Is the bull market already over? Zeneca on stablecoins and institutions

Transcript

GM, good morning. Welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show where we help decode the crypto market that's more desperate for direction than a guy lost without GPS. I'm your host, Jay Hamilton. It's Thursday, April the 3rd, and there's a 20% chance that the bull market is over. We're going to talk about why Zenica believes that. We're also going to talk about stable coins, stable coins, stable coins, stable coins. Everybody's talking about it right now. But the big question is how do you get exposure to stable coins? What are the opportunities? How do you invest in this sector? We're going to talk about portfolio allocation. I'm sure we're going to talk about a bunch more stuff because whenever Zen's on the show, it's a definitely a ranging conversation into many different areas.

Uh we are joined by Zenai. I'm teeing him up as if I've introduced him. We're joined by Zenai again, crypto investor, legendary educator, uh twe tweet tour, uh and and writing a lot right now, producing a lot of content. really excited to dive into some of his recent newsletters. Uh if you guys are swapping, highly recommend Milk Road Swap. Not because only because it's our product and I believe in it. Also because it's got some of the lowest fees in the space. I'm talking about 0.15% fees on trades on Ethereum, Arbitum, and Bass. You can also trade on Salana all within Milkroad Swap. It's backed by Cow Swap, so you know that you're backed by a wellrespected

decentralized DEX in the space. Click on the link in the show notes if you guys are swapping. Today's episode is brought to you by Moon Pay. Trade crypto fee free, fast, and on your terms. It's also brought to you by Coin Shift, powering top crypto treasuries with their yield bearing stable coin, CSUSDL. Zenica, welcome back to the show. Good to be back. Thanks for having me as always. Excited to be here. Always a pleasure, my man. Always a pleasure. Okay. Uh you wrote a piece recently, I think like a maybe a week or two ago. Um and you said that you believe that there's a 20 to 25% chance that the bull market is over. Why? Yeah. I mean, it's it's so hard to know these things.

Everyone is largely guessing. You have some people that look at technical analysis analysis, some people look at fundamentals, some people look at the four-ear cycle and and all that kind of stuff. uh I kind of take into account as many different pieces and points of information as I can and then then it's like just a gut feeling instinct and you have to like you have to come up with some sort of number and so I came up with 20 to 25% because um you know four months ago five months ago I thought it was like five or 10% chance but as as time goes on as you know the the macro environment changes as Trump continues being Trump and tariff nonsense looming over everyone's heads recession fears um you have to sort of increase your odds a little However, I mean, obviously 20 25% thinking it's over still means 75 to 80%

chance that we're in a bull market. Um or the bull market is not um fully over. So, we're in like maybe a bearish choppy period, but I think I still think we hit new all-time highs sometime this year or maybe early next year for Bitcoin. Bitcoin, I I'm glad you said caveat Bitcoin. Who knows for anything else? Yeah, it's tough. It's uh do you think that um I want I want to touch in I'm going to bring up your uh your article and I want to talk about the you broke down really nicely your bullish thoughts and your bearish thoughts. So I want to bring up that and we'll talk about that in a second. But before I do, just did a show uh with um Matt Hogan and Ryan Mesen from Bitwise. And Matt has this thesis that the the typical four-year

cycle is over for crypto. And mainly this is connected to a belief that we are decoupling Bitcoin from the rest of the from the rest of of crypto and that we're no longer going to see the all crypto run at the same time and basically this like you can buy any asset any crypto token in a in a bow market and it's going to go and I I'm really I'm sort of feeling that as well like I feel like it Times are changing. We're having corpor corporations and institutions come into the space. They trade very differently than everybody that's here currently than the retail

and the dgens that are here right now. They're more long-term, all these things. And also the Bitcoin is just it's it's the only one that's got the the runaway fundamentals that I it's pretty hard to argue the Bitcoin thesis at this point, but everything else really in the end it's still speculative tech, right? like yeah I believe very strongly in Ethereum and Salana and I still believe they do well this cycle don't get me wrong but longterm it is it's still it's very high risk and tough it feels tougher I mean you said this yourself I think in a recent article I remember you wrote it took you a long time to realize like it's Bitcoin and then everything else

everything else yeah it's I mean you're right it's this cycle more than or this year or last few years more than any other period I think we've really seen bitcoins separate from the rest. I I also agree that the four-ear cycle is likely over. Uh it has to end eventually. Like it whether it's this time or next time, it's just like it just can't continue four years the same way forever. Um something I've been saying recently about it is that everyone is so caught up and like oh the four year cycle it's going to do this and it's like the sample size is two like or maybe three. So like the yes yes it's happened a few times before but it's not exactly statistically a guarantee that it's going to happen the same way again. and and yeah, I think it's unlikely it's going to continue for

too long. But yeah, I think with with Bitcoin, I I I think we still need to see what happens to alts when monetary policy changes, when quantitative easing begins, when rates drop, when money printer goes on. Like historically, that's been when ETH and alts have run. So, I mean, Bitcoin dominance has just gone up. It's like 62 63% now. If it continues to go up even after quantitative easing, then I think yes, that that is definitely true. and and that would be like the final nail in the coffin. But if if that happens and and ETH starts going up and soul starts going up and and BTC dominance drops, then I think that there's probably still some validity to alts having their uh moment in the sun. I don't want to say

alt season because that's I don't think we get that. I agree that we're not going to get everything rising together. You won't be able to buy something and just have because everything's going up, it'll go up, too. Uh I think most people agree with that now. It's just there's way too many tokens and things. But I I I hold out hope that uh I mean I'm still really bullish on ETH and SOL and like I I'm obviously very bullish on Bitcoin, but I think that there are some longer term concerns about the security of it and and the the you know, if people aren't using it, then how is the network going to stay secure and yada yada yada um 5 10 20 30 years from now? Maybe maybe um smart contract chains solve that. We'll see. Yeah, I I agree. Um I I I think I just feel like right now in a

moment like this I feel very strong conviction for buying Bitcoin and I feel very strong conviction for moving to cash. Like those are the two things I feel strong conviction for. And I don't and it's I'm not saying that I don't I think a lot about buying other tokens. I know you do as well. you, but you wrote a piece on NFTTS coming back and I was like, "Oh, maybe I should buy a Terraform, which we don't need to go down that, but I've been waiting for that moment, too." Uh, and um and and I'm not saying that I'm not going to buy these other tokens. And because look, I I think Bitcoin I I still believe I said Bitcoin would be 240 by the end of the year. I still believe in

that prediction. I find it very interesting that nobody that I've had on the show that made predictions has for Bitcoin has changed their predictions for 2025. Everybody maybe is saying like, "Oh, maybe it goes into 2026." But everybody is generally, and I mean, I kind of set you up at the beginning of the show because I wanted to focus on the negative as opposed to the positive. Um, but so I've chose to focus on your 20% bear as opposed to 80% bull. But, um, but I what I what I do also see is it feels to me like there's you're not going to miss it. I don't think right now. Like I think that what whenever macro turns around, which will turn around and I the

only reason I feel so confident in that is like Trump is not trying to be remembered as the austerity uh you know president who came in and like liquidated every asset class. Like that's not that's not Trump. Not definitely not long term. So it's I feel like it's going to turn around and when it turns around, Bitcoin's going to run first, right? like that just feels like the obvious and then it'll flow to fundamental assets and and those fundamentals will be ETH, Solana, I think DeFi and then it'll flow to the casino. And so I'm not saying that there won't be the opportunity in the casino and the like the, you know, going for those 100 X's. I still think that

happens. I just think that like the I don't necessarily fear the I used to fear like missing out on those pumps and in a moment like this. I don't think you're going to like I think you'll see it coming. As long as you're paying attention. I I think there's a lot of people that are like tuning out and like it happens every bare market. It's it's not exciting to check your portfolio. It's the opposite actually. You dread checking it. It's depressing watching the prices go down every single day. There are fewer opportunities. And so people like tune out. They go back to real life. It's what I did in 2019, 2020. Um, and then I regretted it in 2021. And so, yeah, I think some people are tuning out, but if you know, people that are still listening to podcasts like this and then tuning in every day,

I think are putting themselves in in a much better position to, like you said, take advantage of these opportunities because you'll be able to see the signs as they start bubbling up um before before the rest of the world sort of ushers in. It's it's a great point. It's a great point. you you must stay tuned in because you will miss it because it will h when it does happen I guess it does fast is a relative term but it it could we could there's a real belief that we could rip very quickly actually once macro does turn around because all the we the the tailwinds have never been so strong never so strong like it's insane okay give us give us your let's go through your bullish list and your bearish list

right now Yeah, I mean like just speaking of tailwinds, a lot of the bullishness is based on that. It's like the the shift in the US regulatory approach towards crypto. A lot of the like it's not just gone from like negative to neutral or neutral to good. It's gone from very negative to very positive. It's like two complete extreme ends where now there's a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Now they're talking about a sovereign wealth fund that will buy Bitcoin. Individual states are buying it. They are regulating stable coins. they are there's just so much um just general bullishness. The SEC has completely changed and their approach has completely changed and so yeah I mean that is one big giant bullish thing towards um towards uh Bitcoin. You have uh ETFs which again didn't exist several

years ago and it just makes it easier for um I mean two things with ETFs. makes it easier for the average person to invest in Bitcoin and ETH and probably some other ones later on if they want to. But B, it it is this constant buy pressure from people and institutions who have money sitting in funds or retirement funds or whatever. Whenever there's a allocation and someone's like a portfolio manager like yeah we'll put 1% in crypto or 2% in crypto. It's like that kind of you know every month a little bit of money is trickling in. I think that is is really really really bullish and yeah as we mentioned before like quantitative tightening coming to an end when Mackery changes when the money printer goes on I think that is a potential bullish catalyst and and I do still think that will happen sometime this year lots of

reasons to be bullish there are some reasons to be bearish though let's go through bearish starts off with Trump being Trump I mean today is liberation day which quote unquote liberation day we don't know what that means with tariffs he's going to announce his retal his tariff plan I don't know but yeah the market doesn't like uncertainty and it's been completely uncertain since I mean for the last two months since he's been every day changing his mind and policy on tariffs and trade and literally everything. So that is honestly a big overhang if that clears up. If there's if the market starts to feel confident that you know what he is not going to be in this prolonged trade war with 50 countries at the same time and and there's an end in sight then I think uh like you said it can turn around really

really really quickly quickly but if it doesn't then you know there's recession's fear that there's fear of recession there's fear of a macro crash there's fear of stagflation there's all sorts of fears that you know maybe tech stocks don't recover the entire macro it takes years to recover Bitcoin has never existed during a depression or recession like a significant recession like it was launched after 2008. It was as a result of 2008 and so we haven't seen a obviously there was a COVID crash that was minor but we haven't seen like a prolonged bearish recessionary period for for macros. So I think if that happens all bets are off with with crypto and that could happen. I don't think it's a huge percentage chance that it does but it could. Another thing is like a lot of the catalysts are behind us. So last year you had the ETS, you

had the Trump election, you had Trump being inaugurated, you had the, you know, SEC changing, you had the strategic reserve this year. Um, all these big announcements are behind us now. And so like there's no specific news to look forward to that will necessarily pump it. That could also be seen as a good thing though where it's like now any positive news is is not priced in. So it could just be a surprise and delight type of thing for the market. Retail's been destroyed this cycle. I think uh memecoins have been very extractive and then Trump and Millennia coins were just maximally extractive. It just took so much money out of the ecosystem, so much money from new participants. Um it was just really really really really bad. It could just take a while longer to recover from that than in just a few months. Um and the

last point is that you know the bottom was 2022 and a half November 2022 two and a half years ago been up only for Bitcoin since then. Like there's been periods of sideways action but we've been going up for two and a half years. possible that, you know, that's that's the bull market and that's enough. Um, again, 20 25% chance I think it's over. Um, I I'm very much still on the camp of I think we go higher this year or early next year, but you have to be realistic and and there are some very serious and significant reasons that maybe we have topped. Let's be honest, everything in crypto comes with fees. But here's a nice surprise. Moon balance doesn't take a cut. You heard that right. No Moonay fees when you buy or sell crypto with your Moonay balance. Top up with dollars, pounds, or euros. Then you're

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behind Coin Shift, which is trusted to manage over 1 billion in business treasuries on chain, including a Gitcoin and hundreds of leading institutions. see why CSUSDL is gaining traction at milkroad.com. Let me give you a I'm going to pull up a a chart here from um Coinbase did a survey. Uh this is one of my my most bullish points right now. Uh Coinbase did a survey 350 institutional investors each managed an average of a billion dollars. And this was the number one thing that stood out for me. the survey. We did a whole episode on this with John Dustinino from Coinbase. You guys can go back, this is a few weeks

ago. Go back and listen to that if you want to dive into the whole survey. But one of the things that was said was that 59% of the respondents plan to allocate over 5% of their AUM to crypto. And here's why this is a big deal. The 5% number is a big deal. Because in most institutional investors, you can you can get away with doing kind of whatever you want if you're if you're allocating under 5% to an asset class. You don't need to change your mandate. You don't need to go back to your LPS to get their buy in. If you want to go over 5% allocation into an asset class, you have to go back to your LPs to your investors

and you have to change your mandate. you have to to basically go through a lot of administrative work in order to get their approval to say, "Yeah, hey, you can you can go do this with my money." Right? And so this 5% number is very significant because what it means is that these institutional investors, they are so bullish on crypto that they're willing to basically put their necks on the line. They're willing to go back. They're willing to not only do all this administrative work, they're going they're willing to go back to their LPs and say, "Hey guys, I think we should change our mandate." And I think we should go more into crypto and they're willing to have that conversation, which is scary for these guys because this is like, you know, it's like calling up your your owner of your sports team or

something like that and being like, "Hey, I want to spend the budget differently." It's like, well, I don't know if we should do that. So, it's it's a significant that that over 5% and seeing that more than 50% of them want to get to that over five. That's a really that's a huge number. It's just it's just where it's so I've never seen this in the space where I don't know if you have I've never seen such like strong fundamentals, such strong tailwinds and incredible bullishness. We did an episode last week with Yano from Block Works uh after DS and man he rhymed off a list of like 10 things from DS that were insanely bullish like

insanely but yet the the sentiment the fear is so strong and really that's just that's market uncertainty caused by Trump being Trump as you said nobody is better at nobody's better at creating attention and how do you create attention controversy, uncertainty. That is the best way to attention and that's what he he's doing now. I mean, he has his fiscal policies and his reasons and all of that. Um, but anyways, I just had to bring that up.

Let me ask you a question. Any comments on that before? No, just on that report. you probably covered it when you covered the whole thing. But there was another element of it which said 84% of surveyed respondents which is I think like 360 um institutional companies or investors 84% of them either already are or plan to um integrate stable coins into their ecosystem which is 84% is insane. Um stable coins really are going crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Stable coins are the they're like the least I mean we've been talking about it forever. They're they're the least sexy, the least. They're not I mean there's zero speculative, but I mean you can speculate. We'll talk about circle and Okay. How do you speculate?

Um but let me just ask ask one question quickly. You you you know quite a few of like the OGs and you talked OG's because you're an OG yourself. You've been around long enough. You know, I've only been here I've been here for five years working full-time in the space. It's not really OG. Like you kind of got to go back like eight years, I would say. I don't know what time frame would be OG. One thing I'm hearing a lot from a lot of different people on the OG sides, there's a real there's a real exodus happening there. A lot of the OGs are just like, I'm done, right? I don't I don't care anymore about now. A lot of those OGs have if they leave now, they've made a lot of money because they have big bags and Bitcoin and and even ETH, they probably bought ETH well below

the prices it's at now. Um are you are you seeing that too? Is that exodus happening? Definitely feeling that and seeing that as well. Um I don't think I'm as OG as that either. I'm I'm like you like 2021 I've been full-time since then. I was around in 2017 but not full-time. But yeah, I've definitely been feeling and seeing that same sentiment where people who've been around for a while are just fed up. They're sick. They're tired. They're exhausted. They're disenchanted. Um crypto is not what it was back then, which it very much isn't. Um it's changing. Um it, you know, on multiple fronts. On the one hand, you got, you know, governments and institutions dominating so much of the narrative, which is it's good for adoption, but

it's not good for like the whole cipher punk anti-establishment ethos that a lot of people were into, especially 10 plus years ago. And then secondarily, um, you know, people have been talking about changing the world with crypto and then so much attention has been on meme cocoins and so much attention has been on like things that just are very just extractive and uh vaporware. It's very it's it's very disenchanting for for people that have been building in the space. Um but I think stable coins is is one of the ways that actually is is a counter to that which is like actually this is solving a real problem. It's it's helping people around the world.

It's being adopted. It's it's actually a really cool use case. It's it's sort of funny. Uh if you if you were to like erase the like the last 12 years it's and and Satoshi came back, he'd be like, "Oh, I did it. It's It wasn't actually Bitcoin, it was stable coins, but like, "Hey, look, we did it, right?" And he was stoked. Like, that was his whole objective. He uh payment network basically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, we did it. We did it. And in between, we created this insane speculative asset. Definitely did not intend to do. That was definitely not NFTTS. What the What are you What are you memecoins? What are you guys doing? Yeah. Uh um but I but my point there is um and this

is there's when when all when when all these OGs are are leaving and are leaving in a bit of disgust and a bit of deta distaste as I see right now that is the echo chamber that I find a lot of people are in on crypto Twitter is that's all they see is they see a lot of OGs a lot of influencers a lot of people they've followed for a long time that they trust that have been in the space are fed up and leaving and it's leading to this like that's where I see this like big dichotomy happening that I'm trying to rationalize because like I'm so bullish.

I've never been so bullish. Look, I'm not saying prices are going to turn around tomorrow. It might be one month, it might be six months, but I like I said I still believe very strongly that we end up much higher for Bitcoin than we are today by the end of the year. So I think that's where that comes from of this like this fear that's just like drowning so many people. Yeah. No, it's rough out there. And I think um you know low sentiment gets more low sentiment. So like as people are depressed and fearful and anxious then if they talk about it on the timeline then more people get that way and then they talk about it and then more people get that way. It's like it's just the opposite of like during a bull market there's euphoria and mania and that's because everyone is manic manic and making money

and crazy and then it's just like social media has this way of just adding a million liters of fuel to whatever fire is running if it's a good one or a bad one. So yeah, it's uh I don't know like you said it's about echo chambers. It's about who you follow on Twitter. It's about curating your own timeline in circles and um I think people should use Twitter lists and and really just um focus on you know finding the people that that they that they uh think are being rational and positive and and uh uh logical about the space and not not emotional.

Okay, stable coins. Let's let's talk stable coins. Uh you wrote a great piece on it recently. Uh we'll link to that in the show notes if anybody wants to dive into that. Uh it's it's one of Zenica's premium newsletters, but it's free for everybody right now. So, uh you guys can check it out. Um before we talk about the main thing I think everybody wants to know is how do I get exposure to stable coins and how do I invest in it? Before we talk about that though, just give us your take on stable coins and your framework on how you're thinking about stable coins and where you think it's going. Yeah, I mean massively bullish on them. Like as we've been saying, it's it's it's product market fit. It's an actual use case for crypto.

To me it's like the answer whenever anyone you come across anyone in real life and they're like yeah but what can you actually do with crypto is how is actually solving anything and then you explain stable coins and doesn't take long and you sending money to someone in the other side of the world in you know less than a second for less than 1 cent and it's like you just compare that to Western Union or wire transfers or anything like domestically sure there's Venmo and the things that are free and instant but internationally it's like that has not been sold and probably never will be solved because of intermediaries like banks and transaction fees and currency conversion. Stablecoin solves all that.

It's just like it's it's just it's just a better product and and that to me is very exciting. And the other element of them is that it is um for a lot of countries a very it's a safe haven like their local currency is not stable. Uh Argentina um I think Sudan at the moment uh there's so many countries that have had inflation in the 20 30 100% 200% ranges uh where Zimbabwe a while ago is ridiculous inflation. So if someone is in one of those countries and earning money, uh, putting it into a stable coin in US dollars is much safer and literally more stable than their local currency, more stable than Bitcoin, more stable than practically anything else.

Um, so yeah, real use cases and more and more people are waking up to it. There's regulation being uh proposed and approved all around the world now to allow more companies and entities to just sort of go just like adopt it more and yeah, it's just going crazy. Yeah, we uh we had um Vlad Tennov, the uh founder CEO of Robin Hood on the show uh earlier this week on Monday uh and uh your your opinions about Robin Hood aside because we got a bit slammed for uh for promoting Robin Hood and everybody's still very uh upset about GameStop and what they did in the past.

And look, I don't I don't need to get into that. But one thing he said that really stood out to me was he said that stable coins and and crypto rails are a 10x operational improvement from his current business model. 10x. So it's not like and most of that is most of that relates to 10x of lowering cost basically, right? Um, that's that's that's enor like what corporation in the world is not going to start to use something that is going to potentially lower your cost 10x 10x right. Everybody will do it, right? Like more than I

think it's even more than 10x in some cases. Um, and that's what you need that because to get people to change from an existing system, if it's twice as good, it's it's usually not enough. It needs to be an order of magnitude better. It's like um it's why a new social media site is so difficult. Like there's been a million Twitter competitors, but you have to be an order of magnitude or two or three greater than Twitter to actually get people to get out of their ways and move over. It's the same for a lot of these large companies that are using, you know, traditional financial rails and and models. Um you need to offer them something that's way better. And this is it's it's faster, it's cheaper, it's more transparent, it's it's it's just it's just better so many different ways. Yeah. Exactly. Or you

just need a founder like Elon Musk that pisses off half the world. So then Blue Sky can exist and half the world goes there. Yeah, it is. It always amazes me how many people are still using Blue Sky. It's crazy. It's crazy. I talked to somebody the other day that was on Blue Sky was like, "What? People are there?" But it's still exists. It's big. It's big. A lot of people are there. Um okay. How do you get uh um how do you get exposure to stable coins? Uh and let me tease this up right here. Yeah. So like I I wrote my article and then uh I put it a few ways in. I was like there's no easy way to get exposure because companies like Tether and Circle are not public and you know yada yada yada. And then two days later um Circle

files for IPOs. So this is obviously one clear and easy way to get exposure. Circle is the company behind USDC the the second largest stable coin. Um I think they have like 30% market share or something like that 25%. So that is one way right there. But in my article, I also wrote um buying Coinbase stock as one of the the opportunities because and and got a lot more information after this IPO announcement. Coinbase in conjunction with Circle like helped them launch USDC and part of their deal was always that they get a percentage of the revenue or the profits from USDC. And I think uh when they filed for IPO, they had to release all their financials and everything like that. And it came out that I think they're getting 50% or even more than 50% of the profits are going to Coinbase. So just buying Coinbase

will get you pretty good exposure aside from being a good stock in many other ways as well. Um so that's one way. Uh other ways are buying um DeFi related products, stable coin related products. Athena is one which is sort of a um there you go. It's like a synthetic um stable coin. It's not one to one backed by USD holdings. It's it's kind of algorithmic but not really. Way that they they hold their peg is they have a bunch of crypto assets. of Bitcoin, ETH, and I think they have like 60 or 70% in stables as well. And then they use trading fees from when people are longing and shorting the market to generate yield and distribute that back.

So that's it's it's gotten a lot of excitement this cycle and it's a new primitive that could do well um from here. Um Maker Sky um Sky is like the new rebranding of Maker um which is another DeFi protocol. They're behind D, which is I think the fourth third or fourth biggest stable coin. And um it's it's third. If if you combo if you combo in and Sky D and USDS, which is if you combo those, it's 8 billion total or around there. So it's it's number three.

Um I'm super bullish on on Maker Sky. We got Rune Rune, the founder, coming on the show next week. So, we're going to break down a lot of why we're so bullish on that. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, there's good reason to be bullish. Um, D is also one of the I mean, one of the only and definitely the most significant decentralized stable coins. So, like Tether and and Circle are, you know, centralized entities and we've seen many times before like they'll freeze people's funds, which is sometimes good if there's a massive hack and North Korea siphoning the money. It it's nice to have that recourse, but it's also against the crypto ethos as well. And so I think that it's nice to have a decentralized option as well, which D basically is. Um, and then I mean I didn't mention it here, but um there are

a bunch of other protocols as well uh within existing DeFi R and and other other people using um stable coins and generating yield and things like that. Um you can go further down the stable coin curve. And then yeah, there's a bunch of upcoming tokens. What's this? Yeah, what's this plasma that you were talking about? Plasma is it's getting a lot of hype now. Um plasma is a new I think it's an L1. um a new blockchain. It's being backed by Tether and so it's it's basically their own L1 um designed specifically for stable coins and part of it is going to be that um USDT transfers are going to be fee free. So free transfers which is again you know currently if you're sending USDT on Ethereum it's you know 50 cents maybe a few dollars if gas is really high. Um on

base it's better but sometimes even on base it's 5 cents. when you're talking about millions and billions of transactions. Being able to reduce that to literal zero is actually a massive improvement. So yeah, I think it's very likely to do very well. Unfortunately, there's no way to get exposure at the moment. Um they did it around months and months and months ago. It's it's already closed. Uh hopefully that the hope is that they do some sort of um ICO or or um uh Echo or Legion based round where the community can get involved. Otherwise, just use the platform, hope for an airdrop. buy the token if and when it comes out if the price seems reasonable. Keep an eye on it.

Basically, the other thing you said was just buy Bitcoin, which is I thought was very very interesting. It's the simplest answer. I mean, at the highest level, stable coin adoption, if I mean, I think predictions are be $3 trillion worth of stable coins, I think, within the next few years. We're currently like 250 billion. So, like if there's that amount of money in stables, surely that's some of that's going to run to cryp like Bitcoin and other crypto assets. is only good for crypto. Um, so the simplest answer is literally buy Bitcoin. The slightly more risky, but I still think very reasonable answer is to buy the other chains that are underpinning a lot of this activity. So you've got ETH and Tron TRX, which make up for like 80% of all stable coin volume. Yeah. So I mean,

I'm I'm always finding a way to like shill my ETH bags that I'm very heavily down on. Um, and I've been holding for a very long time, but I'm still bullish ETH. I will die on this hill. Um, and I think this is just yet another reason you for all of the the hate that it gets over half of all stable coin activity and and volume and TVL is still on ETH and not even L2s. Like I think L2s are separate to this and on top of this you can see their base is 1.8% arbitrum 1.4. So ETH mainet 54%. So yeah buy by Bitcoin ETH Tron generally good good ideas I think to to get exposure to the stable coin sector. Do you do you own Tron? I've never really I've never gotten into Tron. I never really I've always had like a weird feeling towards

Justin Sun, so I just never really looked into it. Um, but I looked at the chart when when I was writing this post and it's like it's done very well this cycle. Like really surprisingly well. Yeah, it's kind of just been up only and like it it's dropped but not as much as everything else in the recent crash. Um, probably because of stable coins. You're probably right. Somebody somebody paid us in stable coins on Tron recently and and I I I just had such a difficult time bridging it off of Tron that I was like, "Fuck, it was so annoying." It's incredible how how much volume they still have for stable coins given given all that. Yeah. Well, yeah, because like this is my I mean, look, I I I have not looked deep into Tron at all, but the

thing that stands out to me is like if Tron is really just USDT and if we're going to abstract the chains, like is there really a long-term fundamental case for Tron if they don't have other activity that that keeps them alive when people don't care what chain their stable coins are on, which it feels inevitable. Yeah. No, that's the that's the risk I I also wrote about that where it's like once Plasma is launched, a lot of this USDT TVL and volume is just going to be siphoned from Ethantron over to Plasma.

We'll see what that does to TV and prices. But I mean the counter to that is that even if you take 50% away or 70% away, if the overall TVL goes up by 15x, then it's still an increase in in total amount um in raw amounts on on both chains. competitor is now just have to wait and see. Uh, okay. I want to finish with portfolio. Uh, something we usually always touch on when we have you on the show. How are you thinking about your portfolio allocation? What are you doing right now? You buying sitting on my hands?

Selling a little bit when things pump. Um, not too much. I'm just sitting in stables. A lot of ETH. Um, which I'm still bullish on it. I think it'll come back. I still have some AI coins. banker. I s Virtuals, AXBT, Vader. Um, obviously down bad on all of those, but I took profits on their way up and I'm overall up on them all. So, I don't feel too bad. Yeah, I'm just waiting. Like, I I I'm prepared to like I accept that things can go down another 90% from here. all these AI bags, my my Pangu bag, my there's a a bunch of things that could still drop another 90% and I'm okay with that because I think that there's a decent enough chance that we'll bounce back up and and things will

the coins that I'm holding, at least enough of them will go up three, four, five, 10x from here still um to make up for the the rest. But definitely um down bad like most people. I think that's uh that's reassuring to hear. We're we're not the only one. Everyone is uh it's a tough market every there. I want to ask about where where are you looking for the next when there is when macro turns around and and we we see the next um the bull market come back. What are you paying attention to? uh is there specific sectors or specific areas that

you think could rally first or could catch the narrative? I mean AI I still think is is the dominant narrative of the cycle of the world right now. What I can't figure out is like what within AI that's my struggle right now. You know what I mean? Like is it is it Farcoin? Like cuz that's not even AI, right? Like yeah like there's no there's no clear I think there's no clear winner at the moment. There's no clear direction and that's why it's you have to just like stay tuned into the space like uh be be online, check in on Twitter, check in on newsletters, just check in on podcasts, see what people are talking about, where what new products are being built.

There's a lot in the DeFi AI space. Wayfinders coming out soon. Prompt could be a good bet depending on where it launches could take us. Wayfinders token and and and is that that's the parallel team? That's the parallel team. Yeah, it's I think they said they're launching in the first one or two weeks of April, so very soon. Oh, very soon. Um, yeah, there's a really great airdrop farm that everyone listening should go and do. Um, I'll send you the link if you don't have it already. Basically, you go to their website, you connect to your wallet, you set up an account, um, you deposit like $10 in stable coins and then do a few like social missions, follow them and stuff like that and you're eligible for a percentage of the air drop. I think they're allocating 2% to that or something which is it's should be a

billion dollar protocol. Um, okay. Alpha. Alpha. Alpha. What? You got you got a Did you write an article on this? What's your link? You got a step. I did not article. I wrote a tweet ages ago, but um, no, I'll send you the link. I might actually I might write about it today cuz I put out an issue on Thursdays and yeah, it's worth telling people. Okay, whoever, everybody listening, if you want Zeno to write about this, comment in the show notes that you want to write about it and then we'll get I'm very bullish on on everything parallel and and Wfinder. They've been building this they've been building in this space. well before the AI hype took off. Um, and it's a really good product. Yeah, that's that's an you know, there's an interesting one. I hadn't thought about that because like okay, if we think about AI, you've got

you've got AI influencers which like really like seem to be those were the ones that pumped in the last like AIXBT, those Luna, all of those. You have the you have the launchpads like virtuals. I don't know if I have a lot of conviction on those. Like I guess those will come back. I don't know what your thoughts. Yeah, I guess they would. I don't know. It's just so early. Who knows which launchpad wins. Um I think you have all of the long-term I'm very bullish on the um the more fundamental side of AI. So like the compute and the data storage projects, but those are so they're so nonsexy and so complicated and so difficult to understand. Like I

don't think they catch the narrative. But the de defy or a wallet defi AI that actually you're right that could be that is that perfect blend of it'll probably be used by a lot of people. It's it's interesting. It's it's it's memeable. It's viral. Like Banker Banker really fits that. And Banker has done so it's probably one of the few tokens that it's done well in the past three months. So yeah, that's interesting. Hm. Okay, Wayfinder. There we go. Wayfinder. But yeah, I mean, I'm paying attention to just I think by being around you pay attention to everything. Maybe it's

maybe it's gaming that takes off, although that seems unlikely. Maybe it's memes again. Maybe it's NFTTS, maybe it's um DeFi in general, maybe it's something else. Um but yeah, eventually it'll be AI again. And and that's where my money's on. Uh, but you just have to go where the the wind is is blowing and and just see what makes the most sense at any given time. If you're trying to trade crypto, it's like you can't you can't be picky. You just have to go where the the opportunities are. Did you see uh do you see guns launched? Did you do you see that token? Yeah. Disastrous. Are you I haven't been paying attention.

What happened? I think they launched like a billion FTV, but only like 6% of the supply was out there. Um and then it's already down half. they uh changed the terms on their investors like last minute investors were meant to get 10% at TG or something but probably because Binance wanted them to change it like last minute they changed that um people who bought nodes year years ago which I did um they didn't give any tokens at TGE so it's just like it's it's they didn't the community dislikes them and the token has been down only um which is a shame because the game is genuinely good and fun and like everyone was like a lot of hopes and dreams pinned on it because it was a crypto game that was actually good and actually had lots of users and players. Um, still does. Um,

so maybe it comes back, but the launch itself not great. Yeah. Uh, for everybody who doesn't know, Gun, the ticker is Gun Gu. Guns is by is from Gunzilla is the team which made Off the Grid, which was like the crypto game that blew up back in the fall. Uh, I definitely did a few shows where I was like, "Everybody watch guns." Like I thought when this token launched, I also thought that I knew it was going to launch like Q1, Q2. I also thought we were going to be at a different point in the market now. Um, bummer. Bummer. I was really If this was a few months ago, this could definitely been at a several billion dollar FTB. Um, and if they did a few things differently with the

launch, that's what it is. Oh well, what can you do? Zen, thanks for joining us today. Appreciate your time. Uh we'll throw a link to we'll throw a link to whatever tweet you got or whatever for for Wayfinder and getting involved in that airdrop because that seems like some great alpha. Uh and uh if you do write an article, we'll also share that one as well. Appreciate you joining us today, my man. Thank you. Appreciate you having me here. Thanks for listening today's episode, everybody. Truly appreciate your support and your time. I'm going to be at Consensus Toronto May 14th to May 16th and I would love to meet you guys.

It is so fun to meet our community and to meet fellow crypto investors and crypto builders in person. I truly you get a different level of a relationship. Uh and I want to hang out with all of you. I would hang out with all of you every day if I could because all I do is want to talk crypto and I know you guys are the same. So if you want to grab a ticket to Consensus, you want to come to Toronto, hit the link in the show notes. There's a discount. You can get a $350 off your ticket. We're going to have a Milk Road event. So, if you do buy a ticket, make sure you check out and watch out for Milk Road event so you guys can register that. We're going to have a bunch of drinks and whatnot and we'll be hanging out. Hope to see you

there. We'll see you guys back again tomorrow. Thanks again for listening everybody. Have a wicked awesome day. As always, if you liked today's episode, please hit subscribe and make sure you follow us so you don't miss out on the next one. There's also a link in the description to our free fiveinut daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you while making you laugh. And if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game, we're going to also leave a link for Milk Road Pro. You get access to our portfolio where you can see exactly what we are buying. This is your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto. One final note, this show is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is

financial advice. Investing in crypto or any asset is risky and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose. Thanks so much for listening in my friends.