Is Crypto Quietly Quitting? | Roundup

8 Sept 2024 · 1:24:27

Empire hosts Jason Yanowitz and Santiago Roel Santos examine what they call crypto's quiet-quitting moment, from regulatory pressure on OpenSea and Binance to the outsized but overlooked dominance of Asian trading markets. They also discuss the concept of time billionaires, Maker's rebrand, and where DeFi and stablecoins go next in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Speakers

Topics

Transcript

maybe we're making out crypto to be more influential than it actually is in in the grand scheme of the Electoral Game Theory I know Brian Armstrong tweeted or said something to the effect that if you're anti- crypto in DC it's like committing seu like it's a suicide political suicide this episode is brought to you by aoma the universal intent machine introducing a new era of applications where you define the outcomes you want to stay up to date with aoma you can follow them at x.com anoma or sign up for the newsletter at ana. net special thanks to anoma for sponsoring today's episode hey everyone I'm excited to tell you about fbtc an omni chain Bitcoin

asset being used throughout defi today so far it's accumulated about $157 million in tvl making Bitcoin more accessible and useful be sure to check out Sparkle the rewards program where you earn points just by holding fbtc get started at fbtc ongoing dampa hey everyone the polygon Community grants program was launched with 1 billion tokens All For polygon Builders really excited to share that on today's episode of Empire season 1 of the polygon Community grants program is now live it features 35 million in madic to support the next generation of polygon

projects join the aggregated future today by applying at polygon.net real world assets they've just launched their Rewards program so get started at re. rewards and be sure to use the code in the show notes below special thanks to real for sponsoring today's episode hello happy Friday So I listened to uh Peter teal Joe Rogan episode and you know so they'll keep it running if they like go take a piss break or something they just keep it

running if they go like step out shoot some guns they keep it running uh maybe we should do that yeah we if you relocate to Austin maybe we can go and shoot guns in the back door you know just open the door and shoot or whatever uh yeah so what's going on has uh so we took the last two weeks off um big big win for Empire hit a record number of monthly downloads in August correlation causation does that mean like we just like take the entire year off I don't know yeah um big shout out to the deli guys they got on the feed in August that's been awesome and then the Thousand X pod podcast which is also Avan Avan Jonah which is also on the

Empire feed has been booming so yeah just big hats off to I guess this mini Empire that we're creating on Empire so just big just big thanks to everyone who were uh who's been listening and supporting we've been doing the show for like three and a half years now coming up on four years yeah so let's go that's good we're just getting started I mean if we can if we can hit these numbers during what has felt like a very uh like dead market then I think we're doing something right I think we're the third biggest show now so it's I think it's bankless and then uh I think Unchained is still the second biggest and then and then it's us now so I do love Laura I do love Ryan and David but we are coming

for that for that number one spot absolutely yeah what's on your shirt what are you wearing I don't know it's like my t-shirt that I wear nice sleep with I guess Gotta Get You Prett late out here just just guys burning the midnight oil here and uh in Soul yeah tell us about Korea so you're at KBW yeah yeah I was uh got here yesterday uh was at the apos experience event today speaking with it was like a fireside chat with Neil the head of ecosystem talking about Defi and kind of my perspective um I was so jet likee that I made it he was like you're not supposed to ask questions in this in

this fireside chat I'm the one asking questions like wait wait a minute it's easier to ask questions answer them uh and I'm speaking tomorrow at uh again so so yeah really good I I um I really like Asia in general any takeaways from the event or too early very well put together uh very well attended quality of speakers high so it's it's uh it's fact block and hashed put it together right the Aptos experience one no no KBW KBW yes yeah I haven't I I didn't go to that one actually surprisingly traffic is very bad in Soul I didn't remember it

last time I was here was for the Winter Olympics in 2018 um and God traffic just horrible funny thing is like I tweeted about this like the streets are like four or five Lanes you could like roll tanks through these streets and there's like two two lanes that are always congested because they want to turn left and it's just like everywhere you go it's like 40 minutes like every the recurring theme of the year is Dubai there's flash floods huge traffic and congestion um that so has this uh conference I'm trying to forget that there's another one uh I mean London was not so bad but yeah it's just brutal

tough um I had a long catchup call with Allen who I think did I introduce you to Allen do you know did you end up doing the open Social Deal No but I saw your Tweet maybe you should talk about it yeah so had a long catchup so I'm going I'm going to token um I've never been to Singapore I'm very excited um I've never it's my first like work trip I'd say to Asia I'm very excited for that um I've spent I've spent time and been to Thailand a couple times and Vietnam and stuff but I've never spent a long amount of time there for crypto um so I'm just excited to like be boots on the ground and we're thinking a lot at block Works about like there's kind of this untapped Market in Asia not just obviously token's done a very good job

in KBW but like more from a media and research and data perspective um and so I'm excited to go there so anyways I had a long catchup call with Allen Allen runs evg Everest Ventures group um there are uh I think the best way to look at evg I I kind of hate to use this comparison but like it's a good mental model is they're kind of like the dcg of Asia um they're just they're a large holding company they incubate companies they own companies they invest in companies uh and they just have a lot of influence over that area of the world uh in crypto and just had a very long catchup call with Allen and his CMO and his coo the other day and one thing I realized is just how little westerners know about

the Asian crypto markets um I think the the idea is that in Asia it's like number is big oh lot lot of users in Asia okay uh maybe people in Korea like to trade a lot and maybe there's a lot of users in Indonesia and like basically the knowledge unless you really have spent time on the ground there the knowledge kind of ends there I've realized and it's kind of shocking to me just because of how large the industry uh how large the impact of Asia is hunt the industry the the lack of knowledge there so yeah at least in the west right in the West in the west yeah and so like I don't know he just walked me through all these things I actually want to have him on the on the show to do this big like almost Asia brain dump

uh because there's there's very some very interesting buckets okay so one was like who the powerful players are um and he kind of described it as there's like three buckets of very influential and Powerful players the most powerful are the exchange owners are the exchanges the second are um kind of the most the like the apps that have really taken off like Sky Maven and things like that and then there's kind of like Anoka uh like the the holding companies like evg and animok and folks like that the the big difference one of the big differences from from how Asia operates versus in the how I think people in the US operate us is very Bottoms Up right like let's say you're making a sale to someone

let's say you're trying to sell a software or trying to sell a partnership or something you know you can kind of start with like a junior BD person that person elevates it to their head of BD who elevates it to the COO elevates it to the co-founder everyone's happy gol lucky um Allan was describing a hierarchy that exists in Asia where it's like CEOs talk to CEOs you know head of BD talks to head of BD it is very like not power games but hierarchical in like class of what you've built and what you've accomplished and like where you sit in where you sit in the power games and like those people should interact with those people and if you want to get something done like you know he goes to

the CEO of X exchange and X exchange goes to the CEO of you know maybe okx comes to him and he goes to that person and like it is very direct business like that I would say which is actually for folks who have built companies in the US it's very different from how it works and uh there have been a lot of us companies who have tried to go to Asia uh specifically a lot of CI brands that I think really failed and really flopped and Allan described that hierarchical difference as one of the main reasons why a lot of them flopped just because they just send a lot of you know BD people who maybe speak Mandarin or something no you gota you gotta pay you got to pay respect um sort of very much ingrained in the culture doing business in Asia requ Ires a very subtle and deep

Nuance appreciation for culture and cultural differences between the countries like um Korea has its own unique forms um then Japan and certainly China like and you know like UK like confusion ISM like is a big backbone culturally of these countries but there's flavors to that and um yeah it's just very uh you got to know uh and it's it's very apparent when you don't and uh you know like you remember the scene in like The Last Samurai where like there there's a certain tradition and ways to do things like they'll also never reject you outwardly and so they're just polite but they're actually

telling you like [ __ ] off yeah so uh uhh you know like even tipping like it's it's actually uh considered very rude to suggest that uh you you're going to tip because it imp I that the service was not up to excellent standards uh this is actually very refreshing but also you don't tip no absolutely not you don't even I didn't know see you don't even yeah suggesting tipping implies a subpar experience which is an insult in many ways to to it so you know you can imagine someone coming from you know New York where even a robo coffee maker suggest a 20% tip um so yeah it's a it's

very my my first time in I don't want to say Asia but in in Japan was like very magical like I'm obsessed with Japanese culture one of my favorite books is uh Shogun by James clell and his whole taipon and he has a whole series of books I landed the taxi driver is wearing like gloves just the prec of like he would he would take off his gloves when we hit a red light um as soon as he would he would know EX exactly when it would turn green because he would put his gloves back on I kid you not every time he finished putting the second glove on immediately the light turned green I'm like I'm living in a [ __ ] like sir just just keep driving this car around just keep driving it around I I I could have I could have I was in this Str like State

observing his hands in this process I'm like there's just Excellence here you sit down for a mass you're seeing the assembly line and people should go watch the documentary of jro Dreams or sushi like the Japanese Cuisine and is is is like not one of adding stuff it's like Simplicity in the ingredients and like Perfection and that is what drives a lot of the flavor it's just crazy like the chef like you like 17 years of just like being able to like love that make the rice touch the rice touch the rice yeah um and like you're not you eat with your hand like theas like the ngiri you eat with a hand you're not supposed to add

sauce the chef will add the appropriate amount it's just it's just very very interesting yeah uh but but to bring it back to crypto Korea Korea is an interesting Market it's always been it's one of the most crypto the countries with the highest crypto adoption I think over like 10% of the population has used crypto uh it peaked a few years ago um it uh at certain moments in time the volume in Korea is eclipsed and been larger than us markets um it's very it's very impressive yeah um it's there's been a setback because of Tera U right but um but yeah it's very it's very it's very cool place

Japan is similarly very much very much Bitcoin Centric but also uh very much like um you know people really get crypto here yeah the downside of the hierarchical thing that I was saying earlier is that you know in a place like Korea it's very dominated by in the US it's like startups versus the incumbents and everyone's like yeah go startups although unless you're maybe the you know current Administration or whatever who seem to be very anti-f founder for one reason or another but um you know there it's like in in somewhere like Korea it's like you you really need the stamp of approval of a Samsung or Hyundai or you know SK or kia or uh LG or PCO or something like that right like

it is in the way that like the I don't know from speaking with the guys that hashed and speaking with um I don't know some of the some of the builders in Korea it is very it's less about wanting the Enterprise connection because of like users like I don't know I think people here you know maybe an L1 wants to partner with Nike because they have all the users there it's like they just need the almost societal stamp of approval because it is a very top down uh yeah way of building now I do recognize that we're two white guys talking about what it's like to build companies in Asia so I will I going to invite yeah well you know at least our perspective uh yeah but uh I've made a

number of investments in you know not so much in Japan but definitely Korea uh Vietnam uh Philippines um Malaysia um Singapore uh one observation just uh one of the things I get so excited inspired being here is like I remember in 20 the early 2000s like when I started my professional career at Investment Banking you you're covering all the internet Giants what were still growing in the US fairly rapidly and you started to see the rise of Chinese internet companies and the commentary from people in the West Was they're only copying what is what is working China historically has

been copy can manufacturing therefore it's copying in Tech and in some respects it was true for like the the likes of baba um you know coping Amazon but then you had this phenomenon called WeChat which was actually something quite novel and and new where it just became started with messaging so you could have confused it with WhatsApp and then it just became the everything app it was Netflix and Uber and instacart and um you know Amazon and everything was bundled into this everything app and so just today I was I was just reminded of that and my theory is or the way I

link it is like defi in many ways attempts to do what WeChat has done in a market like China or cacal has done in in Korea like like the point I'm trying to make is it's very integrated like payments is natively integrated in whatever it is that you're doing so you never leave the app um so it's it's like the seamless integration of Finance within the app Ina compared to in the west where you're think you're thinking a Finas as a standalone product meaning you're doing something over here an app you want to do a payment like for the most time you go to another app you log into your bank account you input your credit card data

but you you have to like think of leaving and so finest is like the Standalone product with apps or revolute or venmo or PayPal maybe Apple pay approximates that but it's nowhere near the integration um how it's so inte natively integrated in caca or weat um and so like I think when you come to Asia you truly appreciate how powerful it is to have that native integration because it just totally removes the friction people people people don't even think about Finance should be invisible but it's not in the west and so I think I don't know if that explains why crypto is is just more native and easier easier

to understand for someone in Asia and maybe that explains part of the adoption um but I can certainly I think if you were to survey like a 100 people in Korea for instance and you were to like tell them hey get on boarded to crypto how easy is it for you they would probably say I'm interested in this this doesn't feel as foreign and it's actually fairly easy to get onboarded whereas if you do the same survey in the US for instance they'd be like God this is this is really difficult why do I need this I don't really understand it I have venmo PayPal revolute um but it's one of those things where you have to feel it you have to experience it you have to send your

first stable coin transfer and like do that to to really have that aha moment so that that is just a bit of more of a of a barrier for adoption I think in in a place like the us or in in Western Europe yeah you ever looked at the top 20 internet companies and where they're located Asia so yeah here I'll pull this up so seven of the top 15 are now in China so for anyone who's listening on Spotify or apple or something can't see the I'm sharing my screen on YouTube but uh Amazon and Amazon and Google so alphabet Amazon and and alphabet are the top two then it's jd.com which is in Beijing yeah with uh in Beijing then

meta in San Francisco obviously then it's Alibaba in 10 then bite dance so five six and seven are in then m one H XA shenzen and Beijing then it's Netflix this is by Revenue by the way not market cap right um then it's Netflix then it's m m maton what big e-commerce company too right yeah yeah yeah e-commerce company then PayPal then then wildberries um in Moscow which I know nothing about uh then Salesforce then sunning in naning then Buu or then ozon in Moscow as well then Buu and B is like the Google right

of yeah so very interesting so anyways so to wrap up the Asia conversation and my chat with Allan I posted this thing on Twitter uh which is the daus of the top three social protocols so uh open social so B basically farcaster and lens really dominate The Narrative and I was looking at some like open social type investment stuff and I was like I wonder what the not like not open social in the name of the company I was looking at some like decentralized social investment stuff and I was like I wonder what that market looks like and I'm a small investor in this company called open social so I get some updates from them and what it what I realized is the

narrative is all about lens and foraster at least on my crypto Twitter feed totally yeah it's like all lens and forecast um and it feels like kind of like lens maybe has more of the creators and it's more like soft marketing and fun and playful and some awesome creators are on there and forecasters more like the intellectuals and like the ethereum crowd and like crypto Natives and stuff and it's there's another one someone posted about on about some someone in Salon I'm forgetting the name dscvr which I've never heard of but it sounds like a forecaster for salana um but it turns out so lens has 25,000 daily active users and again these are these are Dune metrics it's very tough

to actually figure out like real daus and like how many people are actually but it's a standard like standardizing some of the data because a lot of it's from the same person it's like lens is 25,000 daus forecaster 65,000 daus and this company open social run by Allen and Everest Ventures group is 110,000 uh daus and the most interesting thing here I think is uh twofold one is the dispersion between narrative and users right so forecaster and lens dominate the conversation but open social has two times the users of forecaster and almost five times the user of lens but I like no nobody talks about open social nobody really knows open social and the only reason I know them is because I'm a tiny tiny tiny

investor and I've noticed that us crypto media and crypto like blockworks included and crypto Twitter really rarely covers the founders and companies and communities in Asia whether that's Singapore Hong Kong Japan South Korea Vietnam Indonesia um I just I actually think there's a big media opportunity to help kind of bridge The Narrative awareness media gap between East and West so that's one thing I'm thinking about a lot the other thing is um I I just think it's like it's it's crazy what can happen when the right when like there are either less regulations or very clear regulations and I think you're see I mean there's a lot of

people in Asia but I don't actually attribute a lot of this to like the number of people in these places I attribute it to just like the builders can build there um and in the US they're really hamstrung right now so I don't know I just found this data very interesting yeah definitely yeah I mean um I mean certainly like I actually got a lot of coverage in the west uh it's play to earn movement and um I think in terms of adoption like yeah I mean actually most of the users came from um you know the Philippines um you know Malaysia Indonesia it's just yeah the probably combination of younger demographic plus more digitally

Savvy and you know for for something like guilds obviously like the income opportunity is just more more like they there for these folks yeah so all right yeah what else happened this week um well we missed the last couple ofek weeks so uh I hope people enjoyed the the the extra guest episodes but there were there were a couple there a couple SEC things right uh sec in issued a Wells notice against I'm doing this off memory so I should probably Google this is you open C but I'm trying to remember what it was for I think it was for um you know what this is this is dumb unregistered Securities again

yeah open C all right let me read the so this is I I like Devon fcer post Deon fcer is the CEO of openc and it's very clear he's going on the offensive here so openc has received a Wells notice from the SEC threatening to sue us because they believe nfts on our platform are securities longer post that we can link to if people are curious or you can just search his name on Twitter but um so so that happened so the SEC is threatening to sue openc because they believe nft is on the platform of Securities and then uh the cftc Pokemon Pokemon holders beware Pokemon holder cards and baseball cards holders beware but yeah the the cftc issued an order against Unis swap Unis swap labs for illegal digital asset

derivatives trading um which is essential and I think they I think they settled I think it was $175,000 settlement over basically Le I think it was over levered tokens being accessed on the front end um yeah so yeah there was there was also a a settlement of two something north of 200,000 I think it was 225,000 The Gallows Capital it's uh fond based in former fond based in Florida that uh and also PR prominent like just Twitter account um but got entangled in the whole FTX stuff they had Assets in FTX and the the complaint of the SEC was

they brought charges them because they were using an unregistered custodian and they they were they were they failed to adhere to their Redemption policy it was uh a very Gallow then put out a a statement saying and like other pin managers then came out in in their defense was you know some of these assets are not supported by registered custodian so the best solution to use as something like fire blocks um and you know that's just the nature of the industry um and their Redemption policy was like 5 days and then they just were like they allowed people to redeem and

wave that five days and they thought it was like a good thing and went after them for that I think it had more to do not knowing anything from the inside was more to do with the probably the fact that they they were using non-registered custodians I think it probably had to do something like the fact that they had so many assets on on FDX and that that penalty is going to pay their investors actually so maybe quick thoughts on both of these cases one is open c um the old take is I think the old SEC take was that if you can prove their belief was if you can prove something as an

unregistered Security on your platform then it makes it more likely that your entire platform is an unlic unlicensed Exchange um and I think that is starting to be NE I think that is starting to be disproven in the courts in cases like uh coin like coinbase and ripple and things like that right so the what the Ripple case I again should probably have a lawyer on here but I think what the Ripple case showed us is that um the token is not a security the investment contract is a security so tokens of security investment and then I think there was a coinbase case um or or another case where the conclusion was something along the lines of hey it's

not just it's not that having unregistered Securities on your on your platform makes you an an unlicensed exchange or even an exchange uh you can just delist that asset and you'll be fine so uh the new take I think is look you just from the from like a policy or legal perspective inside one of these either dexes or Sexes is just D list the asset um and so now what I think the SEC is trying to do which asset with if you don't have guidance so it's a really I think again I I haven't dug into this too much but just seeing like you know blockworks as coverage and stuff like that and posts on Twitter I think what the SEC is trying to do with open C is and again not none of this is fully public yet right I think it was just a Wells I

think it was just a Wells notice so which basically means they will be coming after them at some point soon and hey giving them a heads up basically uh they it's kind of a sneaky way to go after the an unregistered security because if you wanted to really go after an unregistered security you should go after that company itself the issuer the issuer so but in by going after open C the issuer can actually defend themselves so like making or I won't say any names but like going after nft XYZ saying they're in unregistered security well now open C kind of either has to defend them for them yeah or or or just say okay fine they're in unregistered security we'll delist them it's it it's

it's actually it's it's kind of a smart move by the by the SEC to do this um the other thing about going after open C is uh it's the same thing that pissed me off when they went after Unis swap in in in I think April issuing them a Wells notice is unis swap is in New York uh Hayden has just been posted up in Brooklyn for seever several years uh Devin right is in either California or New York uh like these are founders and teams and companies who decided to not leave to Dubai and not leave to Singapore and I know so many Founders who have done that they've said it's just too risky in the US I'm just gonna leave to Dubai and they built subar

products and honestly kind of shadier things and Unis Swap and openc did it the right way and they've got massive legal teams they spent a [ __ ] ton of money on on outside Council and they're the ones getting sued because they decided to stay in San Francisco and New York and that just they didn't even go to Texas right like it's it's it's if you're going to stay in the US it's much more favorable for you from a legal perspective to go to somewhere like Texas and get sued in the courts in Texas they decided like if you get sued in California and you're fighting in Northern California you're fighting the SEC in Northern California like that's an uphill battle like Northern California is much friendlier to the SEC and so I don't know just it just that like there's so many Bad actors I was

walking around Brooklyn the other day and there's unic coin which is a scam company they've been advertising on tax for two years like there are entire taxis that at the top in the electronic bar and the whole taxis now wrapped with it says unic coin the world's best crypto currency and it's a scam company and nobody's taking action against that and they're going after Hayden and and Devon so yeah it's just like Yeah from a found it just really pisses me off because it's um you got to imagine like the Dems are saying they're start you know they're Pro cryp crypto and Comm Pro crypto and coming at but like if I'm I don't I don't know the communication

between like cftc and SEC and the administration and the campaign right those kind of four actors but if I'm kamla I'm like you idiots like you idiots we are trying to get these people to vote for us and you just keep going after them like now that ship might have sail honestly but yeah two two count of observations that one I think these cases take a long long time in the pipeline to develop build case so it might have been possible that they've been building a case against these um two companies and then they decided to you know this but someone is more powerful than Gary Gensler and someone should be saying shut it down buddy shut it down no no this was my second point which is

maybe we're making out crypto to be more influential than it actually is in in the grand scheme of the Electoral Game Theory I know Brian Armstrong tweeted or said something to the effect that if you're anti- crypto DC it's like committing seu like it's a suicide political suicide I mean if that were truly true you you would you you would you know be acting like you said but yeah know it's it's it's a world of of polar oppos the counter Trump trump apparently you know obviously has has only intensified his

fervor and support for crypto whereas um Kamala has just been silent and the current Administration which he serves obviously as a vice president has you know continues continues to be uh under the same like it hasn't shifted its stand so I don't know yeah the the counter to the Brian Armstrong thing is the fairshake pack which is a pro crypto pack be became the largest super pack of the entire election cycle right true yeah yeah and and and Trump I think is now receiving more money in crypto than in Fiat or had for like a week or so I mean it's Trump

is so blockworks did this like looked at the onchain data and some of his royalties info is public because of the lawsuits so there's a great blockworks piece he's Trump is now making more money from ethereum and nft uh from from nfts than he is from all of his royalties from the show The Apprentice wow yeah that's pretty good headline good headline yeah that's a that's a good headline good headline um the last the last thing on on this conversation around what happened was uh obviously Pavo uh dur durov uh the founder of telegram got arrested when he flew into Paris unclear

why he flew into Paris because he was an arrest warrant and he had interview with him saying he avoided going to the US and Europe and was mostly traveling you know in um in other places unclear why he went to Paris he was detained um what was interesting was so he was a citizen of Russia then he be acquired nationality in France and then Dubai the Dubai the unit sorry the United Cates uh so UAE actually issued a statement um where they canel a purchase order of fighter P fighter jets from France and were pressuring the French government to get more clarity on the

arrest kind of like really protecting a citizen of their own to me that was like pretty awesome to see candidly um you know and it just speaks to how government should protect their people and yeah it was it was really like I'd be lying if I didn't like now of the places you go as a you know someone that is in crypto like Dubai is probably top of the list candidly I know I know there's other factors why you wouldn't want to perhaps live their year round but primarily the weather but from a government stance like I think it's they're they're leading the charge I mean it's been incredibly impressive and

and even more so solidified reinforced by their recent support of pavle and you know really putting pressure on the French government hey everyone Jason here I wanted to talk about something that's been on my mind a lot recently and that is where are all of crypto's killer apps we often ask this question on the show so I'm excited to tell you about Empire's latest partner anoma the universal intent machine intents are a new way to build daps enabling users to say what they want without needing to specify how it's done let's say you have an nft on one chain but you want to swap it for a token on another chain to make things even worse you also don't know which bridge to trust or how to navigate different dexes on each chain disaster

right but here's the good news thanks to intense you can just tell the app what you want to do and a Nas's solver Network takes care of all the complexity in the background we're excited to see what cool daps aa's architecture will unlock to stay up to date with anoma you can follow them at x.com anoma or sign up for the newsletter at n.net special thanks to anoma for sponsoring today's episode hey everyone I'm excited to tell you about fbtc an omni chain Bitcoin asset being used throughout defi today it launched back in July and since then it's accumulated about 157 million in total value locked fbtc aims to make Bitcoin more accessible and useful in

various dii applications currently you can use fbtc on both both the ethereum and mantle networks fbtc is highly composable interoperable and secure with over 27 starting Partners if you're ready to get started check out the rewards program Sparkle designed to reward users eligible fbtc positions will now acrew Sparks they're also offering additional rewards like a token airdrop from a project called Babylon and a new token from mantle called COK get started at ftc.com ongoing Dash campaign huge thanks to mantle for sponsoring today's episode this episode is brought to you by

polygon polygon Labs is developing the next generation of open-source zero knowledge Tech to aggregate crypto liquidity and user bases empowering developers to grow in a unified web of interoperable chains with the agir that was a big mouthful so I'm going to tell you what it means in my in my words there's all these things popping up l2s and L3 and it's chaos right if you are building something you no longer have to worry about bootstrapping liquidity you can basically just build in the AG layer to tap into the liquidity of the a layer and the users of the a layer you get the users you get the liquidity it's the a layer it's hot it's by polygon Labs they've got the polygon Community grants

program it was launched with 1 billion tokens Just For polygon Builders season one it's live right now it features 35 million in madic to support the Next Generation of polygon Builders join the aggregated future today by applying at polygon.net polygon.net real world assets on arbitrum orbit what's really cool about real is that it uses the offchain yields from rwas as a sustainable solution for Native liquidity incentives real is also

the first L2 where 100% of profits from transaction fees and fees from protocols acrew back to the l2's governance token rwa real has just launched their Rewards program where 10% of the rwa supply is being given away to early users of the chain users can provide concentrated liquidity trade borrow and leverage tokenized real world assets including T bills real estate and tokenized basis trades just as a quick disclaimer this is not investment advice or product solicitation and not aimed at us persons find out more at re. rewards special thanks to real for sponsoring today's episode I always struggle to explain

like why I'm excited about crypto and what I like what why I think crypto is good for the world and one of the way there are many ways to describe it there's like the Bitcoin argument it's like almost like a hedge against chaos like you never know there's the like maybe Chris Dixon way of explaining it which is like look the Combs just have too much power and like we need to this is the best way like regulation is not the best way to eat away at their power it's like empowering startups and and and crypto are the best rails to do that there's another way to describe it which is just that um censorship resistant applications and ways to transfer value and ways to transfer information don't matter at all until they really matter and I think people in

the US really can't comprehend that and I it's very tough for me to Grapple with what that even means because I grew up in the US I lived in the US my whole life um but there's this uh this wus kasaris like podcast with lurin from maybe 2016 or 2017 that was one of the first podcast I listened to and it really just stuck with me and he just explains how like I think in the US the US is the hardest place in the world to explain crypto to someone because uh the government works and our money works and the companies don't they have too much power but they don't abuse the power um and monopolies oftentimes end up helping consumers with lower prices so it's like the the monopolies and the companies

work the government works uh and the money Works um so it's very hard to explain this telegram case with with pavl just reminded me that like you need alternative in a world of overreaching not just governments companies governments whoever it may be you really need a way to opt out of that and have censorship resistant platforms um and again there there's actually a wired piece like there's a wired piece called the Kremlin has entered the chat and uh if it focuses on how the so so there's a lot of like I'd say sympathy pose for for pavl which is great and and I don't think the French government

should be doing what they did obviously there there's another side of the argument which is this wired article called the Kremlin has entered the chat which focuses on how the Russian government has basically increased its surveillance of private Communications on telegram um and there it kind of highlights this case of Marina pulina I think is their name which is a Russian opposition activist whose private group Chats on telegram were accessed by Russian authorities um and it there there there's a lot of other um kind of examples in this story and so the thing that is frustrating to so one is it's a reminder that it's important to build censorship resistant platforms the other thing is it pains me that I don't know

who's telling the truth I don't know if the Russian government has infiltrated telegram I don't I just I don't have a way of seeing that you either have to listen to the W like this wired article or you have to listen to the CEO of the company like there's no way to verify it and I just wish there was a way to openly and publicly verify what the pr privacy settings of telegram actually are and I'm hopeful that building things on crypto crypto rails can help with this maybe Z I'm not smart enough to understand if it's ZK or crypto rails or open ledgers or what whatever it is but I'm very optimistic that like we'll live in a society one day that where I could quickly verify

what what that is yeah and an encryption is like telegram's not encrypted as far as I know unless you make the chat secret yeah what I do know is that the my friends who care about privacy the most refuse to use Telegram and yeah but then they they were using signal and then they they stopped using signal so what do you do a lot of them are still like anything with the US government the US government is all so I'm all these chats with uh with folks trying to get them to speak at permissionless it's all on Signal interestingly enough it's all all the US government stuff it's all on Signal yeah you know you meaning like people

that work in the government wow that's crazy John sorry John Deon just since the Republican nomination that's crazy um big uh Elizabeth Warren uh taking taking on Elizabeth Warren for her ceny sorry um you mean the the government uses signal the government uses signal not not publicly but like any anytime you're trying to chat with someone who works in the administration or on even on campaigns it's all onal yeah yeah yeah and they won't use telegram by the way I think that's for ideological reasons more so than any yeah that's fair I that's conjecture here but they they probably have back

door in a signal they can control that whereas they don't necessarily the telegram they they may not have guarantees the the the working theory is you know you get pressured into like like suckerberg actually also relevant suckerberg um issued out a a communication saying that uh he was meta was pressured into censoring um censoring post on during the co dur the onset of covid uh pressure by the administration and he said it's uh one of his deepest regrets he wouldn't he wouldn't do it again so just um just goes to show that I mean I guess if if you're the probably the likely

reason why pav got arrested was that he refused to censor particularly stuff around child trafficking pornography um you know bad stuff like Terror you know terrorist activity and and so whereas had he complied you know they they were asking him to comply and I think he refused to comply yeah around ideological reasons of like censorship resistance um and and then you have the opposite right which is something like meta which which complied um so I mean I I think uh we're living in interesting times like very or wheeli and like panopticon

kind of thing where there's there's probably no semblance of privacy not if you're using signal not if you're using any type of communication so you know just sort of like the state of the world um the the one thing that I think you brought up was most important is like you know Twitter's become the you know World Forum the the town hall of the world in many ways and most of I mean I don't even check news sites at this point Haven for ages like Twitter is just the place where stuff gets uh you know reported first there's also a lot of commentary the the the community edit

notes are really valuable yeah I mean think uh what would have happened if we were living in a world where Elon was not at the helm of Twitter or X you know it's a it's uh I mean it came out that the that Twitter and the US government were yeah yeah so yeah absolutely so you know I think uh there's always this there's always this really delicate controversial discussion when you talk about censorship resistance and permissionless systems right you develop a protocol and it gets used in ways that no one really intended

for it to be used for E you know for evil and you know technology in of itself is neutral but the implementation of it might not and how do you how do you grapple with that how do you sensibly kind of you know contain it if you will you really can't do that in a the system right um so what's a happy medium where do you draw a line who's the Arbiter of who's the the judge of that what's fair what should and shouldn't be censored I mean it's very it's not it's not very it could be heavily contested but you know I think we could all agree that

you know human trafficking terrorism anything that causes harm is is bad and should be censored yeah um you know but maybe there's some Far extreme ideological people that say that they're doing that as a you know response to authoritarianism and y yaada y and all this crap but I don't know it it's you know as a reminder like all these Noble Peace prices it was Alfred Noble who invented dynamite and he wanted to absolve himself from that pain that he had by creating this you know well could be used for industrial purposes ended up being used in war and you know so you know he created the Noble Foundation but

yeah it's a the myth of Prometheus so to speak he brings fire to the world and it's not always used for cooking there's one other uh there's one other case that I feel like hasn't been talked about enough which is this binance executive case in Nigeria oh uh I just want to call out ton yeah Garian um it's a really it's a really [ __ ] up thing that's happening and just people I don't think are talking about it that much um so so basically uh he's an American he was the head of I think Financial compliance at binance he has been detained in Nigeria for over six months um basically uh on claims of essentially

money laundering so Nigerian officials have accused have accused ton and binance of money laundering and they're actually being Char separately he is there's a video that the reason I bring this up now is um there's a video that just came out on on on Twitter uh that basically got leaked of him going into his trial he is currently suffering from both pneumonia and a herniated disc and he can barely walk and he's B and I mean you you can Vis visibly see him walking on this crutch and he tries to grab the arm of someone to help him walk and they won't they won't let him walk uh they won't they won't help him out and they won't put him in a wheelchair and he

says he says this this is [ __ ] up uh he was told not to help me pointing at a at a guard he says why can't I use my goddamn wheelchair this is a show I'm effing innocent um and it's very clear that just looking at him now versus looking at him a couple months ago like his his health condition is rapidly deteriorating and usually I would have seen something like this and said this is this is really messed up uh I don't really know the story this this is really messed up um and would have been a bummer but I just want to shed light on it I just read this book red notice um oh Bill Browder Bill about Bill Browder and Hermitage capital and um really one of the really the first like big hedge fund in Russia from an

outsider and um and it is a story of building a hedge fund for the first half of the book and a story of like extreme human rights um violations violations and they killed his they killed his lawyer um his bodyguard they detained him he's he then had then he then became too too important that Putin ended up protecting him uh you know because it was like yeah mentioning him you met you met him yeah I was an event with when he was being honored yeah it's it's an insane book I would really I just finished two

books actually um in the LA I've been reading a lot recently two books one is um uh this one the fish that ate the whale um about the banana king which is really good and then red notice and I'd really recommend both of them but red notice I mean it's literally what they are doing to this guy is what they did in red notice which is they have a suit against binance and binance you know uh Richard Tang came out and was like Nigeria is not a big market for us the government said that we made 20 the government of Nigeria said they made 26 billion in revenue from Nigeria in 2023 obviously that's not the case they did 20 almost 23 billion in total transaction volume not in Revenue so they're mistaking revenue and total

transaction volume um and what the Nigerian government is doing is literally what Russia did in this book red notice which is holding the an important person who could have been tied to something hostage letting his health really deteriorate and hoping and basically everyday putting statements in front of him saying that binance is guilty and eventually his health will get so bad that it's like do you want to live more do you want to live or do you want to say that binance is guilty and one day a lot of people crack they sign the thing that says binance is guilty because they need to go to the hospital they need to get a surgery and it's um yeah it's extortion and it's horrible human rights violation and uh yeah just I don't know not I I just I haven't really seen people

talking about it so I just wanted to no that's that's a really good point yeah yeah so I don't know if there's any policy makers who listen to this or any US Government people but some people were suggesting about it for folks to tag is representative and I don't know what district he's voting district he's on but the tag is representative and probably get more attention that way as that being an effective strategy in the past interesting yeah that's a good call um I did see rep who I think rep Hill uh representative Hill um uh called it out so it's starting to get some eyes so anyways tough to I don't know you have any like high notes any good things

happening I feel like we've been like on a downward Trend this podcast in a bad mood going into this weekend no not at all I mean I I think I have a question for you did you see Travis clings post yesterday I did yeah I mean you want to talk about positive yeah well let's talk about that because well this this is to continue on this magical trend of positive okay I was gonna say this is pretty negative but uh I mean it's it warrants talking about I think it's there's some good points there yeah so Travis runs eeky guy um and they got hit hard by some FTX stuff they had a lot of

funds on FTX and they've recovered all or most of of of that money and he's just a he's a personal friend and really like the guy um but he he tweeted uh just essentially a long thread essentially about like quiet quitting in crypto um he said nfts are dead the metaverse is dead defi is not going anywhere uh so what are we doing here kind of thing yeah he what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing and hearing my Twitter's glitching out what I'm seeing in hearing is that a meaningful swath of the crypto community is simply much less engaged than in Prior years and they are much less

engaged because there's much less belief in the potential of crypto projects to solve real world problems and gained significant adoption as a result that was a dream that was consistently sold and bought from 2017 the year I got in until 2022 crypto will solve real world problems and gain significant adoption as a result many billions of dollars of venture capital funding were raised on this premise and there were steps along anyways we can link to the thread very long thread that essentially um that there are a couple takeaways from it that he drives to in the conclusion but one of them is just that there's a lot of quiet quitting happening in crypto and people who got in in 2017 the 2015 or 2017 class who are just like look I mean I still probably got a lot of my

net worth in crypto but like I'm cooked I'm I'm either burnt out or or or or I don't believe in this anymore does it surprise you no no I would assume this happens in most Industries I don't know in every cycle sort of like a Hallmark of a of a trough no the the the the question is is this time again is this time any different and is this is this sign of something that is more enduring like or is it where are we going um is and think the beauty in the curse of crypto

is that you have real-time price Discovery I'm very emerging assets that in traditional markets wouldn't have price Discovery they would be private but you're attempting to have price discovery on very liquid emerging piece of technology and assets and that presents both an opportunity and and a and a challenge even though you you can drive it through mechanisms like an amm and novel mechanisms but it's still even Bitcoin is still going through this is is it digital gold can it be digital gold can it be uncorrelated can you know is it a is it truly going to work out as a hedge against everything else like blowing up

um but you know let's go through a series of questions do you think that the idea of nfts of digital ownership of creating digital art um or digital scarse assets going away no I mean I if if you go and talk to artists that that have made their livelihood and being able to monetize not just the big guys but just small artists that can no no longer need to rely on SBE Chris's or or art galleries and Soho or somewhere to be discovered do you think that do you think that that's going

away yeah I don't think I mean I don't think I don't think any of this this goes away I don't think you can put this back let me put it easier do you think that Larry Fink is going to stop talking about crypto because of uh of of the soft quitting and that Travis is talking about there's two kinds of investors one that gets really excited when they're soft quitting and another one that freaks out and says maybe we're dead and every sell in your body is telling you his price goes down or does nothing I wonder I think price not doing anything is probably worse than price going down because it gets to the impatience of many investors yeah um but I read that and I I think it's another affirmation of like where we're on the

cycle the opportunity of you know being disciplined being patient yeah I don't know many like I've seen this movie many many times yeah you people how many times do people call the death of Bitcoin my current thinking around this cycle is that it it it just got very warped by actually the the ETFs so you should have seen a line up that looked like this like this but instead you saw an extreme like rise up at the beginning of the like you know in when was that December or January um and then but it it it basically pulled all of that growth like you should see like a slope

of one but yeah know like crypto never uh never is linear no no I yes growth is never what's kind a linear phenomenon in crypto like it's just we we the famous uh Bill Gates uh quote which is we overestimate what can happen in 10 years underestimate we overestimate what get what is it we we overestimate what happens in two and can happen underestimate what can happen in 10 10 and like people fast forward and like they crypto cures cancer one day and then then it's uh rat poison the next I'm just trying to put a reason on why I think the Vibes feel very down when because the market is ripping or it

was ripping like that's that's fundamentally if if we're all in this together and equities are going down and rates are low and crypto's going down it's like yeah you know it's just just you just got to hunker down you know we're value deep long-term investors but when that's not happening then it's like oh [ __ ] maybe the mar but the Market's not ripping it was until most recently like the last week or two is down a bit The Magnificent 7 is down a bit but this year to date it's been a stellar performance nonetheless oh yeah yeah and it's and as we covered in the other podcast it's it's been the

cycle has been one which has been different it's been one of very selective outperformance the same way that traditional markets have right if if you were't invested in the Magnificent 7 yeah you really missed it uh if you were in the Russell yeah you missed it if you were in um msci world index you missed it if you invested in Europe yeah good luck like you know you're really underperformed similarly here if you weren't in salana or Bitcoin or mean coins everything else kind of like has been in a in in in a bare Market kind of down only trend line so and what I'm trying to say is it just hurts more when when a an easy simple narrative like AI punt Nvidia has done so well and you end up looking like an

idiot um you look at yourself in the mirror and you're like what am I doing here like I should have just punted Ai and got and enjoyed my summer and here I've been Glu to the screen poking my portfolio refreshing and not seeing anything it's like the impatience right gets at you not worried about it we probably in the next week month or so you know we see 50 basis points rate rate Cuts takes one or two one week where Bitcoin goes to 75 and and and everyone's like let's go you know okay that was

that was my take it takes let's go and Travis secretly it's like [ __ ] yeah we're back we're back we're back we're so back you know I mean like that's that's okay that's that was what I was going to conclude with too like all it takes is one up only week and and then it's black rocks buying our bags it takes one green big candle to say price drives baby price drives narrative so then it's prices above 70k and then it's okay we might get a pro crypto Administration and the sec's backing off and L things F our bags it's a classic meme of you know Bitcoin hits if bitcoin's at 59 if bitcoin's at 65 we're going to 250 if bitcoin's at 51

we're going back to 40 like in town and it's like there's a big asymmetry there like just temper your emotions and and uh and just like go do other things go do other things you know what I mean preach um all right we got some big new speakers I was supposed to call this out at the beginning of the show but per usual I forgot so come to permissionless we got actually we got some really cool new speakers lined up we got the uh most most likely the future senator of Utah uh rep John Curtis coming in he's speaking that's going to be really exciting got the commissioner of the cftc Caroline fam um we got Richie

Torres great Democrat in New York um we got Dan Dan Morehead uh from panta coming in we got speaking of crypto 2017 class we got Ari Paul uh from from block tower we've got uh Global head of uh crypto at Google coming in Rich who's been great tradition still exists what's the tradition I don't know I don't know wait what did what did you say does that position I'm surprised that position still exists what acquisition that position oh that position dude don't sleep on Google don't sleep on Google's crypto team no no no no no that is they they are that's a tease to go to permissionless I guess

no do you want to actually see this wait Google crypto this is a slept on thing oh God I don't know what this website is anymore try the 404 no oh man I'll link I'll link it Google has done some really cool indexing of all of the L1 and L2 crypto data so if you are someone who sits on top of that data like a nanson or blockworks research oh that's true that's true they like with my my prediction is that Google is gonna run people's show in crypto data and they will end up being one of the biggest crypto data providers actually um yeah interesting yeah yeah um but anyways

it's GNA be going to be a great event we have tickets for You tickets are now 700 bucks a pop they keep going up like every week so go get them now 700 bucks Empire 20 is the code so you heard it right 20% discount yes yes yes man this inflation man what to $700 or you can buy a group pass five tickets and it's only 539 for a group pass should you use telegram groups uh how do pricing finger in the air sounds about right yeah be social should you use lens uh foraster telegram or this live what is it live open social open social

to coordinate your group that's up to you that is up to you whatever group you use you can buy five tickets for $539 cred credible neutrality folks or if you're a developer for some reason we give free tickets to developers or if you're a student it's $99 we have a lot of ticket options for you you know I I sell my student ID card by the way um I was I'm so cheap sometimes I used no not anymore but like back in the day like now they're they look at me they're like yeah no no [ __ ] way but you know like year or two after college you know I whip out that ID card and it be oh yeah

you got it a year or two for sure got it you got got it I was eating sardines yeah I mean sardines are probably really you know my salary my first year in New York 18K which I later learned is year below yeah below well then I got and then I got and then I got commission too but it was I got a $1,500 check at on the last day of every month wow yeah it was tough it was a grind so I I actually did eat sardines and black beans it was it's a good grind damn that's impressive and I started buying crypto on credit cards good F there you go all right we just got the permission list agenda live oh your boy

Logan we got block production mvan salana Lucas Eugene Logan that be good nice all right agenda's now live you heard it here first go check it out oh that's good that's a good panel oh see Raj and Rich yeah I'm I'm I'm no longer qualified to speak next to this caliber of speakers is really I'm too afraid to go and talk these are good these are good panels yeah what's the main stage day two oh we got rousi mert Nick from Celestia rousi from movement Kyle Sani and Josh from Supra interesting oh we got BAGI giving a keynote oh this will be a good panel actually Mack case for Bitcoin Yan Vanek Mike novogratz Dan Morehead and Dan tapier that should be

great yeah it'll be fire really good stuff some some uh wow the IRS has entered the chat some AI stuff I think this is gonna be our best event yeah this looks good absolutely this might be also a very politically important uh conference gets picked up by traditional media if a lot of these crypto um if a lot of we got AIO going Politico going Wall Street Journal Financial Times very cool oh live Empire Roundup good thing Santiago won't be there oh snap tough oh there it is I'm still there know this that's a real that's a

good I don't know who set this up that wasn't me but that's a great Vance and Ari yeah so so I'm I'm speaking at uh at a breakpoint and the it's at breakpoint are debates only and I'm debating salana versus ethereum aichel actually is my opponent he's taking the ethereum side I will be taking the Oh's gonna get cooked I said I I I basically tweeted to I was like what where's the prediction market for this like come on I I love you I love you AOL you're gonna get cooked that's not even it's over y so that should be fun yeah well good excited you know um very

good uh to see you we're back we'll be uh we definitely see oh you know what I didn't get your take on the maker Rebrand what do you think of maker Rebrand no comment Sky I was barely I think that's I think you just gave a comment I gave no comment say no com so so R reached out and I did a Twitter spaces with him and I finally we had him on the pot I didn't understand anything of the road map and the end game at all mind you I've been fairly close to maker for for many years it was just I didn't get it so he we did the spaces he organized it and it was I think uh me him an him I think joined and myself and

so I finally started to understand the endgame I don't know if I agree with it but I understood it finally I think uh and then as soon as I was starting to understand it there's a Rebrand I'm like okay I just I this this is a topic for a broader more longer conversation around the future stable coins there's now speculation of more people entering the chat more people entering the game stable coins are highly lucrative like you got to look at tether and say that's a huge opportunity and so it's just I struggle D's position in the market in not being singly focused on distribution yes you're focused on

yield yes you're focused on kind of like the the Athena side of like yield is important for adoption but you need the distribution you need to be embedded in exchanges you need and if you don't have that look there's a reason why Tron stable coin is what is it like is it tether on Tron that's the most tether on Tron is the most widely used stable coin and it's it's super popular in in emerging economies and it just they just crushed the local distribution game like no other I don't see maker doing that yeah so I don't know what their I don't know what you as as a former delegate think but like what do you think about

the rebranding and just generally like the position of die in the ecosystem is it just gonna be capped um I'll I'll talk about the Rebrand I just I I don't like the Rebrand I don't like but I don't like nine out of 10 rebrands because because it's really hard to build a brand like building a brand is just about trust and like every day that your brand survives and lives is another day that your brand gets stronger and maker is one of the backbones of defi yeah and they've got one of the best brands in all like what is defi it's maker a Unis swap like I think of like those companies honestly like probably those three protocols and maybe some others um

but really those three and uh I I I just don't like the Rebrand I I think I think you should do a brand Evolution and turn maker into something else like if they want to build like an app or something or or a chain like just extend maker out and make it more things but nobody knows what sky is now you've got to re now you got to make a brand from from scratch and that's a very hard thing to do high in the sky um yeah well said I wouldn't bet against run he's a he's he's an Eclectic um but very guy but very good Builder I would say very good crypto Builder well I want to end it with uh it's been as you alluded to a an active

summer of reading uh I read this fantastic book um it's called Never Enough by Andrew Wilkinson the founder of tiny oh yeah was that good I got fantastic read fantastic people should go read it and you'll finish it in a day or two it's really good one or two takeaways honestly it reaffirmed a lot of my my Evolution and thinking of like what you optimizing for he was incredibly successful and he just documents his journey from nothing to being a billionaire and all it and and the realizations that he came about and it's just a really good perspective from someone that has made it and and then came to terms of what he was optimizing

for um very refreshing mod he's a very very good Storyteller too for people who don't know Andrew he started tiny lab they own companies like a and they buy comp they buy startups like they buy companies Aeropress metalab dribble um and he's also the co-founder and chairman of wec Commerce which is a they start and incubate and buy and invest in a lot of amazing Shopify businesses public company I think he took it public with Bill a yeah it was public um really but I've got that on my list I'll get that yeah put it on the top read it any like main takeaways for uh folks who AR going to read it time is the most valuable

asset um we've time and time again we've talked about it here in this pod owning your time you know is the most important valuable thing I think you talked about it in a prior po of like being a Time billionaire um and I think that's the most important thing that Liberty of of owning your time is the greatest luxury that you can have M and sometimes it does not equate to the amount of money that you make um and so being able to share with the people you love but owning your time uh is my Northstar so there's a you ever listened to the T Graham Duncan Tim Ferris

episode no I don't think so okay so I I'd put that as a I haven't listened in years but it's a must listen to episode it came out in early 2019 19 um we'll try to link in the show notes but or you can just search like Graham Duncan Tim Ferris and basically Graham dun so Graham Duncan's a hedge fund manager he says um uh he references a t do you know Tyler Cohen yeah the margin Revolution yeah so he Tyler Cohen talks about cultural billionaires and so Graham Duncan basically says something along the lines of he says look I feel like in our culture we're so obsessed with uh as a culture with money we deify dollar billionaires in a way um and he was thinking about something like he says I was thinking about time

billionaires that when I see like 20 year olds the thought I had was they probably have two billion seconds of their life yet but they aren't relating to themselves as time billionaires and I was thinking and he this is his quote he's like I was thinking about how if you could you know what what would rert Murdoch who's worth 20 billion and he's 90 years old what would he pay if he could take the next five years of someone's 20-y old healthy body mind etc for that 20-year-old how would they price it um and he said over time my pricing has gone completely vertical because the next five years if I were to lose and the key to this question is that you can't sell the five at the end of your life you got to sell them right now he said I don't know how I'd price it

because my kids are at a certain age they'll never be again but I don't know that I that I live every day that way but I aspire to so I think his idea of this time billionaire is um yeah he's trying to capture this like cultural billionaire dollar billionaire it's time billionaire there's also a Tim Urban calendar he has this concept of a life I don't know if you ever read the blog wait but why by Tim Tim Urban yeah he has this concept of a life calendar and what he he sells it as a poster actually I'd recommend it what he does he puts a week he does a circle for every week so he 52 circles on the horizontal and then 90 rows so you can actually see a 90er life in weeks right on one poster and it's a powerful visual very powerful

visual yeah yeah so I my parents they visited and I was just talking to my dad about it and um they're like how many more skiing we love skiing how many more skeme vacations do we have you know my dad's approaching 70s yeah I'm like and then so for me it's a no-brainer when it's like g king g king my dad I know will never regret that I maybe have I don't know one two five probably no more than 10 good ski trips lined up so when I think about it like invert and I think about it like that it just gives me so much focus of where I want to spend my time um funny enough I I announced an investment in time. fund

which is trying to token is is tokenizing time and is trying to bring price Discovery in time and I think it's just going to be the best way this primitive of time as a valuable instrument commodity and asset uh I think is is an area that I'm really excited to explore yeah and um you know there's web to like companies that have been trying to do this but I think it's it's going to be interesting how this unfolds and maybe even gets layered into social apps right you want to get my attention you want to get a phone call but other things right and so I think it's a yeah it's gonna be a fun experiment yeah the I'm gonna I'm G to send you this

time calendar post by Tim Urban the thing that he he wrote this one line I haven't read it in years that really hit with me is 9 98% of the time that you spent with your parents is gone right because you grew up with them every single day and now rare moments right right you only let's say you're let's say you're 40 you got yeah you see your parents your parents are 80 or something or your parents are 70 right you've got 20 years left with them and you might see them twice a year and five days at a time very finite amount of time so I think about that every day so great positive no tend on value your time and maybe as an

experiment thought experiment this weekend think about something that you haven't done that you get a lot of value from whether it's calling your parents doing that thing that you've oh here's the question and I heard it in a podcast it's like everyone always knows who their call would be if you were to say you got one call everyone is is something that is very top of mind for people maybe it's your parents maybe it's your loved one or maybe it's something that you've always wanted to do and you know call that person that you wanted to get it off your chest so I don't know maybe it's worth doing before before you're

actually put on the on the hot spot yeah good called action there's also one last movie on this time concept called in time it was Justin Timber have seen that yeah yeah from like a I don't know 10 or 15 years ago but you've got like time on your wrist remember and you pay for things in time and there's these time billionaires and it's like you go to the casino and like you're buying in with chips you give them time and you get time back so you're like taking other people's it's very interesting concept and then the really poor people like are always racing to do jobs to get more time or else they just die if they run out of time so that's the the bull case for technologies that it will free us up of

our time by creating abundance ah sorry the last thing and we're the last of the last this Gavin Baker episode let's end okay on an optimistic note so I want to talk there's actually this Gavin Baker episode that he did with Patrick o shanesy it's one of the best podcast episodes I've listened to all year it has nothing to do with crypto there are some crypto comparisons with he's talking about investing in apps versus infrastructure why infrastructure is more exciting from an Roi perspective very there are a lot of similarities to crypto I think we could have talked for 30 minutes about that let's make that the homework episode people go listen to that we'll link it we'll talk about our next pod but if you want to get optimistic about the future go listen to Gavin Baker talking with Patrick o Shany

about full self-driving so I mean Gavin lays it out clearly we have solved climate change he says we have so he said to all the 20-year-olds who are ter don't want to bring kids into this world and crazy p Pim istic all the time like I don't know a lot of gen Z people are like crazy crazy pessimistic and like you know refuse to bring yeah and I think there's a correlation with that sometimes but um they he's like we have solved it we are compounding at 11% a year it is like go I don't know just go listen to this episode it's very good yeah thank you for sharing that I that had immediate response to it and I loved it yeah so we'll link it people listen to it we'll

talk about it next pod so that's homework for people we haven't given people homework in a while back in September school's back in session get your ass hopefully you rested yeah we got homework baby we got homework baby let's go all right I have the blockworks All Hands now I gotta jump I am going to sleep it's midnight nice peace sir all right thanks for watching today's episode just wanted to quickly mention that the wait for crypto's killer app wve is nearly over thanks to today's sponsor anoma the Universal intent machine to stay up to date with anoma you can follow them at x.com anoma or sign up for the newsletter at ana. net thanks again to anoma for sponsoring

today's episode [Music]