Crypto’s in a 20-Year Secular Bull Market | Weekly Roundup

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2025 is a line in the sand moment for the industry. I think where we are is kind of 2003, 2004 for the internet. Like boom, bust, rebirth. We're entering a 20-year bull market for the industry. There'll be some chop, whatever, but it is just a trend line up for the next 20 years. This episode is brought to you by Block Damon. You'll hear more about them later in today's episode. Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Block Works. Our hosts, guests, and the Block Works team may hold positions in the companies funds or

projects discussed. >> All right, everyone. Welcome back to Empire. It's going to be a fun roundup. We got Santi, we got Rob in person. Let's go. What's going on, fellas? >> You know, in person always feels like much better. Like, I'm really excited about this. is better. >> Yeah. >> Zanti, how you doing? >> Good, man. >> What are you doing in New York? >> Uh, I >> come to console me. >> I I I I did. As a matter of fact, ladies and gentlemen, we've been doing this for now what, four, five years? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Good run. >> It's been It's been a good run. >> Yeah. Podcasts are staying, ladies. >> The show Let's just get Let's just get out of the bag. The show is going to continue.

>> The show goes on. Yeah, the show goes on. Um, yeah. So, this Okay, so a couple things I want to talk about. Rob, you were just at money 2020. I want to hear about that. Um, a bunch of news like Zerash supposedly is getting acquired by Mastercard. Consensus is IPOing. Poly market, MDI, like you know who's are foreign powers weighing the scales of of of uh the Mani market. Um, Visa and stable coin securitize going public, Western Union on Salana, whole bunch of stuff. But I think we should maybe address the elephant in the room which is >> um Blockworks uh shut down our news division this week. So if you guys are good to start with that, I feel like it's a good good place just to go.

>> You should definitely start with that. >> Yeah. Good. Um so yeah, maybe just to yeah to address it a little bit. So Block Works um when Mike and I started Block Works, we wanted to solve what we called the information problem. And the issue was that there were all these space was super retail. It was going to become an big institutional asset class. All these institutional folks were going to come in. They didn't want to listen to Crypto Panda on Reddit. they wanted a more trusted source of information. So that's what we built for the last eight years. Um built events and news business and podcasts and newsletters and all that kind of stuff. Um yesterday we made the really tough decision to shut down our news division. So we're keeping keeping everything. Show goes on with

everything. Data research DA we'll still have three DASes next year. New York, London, Abu Dhabi. All the podcasts are staying. Um, a couple of the newsletters won't continue, but like Byron's newsletter, the research newsletter, those will continue. But yeah, we shut down the news division. And unfortunately, that meant we laid off uh we had nine journalists um who got laid off. And that's just a uh yeah, yesterday just or Wednesday was just a tough day. Um that's never easy. And like these journalists are I think journalists get a lot of crap from people who don't understand journalism as a profession. It is one of the hardest things to do. you're getting pitched all day long by people trying to promote something and show you something and they're basically trying to sift

through the marketing and the PR to figure out like yeah what's the real story here and they have an incredibly tough job and a lot of the economics are fighting against them like we see journalism layoffs all day long not just in crypto but in traditional media and stuff like that. So anyways, yeah, we decided to shut down the news division. It's not the thing that we wanted to focus on. We wanted to focus on the on the data business, but uh yeah, did just want to give a lot of love to the journalists. They're all incredibly talented people and yeah. >> Yeah, I've um engaged with a number of the Blockworks journalists over the years. Katherine and Jack and and a few others.

>> And uh I think you know I had always referred to Block Works as you know probably the best uh in terms of breaking news stories at least over the last you call it year or two. I think a lot of talent uh within the newsroom and you know it's a sad day for anybody who has to who you know gets laid off but I think uh they'll all land on their feet and I'm really excited for for for them and um then for your new direction and yeah you know I I I think as someone who um had been through the global financial crisis you know it's obviously a different you know type of of layoff that was happening at that time but um so many of the people that I knew you know in 2010 and 2011 and they were able to go and I think really find you know

another place where they were able to build a um a career that I think was in a direction that was a little bit different than before but was you know really exciting for them and so um you know all my well wishes to everybody on your side and all the talent you guys had and you know it's um it was a tough day for you I know as well and you got a little bit of backlash online and so >> yeah I mean that was a I I actually so so I made this tweet what Rob was referencing is I made this Twitter post and announcing it and um actually this was a really good lesson so maybe I can learn the lesson so other people don't have to go through it. I think um there is a time and place to celebrate a company's successes and Block Works is

doing great. Like we have and I I mentioned we have record revenue this year. We're going to have record revenue next year. A post about layoffs is not the place to mention that. Um it's it's not it's a place to celebrate the people who are here, help them find new jobs, land on their feet. And so, um, actually, in in hindsight, I I think it was fair to take some crap, but hopefully, you know, I say this out loud so that other people can learn from my mistakes. Um, >> listen, I mean, I I saw a lot of you responding, engaging with people, and, you know, that shows it's not, you know, everyone's entitled to up like, and I don't think, you know, the intention was good about what the post. The internet's always going to come at you and there's always internet trolls and you get hate.

Like, social media is just a hate skews hate platform. he would just and but I think the way you responded to those and you very quickly like you know was like yeah in hindsight should have done that and I think that you know that shows everything that you stand for is respect for that. >> Maybe going back to um what is what is like the if you look at the evolution of block works on the on the news side. What were some of the highlight stories that you guys covered? I know there was the FDX uh story uh a lot of the reporting right the the trial was going on. I remember that. But in your mind, like if you like what's the the 30 second clip of >> Yeah, we had we had I mean we got cited I like I really think we are we had the

best editorial team in all of crypto at this point. Um we had an amazing team. It was a small team. Like it was a really small journal like when you look at the number of people who got like oh yesterday it was like I think it was nine journalists total like it was really small team and they just punched way above their weight. they were younger, scrappier, and um very technical and understood understood crypto, which is by the way why I think they'll really land on their feet and find something quickly. Um but yeah, we covered amaz Yeah, we covered we wrote thousands of stories. We were um you know, mentioned in every mainstream publication. We were mentioned in >> uh yeah, like pretty much every angle of the industry that could have been covered, we covered and yeah, feel very proud of it. the um I will say I think

uh it was you guys I looked at a lot of the posts of the reporters and all of those were overwhelmingly positive. They're like look Block Works took a early bet in my career. I was straight out of college. They hired me. I came in here and like that wouldn't have happened in a traditional media company. And I think like yeah there's a lot of noise. There's you know the data DeFi lava saga if you want to talk about it. But I think to me I immediately went into retweets. I immediately went to the, you know, the people that I know that have I've contributed to stories and all of them were incredibly grateful.

>> That's the tough thing about a layoff is like you don't want to share too many details. So the only people the people commenting online are the people who aren't involved haven't worked at Block Works, right? And so I think the best way to judge a layoff and just honestly a company's integrity is by the people who work there and who have worked there in the past. Um, so the yeah, you know, people commenting on it don't know about severance details or they don't know, hey, did you just like one click button, everyone's gone or did you get on and have like one-on-one conversations with every and it's not our place to share that publicly, but yeah, I think the people who need to know know. So, and and you know, crypto is interesting, right? Because most industries get fought from the outside. like you know

there's a you have like a AI or something like everyone in AI kind of bonds together and then it's the outsiders who are like attacking AI or something like that or even like a construction industry or healthcare like you kind of bond together as an industry. crypto has such a um like an immune reaction because there are so there are there are a lot of scammers in the industry and there are a lot of people with bad intentions and so it's interesting to see yeah the cryp I mean the crypto react building something in crypto is a little more intense I think than building something somewhere else >> what um for someone look as I think of it you guys uh existed in a time where we needed uh more integrity on the journalism side more fairness in covering stories you know over the last

couple years you traditional media publications were not positive about the industry. We're not portraying it in in a fair light. You guys, I think played an immense role there. Um what is what's the future of uh journalism in crypto? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Where is the place? Who's going to >> this? One of the reasons that we felt okay doing this is so like news had always had for a long time been the smallest business unit of block works from a revenue perspective. like it doesn't really make money but it was kind of a public good that you do and that's by the way that's a re that's the reason like a lot of news companies are owned by billionaires Washington Post Jeff Bezos time Beni off Forbes like the you know LA like LA Times Boston Globe um

>> Atlantic >> the Atlanta yeah like the the the list goes on >> um is kind of is because it's a really tough business model and it kind of does become a public good and that's a little bit how we felt is like um the news business we I didn't think that the caliber of journalism in the industry was where it needed to be. Now I think that's changed a bit. You have um I think Laura is doing amazing work at Unchained. I think um I'm impressed by what the bullish people have done with CoinDesk. I thought they were going to kill it and they've kept it alive and done a good job. Uh this guy John Rice is back as the editor-inchief at Cointelegraph. Um The Defiant, there's a company called Coinage that has is doing like interesting experiments around like communityowned journalism. um DL News,

uh the block, like there's a lot of good journalism and actually the traditional publications are covering it better. Bloomberg Bloomberg's got a great team, Wall Street. >> Yeah, Wall Street Journal. Um >> when I when I invested um you know, you and I have been, you know, started on the podcast made sense to invest at the time. Um we had a discussion around, hey, what's the evolution of block works? And you've been thinking about this I think for a number of years, which is transitioning to a data company and kind of a a Bloomberg type, right? Bloomberg has obviously print, you know, releases stories and has an editorial team, but they make 99% of their money on the subscription and the data, right?

Um maybe I I don't know if there's anything else you want to talk about on the on the news side, but I would love to maybe touch on the the >> the last thing I'd say on news is like a company only gets one maybe if they're extremely lucky, two things that they can be world class at. And you're actually if you do too many things, you're doing a disservice to the people who work on those things. And that's actually how I had come to feel about news is yeah you mentioned some of the names like Casey Jack like Katherine like these are some of Ben like Mix Mixweeny like Jeff like these are some of the best journalists in the entire industry. Um and even beyond just crypto we were doing them a disservice because like you know when if you go inside of

our leadership meetings news wasn't getting any airtime. We're talking about data and software and things like that and uh yeah, you end up actually people aren't going to leave or some people maybe but like mo most people uh aren't are like most people don't like quitting jobs but you end up doing a disservice to them by not giving them a platform that to really focus on. So like my actually recommendation if these people want to stay in journalism like um they should go somewhere where journalism is the thing that that company is excellent at. We're not going to be that's not our focus is to be world class at new, you know, writing news or something like that. We're going to be world class building software and data. Um, >> one thing um maybe I'd add before you

move on from the news side is I actually had two portfolio companies uh of ours reach out yesterday and say, "Hey, listen. We we really need help on comms. Do you think actually anyone from Blockworks would be good for that?" And so if there's anybody out there um you know and we'll reach out separately outside of the pod but um you know from the news team that was affected by the layoffs and is interested in like portfolio company opportunities you know potentially in comms things like that um definitely get in touch one way or >> yeah it's that's a natural progression right is going from going from journalism into comms. Well, we're actually going to post a role today with we're looking for head of I mean we we're putting out so much content hired George uh who is at the blog and he's putting out a lot of research uh go

through our data room. So it's like we we need a comms person. So anyways we're also >> yeah if people are hiring marketers content people comms people journalists ping me directly on Twitter and I'll set you up with folks >> across 30 plus networks and 180 end points. Block Damon Earnstack unites staking and DeFi into a single institutional toolkit for crypto rewards with multi-layered security, full asset control and 247 support. Block Damon Earnstack is built for scale and regulatory clarity. Non-custodial staking and seamless DeFi access allin one stack. Direct access to DeFi with no intermediate smart contract or vaults.

To book a demo, make sure to click the link in the show notes or head over to Block Damon Earnstack to find out more. Thanks to BlockDamon for making today's episode possible. Shout out to today's sponsor, Katana. Katana is a DeFi first chain built for deep liquidity and high yield. No empty emissions, just real yield and sequencer fees routed back to DeFi users. Incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR, Katana is launching with notable ecosystem of primitives, assets, and partners like Morpho, Chain Link, and more. Katana's 1 billion CAT campaign is live. Bridge and deposit directly into vaults in one simple click and start earning immediately on your

Ether, Bitcoin, USDC, and more. Follow the link in today's show notes to get started. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk, terms, and conditions apply. >> Talk about the the the the decision to do the pivot uh in this way. Like you could have maybe taken more time, but it was >> Yeah, I think there's just a Okay, at a macro point of view, the I think Mike and my belief is that and I've talked about this on Empire, 2025 is a line in the sand moment for the industry. I think we will I think where we are is kind of 2003 2004 for the internet like boom bust rebirth we're entering a 20-year bull market for the industry like there'll be some chop whatever but

it it's just a trend 20-y year trend trend line up for the next 20 years and um I think we'll look back and say that there was kind of crypto was like 2009 to 2024 2025 line in the sand the industry forever on and when that happens you get um you just get consol you get consolidation and the winners win big and the and the losers lose and I think we you know we plan on winning we plan on winning and not losing and so but to do that you have to make some yeah tough decisions and you have to rip band-aids you can't you can't think about it for too long you can't be like on your high horse kind of looking you just got to rip band-aids and I think we are in band-aid ripping season at Blockworks >> um I think a lot of discussions you and

I had before was do you need to keep the news as uh public good um as a way to get the data research platform off the ground because it feeds you like from a funnel perspective like users discover the story and then they'll be like oh I want to learn more about this particular project uh let me click oh they have a dashboard oh let me learn more >> um >> that I think that had been part of the calculus before like what made you kind of say hey like listen >> so distribution is still incredibly important I actually think distribution remains king like when as software gets easier and easier to build from either vibe coding or AI or whatever it is or just really talented engineers, distribution is super important. We had found that over the years our distribution was coming from podcasts, a

couple core newsletters and social. >> Is that cuz Rob just >> That's cuz Rob joined. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Before you said it, I was just going to say, >> well, you knew I was going to get that phrase. You know, someone again hit me up last week and said, hey, you know, are you doing free work? Your name's not on the masset. So, and I was like, I am doing >> every morning Rob sent an automated message like, hey, my name's >> Name's not on the masset, fellas. Yeah. But yeah, our like um so distribution there's owned audience and rented audience. And when you have people hitting your website to read a news story, that's a rented audience. When you have people listening to your podcast every single day and reading your newsletter every single morning, that's an owned audience. And so we like

distribution and audience building is super important for us still. And I think it gives us a big competitive edge on the data side, but the focus is owned audience instead of rented audience. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Did you do a lot of analysis of like maybe talk a little bit more about the data, right? Because I remember going to I think it was Dash here or per permissionless or Dash where you launched >> the you just launched a research problem Dan there was like a small booth. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jankiest little booth. >> Yeah. I still remember way in the back. I only went there because it was a beanie bag and I was like uh and you had just gotten it off the ground. Maybe talk a lot about what you're seeing that side of the business. What's a grand vision for it?

>> Yeah, I mean the first So we launched data in 2022. First year we didn't monetize it. Um next two years we you know we revenue is growing 100% year-over-year but like it was still kind of small potatoes. >> Yeah, exactly. Um but the last year revenue grow like the a the recurring revenue side of the business has grown like several hundred% this year and it's the first time in really like we've been building blocks since December of 2017. the first time in basically eight years where we have extreme product market fit. I would say we found who the customer is. We have extreme product market fit. Average deal size is in the hundreds of thousands for these data data deals. And um yeah, it's just the thing that we want to go all in on.

>> Where are your largest customers? Are that cryptonated projects like Salan? Like if you're a major protocol, you probably are working with Blockworks um on the dashboard side. Um but who are the larger or is it funds? Is it? >> Yeah, it's I think I think everyone knows like a lot of the chains pay a lot of money across the industry, but the thing that we get really excited about is the applications. I think the applications do not do an amazing job of getting their story out there and their financials and their data out there. Like you have companies like Maple and you know, Poly Market and like uh Hyperlquid and Pump like real revenue, real onchain revenue and it's not they're not telling that story in a in a great way. How's the reaction been or

have you seen kind of the influx of traditional finance people yet or has it been still very cryptonative on your side >> on the platform? >> Yeah. >> Uh it's good. It's Yeah, it's very strong. It's um >> they care about different things than crypto people do and you probably see this cuz I know you guys are an investor in some some other data companies as well. Um they are uh they are much more sophisticated I would say obviously naturally. Um but they're I mean they're in it. They're deep into the weeds. They're very I mean if you guys saw JP Morgan had um coverage on Coinbase this week or last I think it was this week and like half of it was talking about base right so they're like they're they're more sophisticated than people might realize.

>> Yeah. And so your plan is to like if you fast forward a year or two from now um the customer composition you would say most of that will come from ex like not cryptonative. >> Um we're going to we'll share a little bit soon on like what what we're announcing and what we're building next. Um, we've got a bunch of big things underway that, yeah, you guys know, but don't want to share too much of it publicly right now. But, um, I'd say the mega trend that Mike and I get really excited about is the last 10 years, the mega trend was assets moving on chain. The next 10 years is going to be companies and real revenue moving on chain. And um, that's both cryptonative companies, you know, doing hundreds of millions, billions on of revenue on chain, but it's also Robin Hood

launching a chain and Stripe launching a chain and Black Rockck moving their ETFs on chain. So, I think that's the mega trend that we get really excited about. >> I feel like we keep having this discussion about how like we're in this like multi-year bull market right after the actual prices on the timeline or like go down and the timeline like it's like really bearish. Like we had the Fed yesterday and we got like a little hawkish about December and Bitcoin dipped under 110K and the the timeline's all bearish and you know we'll just keep saying like this is actually a bull market just not the one people want. >> Yeah. >> Look, you just keep saying bull market never die you know. But like your point uh when we were pitching like uh back in 2020 21 like like we would say uh you

know crypto is a secular trend like the software like 2001 >> 2001 you had a very big shift not to do like archaeology right but like it's >> uh you went from onrem to software as a service companies like Salesforce totally changed the game capex to opex and then >> from 200 um 2001 all the way to now you saw a huge proliferation of just adoption of software so companies, right? Public companies, whatever. Um, but during that time, of course, you had like macro shocks and whatever, but like that trend line was secular. >> Yep.

>> That doesn't mean that the stock price doesn't go up or down of Salesforce or whatever. Um, is this time any real um uh like because at the end of the day, like, you know, this is a leopard NASDAQ play at the end of the day. Like, if if the any one of the Mac 7s sneezes or has a bad earnings report, the entire crypto is going to going to dump. Like, >> well, and you're seeing it right now. like you know the I I don't think the market's open yet we're were before 9:30 but futures were down there was down you know aftermarket yesterday after the Fed and then we also we saw like all the big tech earnings last night and the big tech earnings I think people are still trying to figure out like is there too much capex like what is happening in

terms of um AI is it what is it really going to contribute in terms of you know future earnings and you know GDP and the market seems to continue to have these kind of like hiccups around it but to your point like AI crypto like I don't know how you stop either them, right? Like, and I don't know how you can't be really bullish over the next 10 years, even if like every quarter we get these these, you know, kind of >> Rob, what do you do with your personal book? Like when you see something like, you know, I let's start talking about maybe there's a lot of public market news this week. Securitize consensus filed for an IPO. Um, but maybe the first one is OpenAI is preparing for an IPO at a $1 trillion valuation. When you see some of this stuff, do you like are

you just like long long NASDAQ? Are you buying coins in your personal book? like what do you do you own? >> So I tend to be pretty passive, right? So like because I get paid by, you know, my clients, which is essentially my LPs to be really deep in a certain asset class and to be really deep with certain types of companies. I spend all day every day thinking about those companies, thinking about how to invest in or find edge in, you know, that type of investing. And so it's not really the right ROI on my time to be like digging through like Q's and K's and like figuring out, you know, what, you know, individual stock that I actually want to uh want to buy. Okay. So, I'm I'm generally just like long, you know, technology, right? And relatively passively I believe in, you know,

>> and you express that by long NASDAQ and longitin. >> Probably my single biggest holding that is not my fund ownership in Dragonfly is, uh, that I'm long QQ, right? And so, uh, but you know, I've I've definitely at times had opportunities to participate in like IPOs and, um, I would say I'm I I hit the button more often than not because I'm just generally along, you know, technology and doesn't mean it always works, but >> you know, things like, you know, I've seen and and been a part of some of these like XAI and Open AI SPVS and, you know, I mean, it I got to tell you on the foundational model side with like Open AI and anthropic, the the growth I I don't think I've ever seen anything like this, right? You know, I think Anthropics is probably going to clo is

going to grow 10x this year again. It's going to grow from 1 billion to 10 billion and topline like I don't think I've ever seen anything like that at that scale, right? I mean, you're seeing the same thing with Open AI. um some of these these application company compan companies the cursors um and and some of the others you know you look at them and they're going I I was talking to one and I'm blanking on the name of the company um uh like two weeks ago and they had gone from basically a million dollars of ARR to $200 million of AR in 13 months >> right and like this is growth of which we've never seen right in any sort of uh market and so I I try to get as long as much of this stuff as possible but it's not I you know and I'm definitely not

I'm not buying tokens at all right I'm investing in you know other than you know I own Bitcoin and ETH and you know some some large caps but otherwise I'm getting all my you know all exposure basically through the fund. >> Yeah let's talk about some of these public market deals. Um maybe we can start with uh securitize. So securityize uh going public at a $1.25 billion valuation. Um what do you guys think? This is a so it's a spa deal in partnership with Caner. would love to I don't know if you if you dug into this one, Rob, but would love to hear your thoughts.

>> So, I haven't dug into it recently or the the announcement yesterday. I you know, we've looked at the round before. I've known Carlos for a long period of time. You know, he's been at this since I think 2018, 2017. >> 2017. They launched a few months before Blockworks, I think. >> Yeah. So, they've been doing this for a long time. They've had a really singular vision around, you know, what tokenization would look like. They've I you know to his credit they were early to this topic that is now you know really taking off. They're really finding product market fit. They're of course you know the u the they're the issuer alongside uh or at least the transfer agent alongside you know black rockck and others. So um you know excited for them I think >> what does securitize do?

>> Yeah. Okay. Sorry. So to to back up I mean securitize is essentially a transfer agent and a fund administrator. So they bought uh MG Stover which is the largest uh fund administrator in in crypto. Um what does that actually mean? It means that they keep the records of who actually owns any tokenized security. They do the tokenization itself. They do the KYC AML. they understand, you know, who when there are transfers and then they manage all all the administration of these basically these SPVS that they uh that they put together, which includes things like, you know, payouts and making sure that you know things like K1s get filed and appropriate taxes get paid and all that kind of stuff.

>> Make make the valuation make sense. I mean, I know everyone's hyped up about tokenization. How much money is actually business making? I looked at it. I hear the the meta is strong. >> It's like 80 of topline, right? >> 80 million at topline. Yeah, I think so. I mean, you can pull up the deck and it's so Yeah. >> Um 80 86 million. >> Yeah. >> And what's a what's the margin on that? >> I don't I don't see it. >> Like 20% more. >> They're Yeah, they're making money with MG Stove. I think before they were probably uh losing money, >> but again, MG Stover is a traditional fund administrator. Like we worked with them, I think, at Pari and then we transitioned out. A number of funds I'm an investor used him. How real is the technology or is it you know because

candidly like a lot of it seemed like a rapper but underneath it like they were just doing a lot of man work which like is okay but >> I think that is probably right right so so the the question on on transfer agents right so if you look at the traditional markets transfer agents fund administrators these are really sleepy traditional businesses they're very manual they're a lot of paper pushing and you're just managing a lot of processes right these things do not trade well so you don't see things that trade at you 15 times in a topline, right? But I mean, I guess if we want to talk about mid-curving things, which we um you know, had had discussion about last week and and I think I've done before on certain certain companies, >> there is a secular tailwind right now

behind tokenization. There I think a lot of people believe and I'm one of them that there the tokenized asset space is going to absolutely explode, right? When this goes public, it will be the only avenue for people to express that. play. >> Yeah. And so other than you know in stable coins which is kind of a different different market and so there is something to be said about that which I assume is a big part of the reason that you know you see this back deal to get >> I think you hit the nail on the head. Yeah. I think um reminds me this reminds me of Circle like everyone on crypto Twitter being like Circle such a bad business like you know interest rates are going to come down. Circle's going to get whacked. A bunch of competition.

>> It did get whacked. >> No. No. And all all of that was >> but circle 240 bucks >> kind of right except except except that circle stock ripped. And why does circ stock ripped? It's the only asset in the public public markets where you could get long stable coins. Circuitize is going to be the same thing. It's the only way to get long tokens. >> See, that's to me that's lazy thinking, right? It's like yeah, I get we're in an environment >> markets are I have in this market markets are so much lazier than >> in this in this market. Yeah. But you know, you you're the thing is I don't think you think in in in this market environment. It's like you want to hold it back for two three years. Uh, you know, people forget, but Coinbase went all the way down to 13

bucks, 20 bucks. >> Did it go that low? >> Yeah, I think 30. I remember because I was buying it back like they had that day they got hit with like an SEC suit, a bunch of >> and Paradigm put a position there. I think between 30 40 bucks. But that's the thing I'm saying like help me understand how you make a fundamental case. Like if you had a public fund right now like liquid book, uh, would you would you buy this thing at a billion? >> I haven't done that much work. uh but I don't know if it would be um like a core position that said I think one of the main things to think about here the point you're making is often around uh time frame right and when you're investing you have to think about like what your time frame is and there are

different types of investment funds or different types of investors and we've seen a a lot of things happen on short time frames that maybe you know don't happen on long time frames and vice versa and so listen the circle stock you It's behaved, I think, incredibly differently than I think any of us expected. And I don't know what it is pre-market today, but just a couple days ago it was 240 bucks when, you know, it priced at 60, right? And, you know, they had a hard time selling secondary at less than that, you know, before that a year ago. And so, it seems very clear that some there is some of this dislocation happening. You know, let's see what happens with the circle stock.

I think they have the unlock in two weeks. Uh, and so, you know, we'll we'll see some price action around that. you've seen a lot of um options activity around it as people people hedge but there is this like secular trend and maybe the secular trend you know matters more than any individual company and I think you've seen that in AI right I think you've seen that in like software as a service right over the last decade yeah like you were you better off owning you know Nvidia versus like AMD but like if you own either did you make money right like so I think there's a lot of conversation to be had about just catching the right trends in the right market >> across 30 plus networks and 180 endpoints Block Damon Earnstack unites staking and DeFi into a single institutional toolkit for crypto rewards

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Um they recently uh launched or announced a partnership with Salana, the launcher on stablecoin. I believe uh there's um a lot of uh I think ETH heads criticizing speculating that Salana Foundation had paid Western Union to launch this. Uh >> every foundation is paying everybody. So we can talk about that. >> Do you think are do you know for a fact if they are or >> so I I don't know for a fact about this specific deal. What I will tell you and this should be a we can talk about the deal itself and what that means and we should talk about the the pain. >> Let's talk let's first talk about the deal and what they're doing.

>> Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about that first. So the deal itself uh essentially Western Union is going to launch their own stable coin that's going to be issued by Anchorage. >> USDP. >> Yes, I think that's right. >> US dollar payment token, right? >> Yeah. US dollar payment token issued by Anchorage. It's the first of Anchorage's call it like white labeled uh tokens I >> and this comes on the back of them acquiring Mountain Protocol. >> Yeah. So I think I think Martin from Mountain is basically kind of running this with a a guy Sergio who's their their head of stable coins. >> Uh but it's the first of their white labelled tokens. They'll issue it genius compliant way here in the US. Western Union I mean you know they're in uh they about like >> they're the largest remnants operator in the world. They have a

>> 3.95 billion market cap. The stock has gotten absolutely crushed. Uh it's trading at four times PU ratio and it's I started looking at it. They acquired a company that we're looking at called Intermex which is very um one of second largest um operator smaller rem operator in the US Mexico corridor and they bought that for 500 million. But it was one of those like deeply unsexy businesses that just totally left for dead because the analyst I don't think the management team is very competent. like the CEO, if you look at like the transcripts over the over a couple quarters, he, you know, constantly got asked, "Hey, what do you think about stable coins?" Because MoneyGram um probably the second largest remnants operator owned by Madison Dearborn Partners took took him private. Um they

uh yeah, I think the CEO is just very dismissive of stable coins. >> Well, they've been dismissive of like digitization broadly. That's been part of the problem, right? So they I remember talking to the team in 2021 around they was the first time they kind of thought about stable coins and but it was part of like okay well we're going to try to digitize we're have a Western Union app we're going to try to bring everybody into like a much better experience because they were starting to lose market share to things like remittly right and a lot of these you know new fintexs um you know wise etc and they've just been very bad at that right it's been very sleepy it's been very traditional old school go into you know the a storefront and you know But uh you know again you talk about

remittly uh and other like more sexy technology forward remittance operators they trade at like 20 plus some of them are not even profitable like it's just >> I couldn't explain again going back to fundamentals why there was such a big disconnect one is overvalued the other is deeply undervalued in my mind it's like the market I think tends to do this thing where everyone's so hyped about technology that you go max long stuff and forget about their monetization model and profitability. ility and then you leave for dad something you know like a western union that has distribution has connectivity you walk around the street here in New York with anyone that is sending money what's number one name that they'll tell you >> like where would they go and who would

like >> and and so you look at that it's like you know I think distressed steel mill operators back in the 80s were trading at like eight times PE and I was just like make it make sense this business is not going to go away to me that was like has screamed uh if you're an activist fund go buy 5% of this company >> maybe change management implement the strategy like where's Aman is he is he still interested in crypto or is he still >> he's a politician >> in a in a semi-protest >> but this again I mean for me it was >> if I had that type of strategy um this is the Howard Marks right the market pendulum swings to extremes but the fundamentals are there for a business like Western Union >> the one thing I do want to say here

though is if you look at the the last 15 years of public markets and you say, okay, I was a fundamental investor or I was a growth investor who made money, >> the growth tech investors, right? And and what we've seen is the market is willing to pay for growth, especially in a world where you have, you know, inflation, right? In a world where you have um I mean, let's see what happens with with interest rates, but there's an expectation for most of that period of time, interest rates have been low or zero environment. We're probably going there again, right? And so people are much more likely to pay for growth. And the belief was that Western Union might just like bleed out to zero, right? And so maybe that's not true. And then this is where the opportunity comes in for your business specifically, right?

Because you can buy the distribution, you can buy the brand name, and then you can bring growth, right? But the market will today, they do not care about fundamentals if you are a secularly declining business. >> I was reading a book um Michael Dell's book um called Play Nice But Win or Play Nice But Win I think is the name of his book. I first uh listened to the um founders podcast >> yeah the interview with him >> phenomenal book Dell I was a JP Morgan when he took a private the TMT group was was doing it so the book's a phenomenal kind of account of that >> but that to me is an example of similar instance where the market back then 2012 you know the PC market was in a terrible you know wasn't growing people were

again saying PC is going to go away your business is dead >> Michael being you know founder CEO So he was like look the market just does not understand the story does hadn't really accounted for like that being a core mode to do other stuff. He had to take that business private because again being in the public markets I think is just very distracting. Word of advice for dad companies and other crypto people that want to go public. And so I think >> again I agree with you the market just may not appreciate like the they're all super hyped up on growth and it probably is hard for a company like Western Union to implement this playbook in the public market. So uh but the moat is there like I mean Dell is a phenomenal business uh but it was so hard for him to execute in

the public markets he had to take it private. Um so >> yeah one of the interesting things about what happened yesterday too is so they announced this deal and you know congratulations to them for being forward thinking here and and for the the partners around the table. We we announced we we had led a seed round into a company called Zar uh last year and then I know you're >> I was the first I was the first quite literally the second investor in the cap table. >> Yeah. So you're you're an angel investor and then Indrezen just led the yay and and we continued to to participate and Zar is basically doing they're trying to recreate in many ways what Western Union did but from a digital first perspective right and a stablecoin first perspective and very successful founders who had exited businesses before and so the

question that you know I ask myself is do I believe that somebody coming from first principles with a digital first perspective is is able to go and disrupt versus do I think the incumbent is able to call it digitize their business and grow their business and I That's the trade-off in and the decision I'm making all the time as a as an investor. >> I love Brandon who's and and Sebastian actually went to school with. Um they Brandon built the first I think Neo Bank of Pak Pakistan and had a decently decently good outcome. A lot of the conversations I had with him were look I I believe in stable coins. We're all bulls here. But where I focused on getting to know him is like how are you going to leverage distri How are you going to source liquidity? How are you going to acquire customers? And that's I

think to your point around as the industry continues to grow, >> we just need to ask ourselves that kind of question. Like for him, I think he's been very creative. He he went I think to the A16Z like startup school and worked a lot with them and >> a lot of the time that he's been spending on is solving for like working with like local merchants and convenience stores. Tien does to to really kind of solve for that because that's what Western Union has like they have an incredible amount of relationships with >> people want easy cash in and cash out. that doesn't go away. Like as much as technology comes and like solves a lot of the stable coin like transfer, you don't have to have as much FX risk like you can transfer money faster, you still have to source liquidity.

>> Yeah. And you have to recreate the human element. >> Exactly. And so I think that's where we see I see a lot of opportunity of like finding these companies where you know you could be sitting there as an analyst hearing Collison Brothers talk about like stable coins are room temperature semiconductors. And you're like, "Holy like max long on everything that if you control F of 10K like write an LLM of like if if there's a stable coin tokenization thing on any 10K 10Q earnings call max long." >> I don't know that like I just think we it misses the point around like there's still friction and stable coins don't solve >> everything you you have to think about yet. But no, but you you you're not going to solve that that that there's still the things that don't change.

consumers still want cash in emerging economies. >> Yeah, I I that's true. I do think listen, all economies are going more digital. So, over what time frame? Let's, you know, let's see. But if you look at like Alip Pay, Alip Pay has like 98% in uh distribution or or penetration in their core markets in Asia, like everybody is using digital payments. And then you come to some of these other markets, they're not, but it's coming, right? It's just over what time frame. >> So, let's talk about the payment part. So, I don't know if you guys saw the kind of controversy on Twitter. Rob, I think this was the second part of your conversation that you were alluding to, but um people So, there's this guy JRAGE. He said, $50 million paid by Salana Foundation to Western Union for 6 months exclusivity. You'll see the

Western Union stable coin on Ethereum L1's and L2s. Not long after that, Camila uh who uh is the chief growth officer at the Ether Machine um said, "What you don't read. Salana had to write a $25 million check with 25 million in liquidity stimulus for only a six-month exclusive. It's tempting for legacy orgs to derisk their proof of concept with a big check, but they'll regret it when their when their chosen blockchain goes down and millions of payments are offline. So, ignore the second part of that. First part of it is basically there's there's there's a couple things I want to dig into. One, did Salana pay this or not? Two, are other people paying this? And three, is it even is it is it bad to pay? Right.

>> Yeah. So, uh I don't know and I don't have any inside information about this specific deal. What I will say is do I think it is likely they paid them? Yes. And the reason I think that is true is because almost all of these deals are paid right I in almost every instance where you've seen a large org come and build on a specific chain uh they have wanted to derisk their initial buildout through some sort of payment upfront and a lot of it has also been around the liquidity incentives. So this was true of I name all of the names that you can think about. I I don't know what's public and what's not. Uh but pretty much every large org that has come on chain that has issued an asset on chain.

They have either been paid to build there or they've been paid in liquid incentives or both. Right now this is typical of you know call it a lot of types of partnerships that exist and you know outside of crypto. So I don't it is certainly not bad that that is happening. I think the question becomes is there real ROI on this right? And so for you know in some of these products so you know for Robin Hood for example I think there was a controversy around this as well uh there was a bidding war for Robin Hood on where they would build um you know we know what who won and who didn't win. Now is that you know chain because it uh going to acrewue a lot of value to the token of the protocol that won. Well so far that has not been true

right now maybe it'll be true over time as you know Robin Hood builds and they get you know this types of uh you know they get a lot of volume etc. But I think there's a real question on that, right? And we see things like, you know, for for instance, some of these tokenized equity pro uh projects I know have been paid as well. And um you know, none of them have any volume, right? And so like, you know, you look at at Xbox on Salana, Kraken keeps saying they're doing tons of volume on Kraken, but Xbox is doing basically no volume on chain whatsoever that you can track, right? And so I think there's a there's a few things that are happening here. One is that people want real business on chain.

There's a belief that that is where the market is going. There's a belief that you need to win that market if you're going to be the winning chain going in the future. There is an attack on the monolithic chains by the more opinionated ones right now. And Salana um and everybody involved with Salana has a very specific view on you know how Salana is supposed to grow and why you would be on a monolithic chain. So do a lot of people underneath. And then at the same time, you have people like Robin Hood and Stripe and uh Circle and all these people building their really opinionated chains. And so to win these people believe distribution, you have to probably pay for that, right? And so that's natural and that's what's happening. That's what happens in traditional business. Whether or not there is ROI on it, I think remains to

be seen. And it might I think in a lot of these cases and probably most cases where people are paying, there's probably not actual ROI. There was a good tweet about um I mean we've been studying a lot of these remittance operators and like uh MoneyGram um has a pilot with Stellar out of all companies >> and they used to have one with Ripple >> and they used to have one with Ripple which um you know is this time different unclear uh PayPal um you know they had uh both Ethereum I think they had a dual liquidity pools in Ethereum and Salana >> I think it started in Salana primarily though >> started primarily >> yeah and you saw and it's a good point not to interrupt you because you saw PYUSD I think go up to a little over a billion dollars on the back of what were

like heavily incentivized >> yield farming >> uh yield farming right and then when those incentives went away the you know the token came kind of straight back down >> so the takeaway is TBD on whether this is going to be actually a creative what is the measure of success here >> what's different for Western Union for PayPal than it is for Salana right and it's different for and so >> for Western Union we just got done talking about why This makes sense for them profile. >> Yeah. And if if Western Union can digitize their business, they can put all of their volume on chain. Uh and if all of that volume goes through Salana, then absolutely like it's a win for everybody, right? And it's absolutely worth whatever they paid if they paid 2550, $100 million even, right? Uh and

so you know you can see obviously the strategic rationale but if it's you know hey it's you know 6 months of exclusivity and then they're going to go do what most of the stable coin companies do today which is that they they actually allow the you know whoever the customer is to decide what chain to put it on. And you know we just um the Artemis guys just put out a a stable coin payment report an update to it last week. um you know we're we're uh investors in Artemis full disclosure but we helped draft the report but the first one in the update and the you know it shows that you know B2B payments is up 300% uh over the last year you know P2P is is kind of trending down but we're seeing some or kind of flat but we're

seeing some >> we talked about this last week B2B or maybe two weeks ago B2B payments and stable coins are going to be the next big phases >> yeah the next big phase >> because right now it's uh less than a third or so it's not even >> no no now it's the largest not it's fastest growing and the is of yeah of the of the people that they go and look at in terms of the for payment activity specifically right but if you still look at that report all of the payment activity is still on ETH or Tron or a little bit like Polygon or BNB right it's not really on Salana I think Salana is either the fourth or fifth and so there's that's still what's happening because the clients are the ones picking and the clients either have stable coins already or there's liquidity already on

these chains and so clearly what Salana is trying to do is they want to play there and so if they can get Western Union to put the flow through. It makes complete sense. The question is whether or not a deal like this actually results in that happening. >> Yeah. Yeah. I don't hate the payment as much as So, you know, everybody on Twitter hates the pay paytoplay game basically. >> Um, and I think they have that because in the past it's failed, right? whether it's a polygon and Starbucks or arbitum and Robin Hood like actually arbitum and Robin Hood probably will work out but I think people don't look at the history of like platforms enough and this is a very very very common thing right whether it's you know Facebook paying uh publications like CNN and Fox to come onto their platform originally millions

of dollars or uh maybe a better one is Amazon Alexa when Amazon was starting Jeff you know Bezos went to all the Dominoes Uber Walmart and said hey we'll pay 20 million bucks to go develop on the Amazon Alexa, >> you got to kickstart the flywheel in some way. Totally. >> I I agree with you 100%. Like this is how business works and there's >> we constantly see this in crypto where people get like really upset about like just business operating because of the e >> crypto's actually worked in a real company. >> It's like very odd. >> I just experienced this. >> Yeah. >> Um question. Would you rather buy Soul at uh what is it 200 bucks 193 bucks or Western Union um at a $4 billion valuation uh three times P ratio?

>> Soul. >> Soul. >> Okay. >> I'm I'm paying for growth. So >> one year from now soul western the calendar I I'll make a bet. Six months from now >> Western Union outperforms soul >> in the next six months. >> Six months. Yeah. >> This thing trades at >> three billion. Western Union 3 billion. Western Union 3 billion. What's the P ratio of that? >> I think it's 3.95. >> Keep talking. I'll look it up. >> But put it in. Santi and I are going to put 10 grand on it and we're going to talk about it and you want to do this. >> Okay. So, we'll each put 10 grand. Put 10 grand on that's what size is this.

So, you put you're going to put P ratio is 4.15. >> 4.1. It just kind of How much did it go up like yesterday? Like 2%. Not even. >> My size is not Santi's size. That's what he said. >> No, for shits and giggles, ladies and gentlemen. 10k. You're gonna put 10k in soul. I'm gonna put 10k in Western Union or maybe a couple more decimals and then we will uh we'll come back here in New York and whoever wins is going to pay for you know coffee or whatever or >> No, you shouldn't each put in you should just pay the other person. >> Pay the other person 10 grand. We'll put it we'll we can put >> whoever in six months from now whoever has done better in fake in fake money pays the other person 10 grand.

No, you know, pay for lunch or something, you know, like betting money doesn't move a needle, you know. >> It's more of a ride, you know. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to give you something that >> Oh, no. >> It's not about that. It's like it's like I don't like making BS beds for money. Is it more of um symbolic thing like All right. >> All right. One of your protects >> as a board member of Inversion. >> All right. So, one of you guys will buy a nice dinner. Nice dinner. >> And then I'll join >> dinner. Dinner at Teresi and he'll be the benefit of Jana's just going to ride the cocktail. I'm the house, baby. Let's six months from now.

>> 6 months from now. >> Dinner at the All right, let's do it. >> All right, sir. Let's do it. All right. >> Nice bottle of wine you can buy. >> Great. Whatever you want. >> Mantle is pioneering the blockchain for banking. A bold new category combining traditional finance with the power of web 3. With UR, the world's first onchain money app. Users can manage fiat and crypto side by side using a Swiss Ibon account. in euro, US dollar, Swiss Frank, and RMBB, all posted to the blockchain. Backed by the Mantle network, UR is the access layer that unlocks a purpose-built vertical platform for onchain payments, trading, and asset protocols, including ME, TH, MI4, and functions FBTC.

All economic activity within UR will be captured by Mantle Network to further drive value to Mnt token holders. Follow Mantle on X at Mantle official for more. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk terms and conditions apply. >> Let's talk about Zero Hash. Yeah. >> So, Zero Hash rumored acqu Ben Weiss at Fortune broke the story. Um, uh, after losing out to Coinbase on BVNK, Mastercard is poised to acquire Zero Hash for between 1.5 to2 billion. Did Coinbase finalize the BVNK deal?

>> Still rumored. So, let's see if it happens or not. >> All right, cool. Are you guys investors? >> Yeah, we're not investors either. >> Okay, cool. Um, so Zero, >> did you did you look at the deal? Like, everyone in Twitter was like, "Who the hell is Zero Hash?" >> Uh, I've looked at most of the deals at Zash done. I mean they raised that round in 21 then didn't raise again until recently. >> That's BBNK Zash. >> They just raised it a billion. >> Uh so they the re the round they raised recently was primarily basically all of their strategic partners. Uh they did talk to and we talked to them as well a lot of the venture funds but the um the investors were almost all strategic partners in the recent round.

>> Yeah. I've actually known so there uh it was started by this guy Edward Woodford. Yep. Um in like 2015 or 2016 it was called Seed CX. It was a commodities >> in Chicago. >> In Chicago. >> Oh Hemp business. >> It was a hemp. It was a hemp exchange. They had licenses for for Yeah. >> It was a It was a trading platform for for hemp. Look at my ears of this company. >> Very very interestingly actually the first wave of all the stable coin companies in crypto and a lot of the ones we're talking about now all started as exchanges. >> So they all started as exchanges and they were like more cryptonative and they sort of pivoted into this like stable coin payments meta. One of the themes that we've had as a investor is not to derail this has been that uh now

the actual payments people are coming into the space and they just kind of understand money flow I think a little bit better than some of these other guys and so I think >> you know my guess is that a decade from now the names that we're talking about today are probably not the names that we're talking about then. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. CTX. So Edward Woodford actually was one of the first ever podcast our first podcast was Pomp's podcast off the chain. Now it's called the Palm podcast and Edward Woodford was like the third guest ever in 2018. Anyways, they um >> they shuttered their trading platform in 2020 um and went all in on focusing on uh basically they provide the licensing and the technology for the on and off ramps. I would say >> well though I would add one caveat to that which is uh that they do a the

largest part of their business today is still their quoteunquote brokerage as a service. So uh what does that mean? That means like for IBKR or Erade they it's not just like call it on an offramp but it's also like hey I want to buy Bitcoin or ETH or >> Interactive Brokers wants to launch crypto trading they do that through zero correct yeah yeah they also if you go on Kelshi and you try to put crypto onto Kelshi that's zero hash on the back end um yeah they've got what are the licenses MTL and MSB I think >> they have most of their MTLS in the US in the states I think they've >> they got the bit license from 2019 >> what I hear you. Uh, this was June 12, 2018. My message to um Edward.

>> Yeah, >> I hear you, Edward. We think you are far along and have impressive traction makes it particularly hard to pass at this stage. I sense we may up end up I sense we may end up looking back and kicking ourselves for it. That said, it's best for us to stick to our decision at this stage. Let's definitely stay in touch. >> What was the valuation number? >> I'm looking at here. Good afternoon, Santiago. Coinbase is doing just over 200 million a day. Well, that's okay. >> Well, you're pulling it up. That's fine. >> Customer, they they have huge customers, too. Interactive Brokers, Stripe, uh Black Rockck's Biddle Fund uses them for tokenization. Um and a lot of >> uh What do you mean they use them for tokenization? They might do some of the ramps with scar, but scariz does all.

>> Uh yes, you're right. You're right. Right. Um Franklin Templeton, DraftKings is a big customer for them. Uh Moon Moonpay, a lot of these guys. So, Shift 4. So, anyways, shout out series B deck in 2018. Keep going. >> Yeah. So, so they >> shoot myself. >> Yeah. So, the business uh as I understand the business is roughly the same size of of BBK. They're really similar sizes. >> Um they, you know, the majority of the business today though is still as I understand it, this brokerage as a service, it's less around called Stablecoin Money Movement. Um in the way where where that's entirely BBNK's business. I I you know a fan of Edward I and obviously they've been leaning into even growing you know

the stable coin you know orchestration type business and the on-ramp offer business more um and as kind of the core part of the the future I find it for Mastercard a very kind of odd deal personally >> for Mastercard. Yeah, I um you know they Mastercard clearly through like their send product they want to do a lot more like you know merchant type uh payments. They want to be able to get a lot of different payment types in. They clearly want to be able to have the infrastructure to move you know uh a lot of these they want to be able to move stable coins. They want to have good wallet infrastructure uh etc. I I >> we interrupt this $35 million valuation ladies and gentlemen.

>> Oh that's a tough one. Well, there was a lot of money since then. You would have done a lot of >> Fair. So, I was working a lot with uh Ted. Um >> Oh, this is when they were still an exchange. Oh, >> yeah. That was a CTX deck. Um $35 million valuation back in 2018. Um I was having this discussion with uh Brier who I think is one of the largest holder holders of Circle and they're on the board. And my my comment to them back then was I don't think you outperform Bitcoin. And they as much as circle has run up a lot, you would have been better off putting just Bitcoin outperformed. even at 240 bucks. Is that true?

>> Yeah. Now is a circle right at at three billion in 2018. >> The challenge with this analysis of course is in a vacuum. Yeah. But like you would have had hundred different moments where you would have sold Bitcoin. >> Well, risk weighted and funds have underperformed Bitcoin at this point. But they would have had to deal a pension has to deal with a 90% draw. >> Have you met Rob from Dragon? >> Have you met you know I don't know if you looked at our funds, but two of the three two of the three have out Bitcoin. No, not really. >> Um, okay. Well, >> a deal like this, how does this come to be? Is this like this is Mastercard comes to them with the deal?

>> Mastercard's been kicking the can or kicking the tires of a lot of these guys. So, they've been talking to pretty much everybody. I I you know, I was just at Money 2020 to what you said earlier. Money2020 for people who don't know, it's the biggest fintech conference in the world. a lot of payments, a lot of banks, a lot of people you know building across all you know parts of the stack and fintech and every single large org are kicking tires of potential acquisitions in stable coins right now. >> Who are um who are the next logical targets like who are these like infra companies no one really knows about? So on on the orchestration, so I I think on the orchestration side, so there was basically um the largest orchestration businesses were bridge and BBNK and then there was kind of a step down and you've

gotten you know Zero Hash they've obviously they're large from about the same size of BBK and total revenue I think on their orchestration business they're kind of a pretty big step down. Um conduit pay which is one of ours mostly Latin America. >> Uh yeah we're really big in Latin America is their main market. Um uh rail got acquired by uh by Ripple earlier this year. >> Uh but for 200 million bucks. Yeah. And there's there was kind of that big gap in size between Bridge and BBK and then the these the rest of these guys. >> I think there'll be a few more that get acquired. There'll be some aqua hires.

You know, we one of the things that I think about is actually as each one of these assets get taken off the table, the remaining assets get more valuable. >> Yeah. >> Like in hindsight probably bridge sold way too early. >> Way too early. And I was I was on the record saying that's like an Instagram acquisition for Stripe. >> Uh talking about Stripe Tempo, some of the commentary in the timeline yesterday was, "Hey, you have now Mastercard." I don't know if it's an actual good analogy. I want to get your take, but like or or a point which is Mastercard buying zero hash, Coinbase buying BVNK. Where is Give us an update on tempo like uh beyond like they're hiring like crazy. Um how do you see players like Mastercard and Visa like going on? like are they just gonna want to do their own

or are they gonna deploy? >> So I don't think the networks are going to do their own chains, right? And so I think for the networks the whole pitch is we are credibly neutral, right? And Stripe is taking the perspective depending on how much they lean into tempo which depending on who you ask they lean more or less into it. Uh and depending on who they're pitching, they lean more or less into it. But that's a very credibly non-neutral play for Stripe, right? They they would disagree with you. >> Well, no, the Tempo guys would disagree with you, but the Stripe guys would not disagree with you. And depending on But but I will tell you, I know for a fact that there is now Stripe employees, a CRO there who is actively packaging a bridge plus Stripe plus Tempo capability and selling it to people, right? And so

like this is happening at Stripe. So Tempo can say, "Well, it's incredibly neutral because we're going to let all these other things happen." which fine but uh I would be and and I will tell you that the the networks and the other PSPs they might and they and they definitely will support tempo because if their clients want to use tempo they will allow it but they will actively push other things. That's what will happen. So credibly neutral is one of those things like decentralization that can mean it's sort of amorphous and you and I were talking about in the in the in the panel at D like what does that actually mean in this case because you have for instance Western Union deploying on Salana you have u circle launching what is it arc >> y >> uh you have stripe launching tempo and then you have you know public

infrastructure like ethereum and whatever um what does credibly neutral mean because then so Robin Hood for instance is interacting with public infrastructure but what the end customer can't like they can deposit tokens but they can't they can't leave so they're imposing restrictions so like they're using again incredibly neutral public infrastructure but the end user is definitely being served and like it's a very opinionated offering to capture the most amount of LTV when you think about credibly neutral like what does that what does that mean >> yeah I mean it means a lot of things and I think the question that people have to ask themselves when because you started this with okay what does it mean for Visa and Mastercard right Visa and Mastercard are networks that want to

serve all banks. They want to serve all merchant acquirers. They want to serve all PSPs, right? They want to serve all merchants. And to do that, they have to take a opinion every day around how much they want to compete with any of those people or how much they want to push a winner or a loser. Right? Visa and Mastercard are very clearly taking the perspective to not compete at a lot of parts of the stack and to also not push like a certain bank versus another bank, right? They we might see that change over time as people try to control their FFTs and I think you know to the point around acquisitions like you know Mastercard buying zero hash maybe that pushes them to push something versus the other and I think you know everyone is looking at acquisitions at this point but when

you're a service provider like Stripe and you launch a wallet infrastructure and virtual accounts and then you launch a network that theoretically allows you to bypass your biggest partners, you are clearly not neutral anymore. On top of that, like if you launch a chain and you say, "Okay, well, this chain is for payments and so we want all payments companies to come on chain, but our main distribution partner is the competitor to all of these other payment companies." Then why would they want to use it, right? And so it might be clear or they might be able to build infrastructure that is better than everything else that exists and people just say, "Hey, I need to use this infrastructure is is so good." But if you are any other PSP, why would you

want to send, you know, money through a chain, infrastructure through a chain and help your biggest competitor? I mean, I think this is very clearly you you look at this right now and there's even some conversation on the timeline around like why does Salana want to have you USDC be the biggest stable coin on Salana when Bass is their biggest competitor? And I think people are very clearly coming to understand that you do have to be more opinionated about how you go to market and who you um and who you partner with because Stripe, let's just be very clear, they have a long history of doing this. They get close with partners, they farm you for information, they compete with you, right? And there's a lot of companies going to do this and we're going to see this happening in in stable coins as So

maybe to make the comparison here, um how would that been different from Libra for instance, Facebook launching their own um and and having a network like a a consortium of partners on like the validation side or whatever? >> Very different, right? Like Facebook not a payments company, Stripe payments company. So in that case, would you have considered Libra a bit more credibly neutral, viable for financial institutions to work with? >> Yeah, I mean definitely more neutral, right? Uh because they're not directly competitive, right? If it's not directly competitive, I then it's not it's >> viable. Maybe not like neutral. It's opinionated, but it's viable.

>> If you're if you're checkout.com, like you do not want to do anything with, right? You do not want to let you don't want to send your flow through them. If you're but if you're any payments company, you're happy to do work with with Facebook. Maybe you know uh whatever Google is not going to use DM, right, in that case, right? But all the payment infrastructure will because they're not going to be competitive. >> Yeah. Do you think uh four or five years from time from now tempo is a huge success or a total failure? >> I mean there's a lot of gap in between those two things.

>> We're b we're binary people here. >> Um I I think tempo will uh be a very good thing for stripe and I think stripe will continue to be a huge success. Do I think Tempo will be very successful in its own right in a neutral manner outside of Stripe? Let's see. >> Yeah, I mean it's valued now at 5 billion. That's 5% of Stripe's market cap. Feel feels about right. >> Yeah, but I I tell you what, if they launch a token today, like it'd be 15 billion, right? It's uh there's so much excitement around it. So, I don't actually think the five billion was was that expensive.

>> Can we get 30 seconds on Mega ETH? Did you follow because you're you guys are both investors in Mega ETH. They did um I've noticed like we talked about this last week or the week before. There's a big trend in basically doing like new kinds of token drops and new kinds of allocations. I don't know how closely you followed mega but >> well we're the largest investor. >> Oh there you go. >> Uh so you followed it angel. >> Oh there you go. I remember when you guys did when you did that you got a lot of >> for me. >> I remember every new project Yeah. I guess everyone every new every new person every new wellunded company against lot of but >> they so so actually it was I think you guys see or you called me around you were doing the round I participated in

the round um >> was a se I think yeah >> it was a se and I met you know I came into the call uh and Shu Yao and Anamik and uh Eusen >> uh they just delivered like key insights in the pitch like in the first like five minutes I was like okay why do we need another goddamn chain and they're like we're very pined on the validator we're going to juice the validator and and that And that was at a world where like >> everyone's get like giving them criticism around like you know you had Espresso and a couple other like decentralized and and like the validator and they're like no no no we're just going to custom and and we're going to juice it up and this is how we're going to run this chain and this is how we solve Ethereum's like scalability issues

and whatnot. >> I was very impressed by that and immediately kind of committed. Um and then I flew to Berlin where they had their first mega east um mega mafia. GTE was there. Uh funny enough I ended up passing. That was the only company that I didn't like in the cohort for a very specific reason. Um, which they have now detracted in the left mega ethan. So, I don't think I was wrong in my decision to not invest, but of course they've done well. They've partnered with polyark and all that stuff, but I invested in a number of other projects there. But yeah, it's good to see that. I think they they've been experimenting on the type of >> So, mega the reason I bring them up is they just did an ICO. They're 14 times >> doing the ICO, right? They're doing >> they're doing the ICO, but I think it

just ended. >> They raised 50 million billion dollar >> 14x oversubscribed. >> Oh, did it just end? It ends today or tomorrow. >> Yeah. >> But it was what 50 million raise at a >> I like what they're doing. They really haven't I mean I know they raised from you guys but like they haven't raised that much institutional capital. They did the echo. Yeah. They did an e one or two echo raises then this ICO. I just calling them out cuz I like I like what they're doing. >> Yeah. And I like they did this auction where you know it could have been a dollar through a billion. Obviously they're so overscribed. It it ended up at a billion. But uh the cap I think is nice because I think most people I I think on um Hyperliquid the pre-market is trading between four and 5 bill

today. So at the cap of one >> uh a little it's like 20% less. >> So here are the final numbers over 50,000 total bidders total committed is 1.39 billion overs subscribed by 28x. So >> I mean it's great and in the US they have a one-year lock so it's not like it's just traders. Yeah. >> Uh so you know they're trying to get as much community distribution as possible. They've taken that stance from day one >> and so you know we're really excited about what they're doing. >> Yeah. >> Again uh you know in this idea they >> uh I'd be curious Monet also has this card thing going on which is >> actually Mon's air airdrop thing is they also have a cool portal three days of >> an air interacting with it. It's like every day you can like >> it's cool. It's nice. It's like a nice

like it's very retail like >> very retail. Yeah. But I I don't know as many project I haven't invested in as many apps on built on Monad. seen a few like 42 AI and a couple others. Uh but uh Mega Eid think has a pretty pretty good cohort of apps like Euphoria and a couple others that have like on there. So we'll see. It's pretty good. >> I know we got to wrap content of the week. >> You go first. >> I always go first. >> What? >> Yeah. >> Uh you're the most junior person in this podcast. >> Wow. >> Stand up.

>> I got to go I got to go back and look at my board docs, right? like can I hire you? So taking over inversion. Um the uh >> Rob, you don't want to be running the day today. I'm sending message put him on the mass head now. That was it. That was the low. >> Um two days away from Halloween New Frankenstein. >> Incredible movie. >> Incredible. Really? Do you go to Do you go to the movie theaters? >> I love the movie theater. Really? >> When when I am in town. >> Rob, I love your viewing habits of these things. These are great. No, I go to So I I live in Brooklyn. There's an old movie theater called Nighthawk.

>> Great place. >> Great place to go. I we we go to Nighthawk all the time. Like I know the owner. Like you go >> get popcorn, hot dogs or candy. >> No, I but I but I get I get a they have they have old fashions on tap. So I get a I get a little old fashioned. You're an old fashion, you know. I've I've get a a little, you know, chicken sandwich. I watch, you know, Frankenstein. So >> that's good. Robert's thriving. Rob who's the actor there? That's great. Santi, what do you got for us? >> Uh, the book about Delta. I think it's Play Nice But Win. Uh, really, really good book. Um, I really enjoyed that one. It's just, >> you know, you hear about the story of Michael like, uh, which is amazing. And, >> uh, yeah.

>> Nice. >> Um, I have, uh, I've got two actually this week. One is Soft War Soft War. It's a very intimate look at Larry Ellison. Um, but it was written in 2003, so it's about Larry Ell. not about the new Oracle, it's about like the old Oracle like Oracle's like database and ERP business. Very interesting look at like the growth of Oracle. Um >> now the richest man or >> now I think the richest guy in the world. Yeah. Or one maybe top two or three about Yeah, I think number one. The other uh is uh dynasties on HBO. >> It's about the uh it's like each one is a different animal. It's like it looks like the gorillas and like >> then the next one's like the penguins.

It's actually really cool. This is pretty sick actually. >> It's It's actually really >> Is this like what? Brian Atwood or whoever. >> No, David. >> A classic. Yeah, it's him. But it's such good footage. >> What's your uh You know, people identify with certain animals like what's your like are you a lion? Are you a >> manatee baby? >> That's a great way to end the podcast. There you go. >> All right, folks. Thanks for listening. We will see you Monday.