then guess what? And then users show up and they're like they can't onboard. They can't onboard their fiat. They can't even spend any money because they don't have crypto. So like in order for a business in in this era of crypto and applications, you know, there's so many great benefits, but there's still fragmentation. There's fragmentation with crypto which has been introduced by so many chains, so many different tokens and so forth. But then there's fragmentation just around you know geographies and different currencies globally and how do you on-ramp again as well. So you know for me sequence of course we've been focusing on the fragmentation problem is so wide and broad and known but really it's it's just as bad on the other side you know and then connecting it all together in

in the world of internet native finance or neo finance I think is is a really important uh thing to solve and massive opportunity and again I polygon is extremely well positioned to take it. Yeah, >> from my perspective, the the real winners here are the end users. Like this will significantly impact the user experience for the better as a result of unifying all of the experiences that you guys have built for customers over the years. John, I'm I'm curious maybe you could put that into, you know, more specific terms. You know, how will this impact end users on Polygon, you know, before and after? Uh maybe you could give us a sense of how the product may evolve here.

>> Yeah, 100%. Um, you know, the user experience is is is one of the primary goals here of building a unified stack. Um, you know, we we we've made reference in the past to how the internet really freed information, right? And the open money stack is going to free money. And I think the propagation of that and sort of the order of operations is actually quite similar. You know, when the internet came about, it was obvious early on like why it was important for information to better flow between yourself and maybe someone uh in India or someone in a distant country. But it took a while before it actually made sense. You know, how is the internet impacting my day-to-day life at home?

How is it changing the way I interact with my neighbor? You know, how is it changing the way I think about uh my friends? You know, or I think about connecting with people dayto-day. And the same thing will sort of happen in the way that money starts to be advanced in that tomorrow it will become easy and obvious for how you might move money internationally or how you might get money into a foreign currency you couldn't think about before you know but over time it's going to hit you more at home daytoday what is my money doing for me you know while it's sitting and how is it doing that automatically and how am I making decisions about that where I want to or not making decisions but benefiting from this network uh when I don't want to. And so I think in an

ideal state, just like the internet really with Wi-Fi kind of started to fade into the background, we weren't dialing up anymore and making this intentional action to interact with it. I expect to see the open money stack in many cases fade into the background, you know, and disappear behind the kinds of applications that you or I are used to interacting with daytoday. you know, you might go and uh and make a payment somewhere and the source of where that payment comes from, you know, whether it's a DeFi source or a currency source or a bank source can be completely irrelevant to you. And that decision can be made, you know, because you have this interconnected stack. In the short term, that might look like decisions between, you know, one of the amazing things that Coinbay brings us, right, is a cash

on-ramp, you know, a way to actually go and make a payment with cash where you otherwise couldn't. you know, in the longer term that can look more like DeFi or RWAS or lending, you know, or other types of creative uses of money. Um, you know, maybe these things even plug into, you know, mega financial apps like Poly Market and what that's evolved into. So, we really need to build those core commons through this stack to enable those kind of step function experiences with money that sort of change the way we think about it or don't have to think about it in our day-to-day. And so that's maybe like the very top level aspirational and then kind of you know working it down to an actual action.

This has a lot to do with you know how you make a payment intent and decision right and then how you think about the money that's at rest and how you plan for it in the future. Um and all of those little moments we go through dayto-day. so much of our of our day is actually wrapped in commerce, right? Um I think those are the places where the open money stack will just alleviate the overhead of thought in the same way that you know Wi-Fi and the internet has alleviated the overhead of thinking about how I might send a message to my neighbor which would still be over right text message today you know or over messenger or over any other internet service versus walking next door which in the early days of the internet made more sense. So I think aspirationally that's where we're headed and from an

experience standpoint a lot of this stuff really should disappear and we keep you know in crypto we keep hoping that will happen and we do that sort of at the layer and we kind of wait for everyone else to build the solutions. You the open money stack is really a statement here by polygon that we are going to build those layers to actually enact this and allow it to happen not just wait for everyone else to catch up and figure it out. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. One thing that I I just want to add on to this is that um when when we were putting together the vision for the open money stack, one of the things that hit me is like the impact that we're going to make. So, you know, I've been in crypto a long time, right? And everyone talks about like, you know,

changing the world and this and that, but frankly, like most of the time I feel like it's total BS. like I I'm not like really into it, but like as we were writing this this vision and like working through like the product and what it's going to look like. It it's actually one of the first times in my lives that I sat there and I'm like, "Oh, we're like actually going to change the world." And we have this line in the the open money stack vision that talks about changing the way people experience money. And and I actually spent like a lot of time like reading that line and debating it. this idea of like the experience of money because people don't really think about it as an experience, but it really is, right? Like our our, you know, our daily experiences are defined as some parts of them by how

we're going to send money to people and and how we're going to interact, whether it's for commerce purposes or sending money home or, you know, whatever else it might be. And if we can change what that looks like and it turns from like a burden into something that as John said just, you know, fades into the background that you don't think about anymore, this is a huge win. And like it it's not just people think about this only on the consumer side. And it is very true, right? If you want to send money back home, you know, a day two day difference can actually make a very big difference. And like the ability to actually get it, like how do you get cash into crypto today? Um, it's actually very difficult. you think of from like an access perspective, the impact that it has when we're able to

like leverage what Coiny's built to actually let people get cash into crypto and send that back home. It's it's huge. But then you also think about it from a business perspective. Like a lot of what we think about is building something that's like, you know, B2B and B2B TOC and eventually, you know, B TOC. And there's people behind businesses, right? And like every time somebody needs to, you know, stay at work late because a payment didn't go through or they need to like wait for something or they have to get in early to make a payment. That's actually like completely unnecessary. Like we should be able to like avoid that so that people can actually just like enjoy their their lives and still get done everything that they wanted to even faster than they did before. Um, so anyway, that's a way of

just saying that like I think whether it's across businesses or consumers, the really idea is that we can like change how people experience money completely. >> Yeah. Mark, kind of following up on that, I saw some data from Blockworks recently with regards to Polygon transaction activity as well as REV, which is like their kind of economic value measurement uh analytic point a and it's gone, you know, quite quite exponential the last couple of weeks. uh what is that people are are attributing that to poly market I I think that it's more probably attributable to some of the payments flows and then as a result of this open money stack acquisition here of coinme um and sequence you know what kind of uh what kind of numbers are

you expecting to put up in in 2026 and 2027 >> yeah so I think there's so so there's two sources for for those transactions one of them is definitely poly market it's like fantastic to have one of the most successful actually the most successful app in in crypto on on Polygon. Um, and so I think that's really important. The second one is payments. And so if we pull up when we pull up a Dune dashboard around payments and we look at what you know May of last year until today looks like, it literally is an up only chart and consistently one month beating out the next month in terms of volumes that applications are doing. And the the really interesting thing is these are not just like it's it's payment

applications, it's also like on the P2P side of things. Uh it's also really interesting to see the types of transactions, right? A lot of smaller transactions being executed. Um right and we're very controlled in this in terms of like excluding smart contracts and things like that. So we know that it's like true like payments, right? So um that that I think has been has been great in terms of what we we expect. The the general idea here is that Polygon has the opportunity to replace current infrastructure that exists, right? Like when money moves onchain, what what's not being used, right? And I think most importantly, Swift is, you know, is is the number one one target there. Um then you start getting to, you know, card networks on top of that and

opportunities to to replace card networks. um when you look at the market value that exists there um you're talking about somewhere close to a trillion dollars of value between what Swift would be if you actually turn their their revenue into um actual you know market cap and if you take those networks and and you turn them into market cap um that trillion dollars of value right there is a trillion dollars of value for you know the Polygon chain um and for the pole token that can be taken um and that's not all going to exist on the chain itself, right? We very much believe as as I think Peter really touched on on well this multi-chain world. It's actually really cool frankly when we see all of this come together which is Polygon's bet on

this multi-chain world for a long time with the the a layer being built out and this will just accelerate with you know coin me supporting you know any type of chain not just you know polygon um same thing with with trails and the a layer doing the same but when we all uh you know we kind of bring together and aggregate those crosschain flows along with everything on on polygon um we are truly looking at like trillions of dollars of value being created especially as the economy just continues to grow Um and from our perspective that's that's growth in you know the the pole token um which is obviously where we focus our time and attention.

>> Yeah. Yep. All right guys closing out um Neil uh with uh the Coinme side 48 states operation money transmitter licenses compliance infra custodial infra physical fiat cash to crypto 50,000 retail locations. What's on your road mapap here first couple months into the end of the year for this collaboration? And same thing with you, Peter. What are you guys both most focused on to make an impact in the immediate term? Close us out here. >> Yeah. Well, we've got a several large partnership announcements that are coming out over the next few months, and those partnerships are really driving unique use cases uh leveraging the

stack. So, uh keep an eye out for those. uh we're excited to to bring those to market and be supporting those partners on the back end. I'd say there's for us uh it's really building out more of that payments roadmap, payment orchestration, opening up more regions, getting uh really better on the the costs side of things. Uh because there's always interchange fees and costs that always get passed down to consumer. We're doing a lot of innovation around how to bring those costs down so that maybe using physical cash to buy a stable coin is actually cheaper than using a debit card, bar none. And we're able to do that and bring that to market. Uh and then maybe using Coin Me for card processing is actually cheaper than

using a traditional card processor. Uh and we'll be bringing that to market as well. So, not only is it on chain, it's actually about efficiencies. And as you we all know in this neo finance world, there's a lot of efficiencies uh by building a a blockchain internet first financial system. And those efficiencies will start showing up in these user experiences where people could care less that it's neoinance or crypto or DeFi or onchain. It's just cheaper, faster, and a better user experience. And that's what our roadmap is focused on.

Yep. And Peter, uh, what's next for Sequence? >> Yeah. So, I'm not sure if you guys caught it, but we did launch an awesome product called Trails, uh, in December. Um, so HPS, uh, trails.build, and it's a product that is focusing on transaction orchestration across any chain, any token, any wallet. You can show up with MetaMask even without using the new fancy 7702 thing. Um, and you can do a one-click cross-chain transaction that can swap, bridge, and execute a transaction. Why it's so important is it solves a gargantuan fragmentation problem for any any application building or DEX or marketplace or wallet or anything at all that's doing anything on chain and wants to say hey like hey any user you can connect and you can transact and we can monetize you so we

can facilitate very smooth commerce on chain and so trails is is doing really well we're really stoked about integrating it's free to integrate anyone can plug it in it comes with an like you know intense based backend it also has a really robust SDK even like a widget library So, um, yeah, we're going to keep leaning into that. And the the goal for Trails is really to expand and have as much network and chain coverage as possible, including token coverage with low latency and low fees. And that's pretty much it. Trails is built on top of sequence. So, and sequence is onchain building blocks that are that are of modular components. So, there's a lot of stuff that we're working with um with sequence. One of the things we like to do with sequence is really work with the customer and then go backwards. It's

like what do you want to do on chain? How do you want to connect the Legos? you can use sequence guaranteed because there are so many of the Legos it's a matter of how you're looking to compose and solve the complexity what's your flow um we have a lot of really cool things that are coming out so it's about for us it's a really f like since the beginning of our company it's always about utility and activity on chain on many many chains and so again there's a lot of cool things that we have in the works with polygon even before and with polygon so it's those are two efforts plus so no shortage of exciting things to work on this year >> gentlemen neo finance It's happening right in front of our eyes.

Congratulations again Mark John on the acquisition uh Neil Peter on the partnership guys. Thanks for joining us today. It's been awesome and again congrats. This is awesome. >> Super fun for us. >> Thanks guys. >> See you next time. >> Ye is built for big moments. The most fun you'll ever have with your crypto. Go to yeet.com to yeet into your next game.

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>> Yes, sir. >> Polygon. >> Bullish. >> Boom. I mean, it crypto M&A is real. >> Huge acquisition. Also, coin uh coin gecko was up for $500 million rumored today, which is huge as well. >> Oh, yeah. >> Um, this is great. This is a home state accepting stable coins for state payments. >> It's pretty bullish, man. >> I love to see it. Um, so following President Trump's signing of the Genius Act, Florida must ensure that our state is keeping pace with technology and the president's bold vision, says the CFO of Florida proud to propose legislation that will bring uh ensure Florida is ready for the future of financial

transactions with stable coins and that we are protecting consumers in the financial market. Um, yeah. Look, I tend to think that this could happen behind the scenes anyway, but they are making it known that as the Neo finance movement takes hold, they will continue to support stable coins and NEO finance payment methods at the highest levels of government, including the great state of Florida. We love Florida. We are from Florida. >> Yeah, man.

>> Support Florida's fora into the stable coin space. >> Yeah, love it. and and they also have this Bitcoin um reserve coming as well which I think is super cool. So Florida's taking a a step forward in crypto which is bullish. So maybe you can tell your girlfriend what industry you work in now. >> Um she's known for quite some time and uh she's also very supportive of neo finance. Thank you Andy. Let's move right along. What what let's see what what do we have coming up next? Maybe we'll get Andy's new girlfriend on the show sometime.

>> See what she thinks about neo finance. >> Yeah. Which one is that? Not sure what you're talking about there, bud. >> Uh, yeah. I I hell is that. Um, you know, you don't you don't quite have just one girlfriend. >> Whoa. All right, moving on. XRP soul link gain Bitcoin level classification. Again, our friend Eleanor, >> not sure what's up with her profile picture there. Maybe we'll scroll scroll down a little bit. >> What's going on? >> Here's an interesting section giving some token classification as non-insillary assets based on their inclusion in exchange traded products as of Jan 1. XRP soul, Litecoin, HR, Doge, Link are treated the same as Bitcoin and

ETH from day one. >> Debatable. If a token is the main asset of an ETF list listed on a national securities exchange and registered uh with the SEC will not be required to file disclosures that other tokens require file. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's kind of interesting. But unfortunately, these assets are different and the four mentioned or five mentioned are definitely different than Bitcoin and ETH. They have a way different internal policy, way different hierarchy of command. Actually, I would say that Dogecoin is pretty similar to to >> Bitcoin to Bitcoin. I agree with that, which is funny actually.

>> Link, Ripple, Salana, >> Hideera, >> but I mean, you you also have to say Bitcoin and ETH are vastly different. Like, >> yes, of course, >> Dogecoin is more similar to Bitcoin than ETH is to Bitcoin. >> I agree. >> You could even say Litecoin is more similar to Bitcoin than ETH is to Bitcoin, but somehow ETH has been grandfathered in as well. >> Yeah. So, I think it's bullish. These are companies that um look, you also had the XRP lawsuit with the SEC. >> They won. >> They won. So, they're already moving in the right direction. The rest of these companies um I think it certainly behooves them uh to not be considered securities. Like we said earlier, um it's okay if something is listed as a

security. I think more companies are going to end up going public if they're deemed securities, but obviously in the short term, um, you know, it's much it's a much easier path to kind of have your destiny wide open, not be, you know, pigeonholed into >> yes, >> uh, securities regulations with all the disclosures that are required. Um, if you choose to become one, >> so be it. But we don't want anyone forcing anyone into securities laws. >> Yeah. All right, guys. Last one on the US politics arena here coming up. Um, we've got a unveiling of the long-awaited crypto bill. As we know, we've talked about this kind of adnauseium today. So, um, yeah, guys, I

mean, there are certain status quos that are being developed as a result of this action in DC this week. Um the there is uh this is the passive yield for stablecoin uh kind of section that I was talking about where banks are kind of getting a win if this stays as it is. Um so look guys I mean this is the regulation happening in the space. It's the regulatory clarity that as Americans you voted for and we're going to have to figure it out. I mean, >> there's a few more um there's a few more things that have come as a result of, you know, they dropped the draft, so everyone was like, you know, very, you know, excitedly awaiting um the vote and the markup that was going to happen. It

was supposed to happen on Thursday. That's getting pushed back. >> Um but what we did get was the draft of the bill that they're going to end up marking up later in January. So, there's a few things. Obviously, we don't know exactly which way they're going to fall on either side of the aisle, but >> I'll just rattle off a couple other uh key highlights that have come out of this draft. You know, we talked about network tokens presumably not securities if they are, you know, linked to a blockchain and they're for the use of the network. Other things that have come out of this draft is a safe harbor for token distributions.

um gratuitous distributions airdrop like activity are presumed not securities offerings including liquid staking uh self-staking programmatic rules-based protocol rewards. So if a if a blockchain programmatically distributes its rewards, not a securities offering. Uh if they're picking and choosing, could be a security. >> Uh disclosure instead of registration, meaning that you don't need to fully register with the SEC. Um, but you do need an initial or semianual disclosure if you have uh less than $5 million raised or if you average less than $5 million less uh in

daily trading volume. This is obviously going to cover lots of teams. Um failure to disclose can result in dellisting. >> So that's pretty big. Centralized exchanges, in order for them to maintain their compliance in the US, they're going to have to be enforcing this. uh certification path to end ongoing disclosures. Um originators can terminate disclosure obligations by certifying that they meet some certain criteria. >> Y >> uh explicit protections for DeFi and software developers. We saw Senator uh Cynthia Lumis talking about this earlier in the program. It recognizes decentralized governance systems as legally distinct from participants and

it protects developers and validators um and separates them from the brokers. Uh it expands AML sanctions and illicit financial controls. So it it it integrates digital assets into the bank secrecy act. Uh and so this is something that you know obviously we want to be in compliance with the bank secrecy act but there was not a carveout for digital assets with clarity. There will be two more >> um >> banking and stable coin provisions. It clarifies permissible digital asset activities for banks and it preserves stable coin holder rewards. And so we know uh that right now there that is a very contentious point between the

rewards for stable coins between banks and stable coin issuers. Yes. >> Um, >> all because of the yield. >> All because of the yield. It's always, it's always come comes back to the yield. >> Uh, the SEC and the CFTC will have a joint sandbox, a joint advisory committee on digital assets. This was something that the framework guys, Michael and Vance, were extremely extremely excited about this innovation hub, uh, where you can come into the SEC and the CFTC and you can tell them what you're doing and they're not going to persecute you. you can actually talk to them and get their opinion about how you should be building a particular innovative financial product.

>> Um the last thing here is bankruptcy and consumer protection. It explicitly protects customer digital assets in bankruptcy. Another thing that people were looking at here was whether FDIC would carry over to stable coins. >> Uh we will see if that is included or not. >> This is all so serious, man. And it's like the era of the wild well west is coming to an end for for the better of of everyone for the legitimacy and establishment of this industry. But man, we didn't like none of this was even a thing a couple years ago. It's just it's just crazy to see how we've came so far with regards to, you know, let's take ourselves seriously. Let's implement the rules that exist and let's build this thing from the ground up with the people that matter, with the governments, with

the financial institutions. It's kind of gone from like this anarchist mode to like this like appease mode. >> Yeah. I mean, as we have gone grown bigger as an industry, I think it was inevitable that right, >> you know, it was always there was always a slim chance that like digital assets, Bitcoin was going to revolutionize and overthrow the legacy financial system. >> As I grew older, I started to grow out of that mindset. I don't know about you, >> um, but I started to realize I was a very unlikely uh path for this industry to go. A much more likely path was that we were going to integrate rather than

revol revolt against correct going to be a more um >> you know dual path back and forth uh integration process and that's what we're seeing here today which ultimately means that they're going to people are going to put rules out there. They're going to go through the process. If they get instantiated into laws as an industry, we're going to have to follow the rules for better. >> Yeah, we are. We are. Guys, follow the rules. Stay long. Stay strong. We'll see you tomorrow. Big day tomorrow. Um I think the market is ready to go, man.

So, let's see where we where we end up. Um we've been waiting for this move for a while now. Um guys, stay long, stay strong. >> [music]