Is altcoin season cancelled? The record Ethereum short, with Carl Vogel

Transcript

GM good morning welcome to the milk Road show The Daily crypto show that won't rug you like Dave P's mem coin and so much more going on there we're going to talk about that today I'm your host Jay Hamilton today we're joined Again by Carl vogo partner and head of research at six-man Ventures one of the top VC firms in the space so much to talk about today everyone is buying Bitcoin Japan wants to buy Bitcoin US states are buying Bitcoin the University of Austin is buying Bitcoin uh at the same time we have the a buildup of the largest eth short position ever we're going to talk about that you thought that Trump the

president of the United States launching a meme coin was crazy well now a country an African country has launched a meme coin over the weekend we're going to talk about that the fear and greed index hit the its lowest point at 35 over the weekend hasn't been that low since September 6 what's going on with the markets and is the is the cycle over is the top in we'll talk about all of that hey guys in two weeks is one of the biggest crypto conferences I'm talking about consensus Hong Kong and we've partnered with them to get you guys 15% off tickets that's February 18th to 20th in HK some of the biggest names and brands in the space are all going to be there speaking and if you want to work in crypto or you just want to get a sense of what is the vibe and what

matters right now to the builders in the space which often gives you an edge on your Investments you're going to want to check this out hit the link in the show notes use the code milk road to get 15% off your ticket today before we jump in if you guys want to stay up to date on this not just from a podcast and a YouTube video but also from a daily newsletter you've absolutely got to subscribe to the milk Road newsletter it's free it's five minutes in your inbox every day to keep you guys on top of all the stuff and there's so much stuff happening and we are just getting started the next year is going to be bananas so make sure you subscribe if you're not already subscribing to the newsletter let's jump in Carl what's going on my man welcome back to the show

terrific to be here again just celebrating the Eagles Victory go birds for all the Eagles fans out there uh incredible night incredible Redemption uh ever so slight a hangover today you look you look great man considering you know I KN I knew you would be celebrating I was thinking about you yesterday watching watching the game I knew that's my goal is that at night you are thinking about me you're just like you know what I wonder what Carl's doing right now what is Carl shorting what is Carl trading what is Carl watching well that's why we got you back on the show today I'm not the only one thinking that I think our listeners are thinking that too okay let let me start with Bitcoin because there's so many headlines for Bitcoin right now and it feels like

nobody is really paying attention to them because there's so much noise in the market uh and so let me just read off these headlines and then we'll get your takes first uh the Japan Financial Service Agency has said they're going to lift their ban on bitcoin and crypto they're going to likely approve a Bitcoin ETF and let's let me be clear here Japan is the fourth largest GDP in the world they're a tech focused country and they're they love buying gold like their retail investors love buy gold so there's a real there's a real good connection here also 22 States 22 US states have proposed Bitcoin Reserve bills that are currently going through the process Utah is at the

front they've made the most progress they've already reached approval in the house and now it's on to the Senate metap Planet announced that they're going to buy2 billion dollar worth of bitcoin by 2026 so over the next year micro strategy what they they a week ago they said they were going to pause buying Bitcoin that was a week ago everybody and then they rebranded the strategy and then they bought 750 million Bitcoin so their their pause was the shortest pause as a pause for ants and then the University of Austin uh also bought $5 million of Bitcoin I mean nothing nothing that's going to move markets but it was what they said they said we don't want to be left behind so just I Know Carl a lot a lot of news a

lot of headlines there uh any any thoughts on on all of those well we also know micro strategy did a Rebrand to strategy and I feel like they should have rebranded to Big Balls in the current climate um I think what we're seeing here is a continuance of limited Supply and growing demand and at first you know before institutions were afraid to be first for fear of public perception for fear of equity prices going down for fear of public backlash and now there is such incredible support both at the political level with a pro crypto House and Senate in the US um and just in general across Society Bitcoin

becoming even more normalized as a store of value um and growth asset I would say that demand is going to be outpacing supply for the next year I mean I think that's just becoming increasingly clear and to your point you know5 million is a small buy relative to some of the buys that we're going to be seeing and I think bitcoin's inflation rate right now is what one and a half percent I mean we're between one and two like Bitcoin demand is going to be growing much much much greater than 1 to two % over the course of 2025 so I mean Bitcoin continues to be the the bull workk of my crypto position and just something I have incredible faith in going forward over the next over the next year doesn't

mean there's not going to be drops like we're seeing these Touches at 90k but generally if you look forward one year it's going to be in a much better position than where we're at now yeah it's just it feels like the most obvious trade of Our Lives that for some reason most of the world is totally missing and not here yet but it's going to come fast and I think there's I think the thing that's it's obvious to me is there's going to be when there is moves up as they always are in crypto it'll move up really quickly uh so I mean this is probably I'm saying something that I'm sure everybody listening already knows but just like Carl I hope you all have large bags in Bitcoin uh because it's just it's just so so obvious and so easy

and don't get greedy and get stuck looking for 100x we'll talk about meme coins in a second where's the bearish news normally when you'rea an asset there's a mix of uh you know positive news and negative news and signals and you're trying to integrate across these and determine where the signals and the noise is I think there's almost virtually no negative NES on the Bitcoin side I mean everything coming out is is positive and so to your point when you're an investor again not Financial advice um when you're an investor you want to make big swings at limited times right it's like you know what I think there's a unique buying opportunity here there's great um fear there's great um greed and position your largest buys accordingly I

am a fan of dollar cost averaging but I think here it's like everything is going positive for Bitcoin if you're not looking at this as unique buying opportunity it's it's kind of like what what are you waiting for like what other information do you need to see before you realize the table has turned dramatically over the past three months I me think about even just less than three months ago where we were pre-election I mean it is truly truly night and day yeah I mean the the thing that stands out for me that I am very confident is we will never dip below 70k Bitcoin again 70 65 I don't even know if we'll get that low but I'm quite confident we're never going below that ever again and I think there's a good chance that we never we never even come

close that again so yeah it feels it's just so obvious to me let's talk about uh here on milk Road what's that big predictions here on milk Road big predictions big predictions uh let's talk about eth because we talk about eth every day on the show right now and eth Is Well everybody's very the consensus on bitcoin is very clear eth the consensus is not clear there is really both sides here lots of people thinking it's dead it's over lots of people thinking this is the bottom and it's only up from here but the big news right now is that the short position on eth is the largest ever in history what's your thoughts on this Carl well

there's one of two things going on here one could just be Market manipulation specifically people opening short positions to drive down the price to then accumulate at scale I mean that is entirely possible it won't be the first time in crypto we've seen Market manipulation it will not be the last time in crypto we see Market manipulation so that is certainly one answer the other answer is possibly eth has not found its footing I mean if you look at Bitcoin just very clear interest clear Nar artive store of value Global State asset you know strategic reserves it's it's found its it's its narrative very clearly and it's just grow that is growing again you know I'm a fan of the barbell of Bitcoin and salana salana continues to be such a clear thesis

asset the president launched a mem coin on it uh I mean just the amount of growth there is incredible I think eth is kind of in this muddy middle it had this ultrasound money meme for a long time but you know even since the the the uh the fork we now you know eth became deflationary we're now back to the point where there's more eth than there was before so this ultrasound money meme has pretty much dissolved and I think the ethereum community is now wondering how is this asset going to grow how is it going to accumulate value most of the value very clearly being siphoned off by all these l2s which are parasitic in a sense to the price of eth so the question is what happens to eth asset and I think it's a it's a really hard time for the ethereum community a lot of

blame is going towards the ethereum foundation and uh a lot of consternation so I think he it just doesn't have a clear narrative and and growth um you know set of headlines right now and that's really hurting the price that's uh it it I mean it's a tough one it's definitely uh my my view continues to be that we are close to the bottom and ethereum has the network effects and the institutional adoption that it will have a great cycle um we had Dan tapiero on the show last week and he's he's predicting 8K eth for this year uh but the big thing he said is he said the Bottom's not in yet he thinks we still could go lower from here

so uh what's what's driving that I mean to go to 8K I mean that's a three to 4X from where it's at now I mean where is this growth because the the what I've heard from the eth community for a very long time is the institutions are coming the institutions are coming and that's going to be the major growth driver well we can talk about this later I know we will but I was at the Ono Summit in New York which was incredible event and they just launched their own blockchain and they are positioning themselves as the blockchain for all these Rew World assets that these traditional firms and Banks investment Banks can deploy on and so I think you're going to start to see more blockchains coming out that all of a sudden the institutions are coming well they are but they may not be going

to ethereum mnet or somewhere else so I what's driving that that EK prediction I'm not going to answer that question right now you guys are going to have to go back all of our listeners you set me up nicely you set me up real nicely here Carl go back and listen to the show with Dan tapiero to get to the answer to Carl's question from last week uh okay Carl let's talk about I want to talk about meme coins but but first let's just talk about where we're at right now in the cycle and this the the questions that we're seeing all all over the timeline is is is the cycle over is this the top uh and the what the data is showing us is a very interesting

Divergence between institutional sentiment and Retail sentiment so fear and greed is usually never as low as as I said it hit 35 over the weekend usually in a bull cycle as we're in right now fear and greed does never hits that low so we have this weird dichotomy of retail being very fearful which is never which doesn't usually happen in the bull and at the same time institutions seem to be doing the opposite now I do think there is a large difference in institutions are looking at much different assets than a lot of the retail are looking at so we can chat about that but what are your thoughts on this dichotomy between retail being so

fearful and institutional professional investor in sentiment being so bullish right now I think it's a great great dichotomy we see and the way I rationalize it is the retail Narrative of sort of endless coins people are starting to grow a little bit tired it doesn't mean that there's not great opportunities there people in the trenches are winning big right now but it's it's a little tiring it's like wait this coin's G to go up and I can't even you know go to the bathroom by the time it's dumped 40% right and so I think people you know before we had a couple altcoins like the the the Pepe the dog with hat the does and you kind of hold those for fourth cycle and just

accumulate I think the pace is increasing and so that means that for a lot of retail it's just getting increasingly hard for them to stay active and have a relatively uh you know up up portfolio and balanced portfolio on the institutional side they're just getting started again the institutions have been on the sidelines all the all the while we've been going throughout you know 2024 into 2025 institutions have been waiting and only now that we have Trump in office and the the pro crypto House and Senate they're just getting started and so that's why there's inredible optimism um I can't tell you the amount of times I've heard you know tokenized treasuries over the past week and every institution is

eyeing putting this trillion dollar asset class on chain I mean it's incredible optimism but on the retail side it's like people are waiting for the next set of narratives and so I think that to me is how I rationalize these two different views where the guys in suits are are loving life and then the people in the trenches are what's next I'm I'm ready yeah it's it's very I think you nailed it with your comment about you can't go to the bathroom without the meme coin dropping 40% because that is the truth what we're seeing right now is we've never we've never had so many the the the rate of tokens launching is increasing right and if you are in the meme coin trenches the

way you make money the way you really make money is off of new token launches so there's always going to be there's a high appetite for new tokens if you have more new tokens then there's going to be then the dollars are moving out of the the Blue Chips nobody's hodling really anymore and they are going to try to grab the next token that launches but the problem is the this the they drop so quickly like you you basically have to buy the same day it launches and then sell like within that day right so it's just like you know it's it's it's addult dgen musical chairs basically right and it's it's impossible to stay on top of

and so I think you're right I think there is a there's a bit of a a like a souring and a like a a tired of it um that is really I think causing retail to kind of have low sentiment right now and not feel good about the market but it's just so it's so wild to see it when you look at because because here on the show I'm talking I'm not talking to retail Traders every day I'm talking to professional investors and institutions and you know funds like yourself and everybody's so bullish and so pumped and like it's never felt so good and so it's this it's really interesting to see I hope everybody listening is as excited

as as we are and you know just really don't there's so much noise right now now that's the big thing I see there's so so much noise and it's really hard to separate the signal from the noise and not get caught up in all of that noise yeah and um and to not get overleveraged like you know what I have my blue chips that's where most of my cryptonet worth is I'm gonna play in the trenches and I'm going to do it for fun but I think people are also have sometimes too high in expectations it's like you don't 10x a coin it's it's a bad expectation I'm like over you know a lot of funds if you can 3 to 5xa trade over five to six months that's incredible you just do that repeatedly you're going to you know you're you're total chat right so I

think the the difference of expectations too for institutions is different than somebody that's sitting on the couch watching a Netflix show and just looking the 10x by the time they go to bed uh for like a a one Soul buy right and so I think you're seeing all these things coming together but I continue to remain really optimistic on the retail side on the mecoin side but I do think retail needs to say you know what not everything is coming back you know we we know that when Bitcoin is down it's coming back we know that ethereum is coming back to some extent we'll see where that ends up like coming back we know Sal is coming back most assets especially the meme the meme coins they're not coming back like remember memes are attention markets and so just like your Twitter T you know timeline

changes one day to the next with dramatically different things that are funny so are the ideas and the coins associated with those things and so you have to have a fast turnover in order order to stay relevant to the most the ideas that are generating most attention otherwise your idea is not going to come back quick break from the show to tell you guys about the crypto.com card people often ask me uh which credit cards I use how I spend my onchain dollars well I use the crypto.com card here's why I like it no annual fees love it uh lots of great perks Netflix subscription Spotify subscription cash back in crypto love it get me more on chain dollars and if you're a traveler like me get lounge access I've got the

icy white card which gets me lounge access when I travel so if you guys want a great card check it out today link is in the show notes hook yourselves up so you can start to spend your onchain dollars now back to the show with more from Carl okay well what got the biggest attention in meme coins over the weekend was that the Central African Republic this is a country in Africa launched their own meme coin so and and let me let me be clear here that's what we think happened there is some speculation that it might have been a hack or might have been AI from what I don't know what you've seen so far from everything I've seen it seems like this is legit there's a video of the president talking about

it uh there is and it doesn't seem like it's AI but I mean it's getting harder and harder with the Deep fakes that are out there but they launched this this token C is the ticker and it absolutely skyrocketed it got as high as it got like their GDP this country's GDP is 2.5 billion a year and it got to the point where I think it reached half of their GDP or maybe like 33% of their GDP so like I don't I don't know if you got how do you wrap your head around countries potentially launching meme coins um I think their tools for Capital formation and so ultimately you can

imagine countries have like most of their regular currencies have have I I don't know the Central African Republic's currency I'm not you know saying whether it's good or bad but like a lot of them are sort of subject to inflation well meem coins are fixed Supply like they're volatile but like there's only a set amount out there and if you had a country that didn't just do like a a short-term Spike but say you know we're actually going to create an economy around this and let's say we use it I'm making this up targeted for tourism now you know what come visit Central African Republic if you have this coin you're going to be able to use it in local places the government's going to back it in a certain way like you can actually start to create ecosystems out of these tokens and these

ideas and so I think the do you know the US doesn't really need to because we have the Global Currency like the the top one already but why not use it as a new form of um tourism or a new form of capital formation for specific projects um again there's so much red tape in a lot of these countries to be able to access their Capital markets perhaps this is unique way like if you're at home and you were bullish on I'm just making up any country like it's pretty hard for you to go buy stocks and equities in their in their systems to get access to that country even if there if there is a stock market at all um instead maybe coins are a way to start to gain attention towards these smaller often overlooked countries so it's just

experimentation again this is why I was watching the Super Bowl I wasn't paying attention on Twitter all of a sudden I check it it's like 500 and as much as I wanted to buy it I'm like you know what I missed the trade but that's okay there's going to be more trades to come and so rather than chasing some of these as they continue to go up realizing I just it's okay you're not going to catch them all you don't have to it's not Pokemon don't worry about catching them all just get get a couple and that's where you're going to get a lot of great wins from yeah I really I really like what you're saying around uh how this is all experimentation and what's been really interesting to me is watching what Trump is doing with his coin and what he is doing is he is creating all

of these um products Trump shoes Trump merch he's the nfts and how do you buy them you buy them with trumpcoin so he is creating a demand for his coin and so like look I'm not saying that's going to be a Playbook but you can sort of see it from a I agree from a country perspective hey come visit my country buy this coin you can use it in in country maybe it gets you discounts maybe it gets you access to different things like there is there is something underlying here don't get me wrong I'm not I am certain certainly not endorsing going and buying a car the Central African republic coin I think you are in for a volatile ride if you're there or

or traveling to the Central African Republic I'm sure yeah true yeah uh okay what about what about Dave PNE and uh or pornoy and his his token over the weekend so here's the thing is it is it his coin did he launch this no I think I I got I got frustrated so I stopped looking at Porto coins so here's the thing you can be right thesis wrong timing or wrong coin I think it was probably Friday where all of a sudden he was started tweet about memes and he was started buying something sharing it on Twitter and then selling it which by the way could be illegal I mean that's why there's there's a lot of concern is Dave gonna be okay here we'll we'll see what chicks out over time and what lawsuits are brought but he's basically buying

things using his network of distribution to then those appreci in price and then exiting at some point now he's saying when he exits but if you if you sell first and then post you're on to exit that's uh you know kind of I'm not a legal expert but I'll say it's it's sus maybe just leave it there but there was a ton of these that were coming out there was you know new barcol sports ones there was short noi which I thought was really funny and so I bought a couple of these and I lost on most of them now I made money back on one that I was only down a little bit on the day but I was involved here and then all of a sudden sudden this next I think Saturday this one came out and all of a sudden it just ripped right and so it's

it's uh I I think what's it is interesting about this approach though is he didn't make it so he somebody just sent it to him and he's like hey I like this idea and so if the you know Trum Administration it says meme coins are Collectibles which is said what he said his his coin is let's say we can extend that to most great somebody sent me a collectible that has you know this this ticker I like that ticker I'm going to share with the world that I have this ticker right and so all of a sudden now in the view of Collectibles he's creating focus and attention and Community for his followers in a way that could not have existed before in alternative Capital markets so I generally think being a little bit more uh you know crypto in general is caveat

empor which means if you're buying you need to do your research like there's very little protections here in the trenches um but I I like generally where this is going and I think giving creators the opport to control their own finances and currencies more than what we have exists today is really beneficial oh and by the way what's what is the most amazing is if you're a Creator and you're selling a product it's going to go through Distributors like you actually don't know who your customers are you don't know who your followers are if you perform at Madison Square Garden you don't get emails of anyone who attends your show like it's bizarre but if they have your collectible you have their wallet address and so now you can create a direct relationship with your followers and these collectibles

and now in the form of mean coins could be an opportunity to help uh build better relationships between creators and their fans and that is really exciting um and something I'm very look I'm looking forward to2 yeah it it feels that that kind of gives me uh feelings back to nfts and why everybody was so excited about nfts was building Community uh the truth is I I nobody cares about that stuff right now like not yet like it's so early and nfts were like oh I'm going create 10,000 I was like well Taylor Swift has a lot more than 10,000 fans right and so I think meme coins are endless and they're infinitely fungible so if I'm a small fan I can buy a little if I'm a big fan I can buy a lot and again I think

there's a lot of volatility with these because right now it only correlates to basically just price there's no underlying utility but if you hold a certain amount of these poroid tokens and you can now see Dave because you hold a certain amount okay well you actually might get some price floors built or new forms of like less volatility because there's going to be buyers on the other side that don't just want to buy to get a pump they actually feel a connection with this crater and want to get involved with this collectible like it's it's so obvious when you start mapping it out so that's why for you know teams like Jupiter and Meteora for pump for all these teams focusing on this Creator space with tokens um I expect they're going to do very well yeah I think that which is really

to me there's the main point right there is don't go look not Financial advice but I wouldn't go investing in meme coins I would invest in the pic in the shovels in the infrastructure that these meme coins are built on top of because that dgen casino is not going anywhere and and it's getting and if you want to go trade it and play it sure go ahead but it's hard it's very hard and it's only going to get harder so there's great opportunity I mean on that note the other thing that happened over the weekend is sana's stablecoin tvl flipped their mcoin tvl like that is that's huge right and like people nobody's talking about that nobody's sitting here stable coins stable coins are the dopest thing

in the world they're so incredible they're so huge for for for the world for everybody and nobody every time I talk about stable coins on the show everyone's like B whatever yep it's so important because that's how the big Banks get involved um because today stable coins can't be treated as cash and cash equivalents they're separate assets and so if you're a customer at a bank they can't issue a portion of your Holdings and stable coins that let's say they custody and account as your total bank balance it's a completely separate asset class um and actually you know I was I was talking to a very well-known person at a dinner on Thursday that is at one of these top investment Banks and runs digital assets a very senior person and I said if you could get regulation

around stable coins around sort of like what is a security what is a commodity for like tokens or like those classifications and new regulations for exchanges to list assets what would you want he's like stable coins are the 10x larger opportunity than anything else if we get that we can start to bring tokenized treasuries bring the US Dollar on chain which by the way helps the US dollar reach more people in the world who might want access to it um massive opportunity coming up right which just further enhances the US dollar strength as the global Reserve it's like blockchain is saving the US dollar in the long term which is it's wild that the US was fighting it for so long so uh

it's bizarre yeah I know I know let's let's talk about Ando uh you at the tell us about the Ando Summit and what's going on with Ando or what else what takeaways you had from that yeah so the Ando Summit was in in uh New York on Thursday it was a fairly exclusive conference I'd say with 200 people so Ando is is one of the leading sort of real world asset isers they have you know tens of billions of dollars in assets issued on different chains and as you know it's pretty hard you know this this token Ono is valued into tens of billions I I think it was 13 when I checked I don't know what it is right now but at those valuations you know it's like how do you keep growing your Enterprise Beyond just putting more

assets on chain and what they do well they decided to launch blockchain which I think is a terrific idea for them and their goal is that there's benefits in in sort of public blockchains there's benefits and permission blockchains and so they're going to build their own that's going to be able to unify the benefits of both of these towards rear World assets um they have very strong we had a guest speaker come which was uh Donald Trump Jr actually um was at is it Eric Trump this which one is the oldest son is I can't I think it's Eric I think it's Eric is Eric at the event so surprise speakers everyone's like oh my gosh you think about you have the son of the president United States at a crypto conference in New York talking about

digital assets I mean bullish signal hello like it was incredible um but they launched their own blockchain and so when you talk about the institutions are coming I there was leaders from uh you know Goldman JP Morgan Black Rock Fidelity everyone was there like every single person was there who and and they see the trillion dollar opportunity to move these assets on chain and by the way that helps them with economics that allows them to generate new revenue streams and you know Ando his positioning itself as the blockchain where a lot of this Innovation is going to take place so really terrific event um great outcomes and a a fun surprise guest uh to all of a sudden you see Secret Service come out in the in the

room you're like oh boy like this is this is legit so um and here's the thing because Ando has such a great relationship with the Trump Administration it's not inconceivable to say that some of these will be going to Ando and there might be certain sets of block chains where new things are permissible or sandboxed and perhaps Ando is one of those so I'm pretty excited for what the Ando team has been able to accomplish uh during its time would you would you buy Ono right now do you think that's a good buy not Financial advice uh let me see what the current price bring up the chart quickly yeah bring up the chart it looks like it hasn't really moved too much I mean look I I look for I think in investing I look for

opportunities to have limited downside and massive upside and when I see something trading at 13 billion that has a blockchain launching in the future but let's say let's call it six months I don't know when it is to me it seems like there's a lot of potential downside there before you get more news headlines coming about coming out about this going life so risk return this would not be at the top of my list um I think it's certainly one to track and then as you start to see maybe the price start to go down or you start to see more positive news or more institutions coming on the Chain I think that's the time where I'd be really looking to um to invest here but again for me personally not Financial advice I see a lot of potential downside here more than I see immediate upside at a

FDB of 13 billion that's really high app appreciate love getting an honest take it's so great to have it's so great to hear people say they won't buy things it's too many people just saying buy byy byy uh it kind of reminds me what they're doing it makes me think of hype right hyper liquid they launched their per trading platform they had the this great app that's been so successful and then they launched their own chain we're we're seeing that that Trend happening uni chain go live today yeah right or sorry not today uni uni chain is going Live this week I think I mean so it's basically when you get so large how do you keep growing the only possible way is instead of having gas fees that are

being paid on other platforms you bring them to your own platform and you build your own ecosystem and community so we're we're like in the early innings of the amount of blockchains that are going to exist with real value on them again I expect that we're going to see many app chains that exist over time that number is only going to grow up or go up excuse me yeah yeah completely uh okay so let's just before we finish your Carl would love to get your take on just like what nobody wants to buy altcoins right now it's scary out there for altcoins right Bitcoin dominance is continuing don't know what your thoughts are on whether Bitcoin dominance will continue or if we actually will see an altcoin season like it feels like to me it feels like the

opportunity is to invest right now it's to invest in the altcoins that have real Revenue that have real token buyback plants that you know I think about something like a radium that will buy they'll buy and burn 600 million I think tokens in this year those are the types that I would be looking at right now now they're not they don't necessarily get the attention they don't get the hype that you know that a lot of these meme coins are going to get but they feel safer to me when we're in this state of don't really know where we go from here right is I'm not saying I don't think this is the end of the cycle but short term it feels pretty

choppy out there and it could continue to be choppy what are your thoughts yeah I mean I think uh sort of there is this era of you these defi 1.0 coins that you know you look at the AES and the others that are mostly unlocked from an investor base like we talked about this last time I was on the show where if you see a coin that only 25% or 20% of the supply is circulating I'm just saying be careful because there's a lot of people insiders investor private investors and others that may have the desire to sell and so you have to think this coin not only needs to go up in price it needs to overcome potentially some large self pressure as these unlocks happen so I think finding projects that have real utility real revenues going on chain and ideally that have more of their tokens

unlocked or at least if that's not the case you understand the Dynamics of the token well um is is the right approach but the other thing is like it's fine to sit in cash for a while like I think we always think oh my gosh I have to be 100% deployed to crypto and it's like no you know what when these markets are in really uncertain times again it may not be the best opportunity to invest so maybe someone's out there thinking you know what maybe I should hold some Bitcoin maybe some e maybe some salana and I just like build up a little bit of cash and that way when I start to see the market or specific coins turning maybe then is the time to jump in I think that's my one of my biggest mistakes from last cycle is feeling I always need to be exposed to crypto

because what if it goes up and it's like you know what you're looking for opportunities and momentum and Trends and right now it's it's it's a lot of jumble and so maybe sitting in cash is the better approach for a portion of your portfolio that's that's like I have I have more cash in my portfolio right now than I've had I was just G to I was and it's like I'm just less certain on some of the things that I was more certain on before or those those Trends have played out and so now it's great I've sold some let me just sit and wait until I see the next big thing and then and then you know back the truck up what about uh last time you were on the show we talked about deep in h helium had a big announcement recently what what happened there what are your

thoughts on deepen so here's the thing decentralized infrastructure whether it's you know you're talking about like electricity you're talking about your internet your cell phone um has the potential to be orders of magnitude more cost effective and performant than that of a large centralized company trying to operate at scale across you know throughout the world um and basically heling said you know what we have such a big treasury because we've done so well that we're going to enable people to have a free cell phone plant and to me that's where this gets really interesting because now you can go to anyone of the street any you know for retail it's oh I don't want to get into crypto because I don't want to trade mem it's like no this isn't a meme this is a real utility that you can use so helium announced that you can get a free cell

phone plan up to three gigabytes of data a month I think it's a 100 to 300 minutes calling you have to go to the website and check the specifics but a free cell phone plan cell phone plan crazy and so you can imagine you know if you think about crypto being a global Force for good imagine if you're somebody that actually like does struggle to pay their cell phone plan or you have four people in your family and your cell phone plan 200 bucks a month you're like this is getting stupid well now might be the opportunity when it's free to try a plan try decentralized infrastructure and see how it works and then if you go over on monance and you like it well then great then you can start to pay up for a larger plan but the opportunity to try crypto for free

with no risk like think about all the risk we take in crypto there's no risk here you just get a free cell phone plan and you're clear uh I think how how can they offer this do what's what's the uh the fine print here there's no fine print I mean basically what they're doing is it's a form of customer acquisition so what they're saying is you know what we have a large token treasury so we're going to subsidize the payments that a user would normally make onto the network in order to use the different nodes throughout the world we're going to subsidize that so that way the user has a free plan um so there it's just a form of customer acquisition but their expectation is that you're going to like it you're going to use it we're going to use more internet over time as a people and so therefore like

eventually they'll be able to monetize that person for Less their lifetime value of that customer is going to be less than the incentives they're giving up during this period of time to acquire them but I expect you're going to see a lot more of this again I could I could imagine he uh Hive mapper in the future giving out free dash cams because it's like you know what the more data we generate we can monetize that data better than we can by having a smaller Network in charging people for these devices right so I think the UN economics are starting to flip um crypto you get these really interesting phenomenons where treasuries get so large you actually it might be more plus Enterprise Value positive Enterprise Value to make something free and then get a bunch of people excited about your token and build up a huge treasury then

it is to try to charge people and win customers on a onetoone basis so crypto flips the economics of business which is an massive opportunity for new companies to come in and make very big strides and disrupted compet and I think we're just this is the first of many things we're going to see on that path so check it out um if you need a reference uh I think I give you reference or somebody else but go check out helium mobile and see if you can get yourself free cell phone plan yeah definitely it do you think dpin has a moment in in this cycle I mean I know you're very bullish on deepin also I'm very bullish on deepin the thing that I don't know with deepin is if it gets the narrative or if it gets the attention it is certainly there is it is hard to compete with the

attention of memes pretty much impossible right like there that is we are in the internet age attention is going to to go through simpler things than deepin which most people are just not going to understand do you think that it gets the narrative at any point this year um I think it'll have the it h it has the narrative for for the sophisticated investors sophisticated investors are looking at these things saying you know what there's some big opportunities here a lot of these have done like 3 to 5x for example if I look at the geonet chart I mean that thing has doubled in the span of call it four months so there's a lot of these tokens are going to go up two to four 2 to 10x over a period of time because you're going to grow real revenues on chain

that you can monitor um and then pay those back out in the form of buyback and burn or some other mechanism um will it have these headlines everywhere I don't know but sophisticated investors we don't want to be chasing the headlines like I want to be investing in things before it's cool and then all of a sudden people start to catch on and then those things start to to grow in in price yeah don't chase headlines there we go what it Chase Chase waterfall instead what's the old TLC song I maybe Chase grass I think we all need to that's we need to chase grass I like it I like it Carl thanks so much for joining us today everybody listening I gotta know if any of you guys bought car or jail stool or any of Dave Porto's

meme coins are you guys buying any these are you are you moving to cash let us know if you're moving to cash throw a comment uh Carl look forward to getting you back on the show again always a pleasure always a fun thanks a lot thanks for listening in everybody we'll see you tomorrow have a wicked awesome day as always if you liked today's episode please hit subscribe and make sure you follow us so you don't miss out on the next one there's also a link in the description to our free five minute daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you while making you laugh and if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game we're going to also leave a link for milk Road Pro you get access to our portfolio where you

can see exactly what we are buying this is your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto one final note this show is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice investing in crypto or any asset is risky and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose thanks so much for listening in my friends have a wicked awesome day