Is Crypto Really Back? | Roundup

Transcript

memes are basically the mirror that reflect our society and if you take them one step further they can even be catalysts for social change I think um and you look at what like the Pepe meme did in in places like China um they can basically become the social glue that hold us together espe so like communities physical communities used to hold us all together churches things like that now that you don't have that I think basically tribal communities where a meme is the back bone of that has is now the thing that holds a lot of Internet native communities together all right everyone so on Empire you obviously know that we talk a lot about the institutions coming into crypto and that is why we are super excited to share that we are hosting the

digital assets Summit we posted this since 2019 it's coming up in London March 18th to 20th don't miss your chance to get ahead of the curve you can get 20% off with code Empire 20 we'll see you in London this episode is brought to you by the chronicle protocol a cost-efficient transparent and decentralized Oracle Chronicle has developed a Next Generation Oracle primitive called scribe which reduces Oracle gas fees on l1s and l2s by over 60% you'll hear more about Chronicle later in the show this episode is brought to you by North stake the secure and compliant staking platform for institutional investors North stak's e staking service lets institutions earn staking rewards while maintaining

maximum flexibility on all of their C Capital you can learn more about North stak's institutional staking Services by clicking the link in the show notes or that QR code that is on your screen right now if you're on YouTube now let's get into the show all right everyone from opposite sides of the world we got the Roundup you're getting me uh pre coffee and uh pre my makeup you know in the morning so good good to see you guys nice GM what's up and we're getting a Santi with a new haircut so look at that you know the the the trick is if people don't notice you get a haircut it's a good haircut when people notice you get a haircut it's sort of a bad haircut but any that's what you get in a hotel

haircut I guess well I noticed you got haircut so I don't know what that says about your hair cutter there go beautiful I'm recording this from the uh from the hotel in London I'm in London you're in Sydney look at this beautiful cappuccino I've got here damn lovely huh quite so I've been in London I took a red eye out Friday night um I won't dog you by the way but I recognize the the the plate and so I know which hotel you're staying at but are you kidding me are you kidding me I've stayed in like every single well actually yeah uh it's lovely it's lovely um yeah I flew out here Friday night and you know took a hourlong nap Saturday morning and just

have been basically racing since since Saturday so meetings all weekend I've probably met with 20 30 companies and some of the bigger funds out here uh we so we have Das coming up March 18th to 20th and just like kind of like doing a week of prep work for that it has left me very optimistic I would say about the we so we I mean we've been in London for a while with Das but it's uh yeah the state of crypto in London is actually much better than I thought it even was um before coming here so there's like a couple buckets of folks that we've met with there's the funds uh there are the kind of tradition crypto players like Co with copper met with um bitstamp B bitstamp and Kraken

are the two longest running crypto exchanges um and and some of those players but this this whole scene of defi that's popping up here uh met with the founder of pair protocol um they're doing like intense based pair trading um uh specifically for pers it's it's very very very interesting um there's a whole world of defi that's kind of getting created here here and it reminds me I've always thought that like London lagged the US by a couple years it felt like sometimes with with Finn with a lot of things maybe maybe not fintech but everything else they did um they have and uh yeah it's cool it's funny to see that playing out here again and I think there's gonna be this big defi scene here in London uh probably in a year

from now I'd say so I mean it's already been there right I mean a was there for a while obious here Argent is uh I I met with the founder of Argent like they've got a big team here but there's um you have to remember there's been so many great fintech Neo banks that have been started transfer wise revolute like why because monzo n26 exactly like London's in my mind in terms of ftech would rival uh I think the the US particularly New York or Silicon Valley just a it's it's a more International Financial Hub because it sits at that intersection uh connectivity into you know Middle East the the whole Mina region Asia like and so London to me is

always by default had to think about a lot of these like crossb issues naturally that's where crypto really plays in um and of course um you know the administration of uh Rishi sunak I think is new prime minister recently you know they just been more Pro crypto as a interesting history tidbit the gold ETF was resisted for a long time in the US and it was first introduced in London and that was a major breakthrough moment for then us Regulators to um uh get on board and list you know gold ETFs and I think you're going to see the

exact same Evolution uh I mean you already have uh these type of products in in Europe and and so I think uh yeah The Regulators in London my personal experience and anecdotally talking to other Founders has been way more forthcoming way more clear not perfect but at least more accessible and transparent and the intention is the right one so um yeah yeah um yeah you were talking to the was it the FCA or the bank of England back about St I was running my own validators with the team um and you know of course you you you start wondering hey is this gonna be were these were these e validators or was this Cosmos no this

was 2018 2019 it was Cosmos in the picture um and and so and also tasos tasos and cumes were the biggest ones and you know we assembled a team and the first thing is is this gonna be how's this going to be treated money transmitter like you know so a lot of these questions we didn't get good Clarity we reached out to the SEC we actually had a meeting with a crypto Zar within the SEC Valerie super knowledgeable at the time they are contrary to popular believe these administrations like they knew everyone at the time and they were very knowledgeable about proof of stake and all the stuff so anyways that was a very big aha moment but then I went to

London and like within a week we get a meeting with in a response from the FCA I was like wow this is just very refreshing so I actually sympathize if you're a company like if I were to start a crypto company today I would start it in London probably right well so the FCA yeah it's interesting because the F like Dubai and Singapore or Hong Kong but just for me I'm in Europe so it would be Li yeah the F so the FCA is uh regulates is the main body here that regulates crypto they also regulate fintech and I think they saw the success that yeah all the Neo Banks monzo n26 revolute uh the list goes on basically the the success that they had especially

even competing against the US they're basically us fin Tech counterparts and um yeah they seem much more open it I will say every I mean half the meetings I'm in people are talking about the 2024 elections in the US they're like look as as powerful as the FCA is like yeah yeah at the end of the day it's kind of all eyes on on the 2024 elections absolutely um lot to talk about the first thing is uh as you think about your holiday shopping I found a gift for you oh really that's very kind I think you're gonna show I'm gonna show it to you yeah it is the uh it is the Bitcoin mining Lego set damn that's why you get me to buy

Bitcoin I know you like your Legos and uh we've got the price of Bitcoin I don't know if you saw the corn the good old corn hit 45k so 45k in in coinbase I think it was where it hit actually yeah it ticked out yeah yeah so anyways I if you're if you're thinking about uh this uh holiday gift for any nocoin or friend I thought you could get this for them absolutely by the way if anyone from Lego is listening like this would be my ideal sponsor like I think I I collect a lot of stuff like a lot of [ __ ] since I was very little and Legos like I still have Legos from like had I not opened these boxes I would probably made a better return on Lego than crypto like like Star Wars OG Lego sets

just amazing and super rare anyways I love Legos yeah um I also bought too many Legos in in the past so um here's here's here's your gift Santi um thank you I think maybe we could start with I do want to talk about uh good old Bitcoin hitting 45k eth is not moving much um which is interesting I think eth is kind of primed for a run here I I will say I think people have gotten a little too pessimistic on eth but I think maybe the best place start yeah yeah yeah I I mean we can talk about overall thoughts on the market but the best place to start here so we posted this uh video that I kind of posted with this like you know headlin title on Twitter which I think was uh Santi thinks 20%

chance soul will flip eth or something like that um and the reaction to that was uh there was there was a lot of anger I would say in the reaction it got a very it was a very divisive um video and post and um I just from your tweets I mean we haven't talked much since then but just from your tweets I saw you seemed like you were getting pretty reflective on why folks were so divisive on that and I would just love to hear your reaction to to the reaction uh so a little meta here but your reaction to the Met reaction of that that soul that salana video but I mean I don't react to other people in their opinion of what I have to

say I mean and so I think the I do pay attention to the comments and I've been and and look I go through them because I here's the reason why I'm doing a lot of what I do in the podcast but also in Twitter is because I like to document stuff like in the in the bare Market of 2017 post 2017 I got the writing and Publishing in a substack medium then substack and to me that was a very helpful exercise to make sure that I hold myself accountable um and and there's no better way in my mind to do a public and so now I'm I'm really trying to just open source you know the idea that I had starting a bank I went

through the exercise I'm not doing it um but public like I'd like to do these things now in a public context um because it invites criticism and I think that that's the best way to identify mistakes fall there a really good thread right I mean mer got involved in there who runs light speed uh the light speed podcast which is fantastic and then a couple like fishy cat or or cat like there were some really good criticism out there and so I think ultimately the reason why I do a podcast is to elevate the discourse in crypto which is really bad right I mean there's a lot of tribalism as there is and everywhere else you know people

people like stuff if if if it aligns with their bags people don't like stuff if it doesn't align with their bags I get it but I'm in a process of I think it's quite early and it's very unrealistic to assume that you're going to know it all um and so for me it's uh I just I'm in The Pursuit Of Truth and there's no better way I think than doing it in an open source context and I'm willing to put myself out there because I've certainly said dumb [ __ ] I certainly am not an expert on anything but I know some experts exist out there and I I have a decent audience and so I'd rather invite you know the discussion to happen in a public forum because I think that's how we get better as a space you know yeah was there

anything that was posted in response that made you kind of question your earlier assumption or did has your thesis evolved since then in in any way um not particularly I did actually have a private call with uh fishy cat or cat catfish oh interesting yeah I reached out him and said look I actually definitely agree with your take which is was a very good one so I reached out said he you want to come on the Pod let's actually have you on and sounds like he's he's he's very critical and I like that and so I just reached out um and I had a really good discussion here him out and he made some excellent points in that thread um and we're gonna have him on in q1 after the holidays and

so the discussion that he made the point that he made which is an excellent one is how do you value these things like it's certainly not on a cash flow basis like I mean you could look at ethereum and maker and like these things don't trade my hunch is they don't trade on on that like um and I think uh it's just an interesting reflection on like I think we have to be a little bit intellectually honest and realistic around everything trades at a comp like yeah everything trades it ties into the point of Bitcoin everything trades at you know bitcoin's 800 billion close to

a trillion everything is comparable to that right it's like can ethereum be like Bitcoin can salana be like ethereum um and that's I I think the I'm comfortable accepting that whether you want to believe it or not I just think that that's how the market really kind of Trades um now is there a scenario where everything compresses an order of magnitude yeah is there a scenario where it grows an order of magnitude yeah like these valuations are like if you're doing a cash flow the terminal value after 10 years like 99% of the value of any crypto network is predicated on Terminal value but we're not I think the point that he made which is particular to Salon is this idea of we've thought

about the value of ethereum around its disinflationary the block space is pretty there's a high demand for Block space therefore fees are high so okay you have l2s and it's like okay if l2s really take off what's Val cruel to the L1 what happens if you can pay the ative token ARB op what what what's the relationship between that how much value translated into e and and then similar for solo okay if it's a really high through environment yeah okay you have local fee markets and so you have like these price discrimination and and different fees but no one I think really knows like and even Anatoli said this it's like his version of success is

there's a ton of demand and a ton of applications that get built on top and supported by something a network like saana but he's like I actually don't know like if that value is going to translate over to the L1 so I think uh like everything it's so early the best the best I think position that I can be in is being comfortable with things that I don't know and having kind of bookmarking them and saying this needs to be figured out it's an Unknown Known Unknown right uh and I'd rather be comfortable with that versus advocating something that's

actually not correct and I think you see a lot of that in the community where you know they don't wantan to they don't want to see it but I'm okay with it you know ultimately you're always gonna get hate right if you do one thing you're gonna it's decisive it's divisive it's divisive I meant to say but that's okay like honestly if you're not if you're not raising um criticism then you're probably not like doing anything relevant yeah all right so there are two things I want to get your take on one is um the question I think a lot of people were pcking us on Twitter about which is like where where is this the start of the new bowl where are is it is it up

only for here um I think my like maybe I can take the first stab at this which is I I actually think we are a little out ahead of our skis still um I think that I think the bull market has started um however do you remember 2019 when binance iOS launched and this whole we basically got this uh in hindsight it kind of was the the start of a bull market um were some of these iOS but really we had this vicious leg down in March 2020 I think we could be looking I don't think we'll have this vicious leg down because there was that that was covid driven that was um very idiosyncratic much more forceful than

anything that I mean unless there's another covid like event but assuming that there's not I don't think we'll have anything like that but there can still be these pretty vicious draw Downs um yeah up nothing is ever up only like right even even in the peak of euphoria bull like defi summer there were weeks of draw like there were moments and days where you had draw downs and you were questioning is this the end of it is this the end of it and I I think um like you're never in an always like it's just not right in an only always up only environment um even even in those moments you feel like very uncertain and there's

trauma uh I mean categorically we are in a bull market like these crypto assets have rallied uh you know 2x 3x 6X since the bottom um and so you naturally have moments of consolidation like today yesterday right I mean these things kind of need to there are there are people that take chips off the table like things need to cool down funding rates get really high and so you you know leverage runs up and then you get like like you you can plot in during defi summer there are discret moments two or three where you had a lot of the open interest and a lot of the leverage like wiped out of the system and it kind of is a healthy reset to keep the animal

spirits in check right and so I think uh I'm actually I'm I feel very I believe the 2024 is going to be a good year for risk assets including crypto so then the the next question becomes basically how do you play that right so there's like do uh you know you know Chia obviously yeah so I think if you look at a lot of chia's tweets he's um and he's seen a lot of Cycles he's basically summarizing what I think people have seen many cycles kind of feel going into this one which is uh there are like two ways to play this there's the you can there's the right there's the the the mid curve I think

which is trying to get very like queued on like different uh what is the most technical thing and then there's the the left bell curve right bell curve tap like literally goong uh you know dog coins I mean if you look at ch's tweets it's uh I went I mean none of this financial advice but do you remember that discussion we have with Joe mccan from asymmetric I yeah yes I do and I know where you're going and I hearing say that I was like yeah if I if I feel strongly about Soul then Bon to me is a lever bed on soul and so far it's done a 3X and that and I was like yeah I'm just gonna buy a million bucks of Bon and just ride that yeah I mean like if you look at Chad's tweet I think this is a half

kidding half serious tweet but he said GM I plan on outperforming 90% of this website in the next Bull cycle by holding an uncomfortable percentage of my net worth in the original dogcoin and pfps from the fastest chain so I think he's talking about salana nfts here so there are there's a there's a high likelihood that that he's right here um look this go ties into some of the discussions you and I were having around nfts and why don't I think of them as Investments although they could be good ways to play a lever bet on you know punks for instance Al are a lever B on ethereum some of these Solana nfts have been having their moment now right um and

so for me again similar to sha like sh like half jokingly um I'm I'm comfortable putting a a decent decently sized position in something like Bon uh I think it's very difficult to do it as a fund because if there's a huge draw down it's like the career risk of already having crypto fund is high and then telling your LPS that you put money in Bonk like most of these LPS don't don't get it right and I think it just takes again it goes back to this idea I think it takes a fair level of intellectual honesty to say um where how does value get created right and I think this is the beauty of the crypto Journey you know you remember

even having discussions with normal people or even I was having discussions with all my finance friends and former bosses or whatever and they're like what gives Bitcoin value you're like okay you really want to go into that discussion okay well let's talk about value like what is value like this Turtles all the way down right what gives a US dollar value and some people think it's gold like you know this is how like poorly knowledgeable most people are and misinformed and so when you accept that and you say well how do you put a price on culture and value and encapsulating that in a digital asset that is by the way for the first time it's like Global Capital markets open

247 365 people don't appreciate that the range of investment opportunities for most people around the world is fairly limited China you can invest in government bonds or real estate oh well that hasn't turned out to be really nice so Capital flight is is naturally goingon to happen with something like crypto the government doesn't like it for that reason because they dry up the buyers right it's great to be a government when you can only tell your people you can only invest in a local economy same with Argentina same with India like people don't have access to Tesla and apple like you and I do right um and and the moment you understand that you invert and you say well where's

that money gonna go because now you sort of like have created this ability to like untether money and the flow of that at the speed of light and it's like explosive like I remember in 2017 I thought this could go on for um I was having a discussion here with Kane him and I were both talking about this like I was of the mind that you know that run could have lasted for way more like many more years in terms of the aggregate flow of money um and uh and so you know it what's to say that like you

know some of these dog meme coins uh can AC Cru here as value and then and then you can actually it into existence like someone had a pretty interesting tweet uh a year or two ago that said hey like what's to stop if you already have all this attention which is the hardest thing to capture I know where you're going with this why can't why why can't uh like like um any of these dog coins um Doge for instance become like a and you will it into existence like you do PR right or contract it's like okay you cook so let me let me take the other side of so the the common push back this would be if that's all we're doing

longing meme coins and uh you know buying Dogecoin and hoping Dogecoin like launches a products because they've got all the attention Etc like what what are we all doing here um how do you think about that see I I think people have these very particular opinions of what is right and wrong in the world and they try to impose that on other people and it's a same reason why governments shouldn't interfere with what you want to do with your life if you're not damaging other people you're paying your taxes and you're a law- Abiding Citizen they shouldn't meddle with so many things like the drug policies to like and so

what I'm trying to say is I I get your point it's like what are we doing here and it's almost laughable but it's like it's like games right so many people are critical of like Charlie merer Fant I was just reading ACH of his did you listen to that interview I sent you yeah yeah and he was talking about games yeah and you could tell that he's a very smart person I think he can have conflicting ideas in his brain and on one end he struggled with the idea where people would spend a lot of time and hours gaming but then he also appreciated look at the end of the day we're here and we're in this world and we want to have fun and we want to be happy and if if that involves playing a game then that's great like like that's

amazing because if you're happy then that all of a sudden you're not spending and having a strain on the healthare system and and all this opioid like you know what I mean like and so like you can I guess I don't have a strong of an opinion on what other people should be doing yeah or how what they perceive to be valuable as long as it provides utility for them and and I am not the judge of that I ultimately accept that what utility is very subjective it's like art and so you can't really impose your world view on that all you can accept is pay attention to that because I think do just telling

you something you know people I think it's going to be hard as is okay you're a traditional finest guys is listening to this SP explain to me how Goodwill gets captured in a balance sheet what's Goodwill is isn't that what Dogecoin is good literally Goodwill when you can't account for the value of an asset in an acquisition the value of the team well that goes into Goodwill when AOL got what is it when like these crazy Acquisitions what is it bought Myspace or vice versa right Myspace bought like everything was good well like how do you account for that well isn't that like you know what I mean

so what is perhaps the more interesting mindset is hey why is this thing trading at like 60 plus billion or whatever it is trading at uh why is it capturing all this attention and trying to understand that like you invert and you say clearly something here where a ton of people uh perceive valuable well let's unpack that um and and this again ties into the whole regulatory discussion too like what are we trying to accomplish by preventing people from accessing for instance a goo airdrop or some of these air drops like what are you protecting against ultimately what is the intention

here and I think that sometimes we lose sight of that um and I think it's just important to go back to First principles and say what what like what is the role of government and and and you know just being a little bit more open-minded which has ties into everything and crypto is sort of of a fascinating discussion because the minute I don't tweet about salana I'm an eth maximalist and the minute I tweet about salana uh you know I'm I'm [ __ ] on eth and you see all these eth people now on Twitter uh saying oh there's so much hate against ethereum it's like no man I just generally got [ __ ] tired of not getting a very clear answer and understanding of how this thing's going to scale to billions of users I don't see it today I see it more clearly with

salana and so therefore salana could be the most valuable Network now I don't know how they're going to monetize it but at least I know that's the biggest uncertainty but I am okay accepting that and going into a position saying like if it gets a ton of usage I think you have a higher probability of figuring out how to monetize it versus you're just a really expensive place where no one wants to interact and when you have something that's actually really cheap well I I'd much rather bet on that it's the same reason why I don't own Bitcoin and just struggle to justify owning Bitcoin I'd rather own other instruments to hedge and I'd rather like I don't know you ever seen the documentary feel

feel good man uh yeah about the Pepe meme I think it's a really good uh it's a really good documentary to understand like just the power that memes I think basically going back to the Bon conversation and Dogecoin and all of these things I I think you nailed it like the same people who hate that we're talking about you know buying we I mean the my DMs were filled with people who are like you guys should not be talking about salon nfts on the podcast that's a complete waste of time like are the same people who don't think that the government should be cracking down on on crypto it's like it's very hypocritic hypocritical take and I think this uh memes are basically the mirror that reflect our society and if you take them one step further they can even be Catalyst for

social change I think um and you look at what like the Pepe meme did in in places like China um they can basically become the social glue that hold us together espe so like communities physical communities used to hold us all together churches things like that now that you don't have that I think basically tribal communities where a meme is the backbone of that has is now the thing that holds a lot of Internet native communities together so um yeah it'll be we'll see what happens here all right everyone so we talk a lot about the institutions coming into crypto on Empire Santi and I are both headed out to London March 18th to 20th

for blockworks is 8th ever digital assets Summit Das this is an Institutional buttoned up conference that we've hosted since 2019 I like to joke that it is probably the last remaining kind of suit and tie event in crypto people are still wearing suit and tie it's pretty funny but you'll actually hear from a lot of the largest institutions in the world coming from Standard Charter FIS JP Morgan framework folks coming out winner mute Vanek Goldman Sachs there are a couple big themes of this conference one Bitcoin catalysts the having and the spot ETF two A View From the buy side three rw's tokenization and stable coins four Global regulatory Frameworks five institutional infrastructure including Banking and payments and six the macro

case for crypto if you have anything to do with the institutional side of crypto you have to be there Santi and I got your back we hooked you up with a 20% off code it is Empire 20 there is a little competition running internally at blockworks to see who can drive the most number of tickets so help Santi and I out register with our code and you get 20% off that is Empire 20 this episode is brought to you by the chronicle protocol a cost-efficient transparent and decentralized Oracle that gives protocols verifiable onchain data for the frequent listeners of Empire you know that we talk a lot about maker Dow well Chronicle protocol is a novel Oracle solution that has exclusive IV ly secured over 10 billion in assets for

maker Dow and its ecosystem since 2017 and for the first time ever Chronicles Oracle services are now publicly available why should you use Chronicle it's simple Chronicle offers a 60% reduction in gas fees for all of their leading counterparts also super cool they have unparalleled transparency when it comes to oracles Chronicle offers a dashboard that allows anyone to track the Genesis and trajectory of the data it provides this is the first time ever that Oracle has made all of its data verifiable setting a new standard for the accessibility of onchain data endorsed by a network of the most revered validators including ether scan infura gitcoin dydx and maker Dow Chronicle is the epitome of security and

reliability in the Oracle space it's time for a paradigm shift in Oracle development you can learn more about Chronicle at Chronicle labs. org big thanks to Chronicle for sponsoring Empire today's episode is brought to you by North stake the secure and compliant staking platform for institutional investors North stake is purpose-built for institutions that want to enable the ability to move in and out of staked eth seamlessly while controlling all aspects of their fund management North stak's tokenized eth staking service offers institutions easy low-risk crypto yield opportunities complies with both AML and Ma regulations making it possible for institutions to tap into ethereum's growth and earn staking rewards even

through these pretty turbulent regulatory times in crypto if you are an Institutional Investor seeking compliant crypto exposure and yield North stake streamlines that all for you to get started head over to nor stake. DK tokenized hyphen e hyen staking I know you're probably not going to go to that long URL so just click the link in the description of the episode that'll take you right to North Stak site or if you're on YouTube scan the QR code on your screen right now now let's get back to the episode I think the more um probably important question in everyone's mind is where are we in the cycle um what you know have I missed out how long is this kind of last and I think trauma is real um I ultimately

think look um the most important thing is to really focus on don't get carried away in you know if you're seeing it in Twitter then you know everyone has bias in their own bags and so I think the the the more important thing that I would encourage I don't give advice but what is been helpful for me is like document why you're interested in stuff uh the nice thing too is you can get a lot of access to these communities and so if you're using a product you're getting utility uh then I think like the learning curve is is really Steep and you think that there's always going to be a lot of volatility in the space always and so you want to kind of understand how do I minimize is being carried away well Leverage is probably

not a good idea uh being overly spread is also not a good idea not even knowing what the product is also not a good idea you know ultimately I think where I've been most successful is like especially in defire early on was like I'm using this there's a lot of value I come from a financial background I see value in that I think there's a lot of utility but you can come from entertainment and say wow like I can make a movie on on Bon well go at it you know so anyways it's it's um it's gonna be quite interesting I think I'm very optimistic at 2024 and and it sounds like you guys are too in terms of I mean you probably have great vantage point in terms of subscriptions engagement you know we we have a lot of

insights into um uh that other people in the market don't have basically by like from where we sit so you we can see right when like you know 25 people from societ gen all or sock gen subscribed to the newsletter three months ago or like there's something that must be going on at sock gen sure enough and I actually want to talk about this news yesterday they announced um stable coin right the first europ Peg stable coin with bitstamp so you know our podcast downloads podcast downloads were like I think this month well this quarter they'll be the the biggest quarter I think every single podcast to block Works has ever had you know I mean Empire is gonna hit

a record number of downloads light speeds like a par the fastest growing podcast we've ever had Vel curve doing well um page views is is climbing again like like my my Twitter followers are all of a sudden start to grow like thousand a week or so oh yeah mine too mine too uh I mean it's just funny it's just funny so we got to get you a little should we get you a little block Works uh you know the official stamp on Twitter's sure u i mean sure i' still need some blockwork Swag like look in being like company is not doing swag but man I sit on a chair for two years now all right all right we'll send

the send the damn shirt I was like okay he didn't get the memo I'm gonna invest in Block works and I'm still here like you know what do I need to do we'll send the damn shirt we'll send the damn shirt send the Lego to send the leg send the Lego too yeah exactly all right so this week um uh here let me uh I can share this so societ General often more often known as a sock genen just became the first um big European Bank to list a state actually I think the First Bank in general to list a stablecoin so I can walk through some of the the details of this um basically they're launching their own stable coin on bitstamp they're the first big bank to offer uh stable coins that track the price of the

Euro uh it's basically a usdc like product but instead of US Dollars it's a Euro stable coin um but by the way huge void too in the market like you didn't have when I was looking doing the bank I'm like someone's going to build another usdc another us another Euro stable coin doesn't exist it's a huge opportunity anyone that's looking at coinbase's last quarterly report where they finally broke out the revenue that they're cranking out from stable coins I think uh I think every major bank is not paying attention to that yeah I mean if you I I don't know if you can still see my screen here but uh if you Circle euro dollar they had launched e rc but I don't think it really took off much no I

don't think it did no um so anyways this is yeah this is this is uh pretty cool I would say so just for people if you wanted to have a u Euro this Euro stable coin do you have to be a customer of sock gen can you trade it like what's the network and and what's the do we know so uh so it starts trading today on bitstamp like if you're on bitstamp you can you can go buy this um the funds are held at I'd say an arms length from sock gen they have a third party called or the um they have a I think subsidiary called uh sock gen Forge which is like their digital asset arm um it can't really be used on any platform the

platform has to be whitelisted first by sock gen so it's not really freely transferable so it's not really a comparable uh product to to usdc I'd say uh it's also not compliant with uh with my car right now so um uh which is which are the uh markets in crypto asset regulation the EU basically the EU regulation but uh you did just see a big fund um who was it it was let me find this AXA investment managers just invested in a in a digital Bond using using this stablecoin and a is a I mean they're almost a trillion dollar I think they've they're like 50 billion under management yeah so they're

massive insurance company um interesting yeah I mean look uh who was it uh uh Chris briski from Place wer said something that I think it was obviously super interesting I've notic it you're not funding deals with wire transfers anymore everyone's taking usdc everyone usdc I have I have a question for you on that front do you so I just sent a they sent the ad this was a a deal yesterday they sent the wire it was like a third party firm basically they sent the info and do you do a test transaction still or do you just rip out a the whole the whole usdc depends if feeling you know that Google button feeling lucky feel lucky yeah depend on the depends on the

size like if I'm doing you know depend it depends on the size uh protocol wise I think it's the best practice is to always send a test transaction and if you're funding from certain exchanges like coinbase like actually subsidizes it's like you can send a test transaction and they'll send it one usdc to whoever the counterparty is really yeah com Prime oh I didn't realize that I've been sending $1 and just paying like $6 in Cas but but but the best practice is yeah you should you should likely do it the same way that I was feeling lucky yesterday I did it and then I was like [ __ ] and I went to Ether scan I was like

please please please please yeah um so uh okay so sock gen I think this I mean I think this is basically one Trend that you're going to see in the next Market is everyone in their mother is going to launch a stable coin trafi companies CI crypto companies um I mean absolutely like it's uh it's going to be a huge Revenue driver and also the velocity of transactions I think is what banks and more Banks can make money and so I think ultimately that's huge for them right they have all these deposits and yeah I think um it's kind of a bit I think it Dove Tails a little bit into what we saw today of Jamie Diamond kind of like testifying and saying that if he had the possibility to as he said shut down crypto in the US

he would do it which is interesting because we had Tyron on the Pod and I asked him this question like how much buy there is within the organization yeah what about that what about that J I mean did you see the Jamie Diamond I mean I can read that's what I'm saying today yeah if he if he can shut down crypto he would it's like toxic like Charlie Monger says this too you know um I I I I think in his defense or like not Jamie devis but Tyron right it would probably say we're excited about blockchain but not crypto let me read this for anyone who missed this so basically the CEOs from a

lot of the big Banks Morgan Stanley Goldman JP uh Bank of America bny melon Etc uh on Wednesday joined a bunch of lawmakers uh who were questioning them about how effectively the banking industry is serving Americans and Elizabeth Warren senator from Massachusetts very uh vocal critic of the banking industry uh CEOs I would say of banks do not like her they basically found this rare moment of agreement uh when they shifted the topic to crypto and I'll read the quote from from Warren which it's uh it's funny I think this got basically debunked but they're still leveraging this report from chain alysis she said qu today's terrorists have a new way to get around the bank secrecy act cryptocurrency last year an estimated 20 billion in illicit crypto

transactions funded every kind of dangerous criminal North Korea has funded at least half its missile program including nuclear weap weapons using the proceeds of crypto crime so then Warren went on so she finished her F minute segment she went on to ask Jamie Diamond why based on his experience leading JP Morgan criminals are so drawn to crypto and he responds quote I've always been deeply opposed to crypto Bitcoin Etc you pointed out the only true use case for it is criminals drug traffickers anti-money laundering tax avoidance and that is a use case because that it is somewhat Anonymous not fully and because you can move money instantly if I was the government I'd close it down yeah

it's crazy because when you speak with anyone in the uh wealth management department at at JP um which is where they make they make a lot of money obviously I think that do they have the biggest private bank or one of the biggest private Banks out there um every every private banker there is I mean these statements kill them right if you're if you're banking with JP Morgan's Private Bank like you want the the dream would be able to I think a lot of folks want to custody their Bitcoin with someone like JP Morgan they could make a lot more money doing that um but you can't this this is the classic of the enemy of my enemy is my friend right and so there there like people always want to look

for a scapegoat there's no notion of well how much of in the whole binance binance paid four billion of fees that's like the seventh largest fee that is fine that has been placed ever in the US well guess what the top six Are banks HSBC every single major Bank in the US has got a fine because they facilitated money laundering and elicit funds that have been gone through uh their system and right and so I think you know obviously you want to whenever you have the possibility to divert attention to something else you you will now I I looked at this today and and I tweeted um and my tweet was like when you actually think about how Antiquated the financial system is it is it is a patchwork of outdated systems that don't

talk to each other very well um that are costly and people within I think privately if you were to talk to Major Bank Executives they would all agree that putting aside regulation they would absolutely adopt certain pieces of this because it will streamline back office compliance make their operations um make their operations more economic because like you streamline a lot of this stuff and also open up new markets right all of a sudden because things because you don't have to because kyc is lower because you can do atomic settlement versus T plus two because you can reconcile everything faster you don't need as many people like that that meaningful translation in basis points

can then allow you to service other clients other markets like it's so obvious to me that this is going to be the way forward not only that but like I've always I'll encourage you to do something whenever you go talk to a finance friend don't even mention crypto just say hey man imagine a world where you can minimize counterparty risk and and inspect in real time your counterparty's position 247 365 in real time Auto itable you understand where things are you understand like that exposure risk and they'll like holy [ __ ] that' be great like we could do so many different derivatives we could like their their mind just starts their imagination goes crazy I've done this with like 10 20 of my friends that are in hedge funds and

private equity and Banks but the minute you say crypto they're like oh no no no no and look rightfully so there's smart contract bugs I get it but that can be solved yeah look it's going to be a classic inbody zma i' actually think yeah if it's not going to one of these Banks like sojen is going to realize that they can like move in this direction and innovate itself newspapers went through this in online media and Publications like no different so where where it really gets fun is part of the coinbase thesis is it just becomes the better bank right I mean where where it's going to get really interesting is once uh shares of apple and share basically equities are I

think are tokenized essentially and I think the tokenizing real estate is a is a fluffy narrative that I'm not too excited about but what gets really interesting is tokenizing equities and what that the reason it's going to take so long to do that is because of how much money the folks who sit in between all of those transactions make uh whether it's dtcc or you know JP I think one of JP Morgan's biggest clients is Black Rock right they make hundreds of billions of dollars a year settling Black Rock trades um or sitting sitting not like sitting in between those trades I'm not sure if the correct word is settling there um but they're so incentivized not to create a more efficient system uh it would wipe out tens of thousands of jobs so it has to

be created by I mean I had an awesome meeting with the uh CEO and CCO and uh of of copper um I don't know if you know the the copper team but they're I mean I'm not sure how they're I think what they're building uh is not going to be too in 2024 2025 but 2026 2027 in the tokenization space like it's very very cool to see um so yeah uh let me let me there's another thing that launched this week which was a coinbase launch send money anywhere you can send a link instant easily instantly and for free so you can you can basically do this um send a link anywhere sends money um what do you what do you think about this huge

I mean it already exists in there's a app in salana there's already there's another portfolio company of mine called Arana that do like send it um yeah there's also like in the early days Bitcoin you could do this to um yeah it's huge it's funny I remember doing this in like 2016 or something and they must have taken the ability away or 2017 just didn't go anywhere but like the the important novelty here I think is it's just coinbase it has huge distribution yeah so so so when the recipient clicks the link it takes them into the coinbase wallet app they can claim or direct them to to and they can claim directly inside the wallet app or it takes them to download the coinbase wallet app on iOS or Android they can create a new wallet

and just one click um they don't have to do all that I think they do the kyc stuff later and if the fund I thought this was a cool feature if the funds are not claimed within two weeks they automatically get returned to the sender I thought that was a pretty nifty cool feature um like venmo but you know just another way to do it it's like VMO but venmo is only supported in the US and you can't withdraw your funds same day unless you pay a $10 fee right that's right that's right yeah no it's it's huge I'm very excited to I think stable coins are the Trojan Horse of this industry and you're gonna see just way more non-speculative demand for stable coins and it's it's I mean up only for stable coins I think yeah I think uh I

think PayPal I mean we'll see what venmo does on this front but I would assume venmo launches some some competitive thing because they are owned by PayPal and PayPal launched py USD right there St you know what a product that I'd want to see uh give me the ability to send the stable coin and at the same time you can mint an nft I mean imagine a world where you start sending stable coins for various reasons uh you pay for something you send it to a friend you settle a business transaction you append information meta into the nft which uh you know or in the metadata of the

transaction uh that can be shielded with a you know with zero knowledge proofs like right of course because but you can effectively it would be really cool right all of a sudden you have like real information that you pend to you're sending certain amount of money the reason for that or just uh thank you like hey you know if you're a brand and you have a loyalty customer like you just send it's funny I used to do this with um in 2017 with Uber drivers when we would talk about Bitcoin I would just be like oh yeah yeah just Dro me like um because you know how you get the the fake cell phone number or whatever from them I would just send them like five bucks 10 bucks a Bitcoin or something um and that but you lost the ability to do that now you can do that again yeah

that's really exciting see coinbase continues to out innovate man they just increase the leverage on their per like obviously they should do they should do a holiday campaign around this by the way like a send they've done some great videos um recently on like upgrading the system the stock has been on a tear I mean I think a lot of it is cover short covering like I mean it at some point like 33% of all the coinbase um float was being shorted or borrowed so shorted and I think a lot of people just got blown out and uh they're covering the short uh and the stock has gone you know it hit up to 148 140 something close to 150 I mean it was sitting at 30 not too long ago 70 you know month or change ago uh it's

crazy right you you did all right yeah I mean I've been very public as to why I think it's been properly neglected and mispriced but you know everyone should go do their own work and none of this is financial advice or any advice for that matter anything else this week I gotta I gotta jump to that that meeting in a few but anything um oh s s bees is doing a Bitcoin ordinal sale I haven't read about it I just saw the headlines but I I'll leave it with things I want to continue to talk about in The Next Episode definitely ordinals seeing a lot of activity uh you know crazy not just in price but just divisiveness again within the Bitcoin Community we should have you know who we should have on is

uh udy and um yeah I can I'll ping udy um maybe a little Bitcoin Bitcoin chat with him about tap rotes and uh uh ordinals we do for an update we had man earlier but yeah would be great to have where because I think he's building like this direction um want to continue to unpack uh the experience of the salana thesis um and and other kind of I want to do an episode with this uh catfish guy around the at the start of the year at let's poke holes at everything in crypto and I think that's going to be an important episode it could be actually

multi segments a bull market um because it's in those moments where we stop poking holes and we do you know there's mistakes made so we let's try to avoid that right agreed agreed um we have some good we have some good content coming out soon too did uh we have a mutable I don't know if that episode Robbie they just announced obviously great partnership marriage circle is moving over uh I think gaming again gaming as a narrative is totally neglect kieran's here from alium too I was talking to this gaming is gaming is going to be a big Catalyst in 2024 and my line of site had invested in over 40

games a lot of them are gonna go live next year yeah so it's funny so I'm doing I'm uh we're recording this on Thursday Thursday night I'm uh going to Winter mut's office and doing like a 2024 predictions talk with Yi there's like a couple of us on this panel there's I think about 100 150 people coming to winter mut's office and it's me you Genny and a couple other folks and I was looking at uh everyone somewhere in everyone's predictions because we all submitted our predictions ahead of time everyone's mentioning gaming at Le at least once sometimes twice so oh yeah time uh people should go listen to that episode that I recorded in person with Robbie uh and we really I think I really enjoyed that the conversation and you know as always

tweeted us or drop a comment on on Twitter or on YouTube um if you have any questions or you know we're saying dumb [ __ ] we want to know do a lot of that yeah see see see see in the dangerous YouTube comments oh also people should register for um D London Empire is close to flipping on the margin yeah yeah yeah hit that yeah Empire 20 baby you got the code so you're almost I cannot have Mike beat me for another week here this is killing me so uh Empire 20 come on give give Yano a break otherwise he's gonna have a nervous breakdown okay thanks every listening as always and we'll be here next week I guess see you folks hey everyone thank you so much for watching

today's episode really hope you enjoyed it we wanted to take a second to just remind you about our upcoming digital assets Summit in London March 18th to 20th Santi and I got your back seats are limited and we hooked you up with a 20% off discount code it is Empire 20 if you heard it earlier in the podcast there's a little competition running at blockworks to see who can drive the most number of tickets so when you register for the digital last at Summit make sure you use our code Empire 20 see you in [Music] London