BlackRock Buys UNI, Tokenized iShares, Robinhood L2 Testnet Live, & Santiago Santos & RJ

Transcript

[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]

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

[music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]

[music] [music] [music] >> The rollup is headed to the [music] top. If we're not already at the top, we're going to the top. We're going. We're on fourth floor today. We're going to be on floor one, and then we're headed straight to the moon, boys. >> [applause] >> Yes, sir. Happy Wednesday. Happy hump day.

Hump day indeed, brother. Sorry for all the crypto holders out there today. Sorry, guys. I was You know, I was thinking about you yesterday because I was listening I I was listening to um Elon's podcast. Go [laughter] suck. Why did that happen? Yeah, I I see that. All right. All right. I got a little excited that I was thinking about him. >> [laughter] >> Um I think you can still hear me. So, I was thinking about you cuz I was I was listening to Elon's uh podcast that he did with the Stripe founder uh the Cheeky Pint uh podcast.

Um and he goes on there and he explains the um the the strategy and the plan behind SpaceX merging with XAI, and then also why they're going to build data centers in space. And he was essentially explaining how I mean I think this is well-known information, but Elon's a big solar bull. And I was just thinking to myself if if we're going to send satellites into space, Elon's trying to build this colony on the moon to like send, you know, power plant satellites up there to harness more solar energy, what does that mean for nuclear on Earth?

And what does that mean for uranium? Be bullish for uranium, man. I'll tell you that much. It's freaking bullish. Um they're going to be mining that thing. It's down today a little bit, but this is a multi-multi-month play. Multi-year cup and handle. I'd like to see if I'd like to make a side bet that you don't last in the uranium position for longer than 3 months I think is actually I would I think I would have to give you better odds at 3 months. I don't think you're going to last more than a month or two in this uranium position.

>> It's dumping snow out here. The vibes are up. So much has happened since the last 24 hours. We were totally spot on about LayerZero. This hair is almost gone. It's I'm I'm I'm about 2 weeks away from getting this thing shaved off. >> You got something scheduled? Nope, but goddammit, does this thing need needs some work here. Um all right, man. Let's go. Um Yeah, let's go. Let's Rumor mill was firing. We were totally right about LayerZero. That was exciting. Um missed a couple things, but Pretty interesting to see the entire industry rally behind LayerZero.

>> Tweeting about it, right? Oh, yeah. It's kind of a lot. It's uh I mean, they obviously went all out. Um they were able to harness the attention. Uh I'd say that I mean, look, they were the biggest thing yesterday. Um unfortunately for LayerZero now, there is something uh that happened today. [laughter] I know. So, let's let's bring up our first headline. Right. Isn't that funny? Yeah, I mean, I had Brian DM me saying thanks for the uh thanks for the shout-out that the first tweet was a bit was a bit rough for them to manage considering it was 2 and 1/2 years in the making, and you know, it just kind of came out of nowhere from my Twitter account before they had a chance to announce it, but he he he ended up being grateful for the marketing support. And

um yeah. That's great. Yeah, I mean, Brian's a friend of the show. He's been on a couple times. Look forward to hosting him again. >> I texted him back. I was like, "Dude, um I was like, "Dude, uh wait till you see what we have in store come March. I think our last podcast I was in some Brazilian [ __ ] Uh just wait till we we we we do our our next one, man." He was like, "I'm stoked." So. Good. Good vibes for the night. That coin's ripping. Um so. >> Yeah, that's a good one. Um and then obviously the other one that's ripping today is Uniswap. Uh so Our first headline here is that BlackRock was at the Bank of America conference. Yeah.

>> We can scroll down on this because I think we have obviously the more relevant BlackRock news, but let's pause here. Uh just some notes about BlackRock. They achieved an organic base fee growth over 5% over six consecutive quarters reaching 9% for 2025. Yeah. Um obviously their their crypto ETF projects uh products um are massive. >> Yeah. 530 billion dollars of organic asset growth for those ETF products. Yeah. Um so, this has become a massive revenue driver uh for BlackRock. Obviously, this was a massive trillion-dollar company beforehand.

Uh they are only growing with the adoption of digital assets. Uh the company targets 400 billion dollars in fundraising for private markets and alternative by 2030. BlackRock is exploring digital wallets as a new distribution channel and tokenizing its entire ETF suite. Um yeah. Now, we're seeing more of the infrastructure become available for BlackRock to tokenize more of its ETFs, more of its money markets, uh and for those to become more widely accepted and composable with the rest of DeFi. Uh and I think, you know, something that they didn't have to do that blew everyone away was them buying Uniswap uh because not only are they using the

underlying technology, they are buying DeFi. Yeah, it's pretty crazy, right? They didn't have to do that. I think this is just this is just a signal that they are deeply invested in this space. They believe in it. They're going to continue to use it, and they want to be exposed to the upside as they pour more capital into these protocols. Yeah. I mean, why don't we get onto that? Um I think that it was pretty significant. We also have like quite a bit of rumor and chatter around what's coming out of the SEC newsroom Yes.

>> that pertains to this. I think we could talk we'll cover that more on Friday, but yeah, I think that this is this is a huge first step. Token ripped. Uh so, let's get into that. Yeah, so let's keep going. I think that is a little bit later to the end of the docket cuz it came up right uh right as the show was starting. So, let's let's move on. Uh we've got some things to get through before we talk about everything BlackRock securitized Uniswap. >> What's the chat saying? AppChain thesis is back. I bet Uniswap really starts to lean in on beefing up their UniChain. UniChain probably pivots their own L1. I don't I have zero speculation on that. Sup, fellas. Good call out on LayerZero, Andy. Long dip before the announcement. Nice pump.

Love to see that. Keep watching the rollup. Yeah, we That was I think dumped as my as my tweet came out and others piled on. I think Nuke, and then um that thing just ripped 45% in 24 hours with size. Like, you get size on it, too. Oh, yeah. It's a top 100 coin. Another another coin here that had some size, Hyperliquid's permissionless perps hit 5 billion dollars in daily volume. Yeah, what a move, man. >> the frenzy fuels record activity. I just keep buying. I I think I'm actually calling out that hype under 30 right now is I think kind We're we're we're in a really peculiar spot, right? We're like we're either, you know, going to put in

a bottom here under 30 because this is happening, HYP 4 is coming out, things are going to be super exciting, and hypes a generational long here at 28, 29 up to the top of the range, or just like a long long-term hold, which I think there's I'm kind of positioned for both. Like I'm positioned for long-term holds, and I'm positioned for let's try to get this thing back up to the top of the range and see if we can make some some nice bear bear market, uh, you know, a little quick flip in the bear, not my specialty, but um But yeah, so I mean I think this is So, what? There was What is the exact numbers here?

5.2 billion dollars of daily volume in just 4 months of being live. HYP 3 silver perps dominate 50% of HYP 3's volume is in silver perps. Uh, silver, Nasdaq index, gold are the leading ones. And yeah, these underlyings follow TradFi hours, and the weekend closures affect volumes directly, but you can still trade on the weekend, just not really much going on. Um HYP under 30 is a gift, even Coinbase launch. Yeah, if you also think >> Yeah, the thing about Coinbase is interesting.

I mean, trading volume, you've got Coinbase at 1.4 trillion dollars notional, Hyperliquid at 2.6. That's a 50% more volume happening on Hyperliquid than Coinbase. In terms of what? Time frame? >> terms of notional volume overall. That's in that's trillions. That's everything total. 1.4 for Coinbase, 2.6 for Hyperliquid. Uh, okay. That's from Okay. That's just because Coinbase just launched perps and in this like like cuz Coinbase is spot trading and Hyperliquid is um been how you can trade 100x perps on it. Like I think that's I don't think that's just perps.

Okay, well, you fact-check that cuz that sounds crazy considering Coinbase has been out for 20 since 2017. I find that hard to believe. >> it's not not all time. I No, this is so year-to-date >> Okay, that's very believable. Yes, that's very believable. Okay. Yeah, I mean, for example, um you know, on February 6th, right? That was the crazy day in the market. Hyperliquid had almost 3 billion dollars daily volume, and then February 7th it hit 153 million, so that was a weekend. Markets were closed, so it dropped a lot. You can just see a lot of how like on-chain perps are increasingly mirroring TradFi demand, but they still kind of fall into the TradFi constraints, like market hours, liquidity gaps. But again, guys, for me,

HYP has been the thing that I've kind of held through my crypto bearishness. If you've if you've been following the show since I was in I don't know, since I I guess since October, and really in November I was like vocally bearish. HYP was something that I held on to. It did get dumped hard. We sold a bunch and then kind of rebought. Um, so Hyper's Hyper's our number one uh position in Good Idea Ventures' liquid portfolio. Yeah so we'll see what happens, guys. It looks terrible. Like the market looks terrible, but Hyperliquid looks good. I actually just saw a good tweet from uh, Crypto McKenna saying that on a P/E ratio basis, Hyperliquid is again under

uh, 10x P/E ratio. So, it's pretty I don't know, it's pretty reasonably priced. I also saw a chart of Hyperliquid's revenue versus Robinhood, um also pretty insane. So, guys, I mean, this is just something that we're riding in our N7 index, part of our Neo Finance thesis. Uh, we have our dashboard live. We'll be sharing more about that shortly, but that's all I got to say about HYP. Uh, yeah, let's move on. We've got a lot to get through. Uh, Hyperliquid uh strategies, tickers PER uh, also bought, I believe it was about 130 million dollars. This news hit today because they filed earnings, um in which that news became public. But

they actually did this, and they were able to get a execution almost at the I mean, at 25. >> 25. Meanwhile, on the screen, 25 billion dollars of negative DAT value from everything else. Zero above their cost basis except for Hyperliquid. Ex- exactly, except for Hyperliquid. So, so given the news that came out this morning, Hyperliquid Strategies is one of the only DATs that are in profit on their buys. Hey, I mean, we'll see how long that one lasts, hey? >> [laughter] >> Stay bullish, my friends, but I think there is something to be said about >> you think they'll capitulate? I think there is something to be said about how if you are in the DAT game, right?

You're Hyperliquid. This guy's the former Barclays CEO, right? The guy running it, Bob Diamond. You are watching the rest of the market just top last other assets. There's just no way you're getting in there and thinking to yourself I'm trying to top last you know, all like Hyperliquid at 50. Like they waited a significant amount of time, whether it was due to their filings or whatever, but that aside, we'll cover that. This is ridiculous. Like I had tweets saying like DATs the DAT trade's going to end in blood, end in tears. People were like, "You're wrong." Santi's coming on a bit later.

He was like, "Dude, this thing's definitely going to get cooked." Like this is terrible. This is really bad. >> [snorts] >> So, who are the biggest losers here? This is really bad. >> mean, MicroStrategy's below their cost basis now, but not by a whole lot cuz they started buying earlier. Bitmain and Sharplink have to be down a lot. Yeah. And so I like, you know, at what point do these LPs start calling? Right? They obviously believe in the underlying.

A lot of these contributions were in kind, meaning that, you know, Bitmain and Sharplink didn't necessarily buy uh, the top of ETH. Yes, they did. They also received lots of ETH in contribution. >> don't think it was that much. Okay, we're going to have to fact-check that as well. >> think a lot of these other shitcoin DATs did, but I think I think I mean Tom Lee's down like 8 billion dollars. Yeah. Yeah, but he also he bought like 12 or 15 billion. Yeah, I mean, led by MicroStrategy here, 4 billion dollars of a loss trading below average cost basis after ETH and Bitcoin dropped about

30-ish percent year-to-date, one of the worst starting off the year drops in the history of the industry. Um This post kind of counters If you guys I don't know if you if you remember Joe Weisenthal, he was he had this bullish DAT thesis, uh, just kind of like this last gasp by quantifying the fallout, where actually wasn't bullish DATs, where crypto holders traded tokens for overvalued equity just before the downturn, which kind of like amplified corporate balance sheet strains and just kind of struggled me me further, caused more of this dispersion.

I don't know, man. This unwind is like pretty bad, and you ought to think people are going to be having to force sell or dilute their bags here. I don't know. I mean, how patient are these guys? You've got Tom Lee buying MicroStrategy. They just went they bought the financial company company Step. I just you know, these these companies, a lot of them are less than a year old. Mhm. I mean, it's insane capital allocation strategy to spend all of the money that you get within a year of being a company.

Um >> [snorts] >> I I but I I think the the time horizon on these things are a lot longer. And so, I'm I'm thinking that if there is blowup, it's because these prices stayed depreciated at these levels for months on end. Like there would have to be a significant amount. They can also they can go use leverage. They can go, you know, we haven't seen a lot of that as of late. A lot of what, exactly? Like I I don't believe MicroStrategy has issued any more like call options. I don't think Bitmain has really sold that many more puts, which was kind of the the funding strategy that they had used.

And so, I I don't believe the DAT You know, when they initially raised the capital, my understanding is that obviously they took out you know, they raised money for the company itself, and then they also took out debt to go buy more of these underlying assets. Yeah. I haven't seen a lot of those offerings as of late. So, I don't think they've issued a lot of debt as the market's been going down because they don't have excess in their MNAV, and so it's harder to to issue debt, but that would be I I think that would send this thing tumbling over the edge if even though these these equities, these tickers are below MNAV, they don't have a lot of room on their balance sheet, and then they go, you know, they go take out debt on that,

that is when I think these things get stretched. I I we haven't really seen that yet. Yeah, I mean Like I said in the show last couple days, it's going to take a couple months for the market to to digest what just happened, and bodies will come out is my take. So, until that happens, you guys will be hearing me say, "I'm chilling. I'm chilling. I'm chilling." And then once we get the bodies out, once we get the destruction behind us, I think it's interesting, like, you know, I Right now, I I agree with the take that like we're going to be around these levels for a couple months, but I would be surprised if we go

what? >> I'm so bullish now. I just keep counter-trading you. I'm just going to keep counter-trading you, man. Yeah. There's actually way less reason to be sufficiently bearish here than there was Exactly. Exactly. So, like I don't think I'm bearish. It's just a matter of Well, I'm not bearish. Actually, I was going to the the end of that point was going to be I don't think we go much lower. I do think we stay I don't think we go much lower, either. I think we stay in this choppy phase for a couple months. I think we could go 25% lower on Bitcoin. Do you I mean, we may stretch into the 50s like we did on that dump and just retest the lows. I think mid-40s, like high-40s would be would be elite. We might see that, but again, like that is much less of a

drawdown than it was from 80 to 58 where where it was. So, I don't know. Check >> right, I don't know that math math and Mr. Math Manager. Let's let's move on. We're just going to keep speculating about the market here. Um There we go. >> patient. I think these are good level like this is a good level. Bitcoin You know, you're a good man. He's good. >> insane. I I don't know. It's It's a blessing in disguise to have these levels available. Just have some cash flow, have some dry powder, and stay patient. And you can survive chop. Don't use leverage like Andy. >> [laughter] >> Richard Tang today.

>> around. Our first offering with Franklin Templeton. Um yeah, I thought this was interesting because this is uh core to the whole composability thesis. Meaning that, you know, Hyperliquid is tokenizing equities and there's a lot of trading volume that's happening over there. We're We're seeing tokenized equities, tokenized metals. This is a rising trend, but not until we see those tokens given the those tokenized products composable with the rest of DeFi do I think we truly unlock a lot of value here. And that's what I think BlackRock did today with securitizing Uniswap.

That's what I think we're seeing here. Franklin Templeton, you can use these things as collateral now. It means that these companies can go and they can borrow against that collateral. And this is This is where credit creation happens. Binance becomes this lender where they can start to you know, offer margin. And then Franklin Templeton can go use that margin to go create new products and and allocate into new assets. So, So, this model This is going to drive the next wave. So, basically institutions can pledge can pledge tokenized money market shares minted via Franklin Templeton's Benji platform while the assets themselves stay in regulated regulated custody uh that's handled off chain by a platform called Securitize. Basically, this allows institutional grade clients

to earn money market fund yields while simultaneously using the same assets as trading collateral without moving funds onto the exchange. So again guys vaults and taking off-chain assets on chain to use them are the two biggest trends that we're seeing right now in neo finance. Um and we expect those to continue. Yep. Yeah. And this is essentially, you know, you mentioned vaults. Getting programmable collateral in terms of tokenized money market funds, tokenized private credit. All of that is going to is going to spur this Cambrian explosion of vaults that we believe is coming.

Um let's keep going. We got more. It's a big news day. It is. Robinhood launched their L2. Yeah, they're testing it. >> launched L2 on testnet, right? They partnered with Chainlink as the oracle platform for the Robinhood chain. Yeah. Uh this testnet is live. It is an Arbitrum-based L2 uh based on what was announced during Can of last year. Yeah. Chain targets financial grade use cases, very similar to the one that we just heard from Binance about tokenized money market funds being used as collateral. Yeah. Uh 24/7 trading, seamless bridging, DeFi primitives like tokenized assets, lending, and perps. All of this is going to be available through Robinhood's L2.

Yeah. And so, they'll probably announce and launch their own Robinhood products and apps on top of this chain. I imagine that they would migrate quite a bit of their existing business onto their chain. Remember, there is plans Is it Is it for Robinhood to launch their own L1 or is it to launch its L2 away from Arbitrum? There was a migration plan here. >> Yeah, they were going to launch their own L2. Like their own L2. They were going to like do They were going to like launch some DeFi stuff on Arbitrum. Right. And then they were going to um launch their own chain. I think they're just going forward launching their own chain at this point. Okay. Yeah, that's what it seems like. And so, you know, right now this is still the

Arbitrum-based L2 testnet. Um this matches pretty much what we've seen at centralized exchanges. Yeah. Coinbase uh that has launched the base L2, obviously. Uh and also getting into tokenized equities. Uh and then you have Kraken. Uh they've launched Ink and have X stocks. So, there's this tokenization uh you know, adoption curve that's happening. Yeah. You see more tokenized assets becoming composable. And and the place to do this is L2s. So, I think It's kind of funny this comes after Vitalik's uh anti-L2 post.

In this specific case, though, Rob, um this is like this is again Chainlink just kind of being in the middle of where all the institutional flows are meeting DeFi flows. Robinhood has 24 million or more users. Uh again, trying to bring that into crypto, bring accelerating real-world asset tokenization, accelerating more financial grade rails on crypto. Kind of like a mixed community reactions so far. Strong signal for Chainlink like, "Wow, mainstream validation. You guys are working with Robinhood. Great."

Also, people are upset about Chainlink's price action. People want to see Chainlink pump. They want to see an actual value return to the token from this type of activity. Well, it's got the strategic link reserve now. >> million dollars a week that's happening. Yep. Um but again, like this is just a bigger disconnect that we keep seeing in the space that Chainlink is just now getting the boot down on the timeline. Because well, because LayerZero's pumping and then really just because uh the market's bad. So.

Yeah, I think part of that I think part of the the rationale behind that sentiment is like The market's down. Yes, also. I think Chainlink has an incredible suite of announcements and partners. And it's like, "Okay, What's that?" Like all the time. Uh yeah, exactly. So, like the fact that they're powering Robinhood it's like This is a basic normal thing for them. >> it it gets diluted, you know, by the fact that they're also working with DTCC and you know, federal governments and central banks and they're doing all these things. LayerZero has one massive post leads to one, you know, big swell.

Um Chainlink has just continued to push and ship. So, I Look, we're seeing the massive repricing happening of all these assets. You know, we're we're seeing what sticks out. We're we are now understanding uh which DeFi tokens are going to get a bid. Uh there's more coming out of the SEC newsroom that we want to get to. So, let's let's keep going. Um next up Uh more on Robinhood. Uh public testnet is live. Uh developers can now build on a financial grade Ethereum Layer 2 built on Arbitrum designed to support tokenized real-world and digital assets.

Um and then they dropped some docs. And so, I'd imagine that, you know, there's going to be some permissionless builders out there that are that are quite keen on building on top of the Robinhood chain. So. Great. So, congrats Robinhood. Pretty sick. We were also privy to this news due to a little bit of a leak of a leakage beforehand. So, got that thing over the line and congrats for being on the testnet. Pretty excited to see them go live. I think the sentiment around new chain is pretty bad, but I mean, it's Robinhood. So, it's pretty great. Let's keep it rolling.

Just about 5 more minutes until Santi joins us here. Stripe. Stripe. >> Getting into the agentic payments economy here. So, what So, what's the headline here? New system. Stripe launches USDC machine payments on base with X402 protocol. New systems allows developers to charge AI agents directly for API usage and services using microtransactions with USDC. Yeah. Uh integrates a API for programmatic billing, built-in support for sales tax, refunds, reporting.

And there's a pay-per-use API access. I don't know a lot of these things. That's on CoinGecko. They're CoinGecko is moving into a a space that I think a lot more companies are going to move to with their APIs where it's pay per request. They can actually meter the usage of these things a lot better than if it's a subscription model. Like if you look at the bottom of our bottom beautiful bottom thirds here, you'll see some red uh numbers scrolling across the screen. And uh that comes from CoinGecko. We pay a subscription per month for that data coming from CoinGecko. If we had an agent that was pulling from that API key, it would be per request. And so, anytime we wanted to update that ticker, we would pay a

microtransaction. This I think is relevant because this is the onset of the adopt We're changing the internet at some of the most fundamental layers. We're making it a agent-centric internet. And so, this is happening at the browser layer. It's happening at the API level. And I think we're going to continue to see this because eventually there's going to be more agents using the internet than humans. Right? And and that changes some of the most the the UX starts to become very very different when humans are almost second-class citizens on the internet. Things are going to be built with agents in mind because humans are going to be interacting with these things much less.

And so, I I think payments obviously is one big thing, but we're going to see a lot more changes as Claude Bod and agents become more ubiquitous. Yeah, I like it. Very cool. Um and then also Dan Romero left for Tempo. I'm sure they're doing a ton of I've seen him be tweeting as of late about different agentic flows that they're working on that they're looking to get into as well. Uh so definitely interesting. Let's move on from the AI stuff here. Hopefully we can get to Uniswap and BlackRock. Yeah, let's do it.

Not sure if that's exactly next, but we got about 3 minutes until Santiago joins and I'm stoked in this convo. I've been binging his Substack one of the only crypto Substack I've been reading. >> [laughter] >> Okay, stablecoin rules. Yeah skip. >> [laughter] >> Skip. For banks to build on open-source Ethereum. I mean Major banks adopt Ethereum L2s. >> You're an Ethereum bear these days. >> ETH to a thousand. Oh, maybe not. ETH to literally a thousand. It's cooked. Things cooked.

>> ETH to a thousand. How I mean a thousand when BlackRock is buying Uniswap tokens? Dude, I don't know, man. I look at Flood's tweets and I just resonate with them. I just can't. I can't do it. I love you though. HFP 30. Here we go. Yes, sir. We We covered this earlier, but yeah, I mean pretty insane perps volume. If you scroll down, you can see the actual chart where you can see the cumulative volume in silver perps. Um Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty impressive.

Uh that insane hockey-stick growth obviously correlated with um >> [snorts] >> you know, the rise of the silver and gold bubble that just happened. But I mean pretty nuts. Well, I think this is interesting to see how Hyperliquid is becoming uncorrelated from the rest of the uh Exactly. the rest of the crypto market. >> However, OI is cooked. OI is down to about 4 bill. It was at seven after 10/10. It was at 15 bill before 10/10. Dude, that's fine. Dude, it's not a good sign. OI getting smashed is not good. It just means that there's not leverage up there in the system. Like we're getting inflows. You see that they're getting dominance and market share in other categories. They This is going to happen, you know, it's happening in the tokenized gold and

metals markets. It's going to happen in the tokenized equities markets. We're going to see more inflows and then eventually leverage is going to build up in the system again, but I think that's why, you know, we're going to chop for a couple months. There's not a there's not a speculative fervor out there. Institutions aren't going to FOMO. They're not going to use a ton of leverage. So maybe that means open interest and, you know, overall trading volume is like rather slow and steady on Hyperliquid. And then when there is, you know, 1% rates, the new Fed chair gets in there, cuts, you know, money printing starts over again.

Monetary conditions call for more leverage, more risk-taking. Until we until we see that, I think it's just going to be steady as it goes. Well, I think if we get vol death, like volatility death. Very bearish for your perp taxes. Last Last bear market we had GMX run um because we had the a lot of these leverages liquidations and everyone's pulled up on it and then it died. Uh I don't think Hyperliquid's even close to the same product suite or its team, but something to note for Hyperholders. We're both talking about chop here for the next few months, so.

Chop equals vol death. No, no, no. We're going to get more volatility, I think, in the next 6 weeks, but then after that, I'm a bit worried about what happens next. We should get another like big balance and then another try at a big dump and then And then vol death. And just >> And then just like Just chop. >> apathy just like >> Once you start seeing the bart the bart pattern, that's vol death right there. All right, let's move on here. Here we go. I can't tell you if it happens in 90 days or 12 months, said Martin Small of BlackRock. That's 12 months at the outside. If you're wondering what narratives will lead us out of the bear market, this is one of them. Bullish L1s and quite bullish

DeFi. Honestly, just don't agree. Um just not bullish most L1s. Um I am bullish select DeFi with revenue. Uh Sky, Hyperliquid, even Aave if they get their tokenomic stuff sorted out, which hint hint, uh rumor mill's humming this week about some things happening there. Um I I think yes, tokenizing iShares is great, but now we're just doing a full loop here of ETFs then tokenizing them. It's not like we already have the asset on chain.

But >> No. And you're missing the biggest point that I've been trying to harp on for like I ever since we've been talking about tokenized assets, which is that once they become composable with DeFi, you end up seeing capital flow into the assets themselves. These things are currently not regulated in the right way. They're not accessible to institutional capital. That's why it just today you're seeing BlackRock get into Uniswap. We're going to see We're going to see the capital inflow start to permeate throughout the rest of the asset universe, the quality assets, not the shitcoins, but the real businesses that have balance sheets that are investable.

These things are only becoming available to institutional investors now. Tokenizing an ETF makes it any more accessible to institutions than just buying the ETF on Schwab. It is going to become composable with DeFi. Meaning that you can borrow against >> so that means that like >> it. >> that means that like all these assets, so like they're going to buy the tokenized ETF version of the asset, bring that on chain cuz obviously tokenized, and then that's going to contribute to like the TVL of Aave.

It's going to contribute to the TVL of Aave. There's going to be tokenized the the same reason you saw the tokenized money market from from Franklin Templeton as collateral on Binance. That is going to happen from a a hundred institutions in a hundred different venues. And once that happens, it unlocks so much latent capital and margin that ultimately leads to the rise out of this vol death that we're talking about. Because that You need to unleash capital. Now the fact that they're going they're buying Uniswap tokens, BlackRock is, Right. is a choice that they've made to deep further their investment into the industry. It may be the case and it's probably going to be more so the case that Franklin Templeton, Janus, all these all these money market funds, you know, they're they're going and they're

going to allow collateralization of those products. There is going to be margin issued against those products. And then they're going to go into more of those products. Meaning you tokenize a money market, use that margin to go into more money markets. Use you know, you tokenize a metal, you you know, the fact that we had this crazy Hong Kong hedge fund, you know, use metals as collateral and then go into this Bitcoin trade. These things were rather un There's there's sectors of these institutions that want uncorrelated bets. And those might be the ones that do use tokenized hedge funds or money market funds as collateral and then go into more speculative assets. I could also see like leverage looping strategies from these institutions as a much more utilized use case because

they're not exposed to exogenous risks that come in from different industries. I mean, it just sounds like to me you're getting excited that we're all just going to degenerately lever up that the institutions are going to degenerately level lever up on tokenized assets and and pump us to to the moon, but You're such an extremist. It doesn't Just levering up on like on shitcoins isn't the isn't the thing. Go to any bank. How do you Just think about the fundamentals of money, credit creation, and how money is added to the >> No, I know. And we need it and it's not going to happen in DeFi any any This is This is how it's going to happen.

>> That's lenders. That's loans. And the more assets become usable as collateral for loans, it becomes more loans are issued. More money is created. More credit is created. Ultimately that leads to a greater monetary supply and then, you know, I can do that math. So can you. >> can do that moon math. Let's move on. Last one of the day. Santiago's about to join. We're going to talk about a a lot about the great valuation disconnect and more. We got one more headline for you guys. We got the boy Andy in the cut. Nice penguin. I I did not realize this is going to be my tweet. Justin, BlackRock is buying UNI on the market after moving into DeFi with his Build a product. Back BlackRock is also purchasing an undisclosed amount of Uniswap's own token. [clears throat]

They will also be bridging his treasury-backed digital token Build a onto Uniswap to swap in DeFi. Guys, this is massive. BlackRock's literally buying your bags. Um Uniswap ripped added 600 million plus to the market cap. I think we see more of this. There's also rumblings in the SEC right now that there is going to be a new asset class created specifically for revenue-generating DeFi tokens that have immutable smart contracts and have non-custodial properties. You heard that here first. Shout out Jesse from Variant for dropping that with us.

Um guys, BlackRock's buying Uniswap. I don't know what else to tell you. This is massively bullish. Um and we're I don't own any Uniswap, but I'm telling you the SEC is working on something in the newsroom right now that is going to put DeFi tokens in a much better, more regulated class of assets that will allow large capital allocators to get in. This is massive. We've heard so many times BlackRock's buying our bags. Never actually happens. This time it's happening. Good job, Hayden Adams. Congrats team.

All right. Um we didn't think this is going to be Andy's tweet, but he sent it in the curator's chat. I don't have a lot more to add here except everything that we've already been talking about. Let Before Santi comes in, let's go to our our last headline um because this is obviously the biggest news of the day. We've been talking about it. Uh, you heard about it in the last week. BlackRock and Securitize tap DeFi giant Uniswap for direct on-chain bिटल trading. Uh, Securitize is ultimately the glue that makes this happen. Uh, you know, bिटल is tokenized. So, you know, Uniswap is permissionless. You can add uh, pretty much any available token to its exchange, trade between it. But, BlackRock and bिटल have investor requirements, meaning that, you know, there needs to be certain investor uh,

criteria that's met for people to own bिटल. And so, that's difficult to do in a tokenized environment. Securitize is helping with that. Shout out to the team at Securitize. >> this was out of left field today. I don't think any of this leaked. Unlike the Layer Zero rumor mill, nobody got a hold of of this one. Uh, there was no insider trading. If you look at the chart, I mean, at least no obvious insider speculation. It was very, very flat. And then as soon as this hit the wire, green dildo. Um, so, I mean, look, I'm I'm I'm pretty stoked for Uniswap. Hayden also just beat the Bancor team. They were trying to sue them for some smart contract stuff. Um, he announced that, too. So, anyways, guys, we got Santi in the back.

I've been absolutely fanboying on his Substack last couple of uh, weeks here. Guy's been uh, saying saying what needs to be said. Um, I like to think that uh, you know, I I I'm not a big thinker. I'm more of a plebian in the in the media game here. But uh I started this idea of revenue meta, Rob. I put this stupid tweet out. And everyone thought I was the the dumbest guy since the dumbest of guys in investing. That was um, May of 2025. Since then, everyone wants to talk about cash flows, revenue, and why this is the only way to invest. You some could say that we're so low IQ, we're ahead of our time, Rob. Or perhaps that's just me. Let's get Santi up here. Let's let's get him fired up.

>> Quite the intro for our friend of the show Santiago. >> [laughter] >> What's going on, man? How's it going, guys? Thanks for having me on. Yeah, man. A great valuation disconnect, man. Been a hell of the last couple of weeks in the market. I should I should have worn my my green Patagonia vest, wrapping inversion. Uh, you know, the meme of like you're a fundamental mid curve. Um, I think that's where most people place me now, that I've been mid curving uh, the greatest generational trade that crypto is. But, you know, I started being more vocal about the disconnected valuations and adoption in the space. Um, as someone that has invested I love venture. I think there's asymmetric opportunities in this.

It's but, it is hard to justify these valuations. And you know, since I started being more vocal about it and saying some of the quiet parts out loud, the market is just done that. It's down 40, 50%. And I know I just uh, which is different than saying I still believe in the technology. I still believe very much in the potential of it. But, um, there's just certain things that structurally have made it difficult for tokens to capture value. A lot of it is regulatory. Some of it is design from projects that started early on in 2017. And you know, you even saw Vitalik say something that a lot of people have been thinking about as it relates to the roll-up centric architecture. Yep. So,

anyways, that's I think you guys have covered a lot of that. I'm here to just hopefully make it a en- engaging, entertaining discussion. Yeah. >> Definitely. Absolutely. Um, you know, I I I've been in a lot of ways it's it it must be vindicating to to to see a lot of what you've been saying play out. Um, you know, you you also said that a lot of these things are going to get adoption, but may not accrue that value, you know, from that adoption to their token. Um, you know, just today we saw a BlackRock, you know, this news of them buying Uniswap.

Um, you know, this isn't coming from the fee switch or anything. But, you know, they have a real business. They have a balance sheet. And now there's institutional investors that are taking a look at them and, you know, seeing that as an investable asset class. Mhm. Does this start to shift your perspective on the thesis? Or how do you anticipate this particular trend evolving? Well, crypto is an very investable asset class. Will continue to be an investable asset class. The question is how do you express that? You want to go long stablecoins, uh, you're not going to buy USDC. Mhm. >> Right.

Uh, so, you have to you have to put numbers on the board. I mean, at some point you start showing revenue and traction and and you're get grounded to reality. So, I've been positioned on what I think will continue to like my trade and where I'm positioned over the next 15 years. Like industries that the crypto will continue to pro- proliferate. >> [snorts] >> It is very valuable infrastructure that is going to replace traditional financial workflows. Uh, a lot of that is stablecoins. A lot of that is tokenization. Like money is moving just in time, in real time.

That's like just-in-time manufacturing. Just-in-time money. Like don't overthink it. Now, the nuance is how do you position yourself? And I think about like crypto like AI is super impactful. But, you want to be positioned in the right side of the trade. What is the not the right side of the trade? Is infrastructure commoditizes. Like think about you're using Claude and ChatGPT and subscribe to Manas. And like you have a suite of productivity that you're paying a very fraction.

Like they're competing against each other and they're investing all this money in CapEx. It creates a ton of consumer preference, right? Cuz you, Eddie, you, Rob, like you're just now way more productive. You don't need to hire 30 people. What I'm trying to say is the the the cost curve has gone down dramatically for the consumer. That's what technology does. So, you got to be careful to not get too excited in yeah, AI is going to be totally transformational and crypto and stablecoins are going to be totally transformational. But, are you investing in that the like are you going to basically lose your a lot of your money because you bet on the wrong side of that. Mhm. Right? Like if if said differently, to rou- like ground the conversation is

what do you think outperforms? A bag of venture investments in AI startups or the S&P 500 that is able to fire 30% of its workforce and increase margins? Like what is a better investment over the next 5 years? Like what outperforms? Uh, um, Well, it depend [laughter] how good of a venture investor you are. Well, you know, venture is power law. So, there's only like five venture funds that actually outperform the S&P. Yeah, exactly. It's probably the S&P. It certainly is. And that's your and that's your thesis. I remember when you said when you were getting excited about Western Union, people thought you were um, you were just the the antithesis of somebody who should be a crypto bull.

But, I don't want to get down that, you know, this rabbit hole too too much. Santi, I think there's the there's the valuation disconnect. There's the tokens dynamic, which I think people are really in. And then there's kind of like where we go. So, kind of just to round out the the valuation disconnect, we're kind of pushing this idea of, you know, well, obviously I opened it this up saying revenue meta, yada yada. That's obvious. Kind of this convergence point between legacy finance and DeFi being neo finance is really where there's actual value being captured by applications on chain at scale. I know you're an early investor in Pump. We're super big hyperliquid bulls. We are super bullish on Sky. Um, even things like Etherfi, things like

Aave if they can so- sort their token, which we can talk about in a bit. There's this kind of cohort of crypto protocols that are not nearly the same value as L1s or even L2s for that or some of these infra, but it's producing significant amount of cash flow and revenue to the tokens with a very transparent open public programmable kind of uh, format. So, there's a valuation disconnect, Santi, in terms of the the total valuations of of chains and of crypto. And then there's also a valuation disconnect, you know, in in- inside of the industry. How do you think about that kind of like that that evolving and allocators actually changing where they

want to put capital in the coming, you know, months to years as it pertains not just like within crypto macro wise, but within crypto as an industry inside of it. Yeah, there's a couple things that I'll I'll rattle them off in order of importance. I think a basket of companies that use crypto in the public markets outperforms any token. Any basket of tokens within crypto. That is um, you know, Figure. That is Visa. That is Stripe when it IPOs. Um, Klarna. All these businesses that are using this infrastructure that we built over the last 10 years uh, will be made radically efficient.

They will cut their costs 20, 30, 40%. It's dramatic. As dramatic as AI. That those equities outperform the tokens that are not capturing value. Cuz the tokens aren't designed to capture and compound in the way that a stock is. And that's uh, by virtue of the regulatory regime. Like we've never designed tokens to compa- accrue and compound value in the same way that equities do. We can get into that. So, that's point number one. Like equities, companies that use crypto are going to be efficient. They're going to get outperform the token.

Um, second, within tokens, there is a very big disconnect between where value is being captured and the valuation. So, layer ones, the fee that layer ones are capturing has gone down dramatically. Uh, look at Ethereum. Um, a large part of it is technolo- like technolo- like the fees in the L1 have come down a ton. And the value capture has gone down. But, you know, they still are a 200, 300 billion dollar asset. Um so there's a great chart by 1kx that says the percentage of fees that are captured in the system are flowing upstream. They're flowing to D5 protocols. They're flowing to deep in protocols. Um

meanwhile at layer ones the fee capture has gone down, but they still represent 90% of the valuation. Like collectively the market cap excluding Bitcoin, 90% of it is layer ones. But layer ones are capturing less than their share of the revenue. And so to me that's like a jet that that that is the trade. It's go long applications, short the infrastructure. Um but it's tough because infrastructure historically has been where most investors more venture investors have made the most amount of money.

Like you're early in Ethereum, you're early in you know Ripple, you're early in Um and so that's at some point that breaks. You know, I don't short because markets are not rational uh and I don't want to be caught on the GameStop phenomenon of just getting blown out. Uh they're illiquid markets. There's a number of reasons I wouldn't advise anyone to go short. But I do think that at some point um some applications are criminally undervalued. The question is is is the token the best way to express that trade thesis or you know, are you better off investing in the labs equity if you can get a hold of it?

Cuz there's a lot of value leakage. You saw it in Ave last year. You saw it in Uniswap. Uh you like I'm hopeful that we can create we can I'm going to say the quiet part out loud. Tokens should be equity. Should be designed like equity and we should call it like that and and then figure out and work backwards from there and say what do we need to do from a regulatory standpoint to make sure that there's no value leakage. Coinbase bought the team behind Tensor. They didn't buy the token. They bought the the equity behind it. That tells you everything you need to know about the disconnect between between these tokens. Like tokens And someone might say like there's a couple of people that came at me cuz I said look tokens on compound. In my mind they're uninvestable.

In its current form they're not investable. And someone says wait a minute Ethereum has a fee burn. You're mid curving it yet again. I said okay, let's talk about the fee burn, all right? You have all this activity. There's like the world is going to come online. The the institutions are coming to Ethereum. You're an idiot because the token is going to be burned and that reduces the supply. You've you don't understand basic economic principles. I said well yeah, okay I get it. Not so fast, right? Why? Because the fee burn is uh is just that, right? It's like you need to it's not reinvested into the Ethereum ecosystem directly, right?

You could argue okay like if Ethereum produces a billion dollars of fees that year, that gets distributed to people that are staking and you know, validators. And so that's money out the door. And someone could say well that money is going to get reinvested in some way shape or form back into the ecosystem. But that is a very hand-wavy argument. I as an investor don't like that because what I want to see is if a company produces profit excess cash flow, it reinvests that. It either does a share buyback, it either does a dividend.

Um if it can't use product if it can't find productive uses of capital. But most of the time if a company has 10 million dollars of profit, they're going to go you know, reinvest that. They're going to use that to acquire more customers. They're going to use that to buy another business. They're going to grow top line. As a as an investor you should just own [ __ ] that's going to compound. Yeah, I mean I think that's what really resonated with me about that second post. The first one was the first post that you did about the valuation disconnect resonated with me because we you know, this is our third cycle and we had you on back in like 2024 and like one of the things that you said was like just insulate your lifestyle and so you know, we you know, that was achieved this time around and

we feel good about it uh given that that this cycle was really strong. Uh and so I you know, it it felt good to be on on the right side of that and I think there's a certain euphoria associated with selling assets at you know, close to highs and that's great and all, but then this this this next one about that this idea of how tokens don't actually accrue the same value long-term that uh equities do really struck a chord because when I was first kind of starting any sort of entrepreneur career, you know, there's this guy Taylor Welch internet marketer and his thing was always wealthy people set up a essentially systems which over time as time passes they become more wealthy.

And the problem with crypto is that I have to be so focused on speculating and trading, buying and selling as as you mentioned so aggressively all the time. Now obviously if you hold some of these assets really really long-term since the early days, you know, you you know, buy and hold still works and holds holds well for you know, Bitcoin for ETH for some of the majors, but a lot of these things are much more they're they're it's a trader's market, not an investor's market. You have to That's exactly right. Crypto has rewarded traders, not investors. Correct. And and I want to be an owner.

I I want to be a long-term asset owner. That's my strategy, right? I've got all these different buckets. But crypto it's hard to even do that outside of Bitcoin really. >> Cuz the token is not designed to capture value. That's as simple as that. Like if you want you want to you want to be an early you want to believe that adoption is going to happen. Uh whether pick your system of choice, Hyperliquid, Ethereum, an L2, Solana, whatever. And you want to make your money work for you. And unfortunately tokens are just not the instrument. They're they're like a I call them a fixed they're more like fixed income.

Why? Because they're they're a variable coupon bond. Why? Cuz the coupon is how much gets burned that year. How many fees are produced by the system. So that that might go up, but it's capped. You don't own the equity that is compounding. And I think um it it's it's going to suck that in 20 years time someone's going to wake up and says holy [ __ ] So so you're telling me that like we grew number of users on chain 100x and stablecoin in circulation went from 10 trillion to 100 trillion. And somehow Ethereum went down 60%. Make it make sense. What was the quote on the top of the article? Stablecoin volumes went 100x, but our fund only returned 1.3x or something. Yeah, yeah.

And and look it's it's it's the unfortunate circumstance and anyone that's been on the investing side understands you want to get out the door as quickly as possible. And and that creates it's no different than Bitcoin miners. Right? Bitcoin miners the calculus that goes into a industrial grade miner or even a retail miner. You see the deep end, you see it in in Bitcoin is I'm going to spend this money for hardware and and invest and dedicate energy, provision energy resources into a system that is going to pay me a block reward.

And I got to believe that that payback is there in a year's or two years time cuz I I believe that what I'm getting putting in and putting out that calculus is positive for me. But you have a constant amount of sell pressure. So Bitcoin's a bit different in the sense that you believe that it has this sort of store value property. And so you hold it like you hold oil and you store it because it or gold because it's it's valuable. Like gold doesn't have industrial gold doesn't have industrial demand. 90% of the demand for gold is jewelry and speculating. That's Bitcoin. Everything else in crypto is competing a and trying to be a technology stock, but it's not a stock. It's it's the worst of both worlds because it's competing to be a stock. So from a momentum standpoint,

from a attention standpoint, AI will for the time being capture a lot of those flows cuz it's just a more investable, sexier narrative than crypto is today. That might change. And second, your money's not working for you because you have these people that are constantly sucking money out of the system, right? It's all these traders. Um and and unfortunately this is kind of where I think most of the projects that were designed in a regulatory environment that did not allow us to design tokens in the way that they should be, which is capturing compound this value, are going to be at a material disadvantage to the next wave of projects.

100%. >> And and the question that I I I just was talking to the the question that I find myself asking a lot of these long-time builders is like hey, if you could design your project today how would you design it differently? And most of the time it comes down to the structure of the token. Yeah. Imagine Andre Cronje's uh 2020 valueless governance token medium article being written today as of as a launch of a new asset, right guys? Like I mean imagine that. Yeah. >> It would look entirely different. And so Santiago, could you unpack what some of those structural differences are? How do the equities compound value into their into their equity today? And what would the changes have to be to a token structure to compound value into a token?

Yeah. So so when you own a token it's not a claim on the future cash flow. Equities you you're you're owning >> [snorts] >> um a claim on the future cash flow of the system. Um tokens again distribute fees, but those fees are not direct there's not a mechanism to directly reinvest the fees that are generated in a system. While it is true like Ethereum moved a step closer by introducing this fee burn uh with the IP 1559 three years ago. Um the the the the point I'm trying to make is fee burns can be confused to have this property of equity, right? Uh because you know, more

activity more fee burn, what have you. But um the issue is the reinvesting piece. I think you would want to have a system where um in the case of uh for instance, Uniswap, you have you dissolve labs, the token captures the fee of the front end, and captures the fee of the system. And then And then there's the more interesting question is, well, who gets to decide how those fees are like either reinvested or distributed to token holders. Uh cuz in companies, if you're Amazon and you have excess profitability or Google, Google's a good example of this. Like, it was so wildly profitable in search, and then it said, "We're going to invest in robotics and AI and a number of

different divisions." And so, if you're an owner of Google stock, you're you're investing behind a team that is going to be a steward of capital to reinvest that money. And if it at some point decides that it can't reinvest that money, it's going to pay you a dividend. Uh but it's the velocity of the decisions. Like, cuz in in Ethereum, I was thinking about this the other day. It's like, it took us like 6 years to do the merge. And the speed by which that those decisions happen is really slow. Um and and I don't know what a good solution to for Ethereum would be, for instance, in these systems that are very distributed.

I've always felt that you should distribute the token, but not the decision-making behind the company. And so, that's why you see some projects that are a bit more centralized on the product, like Solana or, you know, Canton or Hyperliquid. Like, there's their centralized teams that are, you know, Hyperliquid, the speed by which these proposals happen is quite fast. And you could sort of you're a large part of I don't know, if you ask like 100 people that own hype, I think a lot of the bet is like, this is just a very cracked team of like less than 20 engineers that know what they're doing, and they're going to make really good decisions for the protocol because they own a big part of it. Uh and hope that [clears throat] they're not going to sell. But like, the way they ran the stablecoin RFP, well,

that's pretty interesting. That captured a lot of value. Um so, it's not a perfect solution, but I would say like um you probably get comfortable around having a very centralized organization that is running decisions and deciding what where to allocate the excess fees. And not just simplisticly saying, "We're going to distribute um the fees that get generated in the system to people that are not long-term holders." You know what I mean? Mhm. >> And that's a problem that I see. You know, I I think there's a lot of MEV in these systems. There's a lot of parties that are not aligned for the long term. They're not stakeholders.

They're just like extracting revenue and then not reinvesting it into the system. And so, um the last thing I'll do is probably collapse the labs and equity. And look, there's a reason why DePIN hasn't traded well, cuz like something like Helium, the market understands that. Like, that That's sort of the other point I want to make is the market's not dumb. It sees that and says, "Wait a minute. I don't actually own the goose that makes like the golden goose here. I'm owning a token that there's some fee burns, but I don't understand." And and that's the the the Degen Spartan had this like valueless governance tokens meme. And I think it's very true. I think the market's not dumb.

Um and you're on mute there. Go ahead, Ram. So, I I I take it that, you know, we we are making progress, just much, much too slow. Like, the Ethereum fee burn was a step in the right direction. It's not a big enough step. And then Hyperliquid and Solana and and particularly Hyperliquid with buybacks are much more direct impact on the underlying token. And so, that direct reinvestment into the protocol and into the into the the the instrument itself that measures that network's value is closer. Is Is it still not sufficient? What How do you go to the What is the next milestone?

Yeah, I I think you're you're flying closer to the sun. Like, Maker ETH is now enshrining kind of like the stablecoin with Athena that um you know, pays for some sequencer fees. And you know, that is interesting. It's not enough. Um Hyperliquid is also probably closer. This is again, if you look at what's actually performed well, Yeah. is tokens that behave as close to equity um and the tokens that don't have not traded well. And Hyperliquid, to your point, Robbie, is as close as you are ever going to get to being like an equity because it has a team that moves fast, that is willing to reinvest, that is willing to do things like the stablecoin RFP that, you know, create

more value. Um they're still it's not perfect, right? But it's it's as close to it. And I think that that combined with of course perps just being a killer category. Um but to to to round out this point, I mean, I think again, I want to just validator rewards are not reinvesting. Those are operating costs to run a decentralized system. And so, paying validators is is to secure the network is is like paying rent, right? Mhm. Keeps the lights on, but it doesn't compound value to to the token holder. Um in the you know, and so, that's like it's just important that to internalize because most people will always say, "Oh, validator rewards are are, you know, this is This is how you get

rewarded. It's like equity." And it's really not. Um and and the other point, which is is hard to reconcile, it it it touches on a lot of things, not just like this disconnect between tokens and equity, is like going back to the opening, you're going to see more and more fees get generated by these systems like like L1s. Um and value will be captured by those people like Aave's of the world that actually own the customer. If Aave actually can can become a neobank, they're going to capture a lot of that value for themselves. And the tax that they pay to whoever is providing security on this exit settlement is going to capture a very small

percentage of it. Uh of The next piece I'm going to write is probably security markets. Like, EigenLayer try to sort of create a better model to price security in these decentralized distributed systems, but it's really hard. I I I I ask like, anytime an L2 builder comes here, ask them, "Hey, the amount of money that you're paying back to Ethereum, is that fairly priced? Yes or no?" And they'll all dance around it, but I'll tell you, if you look at their body language, they'll probably say it is the biggest bargain in crypto because you're utilizing your the Ethereum alignment is real because, god damn it, feels great to pay to be paying for a service uh where the tax rate is like 1%. The real tax rate should be the amount of federal taxes that you pay in your tax

bill, Robbie and Andy, which is 30%. Ethereum provides a valuable service, which is security. And I think Vitalik could one point walk up and say, "Enough is enough." Um but of course, anyone can pack up your [ __ ] and go, right? They can go build in Solana in another system. And that That's really the again, the the point that I make is I have zero interest in owning tokens because it's super competitive. It's open source. It's competitive. People going to go If you If you don't like Ethereum and Ethereum jacks up their fee like Tron did, you can go to Solana. And then if if you don't like what Solana's doing, you can pack up your [ __ ] and go to Tempo. Yeah.

And and so again, I think like as we think about what we're doing at Inversion, I I like that dynamic because I'm just going to go to the best provider. And infrastructure eventually becomes a commodity. And it's a race to the bottom. And so, block space is infinite. It's cheap. It will only continue to be cheaper. And the value that is going to be captured is by the people that build on top of it. And so, BlackRock sees that cuz they can use Ethereum. It's fairly cheap to use Ethereum. And then they can make way more money. So, I would rather own BlackRock equity than ETH, the token, or BlackRock equity than Solana, the token, cuz it's just a better business model.

They capture the fees, and it compounds. And and and and so, unfortunately, the crypto market is stuck in still trying to believe that like infrastructure is a good investment. I don't think infrastructure is a good investment. Yeah. So, the the the kind of overlay this in in the next

several years. We, you know, pretty firmly believe that the Trump admin and Hyperliquid, those two this, you know, what's happening now in in terms of this valuation disconnect amongst other factors. And now we'll see teams trying to create more what you're calling crypto-enabled equity. So, what does that look like in the bull case? What's your base case? What's your bear case here for crypto for tokens and crypto as an industry moving towards more crypto-enabled equity? What does that look like on a 5, 10-year time horizon?

Oh, Gus, I mean, don't overthink it. Every business is going to use stablecoins. It starts with B2B cuz there's two motivated people to cut costs. And then it starts to B2C people. You have Gusto. You have um Deel. You have all these payment like employ Employees are going to get Employees are going to be paid in stablecoins. Once they get paid in stablecoins, they transact e-commerce in stablecoins. coins. Then you have a gigantic commerce that uses stable coins. led to Then you have business to businesses that are sending money and saying, "Wait a minute, I don't have to send you a wire. I can just send you a stable coin." And that's uh BB&K, that's Stripe. So, that's the crypto enablement. I mean, I I I can't I mean, I am um

in- incredibly bullish on that happening probably faster than most people think. I mean, gosh, you January alone, you had 10 trillion of stable coins moving around. That's more than Visa and MasterCard combined. Visa has a probably a better measure of like real economic activity, which is the adjusted stable coin volume, which is stripping away MEV and and some like, you know, DEX activity, DeFi activity. And that's still very high. That's 1 and 1/2 trillion of stable coins that are moving in the real economy. That number grows by an order of magnitude this year alone. Grows by two orders of magnitude

in the next 10 years. Don't be on the like, don't overthink it. The The nuance is, how do you express that trade as an investor? It's always the question. And but but I I I think I created this uh so, I've been playing around with AI. Just as it's like amazing what in a month these things have changed. And now I have like I'm opening a filing cabinet my brain of ideas cuz I'm not technical. And now I'm putting them in production. Not prototyping, just putting in production. Within 24 hours, I built a new site. I didn't use a designer. I didn't pay them zero. I paid Claude like $10 to do it.

Rem- like absolutely remarkable. Um what I'm trying to say is um like in many ways, I think AI and crypto are very connected. Um and the If you're wondering like, how can I actually make sense of this? I think there will be We're at a time where a lot of people are skeptical of different use cases of the crypto can power. The focus, of course, right now is stable coins and and, you know, stuff like perps.

If we just stop there, like this industry can grow 10x. And but I think there's going to be a very violent shakeup of of where that 10x grows. Um I created where I was trying to go with AI. I created this, if you want to go online now, it's an fdv.gg. You want to pull it up? >> We're I'm gone. I'm there. >> fdv.gg. >> What would you rather own? Price is what you pay, value is what you get. I am not a cat. That is weird, but that's fine. >> [laughter] >> I am not a cat.

This is to make sure the bots But because it uses machine learning to like to give you the consensus view once you select it. And it's like very simple. Like if we just walk through this exercise, it's like, would you rather own Solana at a $80 billion valuation or Stripe equity in the private markets at 90 billion? Would you rather own XAI equity before it merges SpaceX or Ethereum? Would you rather own Here's an interesting one, Santi. Would you rather own Open AI private equity at 500 bill or Apple at 4 trillion?

Uh Apple. I think Apple is like the dark horse in the AI race. >> was contrarian. That was contrarian, 43%. I had I had Bitcoin 1.3 trillion or Berkshire Hathaway 1.1 trillion. Uh Berkshire Hathaway. That was very contrarian, 20%. Wow, this is insane. This is a great exercise. >> then and then and then and then it uses So, I built that I had a project like this cuz I kept when when when someone asked me this question like, how do you like, do you want to invest in crypto or not? I think we all agree my framework in investing is everyone understands the demand side of crypto extremely well.

Everyone now. It's It's It's unequivocal that demand is going to grow for block space. Demand is going to grow for stable coins and other applications. No one No one argues that anymore. But whenever you're critical about valuations, everyone always goes back to demand. And you're like, well well, but the see, that's my point. If you really want to make money, you need to understand the supply dynamics. What are the supply dynamics? With a click of a button, anyone can deploy a chain. So, the block space is incredibly elastic. It's not scarce by any stretch of the imagination. It's not like you built a road. There's no moat to these systems other than like some sort of memetic brand value that is hard to wrap your

head around that it's worth 300 billion. I'm sorry. I'm just going to call it that. Um and and so, I think if you really want to make money as an investor, you need to understand the supply. How that curve, the shape, the slope of the curve, and the shift in the curve as technology advances. And 5 years ago, I think you could have argued demand for block space was there. And it is very hard to build a consensus engine, a layer one. It took you, you know, you had to uh it wasn't easy to launch a chain.

Now, it's very easy to launch a chain. And so, I think when you go through this game of what you'd rather own, it's always useful to put it in a perspective because it it frames the conversation not of as an investor, you don't necessarily have to own anything. You don't have to own a token. You can go and buy uh Western Union for 9 billion. Or you can go buy uh 4 billion, sorry. You could go buy uh you know, equity in or in things that are going to use the infrastructure. And and I think that's how I disarm a lot of the arguments in crypto, which is you have a really fanatical base that is very very It's like a religi- religious kind of experience, right? You're Ethereum aligned or you're not.

Don't ever bring up the point that Ethereum is worth 300 billion because you're you're a mid-curve and um this is going to the moon. And you're like, fair enough. Like, you know, to each his own. Santi, I don't think the robo-advisors have a ideological preference to their asset classes as much as we do, humans. No, the market doesn't care. The market's not fair. The interesting thing I will say is like, the pendulum will swing back to new applications beyond stable coins and perps. Yep. Um I'm actually kind of now excited to start thinking more and more about that. Um I think that more value is going to be captured from this point forward by newcomers and early and adopters than the OGs that have been investing in

the space. They're now leaving. Mhm. And a lot of a lot of them are leaving because they said, "Gosh, they're like, we envision a world where you're going to have a decentralized Uber and a decentralized, you know, Airbnb experience." And you know, this whole idea of like Wall Street on on on blockchain is This is it's not cool for me. Yeah, it's not the >> yet, same. candidly, not that I don't just want to criticize Ethereum because, you know, I was an early investor in Ethereum. I think there's a lot of really good things about the Ethereum community and developer and it's remarkable what it did in the coordination standpoint. But one thing that's always bugged me is the fact that somehow I feel like the ethereal

Ethereum insider group, even Vitalik, is not they've sort of been dismissive of DeFi. It's like, let's explore other more aggressive things. And and you've seen a lot of the OG DeFi builders say, "Wait a minute, man. Like, I'm trying to build something cool here. I'm I'm trying to build something that is powerful. Financial inclusion gets lost in the conversation. Uh flash loans and new primitives get lost in the conversation." Um and I think it's like, don't why are you neglecting your core customer?

>> Yep. And that's all I've never really understood that, right? And it goes back to this idea of like, why tokens are not equity. You don't have a strong management team that is very aligned and saying, "How do we drive the most amount of value for Ethereum?" Like, you have these factions within the Ethereum community. And 2 years ago or a year and a half ago, that you tried to kind of the Ethereum community said, galvanized and said, "Let's get our [ __ ] together cuz Solana's eating our lunch and other blockchains are eating our lunch." And then so, you have now these two different organizations. And so, that's the drawback of decentralization that unfortunately, we try to decentralize as quickly as possible everything from

validation and block production to product to the hierarchy of all. >> I think And And And I think that's something that I think if if someone would in a private conversation would tell you, we probably shouldn't have done that. We probably should have stayed a bit more. But you couldn't have done it, right? Because it was a very hostile regulatory environment. Um to So, it's not surprising that a lot of the L2s, hyperliquid, a lot of the new chains are very much centralized from a product decision-making standpoint. Yes. >> Some go even as far as like um being very opinionated in the applications they could build, right?

Mega ETH selected Athena. That's That's a pretty specific choice, right? By a management team. That By the way, may or may not be the right choice because it introduces counterparty risk. And if Athena, you know it's um it is a But but But I think that that's the It Moving fast is important and making decisions is very important to drive to adapt to new demand for block space. Uh and unfortunately, a lot of these kind of Gen 1, Gen 2 chains were just not are not designed to move fast and to compound in the way

that, you know, a management team and a company that represents an equity will. And and the power of compounding is the velocity by which you make those decisions and reinvest that cash flow. Fee burns are not that. Validator rewards not that. >> are not that. >> And if you think about it, it actually works in reverse because the time that you spend holding assets which don't have that property of making owners wealthy is time less spent owning assets that could do that for you. And Santiago Santos, always a pleasure, man. Hope you're spending as as much time building out inversion as you are writing these bangers, brother. So, uh And possibly we're in the new office. That's our little background, inversion green. So,

we're here, we're building. Um yeah, thanks for having me on, guys. Cheers, man. Absolutely, guys. We'll take a quick break and be right back with our next guest. Thanks, Santi. Thanks Ash. >> [music] >> Yeet 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. >> [music] >> Go anywhere on chain instantly with relay.link. Relay is closing in on 10 billion dollars transferred. Go to relay.link to bridge your assets now.

>> [music] >> 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] >> Habachi is fast [music] and private perp trading secured by ZK with Celestia underneath. Go to habachi.xyz to start trading [music] today.

Looking for yield that stands out? Infinitify gives you just that. Deposit stablecoins and earn far more than the current savings rate. Infinitify is a battle-tested, reliable DeFi platform that [music] is ready to go. Head to infinitify.xyz. >> [music] >> Open, stable, borderless. Frax is building the next generation of stablecoin infrastructure for the digital finance era. Visit frax.com to learn more today.

Yeet 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. Go anywhere on chain instantly with relay.link. [music] Relay is closing in on 10 billion dollars transferred. Go to relay.link to bridge your assets now. 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.

Habachi is fast and private perp [music] trading secured by ZK with Celestia underneath. Go to habachi.xyz to start trading today. >> [music] >> Looking for yield that stands out? Infinitify gives you just that. Deposit stablecoins and earn far more than the current savings rate. Infinitify is a battle-tested, reliable DeFi platform that is ready to go. Head to infinitify.xyz. Open, stable, borderless. Frax is building the next generation of

stablecoin infrastructure for the digital finance era. Visit frax.com to learn more today. All right, we are back. We've got our friend RJ from Aligned. RJ, man, it's good to see you. Last time I think we we were chatting was Devconnect in Argentina. Yeah. Thank you for having me again, Rowey. Absolutely. >> been a while. Yeah, I mean, you abs- Lambda class has general Aligned in general just absolutely crushed Devconnect. Uh we hosted an incredible event together. It was a lot of fun. Uh but you guys also launched like a lot of cool things at Devconnect in Argentina.

So, give us just uh a bit of an update on Aligned and then we'll talk maybe broadly about, you know, how the verifiable space is going with AI. You guys are doing cool things with EigenLayer as well. So, just give us a a little bit of a heads-up uh as far as like what has been on your radar the last couple months? Yeah, sure. So, for those who don't know, um we're building uh one-click solution for enterprises and institutions that want to build businesses on top of Ethereum. What that means is if you are an economic actor, right, or a financial uh service provider in the world and you want to use a blockchain, in particular Ethereum, you need a couple of tools.

And we're building all of them in order to make that upgrade as seamless as possible. And for that, you need rollups, you need wallets because you need to onboard millions of users, and you also need services for liquidity and DeFi, and that's why we're building a lot of interoperability uh protocols uh underneath. So, yeah, like like the last couple of big updates we had or milestones we hit, um basically we put another product on mainnet, and we completed uh our ZK verification layer.

Uh what that means is infrastructure that allows um ZK rollups or people that use ZK, in particular ZK VMs, to aggregate many of those proof and verify them for in a very low-cost manner uh directly on Ethereum. And this is a very important milestone for us because this allows us to connect on mainnet the last missing puzzle we had in order to put uh ZK rollups built with E Frax directly on top of Ethereum. Incredible. And so, you know, Vitalik has been pretty vocal about how he thinks the rollup-centric roadmap, you know, maybe had some weaknesses, but you know, it's still steadfast in building the world computer. Obviously, that needs to scale. And now we're seeing, you know, different rollup providers

kind of come out and talk about where their perspective lives, you know, as far as where the Ethereum L1 is going and and where Ethereum is going in general. I'm I'm just curious. I know like you and Feder are very plugged into everything that's happening within, you know, deep deep Ethereum. So, from your perspective, how how are you reading some of the more some of the later messages coming from Vitalik? Actually, I mean, speaking directly from my point of view, but the team generally agrees. We're actually very optimistic about the latest post by by Vitalik.

And it aligns very well with what we have been seeing or we wanted to see, right? In our opinion, even if [clears throat] we we can say we are like tech maxis in the sense that we come from a very engineering background, we always said that we believe rollups were a commodity. Like at some point it will become a commodity. Mhm. So, your business model could not depend on having or running one single rollup because your edge was going to be something that anyone could be able to deploy. Mhm. So, our vision was always the opposite, okay? If this is going to become a commodity, what we are trying to do is build the best stack for launching rollups, but build it in a way that is easy to launch so anyone can run them.

And we help businesses onboard directly to Ethereum. So, our mission aligns very well with what Vitalik is saying, like, okay, we have this great world computer that works as a financial backend, and it can be much more than just a financial backend. What are the tools and the applications that we need in order to onboard more people directly to what we believe is the best place to build institutions in on the internet. Um so, we were very bullish on that vision, and it aligns perfectly with what we uh we have been building. I mean, uh it's not an easy task to build, Mhm. but we believe we're doing it in a way that is going to lower the cost of entry to many people that want to migrate

directly to Ethereum. And already have institutions that are doing that. I I think yeah, this is where we see the space going as well. The infrastructure is becoming commoditized to a certain extent. It's becoming very easy to launch these rollups, and that's leading to, you know, very similar-looking rollups. Not a lot of differentiation at the rollup stack. Only the ones that are, you know, enabling net new use cases have a value proposition that supersedes, you know, whatever the the rollup that came before and comes after is. Another thing that's happening is the L1 is scaling. And I think the L1 still carries a an air of trust, uh reliance, resiliency that, you know, L2s that launched, you know,

you know, new L2s that launch, it takes a long time to build up that kind of trust and resiliency. Yeah. Um but the L1 is starting to use like Justin Drake talked about snarkification of Ethereum, in bedding embedding ZK VMs into ZKVMs into the L1. the L1, Then then there's also native rollups with, you know, these these precompiles. Um, and and, you know, I saw you posted recently, you know, or excuse me, Fede posted, you reposted it, the ZKVM architecture whitepaper that was kind of included in Ethereum's, you know, roadmap by their cryptography team.

You know, get what where are we at when it comes to the snarkification of Ethereum? And then, separately, you know, Aligned as this verification service plays a very complimentary role. So, first, yeah, where are we, you know, when it comes to ZKVMs embedded inside the L1? And then, how can Aligned help complement that vision? Yeah, so we are super excited about the the the roadmap of Ethereum. Actually, we we put a lot of resources on it as well. Uh, from the line side, and of course, Fede from the Lambda side, uh, literally has engineers working on the on the latest version of the roadmap for the consensus client, not only on the on the execution client, but for the what is called the beam chain.

Uh, there's already something called if Lambda that is working on devnet that is already uh, testing and verifying like this new version of Ethereum that is being developed. And it's a very important step in the right direction for what we believe Ethereum should do in order to be super scalable, uh, competitive in the in the L1 and DeFi parallel, but also always thinking ahead of what the market uh, is doing. Like, every single time that Ethereum can had the opportunity to take the long-term approach, uh, has played out. And this time, Ethereum is doing exactly the same thing with CK and also with quantum

resistance. So, I think for people that are not technical and say, "Okay, like, why are people talking all of this technical stuff from the Ethereum roadmap?" I think the the the way to think about it, at least that's the way we see it, is, "Okay, all of these institutions are coming into Ethereum. Everything that we wanted in terms of adoption is actually happening. Yeah. We probably can ask for more, right? Like, okay, I saw you guys were interviewing Santi Mhm. uh, a couple of minutes ago, he's talking like, "Yeah, there's an issue with tokens and how we can accrue value directly to there." And I 100% agree uh, with everything that was said.

And but at the same time, things are happening, and it's very easy to see that in the next year and in the next 10 years, the whole world will run on top of this. >> [snorts] >> So, if you actually believe that's going to happen, you cannot make tradeoff that benefit the short-term without thinking about the long-term, knowing that you will have trillions of dollars on chain. And Ethereum is prioritizing and fixing quickly the short-term stuff, while at the same time building the most ambitious and future-proof roadmap. Um, so for us, that's like a a game-changer because we double down on building in this ecosystem, knowing that the clients that we will bring on board will be in the best place for liquidity, for security, and for future-proof.

Because at some point, if science is getting accelerated because of AI and every industry is getting accelerated, why wouldn't quantum computers get benefited as well? With researchers being able to have better tools. And luckily, Ethereum is always thinking ahead, and Justin Drake is doing an amazing job uh, with the beam chain team on thinking how we we we can do all of these things. And in particular, what we're doing at Aligned is we're building with Lambda and a cryptography research company called FMI, a ZKVM with every single thing we learned from helping others build ZKVMs and the things that we know we need in order to um, build the best products on top of Ethereum. So, we we're designing it with

the the standards and the and the things that the Ethereum Foundation is asking. Yeah. It it's it's a it's a disconnect, and this is what we were talking about with with Santi, where Ethereum is executing on its roadmap uh, steadfast. It has a very ambitious roadmap, and it is successfully accomplishing things day in day out. At the same time, there's a disconnect from the token that doesn't accrue value from all of the adoption that's happening. And so, yeah, that's that's a little TLDR from, you know, the last conversation we had with Santi, but from the Ethereum standpoint, I think this is why they're going and they're you're tackling more, you know, I've I've spoken to a couple people from the Ethereum Foundation now that they're focused on institutions, they're focused

on enterprises, and I think they are focused on fixing the value accrual mechanism. And then, obviously, the cryptography team, their mission has not changed, right? It's just continuing to provide, you know, a safe, secure mechanism for the world's computer. And I think, you know, ZK plays an important role in that. Um, and so, you know, January is a big month for you guys. Uh, I saw you guys release the uh, the proof aggregation service. Yep.

Tell us a little bit about how you see this going now that it's in production, and and generally what the plan is to scale the the proof aggregation service. Yes, so the proof aggregation service is super important for us because it allows us to get our clients that will run on top of our rollups directly to mainnet. Because many of them are not latency sensitive in terms of finality, but they do care a lot about cost, even taking into account that the the L1 is scaling and the verification costs have come down. So, for example, um, the work we're doing with Sovrin, that is a an identity company that is helping governments upgrade their identity stack, they have their own rollup.

Uh, this accelerates everything because we have a more robust infrastructure to put this in in production. So, the EtherEx team uh, at Lambda with the L2 stack and the L1 client are improving all of the performance part um, of the solution. And we have deployed all of like the CK components that we need in order to put this into production. And we're packaging everything together with um, a wallet as a service that we already started the development with. So, in this case, we work with, for example, Sovrin and say, "Okay, we offer something super easy where you manage everything from the wallets, the rollup, and we take care of all the CK uh, magic, so you don't have to know

anything about it, and we just make you uh, we just offer you a robust and and scalable infrastructure." What are the So, so identity I think is a a very clear use case. ZK provides, you know, a a very clear value proposition to identity protocols. What are some of the other use cases that you're seeing as primary uh, benefactors of ZK and in particular the EtherEx, you know, rollup as a service program? What are What are they using it for? So, I think primarily, I will think it around the other way around. Like, what problems people that want to start building on Ethereum or or start saying, "Hey, I want to do stuff

with stablecoins." What what problems do they have? Mhm. The people who we are talking, I mean, the market is huge, right? Like, it's no longer one single thing. I don't think the word industry would crypto make sense anymore because it's too it's too big. But the main things we we discuss with them is like, "Hey, I'm not an expert on this. I just know that this is a new opportunity for me to be more competitive against people who are also building financial services. And that they already have a distribution. Every single customer that we have already has a big distribution, and they have been building with Web2 tools, and they want to use crypto-native tools in order to lower cost and build their own financial ecosystem.

So, when you have big distribution, what you need is a way to onboard millions of users in a very seamless manner uh, to a non-custodial wallets. And it should be easy to recover them, and it should be safe. The other thing you need is a scalable backend because if you have millions of users, I mean, you can try to put that on Ethereum but let's say you have 2 million users and you're a supermarket chain, and you want to remove the need of a payment provider like in I don't know, in Argentina, you have Mercado Pago, and it takes a huge cut from their from their business, but they own the clients because people go to the supermarket because they like them, they trust them.

So, if you want to build your own super financial app, what you need is a wallets, you need the scalable backend. The scalable backend is a rollup. And it needs to be customizable because depending on the client and the country, they have different regulations or needs that we need to take care of take care of. So, EtherEx comes there because we can offer something performant, but also something that is easy to build on top of and customize. So, we can have something with privacy like what we're doing with Sovrin, or it can be like a classic rollup that people are already familiar with.

Yeah. I I think this is where a lot of, you know, traditional businesses are starting to get into uh, they're they're starting to replace some of the cost structures that are just payment infrastructures, financial, you know, accounting mechanisms. These are costs and expenses on, you know, traditional businesses' books. Everyone will be using blockchains because everyone will be using stablecoins. And and, you know, that is where I think the vector for adoption is mostly happening. And so, uh, these aren't necessarily crypto businesses. Like you said, it's a supermarket, right? Anyone who accepts payments is ultimately going to benefit from the cost savings and the efficiencies driven by blockchain

systems. Um, this this was, you know, another thing that Santi, you know, earlier was saying, um, and and you know, this kind of creates this dynamic where, you know, the businesses that are benefiting from the efficiency gains, let's say, you know, they're able to cost they cut, you know, 20 to 30% of their costs, ends up driving quite a bit of value to those end businesses. Um, the services, uh, like the token crypto ZK services, the blockchain services, like uh, what how are you thinking about value accrual, um, especially in this world where equity tokens are maybe different structures, and give us a sense of, given that you guys are still sort of very patient on

the token front, how do you think the right way to structure this going forward for compounding value within the system? What do you think the best structure for that is? So, I think there are two components, right? One of them is our strategy is taking into account talking a lot with the client and seeing, okay, how can we fix how can we find a sustainable way for both of us? Knowing that we are the experts on the blockchain side and they already have the distribution and they are the experts in their business.

So, I think one of the things we'll explore a lot is revenue sharing. I think that will happen. And the other thing that is very important to understand is, okay, there are a couple of things that we already know that are valuable in in blockchain. In the pipeline of what happens with a transaction on blockchain. So, let's say, um, we we find a way to build all of this infrastructure using Utreexo, our wallet as a service, and everything on a line. If a big portion of the economy goes through our infrastructure, I think part of what we we will see is us benefiting benefiting from seeing or or having that complete pipeline. Like,

okay, I go to the supermarket and they they say, "Hey, I I have this payment thing, but I also want to have remittances." Because many of the people that come to my supermarket, they have people that live in, I don't know, Paraguay, and they want to send money every month. And they don't want to go to another place because they go to the supermarket every week. Can we provide that? Yeah, of course. I can also provide the financial part behind the scenes, running fees, and have the global liquidity. Because what they cannot do is build the global liquidity because what has strong network effects is the financial component of that part, not the commodity of the payment in itself.

So, we will try to figure out by talking with all of them what they need, what is the best place where we can accrue value, while at the same time still giving them something that is extremely useful and aligns with the the their incentives long term. Um, and then, of course, I think they will need to pay for infrastructure, and similar to what happened with the internet, with Red Hat, with Linux, I think Align plays kind of a similar role in that sense. Like, we see ourselves in a similar position to what Red Hat had to do, uh, in the early, uh, stages of the internet and the web, uh, with Linux.

But in this case, we are building financial infrastructure, and we can also have at our disposal different tools that they didn't have, uh, to offer. It's not just tech. Mm. Man, okay, well, busy times. Give us a sense of what's coming up next, right? Cuz you guys are shipping, uh, you're also working deeply with the Ethereum Foundation, building out ZK tech, ZK VMs. Yeah, where do you think this goes in the coming weeks and months? And and generally what what can we expect, uh, from Align here over the next, uh, in the next bit of time?

Yeah, so, we I mean, we're working on many fronts to complete our full stack. So, I mean, our main priorities is our ZK VM that we're building with Lambda and Polygon ID. That is going, uh, very well. We're very happy with the results we got so far. We haven't, uh, made anything public yet from the code or the design yet, but we'll probably do once we complete one of the major milestones that we have in mind. But we we are targeting to share some of these things, uh, in one of the next big Ethereum events. And then, the wallet as a service, that is from the product point of view and the commercial point of view, is something that we uh, care a lot about because that's what people need the most currently from everyone we're talking

to. And that's coming up very well. We already have a first version, and we're talking with one of the first clients to see how we can, uh, touch the last details and see what's the best way to put in production with them as soon as possible. And I, yeah, I would say, uh, people to keep, uh, close attention to what we're doing. Apart from that, I think we're moving very fast on all the go-to-market strategy. And we are trying to offer an Ethereum kind of, Align solution to many of the things that we're seeing in the market. And Layer Zero is trying to do something similar with a different tech stack. Mm.

We believe Tempo is a a similar play with a different tech stack as well. And we are trying to build the competitive stack in order to help, the world upgrade to Ethereum directly because we believe that's the best solution for most of them. Yeah. Incredible. We saw how those announcements went, and I think, uh, I think you guys are also building towards this future that we're seeing play out in real time. Uh, RJ, man, always a pleasure. Uh, thanks for being such such great hosts during Devconnect. It was a lot of fun. And, uh, I'm looking forward to being being back there again soon.

Thank you, Robbie. And thank you everyone from the Rollup. You have a you guys have an incredible show. Thank you, man. Always a pleasure. Cheers. Bye-bye. All right, guys. That's our show. Uh, so we had Santi and RJ come on today. Uh, ZK VMs, obviously, uh, at the deepest part of the stack. Hearing some conflicting things, you know, uh, Santi is, um, you know, not so bullish on, uh, the Ethereum token, but obviously we're seeing adoption happen.

Uh, these guys are, you know, leading researchers, cryptographers. And so, you know, when it comes to how much adoption is able to be generated, uh, via Ethereum's protocol, all of the L2s, all of these things, there's tremendous amounts of value that is is happening on this chain. Um, when it comes to how the value accrues to the token, you heard Santi say that, you know, the burn is not sufficient. There has to be more, uh, direct impacts in how the value will compound for the network itself. Um, so we'll see. We'll see if, uh, Ethereum community can figure out the economics here. Another great show.

Uh, we are going to not stream tomorrow. And then, uh, we've got a heater for you guys coming up on Friday. So, we'll be here on Friday. You guys are not going to want to miss it. An absolutely stud lineup, and, uh, we'll see you there. Thanks, guys. See you next time.