Crypto’s Next Chapter: Who Thrives and Who Folds? | Roundup

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and I mean it's tough for the people who came in with the expectation of a quick buck and a quick flip but that's not what is going to work anymore and like The Jig Is up and I I am very excited about us transitioning through and the people who want to be on that other side of the transition are are going to be there with us but yeah the people who who weren't uh you know flavor of the month type people were were never going to survive anyways this episode is brought to you by Aries markets to learn more about Aries markets follow the link in the show notes below hey everyone quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode nothing said on bell curve is a recommendation to buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is for informational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show

are solely our opinions not Financial advice our guest and I may hold positions in the companies funds or projects discussed all right everyone welcome back to another bell curve Roundup you got all the fellas Michael's want to Vance the Triumph giv us guns dude I saw you getting flamed today on the timeline EO yeah yeah I I missed this what what Tak our L here uh we there someone wrote an article about movement um it was uh uh Jason is an angel in movement and Kobe flamed for being too too generous and uh H Jason you know just the idea that Jason invested so yeah and a g move to

you sir G move yeah I mean I think the uh I think he's right that um def we we we do disclosures uh so we update those every month we haven't had Angel Investments on there historically because uh Founders there's like a huge gap in between when a round will close and when they announce uh but we're going to put those on there I think that's totally right um but also part of the uh the joy of running a media company is we had no idea that this article was coming out obviously I neither did the guy who wrote it no Jason's involvement here so it was some good good honest push back but I do respect that there is actually like a wall between you know blockworks media and uh like the rest of the company I just think you know with the Chinese

wall comes a lack of visibility when when things get written happen I know it's almost like having a loaded gun pointed at your head sometimes but it that wall that wall exists for a reason it's like good reason for that to ex the best way to walk into a negotiating room is with a suicide vest on yes I'm taking hostages did you tell our president that bro the man he's he's off his rocker gotta calm him down yeah what do we think about this I mean you know what the funny thing about his like madman Theory art of the deal stuff is is that everyone kind of knows what his art of the deal everyone knows these tactics U so how effective do you think these uh tariffs this like tariff negotiation

strategy is at the moment it depends on what what he's trying to be effective with or like how like what what is what is the outcome that he's driving towards and look I I think um we may have talked about this a bit last time but uh just to reiterate the two dat is a macro pod again when crypto down this much there's a macropod going on I'm taking shells the uh the two data points that we track are are the GDP now and the inflation Now cast uh from the Atlanta fed and the Cleveland fed respectively um GDP now is falling off a cliff uh went from like 2% plus a positive 2% 2 and a half% to like negative 2 and a half% in the last couple weeks the 17th of March is when

the next print comes so it'll be interesting to see if like Two's A Trend three is a pattern um the the uh we we saw a lower inflation print than expected uh two days ago um or yesterday whenever that was uh and uh the month over month for March and we're 13 days into uh March so far but the month over Monon CPI is 0.1% um so inflation is also starting to come down and look if if the if the desired outcome here for tariff policy is truly to like have tariffs be the way that you fund the government it's gonna get messy um I don't know if that's really the intention here but if part of

the strategy is let's have things reset let's have inflation come down let's have growth you know have to reset its expectations Doge I think is not actually doing as much of the cutting as people would have expected um go figure you can only delete so many Microsoft SAS accounts uh to be able to make a dent in the budget um but hard though yeah there's a lot of them but it's not you know trillions of dollars worth but the I I think if the desired outcome here is a reset to rebuild then we're probably pretty close there and what happens when it gets to such a bad level where growth is is potentially in the crosshairs inflation is completely down

um if that's the case then man 4.25% interest rates are looking pretty high um and that's the that's kind of the next point of the conversation um and dropping interest rates ultimately is you know a asset values asset prices are the biggest beneficiary there um but the other thing we were just talking about you know kind of collectively is like what does that mean for defi in particular to bring it back to crypto a bit um you know if the sky savings rate is at 6.5% right now the difference between 4.25% in a money market account versus 6.5% not that huge but if you're at 1% versus 6.5% that's a pretty big difference I I one of one of our LPS

asked us where we think stable coin Supply could be at the end of the year hard to say um but we're at about 240 billion right now if there's a real discrepancy between what traditional markets are offering and what defi can offer from a stable rate perspective we we could easily see that double and you know our bet was 500 billion by the end of the year do you guys have a sense of how um yields in trafi flow through or what the correlation is between trafi yields and defi yields like my my sense is that there are a couple of different yield sources for that go into something like usds there's the desire to borrow against like Bitcoin or eth um right there's like what Athena is importing

which is like Ci leverage um and then and shoot there's one other one that I'm blanking on here but it's it's basically just rwa like priv yeah yeah those yeah exactly so let me show you something wild um whoa let me show you this so like the actual um and Vance while you're pulling that out just to finish that thought is if the you know economy collapse like the traditional economy collapse I I would guess that borrow demand collapses as well which might impact that usds savings rate but yeah I mean basically what's happened is like the Athena per yields have come down and they're like you know the least sticky of all yields because like you

can put on and take off per positions and that spikes or drops the interest rate when you're in a CDP basically it's like you've locked your crypto in that the only way you can get out is repaying your debt in full and so like those are the stickier higher longer lasting yield components that is the reason that maker is able to offer such a high Sky savings rate um but when you look at the actual composition of like where D is coming from from so like this is in you know 2022 there was 10 billion die at this point and only 65 million 69 million was in the die savings rate and now you look today and there's like you know a billion in the die savings rate there's 3333 billion in the sky savings rate and these are just like the different names

of the different stable coins but like the vast majority of D today is Created from stable coins which are then going off and earning the sky savings rate from the high yields that are in these cdps and like now sky is in a position where it's like they are the largest they're compounding the fastest like if there's like a spike in perp rates like they can just go allocate to that and kind of like squish it down so like it's like stable coins do this weird with effects where what really really matters as in social networks is like not only how how strong your network effects are it's like how big you are and like if you're the biggest you compound the fastest and you're able to take

advantage of the of the yields because like you are the person who sets the rates in terms of like okay Athena yield Spike you go allocate to that okay they're too low you take it off and you like let those yields rise a little bit but like I think sky is kind of in control of the yield Market at this point and what we're focused on right now is like um a AME and and all the things that are happening with sky and hanging out with Rune but B it's like we're trying to get very high yielding very safe collateral as backing assets for these stable coins that we can pass it through to people who use usds and some of the things we're looking at in the energy space are like 30% plus apy with instantly liquid Redemption and a high margin of safety and to double

click into that I think Mike to your question it's like okay you assume the crypto collateral rates are probably going to drop if interest rates drop uh because demand for borrow is probably not as high you've got um rwas you know maybe some of those are set set rates depending on the structure of them but you assume that if rates come down those rates probably come down too those are correlated with fed funds rate I actually think there's a pretty strong argument that Athena is uncorrelated or or potentially inverse correlated to Fed funds rate if you've got you know per really blowing it out because activity and excitement is coming back into the market like that actually jumps the yield of Athena and so maybe you like kind of allocate more in that way but the real goal here is to kind of pull uh

in yield sources that are not correlated with interest rates or or fed funds rate um and that's where you know the big bet here is going to be on energy yeah yeah um I mean energy has been actually sorry just to double click into that a little bit more energy and and the source of the yields of energy is from the power purchase agreement revenue of the actual energy sources themselves as well as the incentive tax credit in the United States which can get basically like repurchased by someone who can actually use it that stuff is is completely uncorrelated to uh to interest rates got it so is the idea here basically to just keep pulling in this like treasuries was maybe the first uh like easiest form of you know

Trad file yield and then you're just going to keep pulling in disperate sources of yield to buttress protocols like maker or you know Moro or whatever that is that basically the yeah I mean like you know it I think kind of the framework to think about it is like you want to be as close to the issue or as possible mhm you want to be kind of close to usds you want to be close to tether and then you want to bring on backing assets that are really interesting and people can Loop and like you are long credit spreads when you're doing defi lending and that's where the macro is going at least over the next you know probably 18 months 24 months this episode is brought to you by Aries markets Aries markets deployed on apps in

2022 and is now the largest lending protocol with $280 million in TV to learn more about AR's markets follow the link in the show notes below this episode is brought to you by marinade marinade is a high performance staking delegation platform that brings both liquidity and security to the salana network by connecting Soul holders with the best staking rates on salana follow the link in today's show notes to learn more what do you guys think about these next 18 or 24 months I know when we started we did our predictions episode This Year everyone was uh pretty hyped up and bullish about 25 like how are people feeling about uh everything now I mean I I I think that the the cycle uh you know framework is probably not super useful here but you know how are we feeling about just the rest of the year

going into 26 people are a lot of really upset a lot of people first of all it's every asset class like KKR is down 40% in a month Tesla's down 55% like it's like I think one of our maxims is like you shouldn't necessarily overdetermine the future of like whatever you're doing when like Global stock markets are in a correction and individual like Blue Chip stocks are like down 50% um I do think it's just like useful to fade the consensus on a lot of fronts where everyone thinks it's like trump super cycle it's like well maybe it's like you need to survive the first six months of the administration and that is trump super cycle um but I I generally feel pretty bullish for the things that

are you know like basically able to you know other things like Bitcoin like eth like a lot of the Define lending and and just like things that have actual fees and BuyBacks um but what I think has changed is like not just like a sentiment reset but there's also been like a psychology reset where it's like okay it's not just like pile into any alt and it's going to go up more than Bitcoin it's not just like okay we're going to try the meme coin super cycle again and hope it turns out better it's like I think we're done with that like part's over it's time to like really build and shoot glass and and buy back your own token and do things that matter um outside of that not sure how much stuff will catch a bid I agree I think that the psychology if you know just

comparing at least how I felt in like the lesson right of 2022 uh versus like today how I think people are feeling is you if you remember like Bitcoin was almost out of consensus at that point it was the pet rock or the Boomer coin and you wouldn't have seen that you know crypto natives being super favorable about Bitcoin in general it's all about eth and maybe you had some smaller group of people that was hyped on Soul or Cosmos or something but um now it's it's almost flipped right and so the lesson going into the cycle which is probably why people Tred to skip to the end with meme coins is just buy shitty alts and they'll go up the most then you can sell them um but the lesson at the end of this cycle is you can't do that um that's not going to work anymore I I do

think there is like I don't know the consensus of like Bitcoin is going to keep going up more than anything else Bitcoin dominance Rising like I we talked about this earlier this week Michael but you know the the Sailor like I'm going to raise 21 billion and buy Bitcoin with it it's like well I think it's you know there's like a bare case where it's like okay say sailor cannot raise 21 billion that's pretty bearish because it's like you know he's the one guy that's been pushing it up he's the one guy that has the infinite money cheat code and like if the infinite money cheat code stops working then you need nation states if you don't have nation states then you need the ETFs if you don't have the ETFs like they can become sellers like I I do think we're at a point now where Bitcoin

dominance is so high that other things will catch a bid and it'll be super ID syncratic but um the Bitcoin bull case is like very well articulated in consensus um I do think there are holes in it but I mean look we hold a bunch of Bitcoin like we're we're we're we have bags of all flavors we're aligned with generally everyone but um I think like Bitcoin is also like in a place where eth was like probably you know two or three years ago I agree yeah I totally agree um actually someone someone said something pretty interesting um let me see if I can find this tweet actually I thought it was very interesting the way that they phrased this uh but someone said I think it's TR this is a maybe a bear take for eth here but

I think there's actually something very interesting in the way this was phrased I think it's truly over for eth even if it rises 1500 to 10,000 it won't outperform BTC over that period from the current eth BTC ratio maybe the staked version will buy peanuts and I feel like actually that last sentence is the the bull case for eth in the like there's a bullish idea in that bare thesis which is that yeah this is what I've always thought too when people talked about how gold you know like those charts of like the dollar going down over time it's like not if you staked your dollars right right that's what bonds are um and I think that's that's the long-term bull case for these L1 assets right like okay there's the price performance but you have to layer on the yield there in terms of the return and like more

sophisticated investors over time will layer that yield on like I just thought that was a really interesting way to say it like you're so bearish on E but you said it's outperform Bitcoin like right I just thought it was an interesting phrase and you can restake it and you can borrow against it and do things with that money like I check this today but from the time we launched our last fund Bitcoin is up I think 15% like that that was you know two two years ago um three years ago um people were like you know eth is eth is still flat from three years it's like when we launch the fund Bitcoin is up 15% like if you like the hardest way to big beat Bitcoin is to hold a bunch of Bitcoin right like you got to go further out the

risk curve and like that's like candidly the conversations that we're having right now it's like okay like we're probably close-ish to like liquids being pretty interesting but like what do you buy and the answers like I've pulled a bunch of group chats and friends and communities like the answers I've got are like oh you should just buy a bunch of Bitcoin but like in massive massive size like Okay sounds pretty risky like you got anything else it's like we'll just like buy Hyper liquid it's like okay that also sounds kind of risky like what else like those are the only two ideas that anybody has do you think uh you know I I spoke to someone this week um uh who I like like he he works at a token project and he was describing you know because i' I've been saying like this is kind of a

Goldilocks time for Builders actually um and he was like this sucks glass yeah yeah well his perspective has having a liquid token it was very interesting it's like one of our challenges historically has been that a token you can launch a token have it go to a billion and a half FTV overnight and you can Duke out these massive packages right to recruit people but now that all the tokens are going down it like he's like the psychology like the day-to-day psychology is brutal uh like I spend my time just like being like hey it's G to be okay the token price is gonna go back up and it's like wow it it really just depends right on where you are in in uh you know how token prices are going but it can really the sword Cuts both ways right launch a token they

said it would be fun they said I mean look like part's over like you want to launch a token go launch your token tell me what happens like and guess what like I think it like good bad teams amazing teams like it's kind of the Fate is all going to be the same where like if you're like Prime Time viewing congrats you launch it like two to four billion and then you can duke it out go up or down based on how real your thing is if you're anybody else then it's like you're launching at 500 million and you are fighting in the trenches to go up from there and like that's probably where your valed at in the private market and so like it's nothing personal it's just like that's where you are but like the people who stick it out they're going to make a lot of money like you

have to build something valuable for to be valued highly but like if you're not building something valuable then like in my mind you're like a bad actor and we need to flush you out and like I have no qualms about selling or shorting those assets like is what it is so Amazon when during their stock peak in 1999 during that um like lead into the tech bubble how long would you imagine it took before it reached new alltime highs like 10 years yeah no longer I think3 to hit a new alltime high it's 10 years 2009 yeah 1999 to 2009 10 years but like but V it like

kind of you know before it convincingly broke through was another couple years after that I mean yeah a long time right you listen like Brad gersner had a section on his POD at some point about this and you know he was doing so like Fred Wilson has like a similar anecdote where like you know he started this fund called flat iron Partners before USV and flat iron Partners was like basically a crypto Fund in the late 90s but like they were investing in like internet stocks that were valued on like [ __ ] metrics and like I think the fund went from like a 100 million to like six billion or something like that and then it went all the way back down to like like 60 or 70 million his LP's lost money and like there's a speech that he gave uh I forget what university was at

but he was like you know like it was like it was like [ __ ] traumatic like I had to like go and sit for like a couple years and like write down what I learned and like start to put the pieces back together and try to invest in real things and like you know when he tried to raise his next fund people were like aren't you the guy that blew up your last fund and like you're really GNA try internet investing again and it's like I think there's some parallels here where it's like you know everybody knows that everybody knows that Meme coins are ridiculous and not going to work like like the facade has dropped like like it's there is only real things behind the the curtain at this point and if you're willing to put in the work and chew the glass like you're gonna do

pretty well but if you're not like you should rip off the Band-Aid and go work in big Tech but they're not hiring anymore or you should go work as a software engineer but that doesn't exist anymore or you should go do something else that doesn't exist anymore but likee I actually wait I listen you should definitely [ __ ] find out I actually had to laugh at this I it was I don't want to make fun it was I was listening to Jason calanis was describing you know all these jobs that were going to get created at AI he's like you can make you know 30 40 bucks an hour factchecking AI we're going to create tens of thousands of fact Checker jobs it's was like dude who wants that wake up every morning all right

time to log into my job all right misspelled th fix that the sentiment is like universally terrible not across just all asset classes but across like even startup verticals and like software like YC uh demo day was yesterday and like we were talking to one of the guys that went to it last night at dinner and he was like dude everyone's building the same [ __ ] thing they're trying to build cursor for Microsoft Office they're trying to build Cur cursor for Microsoft Excel some tweet that like you know there's like notion there's like you know uh like all these kind of like creativity figma software and like their tagline is all the same what do you want to build today it's like oh my God we're all building the same

thing yeah I don't know you got you got to take the better with the better you got to have like a long time frame it's not just crypto that's going through this right now it's everything but like the reason is because it should be [ __ ] hard to build a startup yeah I agree no easy and and like the of like VCS launching coins at 10 billion and like immediately selling it's like that's over too we're all in the trenches together now the necessity is the mother of invention I don't know like the the best ideas that we've come up with at block Works have been under almost extreme duress uh I would say so it's just really difficult to actually innovate um unless you absolutely need to and your feed are to the fire like it's just hard it's hard to come up with new

interesting ideas if you can kind of spin up a you know a another L2 and you know launch at 1.5 billion or two billion fdv like that's actually really bad for Innovation that's a horrible environment for Innovation like you don't need to really do anything okay you tweak this sequencer design or that governance thing it's like that's not really innovating I'm not picking on l2s that you could that across every single category in crypto that's the same so now it's an execution game and a grinded out game and you know the ones that really have the juice will make it and I I do think that there'll be massive consolidation from here as well like we just don't need all the stuff that we have um I think vertical integration will continue to be a thing um people

will move up the stack people are thinking from the perspective of front ends at this point like I don't know I think it'll be a really interesting time honestly but maybe not the most fun time like fewer big parties and things like that at uh which is totally fine like that that that stuff was was temporary in the first place but I think the bigger thing you know the stuff the wor thing about talking about with Founders that we meet with or or that we work with already is sort of like how do you mentally survive all of this and everybody kind of came in we talked about this over the last couple of PODS but like everybody came into 2025 being like this is the payoff year we made it we survived and just like existential crisis because you're like wait I've got another three years that I potentially

have to wait for like this payoff to happen closing pillow immediately yeah the the uh you can't think in ter of like I made it or like here's the time I've I've like identified on the calendar when I'm going to you know be this or that or this wealthy and or like sell and just like ride off into the sunset it it is um and if you are thinking that way like you don't belong there and and whatever you're doing but there's still so many people that have that perspective like oh I'm just gonna build this thing I know how to do this I know how to do that I'm gonna build this thing I'm not gonna do a company I'm going to do a token I'm gonna launch it on binance it's GNA be worth a billion and then I'm going to sell it and then

be like cool I'm done done it's it's that those days are completely over um and um I think the market is slowly recognizing that and there's a lot of people that are really upset about it quick shout out to today's sponsor Aries markets Aries markets deployed on APS in 2022 and is now among the top 10 lending protocols across all blockchains with $280 million of tvl Aries markets has expanded its product Suite to become a fully integrated defi Hub combining lending borrowing and More in 2024 alone Aries introduced several new features to better meet the needs of its users including native usdt support an incentive program and more click the link at the bottom of the show notes head over to Aries markets and tell them that I sent you hey everyone quick shout

out to today's sponsor marinade since launching in 2021 marinade has expanded their Suite of products to provide solutions for both defi users and trafi including liquid and Native staking as well as direct Enterprise Integrations marinades platform is optimized for institutions to securely expand their exposure to to salana whether through the provisioning of custodial or non-custodial yield integrating staking rewards into salana Financial products or leveraging Marin's best and Market rewards rate for revenue and treasury management whether you're in defi trafi or somewhere in between marinade has something for you to learn more about marinade follow the link in today's show notes okay wait I'm looking for a passage here this is like a old um I I

was do have you guys ever read any of the Ron chno uh biographies of like famous people businesses or he wrote one on John D Rockefeller and um yeah I had a uh okay so he wrote this about just listen to this passage that he wrote this is like early oil industry this was pre them even figuring out that this was useful for cars right this was kerosene right so um drilling for oil often seemed less an industry than a lottery no one knew if oil would prove a lasting benefit to mankind or an evanescent wonder if the oil regions created many millionaires they left many more poppers instead of building up an industry most producers prefer to drain their Wells as quickly as possible in this Haram scar atmosphere blah blah blah um searching for oil was wildly

unpredictable whereas refining seemed safe methodical by comparison um before too long he realized that refining was the critical point where he could exert maximum leverage all right there's a really great sh I'm gonna miss the last sentence but basically it's like what so it was very very similar to early crypto right it was like there would be these massive gushers it would tank the price of oil everyone viewed it is massively speculative there would be boom towns that you know cropped up in the period of a month and then a year went by like all this gambling Millionaires and then it all went bust like instantly um and John D just honestly the thing that he did was he levered up every single time the industry went bust he borrowed a lot from the bankers and he bought his competitors and he put it into a system

he was a rigorous operator and that guy won more than anyone's everone in the history of business so right yeah I think it happens with every industry by the way this was the 90s and the tech boom and you know the internet boom like this was I mean this has happened like this same exact story has happened so many times this is like wailing back in the 1920s like the all all of these industries kind of like ultimately have that speculative fer drives activity and attention and then eventually you build a market structure in an environment where you have long-term dur long-term durable value be what differentiates and like we're in that transition right now and I mean it's tough for the people who came in with the expectation of a quick buck and a

quick flip but that's not what is going to work anymore and like The Jig Is up and I I am very excited about us transitioning through and the people who want to be on that other side of the transition are are going to be there with us but yeah the people who who weren't uh you know flavor of the month type people were were never going to survive anyways and we we've had I mean there there are like crazy stories of Founders that we've worked with who like lost hair and like you know had like health issues and like it's just like you can't you can't have that be the thing that like you you bake so much into that you can't survive you can't make it you you you have to have it be c a certain time frame uh and like if it's another couple

of years like you're never going to be able to to last that long like there has to be something that's a little bit more sustainable agreed um let's talk about there was an interesting story that came out this week so binance got A2 billion do investment I don't know if you guys saw this yeah um um I'll pull it up here uh let see actually there were a couple of interesting binance related stories so the Wall Street Journal reported that uh the Trump family had at one point been in talks um with binance us arm uh CZ has since come out and said that those talks had never happened um but you know so Journal is the worst I mean it is

like a good newspaper but it's just like they want to bomb every country it's like basically like the business round Tes mouthpiece like they're they're like anti-trump and like they just report [ __ ] that like never happened so all right the the investment so that was one that was one part of the story and then um yeah the it was the Abu Dhabi firm uh mgx um so this is a single largest investment into a crypto company beating out ftxs $1 billion series B and nig's $1 billion do private Equity round in 2021 um and you know public bear is saying that those are obviously happening at very different times by the way what is happening with nidek that's a name I haven't heard in I was going to say like not good company to be in yeah I mean just size of those Investments

leading to poor outcomes yeah so nidek is the subsidiary of a Stone Ridge Holding Group um they were kind of they were huge back in 2021 I remember I think they put the gbtc trade on I don't know how that ended up for them yeah I'm not sure either um but anyway um I mean what do you guys make of this um I mean it's it's interesting massive investment from a sovereign wealth fund here this is obviously under Richard tangs uh the new CEO's leadership um these are all things that we wanted to happen right yeah three years ago and just like everyone's so butt hurt about like a macro collapse that like they kind of can't see the forest for the trees what this does not mean is that like your random altcoin is going to come back yeah what it does mean is that the

people who build things that are real are going to have a very wide aperture to monetize and distribute them I I think that's also just like I mean obviously the signals to to everybody and the reason why this is valuable is there are massive investment firms or Sovereign wealth funds that are looking for how to get exposure to this industry r large and uh I mean muda or however you pronounce it is is you know was on the list of the bitwise or the uh the I shares uh Bitcoin uh ETF like you can imagine that Sovereign weals are looking at this as well and they they we want to buy you we want to invest in the equivalent of the John D Rockefeller Refinery AKA binance we want to buy the underlying asset uh AKA Bitcoin like

they're they're looking at this industry from a holistic perspective and imagine that you know they're starting with the things that are the most obvious and the things frankly that they can probably get past their IC fastest and then they're eventually going to like trickle down into things that are a little bit more speculative and smaller size but uh the things that where they want to really you know play some bets but I I think broadly this is just a signal to the rest of the rest of the world that this industry is here and and people are taking it very very seriously yeah I completely agree also binance is just a monster business I mean if you look at the volume that they put up versus all the other exchanges combined it's still like it still shocks me just how dominant they are that that's the other point too it's like why

did binance do this and I think that they recognize they don't need the money right but the I think what they recognize is the sabling factor um and that's probably the the benefit to them is that this industry gets that signaling factor and they get to be the conduit for it yeah all right so I'm looking at coin market cap here and admittedly coin market cap is owned by binance but I would assume these numbers are still right uh so in the last 24 hours binance did almost $20 billion of volume uh bybit uh did 2.3 coinbase did 3.1 okx did 2.8 up bit 2.1 it's all somewhere between two and three bitg Mexi um gate.io Krakens at one I me it's crazy they're 10x bigger than their than

their next competitor yeah yeah that's nuts actually wow um I didn't realize here that uh htx I guess this is hobi actually does about did about six um so they're still putting up massive numbers um but yeah I mean it's it's complet it's just wild how like the market share that they have still in like a massively crowded pretty commoditized space it's like what are you really competing on I guess there's different you know regulatory jurisdiction something like that but yeah they've just dominated um been super good for super long yeah now is Cy he's still not allowed to be involved in the management of that company at all right he's still the largest shareholder um he's out of prison um and has been for at least a couple of months but he didn't have to

devest I don't think but he didn't he's not allowed to touch management stuff right I think there was some fine paid um I don't think he had to sell and and yes he he was there for four months and then is out since and look I think C's coming back too like there was some announcement of you know his like family office or whatever you want to call you know the entity that's investing um we anecdotally like we've seen them be more active um like he's definitely back uh and and definitely looking at this industry you know with a concerted approach um and wanting to deploy Capital into it so I don't think he it's Richard J Richard Tang uh at binance who's running it um and I don't think

C's involved there at all but um it doesn't mean that he's not gone I would I would imagine it's tough for a guy like that who is such a I mean he's such an entrepreneur and a CEO and just a operator you know I mean I'd imagine it's really difficult for him to fully pull himself out of it at this point but you know I'm sure he's complying or doing whatever he needs to do right comply comply hopefully yeah right um he'll be okay yeah yeah he will Traders AI enthusiasts and deons listen up the game is changing and desk is leading the charge to celebrate their launch desk is running a trading campaign with three major highlights 38%

of their token Supply will be allocated to airdrops they're offering the lowest trading fees on Earth and finally they will be running a desk referral program the more people you invite the bigger your rewards will be to get started click the link in the show notes below and make sure to follow at trade ones this episode is brought to you by Moro Moro is the first and only defi Proto call coinbase has integrated directly into their main app giving millions of users access to borrow against their Bitcoin on coinbase just as web 2 companies like Google Amazon and meta were built on internet protocols the largest financial companies of the future such as coinbase will build on decentralized protocols like Moro whether you're an individual fund fintech or institution Moro is for you follow the link in today's show notes to

try Moro today I guess you know last thing is uh all right so just an update on so we have the this was a full week ago today but I'm curious to get your reaction there there's this big you know White House Summit um digital asset Summit is actually the name um and yeah it's funny um not the real digital asset Summit that's happening next week week next week baby um but we honestly I mean I'm curious to get your guys and we also had the the genius act the stable coin Bill U moved to the house today but in terms of the White House Summit it felt I guess editorialized like we didn't get get a whole lot right we actually weirdly started with like a FIFA present like the head of FIFA we got shown some

Trophy and there's going to be FIFA Coin I was I literally thought I was in the wrong stream for a second and then um and then bessent said like Trump said a couple words bessent said some words about um you know strategic Bitcoin reserve and something about stable coins as well like treasury being more open to working with stable coins which I thought was really positive then everyone kind of went around the room and said uh hey this is great we're not getting debanked anymore and then we ended right it it was about 10 minutes so I don't know if you guys took away anything else but yeah kind of look like everyone getting called into like the principal's office you know everyone's sitting like in ill-fitting suits just around the table like I don't know it's principal's office I think it's more of just like everybody everybody talk to

you know the guest speaker and like let's the elementary school and all the brilliant children who are here it's like everyone getting like to ask a question I'm I mean look like so maybe one framework to evaluate this is like the more anyone does of anything the less valuable it becomes I mean the crime season was certainly like that where it was like once everyone was doing crime like no one was doing crime like the marginal value of crime went down and then you know like the politics season where it's like who can take the most selfies with Trump it's like we we've culminated that with like this like you know crypto Summit Round Table whatever you want to call it um but I

think it's kind of like to me that's like the nail in the coffin of like okay cool like we've all showed how Pro America we are and we're all in suits on Capitol Hill it's like all that is like preamble to like give us some rules give us some legislation and let us duke it out and like if those people are still the relevant people after we duke it out like that's great but like my money is on that not being the case right yeah I mean it's it's all signaling factor and I think a lot of people are are definitely you know taking the victory laps by being there and showcasing all this stuff but there was Zero substance and and it it doesn't actually do anything what matters is happening I think him calling out stable coins is

actually like him basically telling Congress hey whatever's about to come out with the genius act and we can talk about that um let's get this thing done um he's got a subversive way of communicating uh his intentions or his desires and I think that that's exactly what it was um but I guarantee you doesn't know what you know the vast majority of the people in that room do um and probably never will he's just looking at this as like these these people you know gave me a bunch of money to get elected I'm gonna give him 10 minutes of my time yes and like Trump like he does not know what these people do nor does he care but he can see them coming a mile away anybody who wants something from Trump like he's like like I'm I'm I'm watching your ass like I I

know exactly what you're trying to get and I think what he's giving in return is like oh you want like all this stuff that's great I'm going to give you all of it I'm going to throw your ass in the deep end of the pool and see if you sink or swim and he's doing that to all these countries he's putting tariffs on he's doing that to all these industries he's like doing these EOS into and like I think the whole point of like if there is a a reason to The Madness of what he's doing today is like we are going to set rules we are going to throw everyone into the deep end of the pool and then like the whole point of America is like if you can make it you're going to make it if if you're going to be great you're

going to be great and if not like it's just the way the cookie crumbles indeed yeah I mean that's what I I think uh you know that was sort of my takea away from listening to that Summit too it's sort of like if I had to paraphrase it would be hey um we're not going to debank you guys anymore um you're not gonna you don't have to worry about getting arrested but you're kind of on your own um and I read Matt LaVine wrote a really great piece uh today on kind of the difference in between you know this on this idea of non- enforcement and you know use the analogy of you know if you're you know if you want to do something as a bank like let's say you're operating in another country you want to bribe someone you go to your compliance officer said hey uh can we do

this thing said the compliance officer says no uh because briber is illegal and you could go to jail or pay a massive fine like okay but now there's this weird gray area where there's still a thing and if you actually look at the example of like the Foreign Corrupt Practices or Foreign Corrupt Practice Act I think the fcpa um so Trump has said that he doesn't want to enforce that anymore and so now it's like a little bit more of a difficult question if you go to your compliance officer it's like well this is still probably illegal right um so it's not being enforced right now but it might you know anyone could decide to enforce it again at any minute and so and and it feels like that's actually the area that we're sitting at in crypto here where okay you're probably not there's not going to

be an enforcement brought against you today um but it doesn't mean there won't be tomorrow doesn't mean Trump won't change his mind or the next Administration won't come in we literally had this conversation you you can be charged I know this is going to be shocking you can be charged for crimes committed in a previous presidential Administration like the only way that that changes Mike is is frankly if there's if the rules change and that that takes it an act of Congress and that's what we're working on and that's what we keep talking about and that's what we're seeing draft Bill texts for like the the whole Sideshow of just like oh let's go and you know dog and pony in front of the president is one thing and and definitely has some signaling value

maybe that's the extent of the value but what really matters is what's happening you know up on Capitol Hill and what's going to get passed and even some of these things like the EOS like those are the first things to go in the next Administration and so you can't you know lean on that stuff uh to be able to build you know whatever it is that you're doing you really have to hope and and work on you know what's going on into the into actual bills into the text and make sure that those pass in the ways you want them to and and I think that you know all the people that are in DC right now and I know that there's a bunch of you know Founders and investors and people around the industry who are who are spending a lot of time there

right now that should be the focus and that's what we need to get done because that's really what will have lasting value uh everything else is just you know it's a it's a it's a press opportunity agreed yeah so maybe maybe that's the takeaway here like this is maybe analogous to like 2004 and the tech I I actually remember someone was describing on a podcast like you know after 2001 it was so dead that there was one acquisition for like $25 million to revive the whole tech industry which is insane given the scale of what's happening now but you know that should give you some perspective right I mean what um I mean gole went public in 2004 I think you know the analogies here is like what happened with the internet

bill and I can't remember the name of it but I think that was in 93 or 95 but there was a bunch of stuff in there like that's where section 230 comes in that's where like you use credit cards for commercial Purp internet can be for commercial purpose you can put credit cards on it SSL isn't like a a weapon of mass destruction or crypto uh cryptography isn't a weapon of mass destruction when used on the internet like all those things that build the the like basic building blocks in the market structure for how you can do all of this industry and all of this technology like that's that's the equivalent in my mind and like that's what we're waiting on but it's kind of weird in that the timelines don't match exactly where like we've already had the speculative fervor because there were no rules and it was

great area and it was regulation by enforcement and now it's like we're asking for the rules but like the speculative fervor has already passed and so I I think we're kind of like it's gonna be an interesting you know it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out but like the only thing that matters is the bills like that's that's basically it and um you know they're they're coming like the the genius Act is out like we know what it is yeah and like I think one of the saddest things is like trying to get like look like Bitcoin and eth like maybe put one or two or whatever both of them in the Bitcoin or the Strategic Reserve I think like startup Founders sing for governments to buy their tokens is maybe the furthest straying from like the original cyberp Punk ideals that are

still very important I'm I'm very glad for that to be over and by the way me too man me too yeah yeah it's like you do that instead of what with your free time no we're going to destroy the banks we're going to destroy the governments but actually wait no now I need the governments to buy my token we do yeah we will need the government to buy our tokens like guess what the biggest this this is maybe how we should leave this podcast the biggest buyer of your token needs to be yourself needs to be the treasury needs to be your earnings only then can you figure the rest of the hierarchy of needs out one more call to action here as well is that the reality is that there are going to be people that are willing to spend time in DC and

advocate for their own interests and I like I think I speak for the whole industry I'm super appreciative of like the legal battle that coinbase has fought and won on behalf of the industry massive debt of gratitude that we owe to them Ripple same they spent you know tens of millions of dollars basically you know fighting the SEC on behalf of the industry however if we want Defi and the more decentralized protocols to win there has to be a voice and there are great there's like coin Center and chamber of digital Commerce um you know Etc that advocate in DC but if you are a you know startup founder of a protocol and you have some amount of extra time and money I would you know at least consider maybe going to DC and making your voice heard because if you don't like centralized exchanges as great as

they are and as much as they've done for us like you know there are differing incentives at some point from more decentralized protocols and Regulatory capture 101 yeah it's uh I spent $50 million on this uh on this lawsuit like now it's my turn it's kind of an interesting yeah what do you guys think I think maybe Vance I asked I can't remember I asked one of you guys this the other week but it's uh it's sort of interesting right because okay coinbase spent 125 million of their own money right y it kind of does make sense it's like fair is fair right they were the ones who fored it over like they should get something for that outside of just Goodwill but where's the line between that and Regulatory capture it's hard you know I mean like the the genius act if it's any indication and the

market structure act will be more contentious because there's more moving parts and there's more ways to kind of like regulator regulatorily capture sure things but like the stable coin bill is like pretty vanilla it like just enshrines the ability to do it in the US with a rule set and then overseas you got to follow follow your own local regulation and there needs to be reciprocity between the two jurisdictions it's like there is no like you know the bankers are taking your coins or like the centralized exchanges are taking your coins or you're taking your business it's just like here are the rules it's legal now it can't be reversed by EO Market structure will be very different Market structure will be like I mean part of the current coin set will be declared unregistered Securities

people will not like that there will be some sort of grandfathering some sort of sandbox but like that will happen and then there will be Commodities which like xrp eth Bitcoin Litecoin maybe you know those are those and then there's going to be a whole SWAT of the market that's like in between where it's like you can either become a commodity and here's how or you can you know be unregistered security mcoin and basically like kill your road map and just like don't do anything so people will be pissed over that but the the stable coin bill it's just like just making stable coins which are the thing that's growing the most in crypto legal not not necessarily legal it's just it's a it's a it's a framework for how you can interact with yeah well anyway I so maybe on a more

optimistic note to end if you're serious and have a long-term view it's great right this is a great time to be in this industry this is yes this is like the I actually think that this is the payoff year it's just not the market payoff year this this is all the stuff that we've been asking for this is all the stuff that we've wanted like you literally it's people who are like burnt out and tired and all this it's like you've literally you know like ran through the muck in the mud and like you just gotten hit left and right and center and like you're now gonna throw in the towel like right as it's about to get better like we we have like regulatory confines and Frameworks like literally on the docket getting voted on in the house I don't know I'm like it we're right at

the precipice yep I agree all right fellas um good one we can land it there see you in person uh in a couple of days live live recording live recording baby yeah we're gonna do it later guys [Music]