Carl Vogel on Bitcoin dominance and altcoin season

Transcript

GM, good morning. Welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show where we're not just bullish, we're booking tickets to the moon and asking about return flights later. I'm your host, Jay Hamilton. It's Wednesday, May the 28th. Crypto Market Cap is only 6% below the December 2024 peak. I don't think people realize what is happening right now. We are 6% below the peak and yet we are still in this like confusion of are we bullish or are we bearish. So the setup is way better than December but we're basically almost at all-time highs. Bitcoin Vegas is happening right now and I mean the Bitcoin train just can't be stopped. We're going to dive into so much news around Bitcoin Bitcoin

lending. We're going to talk about crypto narratives. We got one of our good buddies on the show today, Carl Vogle, general partner over at Sixman Ventures, one of the best VCs in the space. Carl also has a something to tell you guys at the end of the show that he has been cooking and he just launched recently. So stick around to hear an exciting announcement from him. Before we jump in, I got to tell you guys, I told you guys this yesterday and I'm going to tell you again. We just launched Milk Road Macro. I am so stoked about this. It is a new newsletter. We've brought on Thomas Malloy, a vet journalist and market researcher with a great macro background. Check it out.

Hit the link in the show notes every Tuesday, Thursday, five minutes in your inbox to keep you on top of what is happening in macro, which if you've been listening to the show a lot, you know that we believe macro moves markets and is one of the most important things that you need to understand as an investor, but it's very difficult to understand and Thomas does a great job of explaining it in a simple way. Today's episode is brought to you by Letin get cash without selling your Bitcoin. It's also brought to you by Meanwhile, Ditch Dollars Insure in Bitcoin. Without further ado, Carl, welcome back to the Milk Road Show. It is terrific to be back. How are you doing today? I'm great, man. It's good to see you. Good to see you. Likewise, man. It's It's been a while and there's so much there's

so much to talk about. So much. Yeah. So much. Uh, okay. Let's let's just start with um how are you framing the market right now? What's what's your current when you're explaining it to to your to your friends, you're sitting at a bar, how do you explain the current market setup? Yeah, my my general take is again not financial advice as a registered investment advisor. My general take is there's Bitcoin and then there's everything else. And the reason I say that is I was looking at Bitcoin dominance recently and over the past year it's gone up 25 to 30% now being at 60% on 63% on Bitcoin dominance. And I mean looking back it's hasn't been that high since 2021, right? So I mean Bitcoin

clearly is an asset class of its own. We've never had a more bullish regulatory and what I'll say political setup. I mean we have the president himself and his family empire setting up Bitcoin mining operations. We continue to see growth in the Bitcoin lending market enabling users to borrow against their Bitcoin. Um, and so I think generally the market, you're right, calling out macro as part of your frame, your sort of uh framing and the new uh product because I think it's really important. Right now, Bitcoin's trading as a macro asset, but it's actually outperforming a lot of the macro assets including the S&P. So clearly there's a desire for this asset and especially with tariffs and what's going to go on and if bonds go uh, you know, become

cheaper, are we going to have to print more and potentially increase inflation in order to cover that? I think people are just realizing that the US economy, Trump does not want it to fail for sure and he's going to do everything in his power to prop it up, but it will never be as sound a form of money as something that is scarce and finite. And that's the case with Bitcoin. So, I think Bitcoin is is really doing an incredible job. I mean, to think that six weeks ago, you could have bought it for 75K and now we've just clipped above 1001 I think yesterday in the span of six weeks. I mean it's it's truly bizarre and uh what I wouldn't say once in a lifetimes there's always more good buying opportunities but it was a generational buying opportunity for

those who were active and realizing the longerterm vision. Um the rest of the crypto market look is doing well. I just think that all the attention right now is on Bitcoin. It's a sound secure asset. People are generally scared right now. So there's a lot of riskoff behavior. Liquidity is drying up both on the private capital market side and the public markets. So you're seeing even great assets like Salada and others that are uh you know performing fine but they're certainly not outperforming and just because that Bitcoin dominance continues to accelerate. So that's that's kind of my my quick highlevel take. What's yours?

Oh wow. Look at this guy. He's getting ready to do his own podcast asking me questions now. I fully agree with you on the on the Bitcoin side. It's it's Bitcoin's world right now. Uh and we're all just playing in it. I think that uh I think that we are my my general take is we're we're in we're still in a bull market. I am shortterm unsure though. I'm still unsure what happens in the short term. The key dates that I'm paying attention to are I mean I'm not I don't even know if I'm paying attention to the Fed right now because I just don't expect them to do anything anytime soon, right? So I don't think the Fed does anything. I I we will be watching the Fed date in July very closely. I

think the July symposium in Jackson Hole is a big milestone meeting for them and that will we might finally get some signals but I don't expect anything to happen at the June meeting. So not really paying attention there. I think tariffs the market has priced in tariffs. So I'm not so worried about tariffs but I am worried about the the noise that will come around the end of all of these delays. like there is this push back on on the tariff side and I can't even keep track of like when each 90day or 40 45day you know thing there's the China deal there's the EU delay there's delays with a whole bunch of other countries too so that that kind of concerns me and that's that's all going to come to a head likely in July too so uh I don't know I feel I feel very good

about the next four to six weeks and I could see a rip for Bitcoin um altcoins I think not Not so sure on that. Maybe some will go, but I don't think we're in altcoin season. I think we kind of just had an altcoin season to be honest. We just had a mini altcoin season, right? Like we had a good run and and everyone's upset because we're not at alltime highs on altcoins, right? But like you got to remember like ETH and Soul are up what, like seven 70% from their all-time lows just like a month ago. So like I think I think that's the way all coin seasons go, right? They're I mean, you know, you've been in this for a long time. They are very fast and very short and yes and and and they happen in a blink and then it's done. So

I think we get more altcoins will rip but I don't know that it happens this summer. That feels more like Q4 maybe Q1 is when really we go into euphoria especially because I think we can get more liquidity by that point. I think it's also the big thing is what is happening as you mentioned with like Trump and Bessant have said they are going to grow their way like austerity is off the table. we're gonna grow our way out of this. What does that mean? It means more liquidity. It means money printer goes on whatever way they're going to do that. I mean, treasury buybacks, the SLR program, like you know, like these types of things. But, um, will I think it's it's it's a it feels like a very very bullish setup

right now. I just don't know the short term. What what's your time frame like? How do you think about the next six to 12 months? Yeah, I mean 12 months very optimistic, but look, there's a lot of uncertainty. I mean I one of the things I'll be watching for is uh sort of I mean we're we're a ways out still from Q2 earnings where it's still you call it 8 weeks away but if you're a company right now you have AI on one of these driving forces that's radically changing and you have tariffs and it's like well should I build a factory here should I not build a factory and the other thing is let's say you decide to start building more in America but what happens if the administration changes in three years and all of a sudden now like you just are going to be taxed a lot for

for your efforts and So I I feel bad for companies in this situation. I really think it's going to be hard for them to operate these emerging technological and geopolitical trends simultaneously. So I expect Q2 to be a a difficult quarter. In fact, a lot of companies even said last, you know, coming out of Q1, we're not even going to publish expectations because we don't know like and so I I think um I think it's going to be hard. So 12 months very optimistic. Um I think for three months though, I don't know. I think it's a look, you just have to be a long-term investor. Like, if you're trying to play this thing up and down, you know, my my framing is, hey, if Bitcoin goes back below a certain price, whether that's, you know, 100 or 90 or whatever that happens to be, it's like

great, this is time to start accumulating again. But other other words, we're in price discovery. We're in truly unprecedented um, you know, valuations and now it's just to see where the where the market goes and where the global liquidity goes. Yeah, completely completely agree. It is something to be paying attention to right now. Uh, okay. Let's let's let's just rhyme off some Bitcoin news while we're on the Bitcoin topic. Let's listen to this news. Okay. Um, and some of this is from a few days ago, some of it more recent. Uh, the US has said that they David Sach said that the US could buy more Bitcoin. Trump Media, I'm sure everybody knows this by this point, is going to raise 2.5 billion to buy more Bitcoin. They I think that closes like today or tomorrow. It closes like this

week and then they're going to buy it. So, they haven't even bought it yet. weird that they made an announcement they were going to buy 2.5 billion before they actually bought it. But anyways, uh GameStop gonna buy 512 million. Uh Strive has is going to raise 750 million to buy Bitcoin. Metanet issued another 50 million in debt to buy Bitcoin. El Salvador continues to defy the IMF continues to buy more Bitcoin. Good for you, El Salvador. Please keep doing that. Uh and then the Bitcoin Act is actually hitting Congress next week and Senator Lumis is in Bitcoin Vegas this week talking all about that. So, we have like just the the the it it doesn't stop. And what what's really standing out to me, and we were talking about this on a show earlier this week with Scott Milker, is the real trend right now around Bitcoin, is the corporate

buying, right? Like the government buying is not quite central bank buying. It's not quite there. We all we all know that's coming and and it is happening. I'm not saying it's not happening, but it's not it's not happening at scale yet. uh or if it is, we just don't know and they're not announcing it, which actually probably might be a smart idea for some of these governments. But on the corporate treasury side, two things are happening. We see we see lots of corporations are buying Bitcoin just as a like natural investment, not as a like strategy uh meta planet, meta uh GameStop, these companies where they seem to be doing it as this as this business model where you sell notes and then you buy Bitcoin which is really

like a leverage play to get more Bitcoin and believe believe in the the long term of Bitcoin. What's your thought on on these? Are you one question I keep asking is like is there systemic risk around all of these new players that are getting in and buying Bitcoin on leverage? Do you think that's a risk? I think there are risk scenarios and in fact I'm even a little bit more concerned about people running this trade for other asset classes. So people are doing this for Ethereum. You saw Joe Luben is now chairman of a new Ethereum based entity basically running the same strategy buying Ethereum. There's now multiple ones including uh soul strategies uh that are doing this for Salana and I imagine for you know other move chains and other chains this is

just going to be part of the default strategy especially if getting an ETF takes time this is a a fast track by a company run the strategy as well as people just want leverage like a lot of people just want leveraged asset you know let's say two to 5x exposure and you know right now I think the nav on nav premium on micro strategy is 2x so in theory you're actually getting a good amount of health, you know, healthy leverage. So, when does this start to break down? I was actually talking about somebody about this last week at the Salana conference who's doing the same thing for Salana. Basically, Micro Strategy is running this with I think fiveyear dated bonds. So, where they start to get in trouble is, you know, if the price of Bitcoin is depressed for a very very very long time, that is where

they may struggle in the conversion from the bonds to the equity and actually start to have some uh in insolveny issues. And again, this isn't an area where I'm an expert. So if I'm using the wrong term and it's not insolveny, it's another form of bankruptcy. Don't don't quote me deeply, but it's really about time duration. And so bit, you know, Sailor can buy this now at 110 or whatever he's going to buy it at in the next week. He's like, look, I think this is going to 500 over the next 5 years or a million eventually by 2030, I think he's called. And so he's like, I don't care. Like it's fine. I don't have this short-term I'm going to get liquidated if the price drops below any particular let's say threshold like many people who are borrowing against Bitcoin. He's just getting this le longdated leverage. So I

I think it's pretty safe right now for what he's doing if I understand the failure modes correctly. Um, and I get, but I think these other assets like the the Ethereums, the Salanas, it's not clear to me they're on the same long-term capital asset, lower volatility, high growth curve. Obviously, they can outperform Bitcoin for periods, but they also draw down much larger. And so, I think all of a sudden you might be buying at a very high price, then the assets trading at a much lower price. And so, I think that's where you would start running into issues. But it's something we've even been talking about is should we be getting equity? You know, should we be getting brokerage accounts and start to look at these in more detail? And you know, it's funny. I don't think people

venture funds, private credit funds would ever be talking about these types of strategies. But here we are. And there's there's a lot of them that are being run. But I think you have to go with a trustworthy um team and uh you know, executive team for sure because otherwise there could be nefarious activity which would completely destroy the uh the value that's created. Yeah. Yeah. completely and that's I think that's my that's exactly my feeling right now is I I don't have a lot of concerns about strategy proven been around for a long time uh but when I see so many new players coming into a space my radar goes off of people are sniffing opportunity and they're just jumping on it and they don't understand the complexity in order to do this properly

and so I could see at some point one of these one of these Bitcoin treasury or source treasury or ETH treasury companies is going to blow up and it's gonna for sure and they're starting later like Sailor's been buying that's the other thing the cost basis he has a much lower cost basis these teams starting now I mean they're they there's definitely some risk that is that is being taken on so I I completely agree so be safe out there you know leverage is great but ultimately holding the underlying assets in a secure self-custody solution or with a secure provider is the the best way to to create long-term wealth if I was advising somebody on the the retail side Again, not financial advice. Yeah. Let's let's uh let's talk about um Oh, before I mention this, uh Patrick, uh I see you

asking a question and I see a few questions coming in. Give us your questions. We'll ask Carl any questions at the end of the show. Um I I want to switch to to Bitcoin lending. Uh this is something you and I were talking about before we recorded today. Uh, and I've been doing a lot of research and talking to different projects on Bitcoin landing because it's probably one of the most common questions I get right now from our audience is how do I how do I lend against my Bitcoin or how do I get yield? I mean, there's obviously different ways to access capital from your Bitcoin. Uh, let's talk about Bitcoin lending. You were mentioning some news that happened this morning over at Caner. What what's your thought on Bitcoin lending? Yeah. So, Caner Fitzgerald, I know the head of digital assets there. They have been longtime uh

Bitcoin infrastructure providers and sort of financial experts. And so, they've already been they already have a very large multi-billion dollar lending facility where if you're a company, if you're a fund and you need to borrow against your Bitcoin, you can create a structure with them and basically borrow. And what we see now is instead of these sort of you know executive to executive arrangements that are being created now it's being opened up to a much broader audience. So for example Maple is a platform I think it's both on Ethereum and Salana. I know Salana for sure maybe Ethereum as well where now you can start to uh post collateral in including your Bitcoin to borrow and you start seeing this in Falcon X. So what

we're seeing is people don't want to sell Bitcoin. Why would you want to sell Bitcoin inherit a 20 plus percent uh capital gains tax if not more? Especially those for in the US. If you're one of these um you know enterprises we're talking about buying Bitcoin, if they view this as a capital asset, they're not going to sell it in six months. They're going to want to borrow against it to finance their their operations. And so we're increasingly see this taking place. And and my own personal retail strategy, that's how I've been playing is continue to build up a base. and you know many assets but Bitcoin being the largest and I'd say most important holding and then borrow against it because I can borrow for call it 8 12% on a platform and I don't have to worry about a 20 to 30% capital gains

tax that's being paid. So um we've seen on the private side a ton of deals doing this that are retail specific. A lot of them in particular are focused on um I I'm going to hold your Bitcoin in a wallet on the Bitcoin network. like I'm not going to reissue you something on some other side chain or some other network. It's like no, this is a pseudo self-custody solution for your Bitcoin and that we're only under certain conditions can they actually liquidate it. But if you as long as you keep your collateral um up and high enough blown to value ratio, you can just borrow against it in dollars and they help finance those activities. So I think this growing area of DeFi is going to make it radically easier for people to get in and start borrowing against their Bitcoin, which I think is great. Yeah, I

think as you you made a really good point before uh we started recording, which was that we need to teach and educate Bitcoin holders on how to handle their Bitcoin moving forward. And I don't mean I don't I mean security, yeah, that as well. And we actually did a an great episode about a month ago with Jameson Lop. So, you go back and listen to that if you want to learn all about Bitcoin security. He's the OG in that space. But um but just on the okay, so you've got Bitcoin, you've got one Bitcoin, you got half a Bitcoin, you got 10 Bitcoin, you got 100 Bitcoin, whatever that might be. Okay, what's your plan, right? Like the never sell plan. I fully agree your plan should be to never sell, but then but then what?

Like what are you just going to hold it and then die one day and like pass it on your kids? Like yeah, like I love my kid, don't get me wrong, but like yo, come on. Daddy wants some payout during his life too, right? So like this this this education here is really I think the next phase. Uh, and this is a great uh CTA and to our our sponsors for today's episode. I did not set this up folks, but I got I got to take a minute to recognize our sponsors who make this show possible, who are both going to give you an opportunity to access capital from your Bitcoin. We'll be right back. Selling your Bitcoin should be a last resort when you need cash. That's why there's Lein, the trusted platform for Bitcoin backed loans. You can unlock

cash in as little as 18 hours with no monthly interest payments and no prepayment penalties. They've issued over 9 billion in loans and never lost a single Satoshi of client funds, even during the chaos of 2022. If you're a long-term hodler, this is the move. Get liquidity without selling at milkroad.com/letinit spelled ln is the world's first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the bitcoin economy. They do everything in BTC. You pay in BTC, they pay claims to your family in BTC. You take out policy loans entirely in BTC when you need liquidity. Protect your

family from life's uncertainty and a broken financial system. Build intergenerational Bitcoin wealth while the cost of living skyrockets in dollar terms. Plus, get all the tax and legal benefits of life insurance now in Bitcoin. Visit milkroad.com/meanwan to join the wait list and get early access to the world's first Bitcoin life insurance. I can't I can't hear you, Jay. Oh, I was muted. I do this like once a week. Thank you. Uh you were at Accelerate last week. Yeah. This is Salana's uh we're chatting actually with uh Sam Andrew, another uh VC in the space uh yesterday and he was talk Oh, look at this guy.

Guys, if you're watching video right now, let's go. Full American flag. Let's go. Okay. Wow. I mean, guy gives to Salana like really leaning into crypto being built in America and leaning into the opportunity that is happening right now as a result of the Trump administration and I mean look at the glasses you're wearing. Uh tell give us give us the the download on Accelerate for those who weren't there. Yeah. What were the takeaways? It was a terrific conference. It was the first Salana conference in the US and of course previously companies and teams wouldn't feel comfortable setting up conferences. So everyone in the industry had to go travel to remote parts of the world to attend these and now we can do it in my

own backyard. In fact, it was in the Lori side of New York. I live in Lori Side. So I was like, "Wow, instead of getting on a plane to Dubai or to Singapore, I'm just walking 15 minutes to a conference. Not even a train or cab or anything required." So it was it was uh I think everyone was really excited to be able to do something in the financial capital of the world, which is New York City. a number of major announcements coming out uh this last week. One was Salana released a new consensus algorithm and that is like pretty [ __ ] huge. I mean you think about how like core consensus is to the design of a protocol and I think one of the things we see in salon is there is this incredible group of engineers that are cracked out nerds in uh like high

throughput performance and decentralized operation distributed systems and like Salana is an amazing test bed for them to take all these esoteric computer science algorithms and apply them to the future of finance which a lot of it is taking place on Salana. So they changed their the new consensus mechanism is called Alpenlow. And what this means for users is and especially builders on Salana is transactions finalize up to 100x faster than they did before. And the funny thing about this is somebody who's a professor in Switzerland.

Ironically, the university is called uh ETH ETHZURI. It's actually like a legitimate school, but it's funny. They were criticizing nothing to do with yeah nothing to do with theory it's just like I don't know what it stands for but it's like ETHZ was criticizing salon in the designs there were certain failure modes and so then to the team reached out and said hey why don't you go help us improvement these professors and their PhD students went to work and lo and behold now we have a brand new uh consensus algorithm implemented by the amazing team over at Anza and so 100x faster finality what what does that actually mean it means that especially if you're trying to build an exchange or a business, you need to if you're like receiving Salana to then do a transaction, like you're trying to send

a fiat payment, you're trying to settle a trade, you might need to wait up to 12 seconds for this to happen because you can't give somebody else's funds away while you're still waiting for this to officially settle and get 32 blocks confirmed on chain. But now blocks will settle, I think it's like 150 in some cases, if not up to like max 500, 600 milliseconds. And so it makes it way easier for companies and teams building on Slanton to actually uh create better user experiences. One of the amazing things um another really probably the biggest announcement of the week I'd say is Kraken allowing their international users to trade equities like Tesla and I think strategy and others on on Salana.

So onchain. So now if you're a user, you can get, you know, what what I've seen from like a thesis perspective is there's a convergence of banks, brokerages, and crypto exchanges. In other words, everyone's trying to move into different parts of the triangle. You saw Robin Hood move into banking and ATM, you know, distributions with literally people drive around cities giving you cash when you want it. Uh you've seen Kraken now getting into brokerage. You see Coinbase getting into banking. So, everyone's trying to move into these different areas because it's really the main uh main way to grow. And so, having this is is huge because it provides 247 flexibility for Kraken users to access and trade these. And we

now create an onchain 247 price discovery mechanism we didn't have before. So, yeah, this is what I posted about it. Absolutely massive. Um, let me Is this live? Like, yeah. Uh, I need I need to double check. I'm I'm I'm here. I can't use it because I'm a I'm I'm in the US, but b I'm in New York. In fact, one of the tweets below that was like before I can use Kraken as a New York resident, they're already issuing tokenized equities um through their partner back. So, uh I I can't use it. I don't know if it's live, but um there's a number of exciting things I understand in the Kraken road map coming up for this year. So, definitely a company to be looking out for. If you haven't tried their product, uh it might be worth exploring further. We we got Kraken's uh

founder and CEO coming on the show in a few weeks actually. So we'll we'll definitely Oh, you should definitely dive in deep. the the great take I heard um uh on yesterday's show from Sam Andrew was that uh and this just like picture perfect for me was Salana bad assets great infrastructure NASDAQ great assets bad infrastructure smash those together and what's going to happen right internet capital markets yeah you know you can't use that term though because the believe app stole that term recently just gets so confusing now. Yeah, I'm I'm all about reclaim. You're not in the trenches enough, Carl. Anyway, no, but um but it is it is so true of like tokenized stocks, tokenized

equities. Like this is this is like 247 trading of this stuff globally around the world is like the killer use case that we have ready. Like it's ready. We're like, "Yeah, hey, we can do this right now." And it's it's going to happen. I you can see I thought it wouldn't happen till after a market structure built but it's already happening and and like I just I don't know again I don't know if it's live and I don't know how quick it's happening exactly in this exact moment but like I could see this absolutely exploding in the next year and being a massive massive narrative that nobody is really paying attention to in the crypto world.

Tradfi I'm sure is noticing it but crypto not so much. Totally. And one of our I'm not going to mention the name because I don't want to be accused of shilling portfolio companies, but one of our portfolio companies uh offers this as well through a different partner dinari. So basically in their app you can hold and send stable coins, you can hold and send crypto and you can hold and send actually you can't send anything you just hold equities. And so to be able to have multiple asset classes in one place, it really makes it the premier uh financial solution for both your daily uh you know operations, daily spending. Oh, they have a card.

Daily spending, but also your long-term investing. So, again, this convergence of banks, brokerages, and crypto companies or crypto exchanges, you're just going to continue to see that over the next couple years, and it's the the killer strategy forever at the highest levels can nail all three in a single platform. And I think a lot of it, your point, is going to take place on Salonic because it has all these cracked distributed systems engineers that are shipping continuously shipping new updates. Yeah. you you're obviously very bullish on Salana. Just what we're talking about. Why? What would give that away?

Uh, okay. If if you guys I got what we're talking about Salana, if you're bullish on Salana, which I know everybody listening to the show is. I feel like everybody listening has got their got bags in Salana and and I think you should. It's one of the best riskadjusted investments in the space. Um, but this past weekend, our pro team put out a report all about Salana DeFi, which I think is an undervalued area of Salana that not enough people are paying attention to because if if Salana wins and Salana rips, which it likely will, then who's going to win off the backs of that? Well, DeFi is going to win huge. And there is some I mean, we all know the projects Jupiter. You can read that report. We'll link to it in the show notes and you can see what our team thinks you should buy within the Salana

DeFi space. Okay. Can I point on that real quick? Just real quick point on that. So I think undervalued in terms of they're not on everyone's radar but potentially not undervalued in terms of the fundamentals. So if you look at the sort of if you look at like a lending platform like an aby or compound and you look at the price relative to the amount of liquidity that's there, the amount of TVL compared to Camino or you look at some of the other like onetoone comparisons, do some of that research and just see how undervervalued they are. And from when I was last looking at this, they actually might be slightly overvalued relative to the amount of TBL that they have in in their ETH counterparts. But again, there's a lot of ways to value this. You can look at asset velocity and other things that

say, hey, like there's all these legacy assets that are Na'vi that nobody's going to touch or use versus Salana. It's like real-time money movement constantly taking place. But um do your research, but uh very excited for Salona Defi. Carl, you're you're you're CTAing and and promoing my this pro report so well because the pro valuation metrics in it that compare E to Salana. So guys, if you're pro, go read the report. If you're not pro, go pro today and check it out. Okay, Carl, we got to go to you guys have been cooking. You guys are always cooking over at Sixman Ventures.

Yeah, take take off the salada glasses. Let's get Carl back. Oh, the this is a Okay, let's get let's get in the trenches. Carl, you just launched a new podcast and you launched a memecoin. What's what what's going on here? Give us the give us the download. Yeah, it's uh it's something I've been thinking about for a while and finally was able to pull the trigger. Basically, my general take is I love podcasts, but there's too many podcasts out there for me to consume. And so, if I have this problem and my job is to be a professional investor consuming content, I can't imagine how hard it is for other people to do so. which is great where you guys have bite-sized pieces and pro services and more advanced things that make it really easy to get the digest of

what matters most any given day. But I love the idea of like a live stream where you're actually interacting with the audience. And my general take is Salana and crypto more broadly has gotten this vibe of being the casino where it's all about trading and degeneracy etc. And that actually is a good um forcing function and creates awareness and excitement for new types of channels and products that are coming out. But there also needs to be really good content on the apps that people can use and engage with in crypto. And I said, well, if I'm going to be talking about crypto apps, and again, we have a unique view at Sixman Ventures investing at the application layer. I was like, well, why don't I do this on cryptonnative in infrastructure? Like if

I just run to Twitter, YouTube or somewhere else, it's I'm am I actually in the trenches talking about crypto builders? Like maybe I should actually be using products built by cryptobuilders. And so it's a live stream on pumpf fun. In order to create a live stream, you need to launch token. So like the token is an interesting byproduct of this. But what they did is you know in the past the trenches have been you know coin go up and then dev sells and so all of a sudden the whole thing unravels. What pump does now is you as a creator you actually get a percentage of trading fees. So I think so far I you know I've I've acred trading fees from this trading on the open market and now I don't have to sell any tokens. So you can see there I think

the the channel owns 3% of the supply and I haven't sold a single one but this thing's trading at five it clipped 10 for a period of time. And so this this when you look at new business models like is the future of content going to be adbased? Like that's kind of an old model. We had a stop for an advertise advertisements in there and they're great ads but still it's ads. It's a disruption to the flow of content. Instead, if somebody's bullish on Milk Road, well, how do they get exposure to you guys and grow with you? Well, tokens and coins, creator coins are the way main way to make that happen. So, I say now's the time. Let's try it. And look, it might fail miserably. Like, this isn't my full-time job. I'm not doing this to get rich. This is I want to be

in the trenches reclaiming it from the dgens for the builders and the users of crypto. So we have our first live stream today at 4 pm. We're going to be talking a little bit more about salon accelerate going one layer deeper uh deeper than we did here. And the other thing I want to do is if it's for builders every live stream needs to have a demo. If there's not a demo in the live stream then I'm failing the builders of Salana and crypto more broadly. So, we're gonna be having Baxis, which is a tokenized whiskey and spirits platform, demoing their product, and we're even going to be giving away a bottle of whiskey on it. So, uh, very excited for that. Uh, happy to jump in anything anywhere else.

But, yeah, it's been a wild wild 24 hours beyond my expectations. Incredible. We'll we'll link to the the show in the show notes so you guys can go check it out. I've never attended a a live stream on Pumped Fun, so I didn't even know that they had live streams and they were like offering, I guess, podcasts through that. very interesting to see the way that they are. I mean, I think you the the the truth of the matter is attention is going to be captured. We're going to capture the value of attention with blockchain tech. Like, we all know that. We all know that's happening. It's already happening in unique ways with prediction markets. We're seeing it happen in unique ways with infoi, with

social. So, it's going to happen. My one question here is so the the the coin the token the trenches token is just it's just a memecoin right it doesn't have utility it it's not it doesn't have you're not trying to create a business around this memecoin it's just a memecoin that is shares the same brand as the show I guess I think we'll we'll have to share a little bit more at at 4 p.m. today. But my general take is this is a coin for the channel and there's many ways that can be used. It can be used to, for example, what if we had a demo day where founders can come up, pitch what they're building to potentially thousands of live streamers watching this channel and the winner gets tokens from the channel. They get

more, you know, trenches token. Well, that to me is creating utility around it. But it's, you know, I'm not selling it just to like get profits. You know, eventually if this thing keeps growing, some might need to be sold just to help finance some operations. But like my thing is because of this new model, like just taking a step back, I actually gave a a talk on this at at Salon Crossroads conference in Turkey. The general thing is if you look at web 2 today, you can get attention on Tik Tok and X and all these platforms, but you really don't make money. Everyone makes these offplatform agreements. And you know, so if you look at it, people want to engage with apps to get fame or get fortune.

And so web two helps you to get famous but not get fortune on the platform itself. It's all off platform. You guys know this, right? Likewise, there's a lot of web two apps that help you get fortune, the Robin Hoods of the world, trading platforms, etc. But you're not going to get famous on Robin Hood. Like you have to go to X somewhere else to go do it. So you know, I have this access of get fame and get fortune. And there's apps in both of these quadrants, but it's a separate experience. In Pump.fun, fund. It's the same. You're making value on the platform itself. So, as this token trades, the channel is getting money, but it's also g going viral and getting more attention and getting fame because people want to buy into this community and buy into this token. So, it's the first time where fame and

fortune are on the same platform versus having to monetize or uh grow in in separate directions. So, that's the general thesis how web 3 social could truly revolutionize the media business. And uh this is an experiment and we're going to go into the trenches. Good for you for experimenting, my man. Love to see it. Love to see I did not have on my bingo card this year that you guys were going to launch a podcast doesn't surprise me so much but a memecoin and it just you know I think the main thing is we all got to get in and experiment here and the only way you learn is by experimenting and testing things. not financial advice obviously if you guys are going to go invest in the trenches token you should do so by doing research and being thoughtful about it right um

so be you know be aware but uh very very interesting to see what you guys are doing excited to see and uh you know it's it's funny I didn't think we would be launching a token either but that's the way crypto is like crypto the token is a is a proxy for attention and so let's uh yeah let's jump in so very excited for that it makes me think as well about uh um wrecked brands uh and uh OB OSF over there uh just put out a tweet recently about what he's calling brand coins and this feels like you know content coins brand coins there's all these terminologies and like you can just get totally lost in it but this concept of like if there's a brand that you love and you want to support them well yeah you can buy their products but

what if you want access to their upside yeah okay you could buy their stock if they're a public company but a lot of the brands that people love now are smaller, you know, built-in home Etsy type brands, right? You can't you can't go buy their public stock. They don't want to and they don't want to go public. They don't need to go public. Like that's not their business model. So, I could see there's just that what I am feeling right now as a whole as I step back is I am feeling like there is a resurgence and finally a moment for web 3 crypto, right? for the the stuff outside of like the finance stuff like Bitcoin and all of the financial backing that blockchain is going to provide to

Tradfi. That train is that that train is going, right? Like get on or or or see or see you later in five years and you missed it, right? But the web 3 side is still like we're still experimenting. We still haven't seen Let me ask you a question. Uh Kyle had this take recently that he doesn't think we will get a chat GPT crypto app like a mainstream mass crypto app. He he's not so sure we're going to have that anymore because we used to talk about that a lot like there's going to be this you know mainstream crypto app. A lot of people thought it might be gaming. We had AXI infinity for a moment that did catch a lot of steam. A lot of people thought it be NFTts. We all know how that ended. Do you I mean you're deep in consumer. Do

you think we'll ever get a mass mainstream crypto app? I think it's a it's a multi-deade journey. And if you take gaming as an example, when gaming first came out, I mean, it was for, you know, nerds and it was like these things were very hard to use and very expensive at the time. And it took decades to actually continue to reduce the cost of these platforms, reduce the cost of game design to now make games and and make it easier to buy and access these games to now where gaming is ubiquitous and everywhere. But and it you know it took new it took many business uh different platforms and business models to actually get to that point where now gaming is everywhere. So I think we will. I would never say we wouldn't get

there. They say hey is it going to happen this cycle? I don't know. I mean there's a lot of compelling things being built but I don't think it's going to go to the size of chat GPT. I mean that would just be it's what hund how many users do they have? Like I don't even know hundreds of millions. Crazy number. I mean I don't we're certainly I would say not going to get through the cycle. But that doesn't mean that we're not successful at the same time. Yeah. Yo to your point I I guess how much you know I have a pretty active on Twitter. I hopefully have some good takes in between the ship hosts. Guess how much money I've made from Twitter over the years. Oh man. Uh hundred bucks. Couple zero bucks. I've literally not made a dime from Twitter all this time. Yeah.

And and like I've made this Well, I mean the channel like I'm the channel, but like we are the channel like has made five digits in uh you know you know a little bit over 10K so far in creator fees. It's all transparent. You can see I think it's like 12K now in fees. And so when you talk about enabling these smaller creators, if I was to go start a podcast from ground zero, I'd have to slave for views. You know, I would be worshiping viewers and subscribers and all these weird mechanisms to try to promote some algorithm instead. Hey, this is it. This is the platform. Here's the token. Trade it if you want. Here's who I am. I'm authentic. I haven't sold any. I didn't tell anyone about it. And people want that. People want the authenticity. They're tired of people trying to play these social media games

that are being built. And so you could actually finance a real podcast and a real business on crypto rails. And that I think is the big opportunity. It's kind of like when people say hey pumpf fun and you know um hyperlquid these things are extractive from the community and it's like we actually want businesses to be able to be built like real businesses built on crypto rails. That's the goal because that's how you start getting more and more companies that are being created. So uh I think this is going to enable a lot of creators to to print the that let's be clear here the pro like who is extractive is not the the the platform right uh I mean look you could get into the semantics of the business model of

the platform and say that maybe certain parts are extractive but look there are new these are new businesses they're just trying to figure it the [ __ ] out and trying to thrive. What is extractive is all the users and the speculators. And love it or hate it, that's what we got right now. But the only way to the path of true consumer apps is to unfortunately go through the mud and get there. So it's it's why, you know, you got to do your research and be careful. And there's going to be a lot of gold along gold nuggets along the way in that mud. Yeah, a lot of gold nuggets. Nuggets. McDonald's. Okay. I like some some I could go for some nuggies. Yeah, Carl. Great to get you on the show again, my man. Appreciate you. Thanks for joining us today. Uh, good luck and

do your first show. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. Terrific to catch up again. And I'd love to do the live stream format. Maybe next time if I come back, we can even get some more questions from the community because I love Oh, yeah. Let's do Let's do a question. I didn't I always forget the question. What do we got here? Uh, sell in May. In your opinion, is the sell in May and go away thesis likely to hold in this cycle or has this probably changed now due to macro events? Look, I think there's always going to be less liquidity over the summer. People are more risk off in the summer, but I I so I think that's my my general framing is yeah, there's probably going to be less activity, but it doesn't mean that things are going to go down in price.

Just less activity, less speculation and hype in the summer months. People are going on vacation. People would be risk off. But um look, if you're if you're looking for an opportunity to sell some and get off the table, I wouldn't say now's a bad price. We're close to alltime highs. Like it wouldn't be a bad decision. But if we do get some tariffs, figure it out and it starts running, are you going to have regret about that? And so I think rather than again selling, maybe there's an opportunity to borrow or other ways where you can stay long-term exposed but then still finance a lot of the your other life in in other ways. Okay, one more question here. Uh who are the winners for ZK in crypto? Uh no one so far. Uh we've we've looked at a lot of ZK companies and I truly

believe in the technology. like I truly do for privacy, for scaling, but we had the opportunity to invest in some of these private rounds of ZK infrastructure and there's just not the demand. I mean, their demand is a bunch of ZKL2s that aren't really being utilized at this point. And so, I think the technolog is too early. It's still too hard to process even basic math like doing addition and subtraction in ZK is hard. Doing multiplication is extremely hard and takes a long time. So the amount of compute that's required, we're not there yet for mass market adoption of ZK in my personal view unless you do it hyper centralized, but to do anything that's kind of remotely decentralized, it's it's not there. So we will have winners, but I don't see any in the near

term happening. Yeah, I I will completely agree with those takes. Carl, great to get you to the show again, my man. Thanks for your time today. Thanks a lot, Jay. Thanks everybody for listening in. Remember, none of this was financial advice. This show is for entertainment and educational purposes only. I'm not your financial adviser. Carl is not your financial adviser. If you want a financial adviser, you should go get one. If you don't want a financial adviser, you should freaking do your own research and take the time to think for yourself. And you should always make sure that whatever you invest, you are prepared to lose because investing is difficult and it's risky.

If it was easy, everyone would do it and we'd all be millionaires. But we're not. But we're going to get there someday. So stick with us. And if you want help, make sure you check out Milkrobe Pro. It'll get you access to everything you need to keep on top of the markets, get the signal within the noise. Thanks so much for listening, folks. Have a wicked awesome day. We'll see you again tomorrow.