DeFi by Design EP#72: Building a Token Warchest w Dave Levine

Transcript

welcome to d5 by design where we talk all things blockchain and cryptocurrency while striving to educate empower and enrich it's your boy andy and welcome back to the defy slate youtube channel smash the like button on this video that really helps us out and sit back and enjoy the content thank you very much what's going on guys welcome to episode 72 of the d5 by design podcast here today talk all things d5 give you guys some updates some alpha some some good info here with our boy dave dave is a d5 youtuber a user and um a fellow who has some good experience in d5 so this one should be jam-packed with a lot of good info we already kind of kicked it off talking about what's going on with frax and fbi and fxs so i'm going to give a

little brief intro here with rob and we're going to dive right in yo yo what's going on guys of course it's another beautiful day in florida yeah what's up dave it's uh good to have you on man and uh stoked to dive into the world of stable coins and kind of what you've been up to in the crypto sphere i'll uh yeah pass it over to you and uh let's get to it man well that's good to hear i didn't wasn't sure what we're gonna talk about and i love talking about stable coins and it's hard to find anyone who wants to or even you know in the norming world knows what they are and uh before we started i was like wait should we start the show because we were talking about fxs and i was like oh yeah i've been well almost a year ago

i started talking about frax and i was like you know it takes a while to wrap your head around it you know and i always think for anything in crypto you know especially when new people get in and they read it and they're like i don't understand any of this and i remind people that is normal you know i still you know it takes a long time i remember when afrac started with the amos their way of doing you know managing the the price with this thing called amos for those who know what that is i mean it took me so long to wrap my head around this thing and the fxs token how that works but anyways you know uh months ago i made a video about fxs and the airdrop and get it and lock it up before that date where they did

the um the snapshot so you could get your free fpis token and then i mean in my video yesterday was you know i usually usually when i invest i like to really know and study deeply and be heavily convicted i'm not a trader buy and hold five years this fbis though is a new thing i don't totally understand how they're going to maintain that peg to inflation but i've seen this frax team sam kazemian they just keep nailing it and they just write on the ball all the time and so i was just like this fpis thing i don't know if i'm just talking off over people's heads here right out of

the gate but this thing looks so good i am so excited about fracks fxs and their new fbis token all these i just you know yeah i don't know actually your audience and what level people are at and i might be just talking nah you're good our last podcast was with sam it was solid um yeah i'm curious what you think about the four pool that's coming out this week by the time this it'll be on the day before this comes out um we're gonna post this here on thursday but before pool is supposed to come out on the 20th of april which will really you know kind of make the two decentralized stable coins of the market ust and frax what are your thoughts uh generally speaking i mean my video today is

getting in the four pool on arbitrage and i'm in it already and you know so i heard uh sam on banco's podcast and he mentioned you know they want this for pool everywhere they're gunning for this thing to be uh the winning pool and you know we'll see what happens but i think if nothing else out of the gate they're gonna be throwing a lot of rewards at this thing i think it'll be a good interest rate in the crv token and so anyways you know i before i get to how i think you should handle it you know the the thing is right now it's worth i mean i think everyone should have some stable coins the way i like to have my portfolio is although i predict i feel like we're

going heading into bear market now and sometimes it's just go straight up i like to have a bunch of risk assets so if everything goes straight up i make a lot of money and i like to have a lot of stable coins so that if everything crashes i've got my stables and i can buy stuff cheap so and i don't want to predict where the market goes so i think stable coins are an important important part of your portfolio you know 20 or more percent i think of your crypto portfolio and now i have more than that you know uh in stables and then where do you put those to earn yield i think a chunk of that can go into the four pool now i just i went to arbitram and i think it's good to get on i love aetherium and layer two i've wanted to

get on these layer twos i haven't bothered but this finally motivated me to get on arbitram and take some of my sex i had a i was always saying 50 and die of my stable coins but you know what i had to think about it well what am i going to get out of and i don't know my friend you know i decided i'm going to downsize a little die to go to fort pool took some of that and put it into the four pool and if you look at the four pool now on arbitrage there's zero interest rate and i saw someone talking about that oh we'll wait for it to go up you mentioned the 20th i don't know when the interest rate will go up i'm sure it will but i always love being early i don't want to wait till it's up and then go you know let's let's

get there and and allocate something to to those pools and you know i i don't think it's a no-brainer that they're going to win or that that's the best place to go there's so many places to earn yield on stables and they all have their risks and benefits and return to compensate it and i just think this is one place it's worth being yeah yeah absolutely and and i mean you hit the nail on the head as far as like uh kind of the the being early nature like before those incentives hit you already know that when the incentives hit they're kind of top loaded in the first few days before the liquidity really enters the pool

um so if you can get in kind of in that pre-farm stage then you're really setting up for some nice yields um and it'll be interesting to see the way it plays out with respect to the con uh excuse me the curve wars and like you know if there's uh kind of a a real vacuum that scoops up a lot of the uh curve um you know there's there's terra luna usdt and usdc all part of this four pool as well as fracs they have so much uh liquidity to generate um governance power and curbs ve mechanism that they could drive a significant portion of the incentives and we could

i don't want to put out the word monopoly but like we could see a large uh you know supply of curve behind this floor pool as a result of the pretty powerful stable coin issuers that are a part of this pool and then drive a good chunk of the incentives that way and you know maybe we see some some uh like constrict like you know not really uh like a bit of a just contraction in the stable coin market where a lot of the liquidity starts to get scooped up in just a few of the stable coins um you know and and you start to see some of these smaller stable coins dwindle away as the incentives go towards the other four pool so it'll definitely be interesting to see the way it plays out

um both on curve when the incentives drive that way as well as kind of the uh the l1 incentives when they start to deploy this four pool across some different chains yeah i mean um it's interesting i feel like it's on one hand what you're saying is the smaller ones i never like small i feel like with a lot of investments especially risk assets everyone wants the new thing and i'm like crypto's the new thing you might as well get the leader in crypto you know i don't want and and then with stable coins i think size matters i always liked rye i still like rye i don't know if you're familiar with that one it's over collateralized it just seems very safe i like i like a lot of things about it but no one else likes it so it's really small and that

is a concern you know you want the biggest and the biggest liquidity matters and so the small ones fall off but the other thing is i feel like everything's sort of coming together in that on one hand everyone makes fun of die because they have whatever it is 40 backed by usdc but meanwhile fracks i don't know what that's like what are they 40 backed by usdc and now you know in ust well they're like not backed okay so they're not backed by usdc but now they're going into the four pool which is backed by it'll be 50 usdc and usdt which is the worst of the centralized coin so it looks like you know everybody's in bed together and

it's everybody and then this other thing with like which frac sort of innovated this use you know sort of printing money into these liquidity exchanges to help maintain the rate and now it seems like die is sort of doing that sort of thing and ust is doing this they're all the leaders are all starting to do the same thing and everybody's teaming and the centralized and decentralized are teaming up together and there's the leaders are starting to look more and more like each other yeah and when it was only the first one doing it it was usdt and they were using bitcoin and other crypto to to back usdt so they had these risk on assets and their reserves and they were kind of ostracized for

doing that where you know fast forward to today ust is kind of employing the same mechanism where they have some bitcoin you know doe dokwan is buying bitcoin on the market and they're they're using that to back uh ust and it's kind of more accepted now usdt was a frontrunner and you know now that kind of everyone's doing it it's it's more popular it's a little bit more widely accepted to have these risk on assets as part of your reserves i guess with the understanding that it's significantly over collateralized you know to so if that if that reserve drops well yeah like usdt right like ust is is over collateralized

and and has some bitcoin and other risk on assets in its reserves and yes well ust is not over collateralized it's it's sort of it's collateralized by luna but like there's a saying i think sam said just hit it on bankless you sort of can't collateralize yourself with yourself you know that sort of doesn't make sense so because ust is like you can trade it to get luna but luna's the token that secures the ust so that's it's collateral and but it's not you know that's where people are worried about this death spiral that i think at some point luna will be tested i wouldn't be surprised if luna doesn't hit 10 i and i can't wait to buy it yeah 10

but um you know so they have this problem which i think is a real problem and so they're like well we're gonna back it with some bitcoin it's this 10 billion dollars of bitcoin is someday like they're trying to get to 3 billion but the ust outstanding is what is it 10 uh it's like 15 billion or something yeah yeah it's growing so fast and this anchor is kind of unsustainable like i think ust at some point is gonna i don't know if it'll be a hard landing or you know they adjust i don't think it goes away but i i think it gets tested but it's not over collateralized and i think and dye is over collateralized and then fracs

is sort of evenly collateralized if you if the way you add it up because their treasury now is so big that it's big enough to back fss and it's backed by usd and fxs so tracks again is is in the middle i just say i'm just saying that all roads lead to fracks i sort of uh am a believer in yeah i mean we started to see um frax wars even now as well on curve um the guys at a redacted cartel um have their new hidden hand product um and they are going to start or there's a a gauge that that that they are going to be you know using their liquidity to vote for uh that is a vst for axe gauge which

is uh the vesta finance stablecoin vst um and so they're basically going to be trying to uh direct more rewards to that pool um and away from other stable coin pools as well so there's a there's kind of a new narrative as well for the frax wars which um really interesting to see um i'm i'm not sure if that one's going to be able to uh be as as like you know just sustainable as curve wars if you will because that's kind of a different it's kind of a different uh you know sphere of tokens but yeah i think all roads leads to fractions interesting and sam you mentioned that uh fxs might become its own layer one um what do you think about like these like apps app specific chains or you know

these kind of alternative layer ones um kind of popping up left and right getting a lot of um high seed rounds and a lot of them we've seen like the solana luna avax pair just blow up in the last year like what are your thoughts on like the creation of all these different layer ones and um of absolute chains as well yeah so you know i don't know it was only a year or two ago that it was like ethereum was everything and it seemed like you know i why even worried about it and then the fees went high and some of these started getting real traction and you know it's it's hard sort of to predict um you know i'm always i'm not big into predicting i like to look at i mean who's the biggest and who's doing

the best and then just invest in those when it's not over hyped and priced high so you know starting you know months ago i was like okay other l1s are a thing that i don't think it's going away and so where are the best ones and it felt like there was like too many and the prices were super hyped and now they're coming down they probably come down more in price i wouldn't be surprised but i my feeling right now the one i'm sort of that i am watching and i haven't gone there yet is avalanche just looks it looks good to me everything i can see that it looks like it's gonna last it's for real and i like that one and i haven't um you know i haven't gone and i always

like one things to study the other thing is to actually do and get on there and use it and and then really understand it um i like that one so lana i'm um so i you know i made a video that was one of my more popular ones too which was this idea that every blockchain will have a scaling issue i believe so in other words so you have ethereum is full so now in order for it to grow it's going to have all these l2s and that's what they're dealing with now so then you have like solana and avax and they're not filled up and if they do sometimes they're like maybe we'll never need to scale i don't really believe that they may be it's sort of like if ethereum is this

big and it fills up and like oh if x and so on are this big so they're bigger but the universe is like gigantic so eventually to get filled up and then they have to go through the scaling and solana even more than avax i feel like just thinks it's all gonna be on layer one and i haven't and i even heard an interview and someone asked and i felt like he's the uh what's his name the founder of uh solana just danced around the issue so i'm i'm a little more skeptical of solana because i just and i see they're having some issues now with little things it might be fine it's a little early for me to be i feel like people are a little over confident in it whereas avax looks like maybe better technology and

they have with these subnets they have a scaling solution and even they could do l2s and i'm just hoping you know we have a bear market and everyone starts hating it and the ethereum fees go down and then i can kind of get into avex cheap you know um and there's so many others but i would just watch who you know i like to who's the who's going to be the biggest and um but i still love ethereum because we have the merge coming and i still wouldn't be surprised if eventually l once ethereum is 80 and all the other ones are twenty percent of the you know the ethereum plus all their l2s yeah i think you make a good point like ethereum is trying to get into that um

modular blockchain kind of realm with layer twos and then the merge and then eventually sharding and whatnot and i think i think avalanche is doing that with the subnets but yeah you're right i think the blockchains that are only focused on like one layer for all the uh properties like execution and settlement and um whatever the last one is um yeah those those might struggle because they're just gonna be such a large scale um you know but i think these are these later ones really bring their own communities which is kind of huge like each community each each project has their own community um it makes me extremely bullish on the projects that are able to uh like tend to all the communities um and i think like two of those are one is

stargate the kind of omnichain protocol um but that that kind of cross-chain kind of messaging idea um as well as pocket network which is like a um like kind of like the middleware uh of d5 doing you know um blockchain blockchain node running and and uh growing their amount of relays for each chain um they're on like all the chains now and i mean they're growing so i think i think within the space um i think your point of okay ethereum could be you know like the basically like the hub and all these little other chains will be kind of like this all roads leading back to ethereum but i think like the second order of thinking then becomes like okay how can we capitalize on this concept of this kind

of multi-chain world and other protocols that are doing that um so i i pose you the question how can we capitalize on this concept of the multi-chain world um you know based on your kind of uh you your thesis well one thing is that you know in a sense like i said i just got on an arbor drum which is like another chain but it's it's my understanding is it's really safe it's as safe and secure as ethereum you know the only issue is it takes eight days to get out of it if you want but is that easier for me to go to than to get to avalanche i mean it is i feel like for me because i'm already on eth um but it's just like there's going to

be all these other chains the bottom line for me is always with all my investments is what is a space that you think is big and just go with the leader i think it's the lead always the leaders game to lose and instead of always looking for the new thing so right now the biggest is a theory so i want to have an investment in the theorem who's in second place you know right now and that can be debatable and difficult and changing all the time you know i hate telling friends or even on the show i like this and then three months later it's different and then three years later someone's like you said you like this i'm like oh yeah that was that's d5 for you yeah things changed too fast especially with the small things but i want to go where it's been now arbitrarium and

optimism supposedly are going to come out with a token there's probably some air drop thing that happened so it's like definitely well one thing i want to do is just get on there i'm happy i'm on opportune i went to uni swamp on awkward trim i um i put it in the floor pool i went to you know so i'm there i don't know there's an error off or something's happening i'm on there if there was a token like i said avalanche i would want to just get in i always look for where are the most users the most apps the most transactions the most dollars locked and go you know and have a little investment and and measure your investment by the size of its thing like if if you know avalanches

i don't think it's more than 10 it's not 10 as big as ethereum so i wouldn't have more i have 10 times as much ethereum as i do avalanche unless you really have some great insight you think that maybe you have 15 or 20 or something of your l1 investment you're sort of overexposed but i i like to follow i think indeed in in this in crypto you don't it's not you don't have to predict like in the stock market it's like you get a project you're going to know what no one knows and crypto if you just know what's going on today you're like way ahead of everyone right i mean it's like i know fbi launched three days ago so like i know more than everybody you know it's like i mean maybe not

everyone on your channel but there's it's just keeping up with what's going on and then and measuring accordingly so i and i and when you start predicting what's gonna happen it's it's really hard so i just try to know what's happening and be invested in the leaders you know i that's that's my have you heard anything about the uh the um the stablecoin launch of uh of near their usd um and i believe or us and stablecoin launch trying to again go after kind of what tara has done with ust wait usdn wasn't that the one that lost the peg yeah sorry no it's it's just us and

um yeah usdn was the waves one but near is the usn which is basically doing the uh same model of uh mint and burn uh using the near token um i think it's i think near something that people have kind of slept on um apparently it's also supposed to be rumored for this week but that was just a rumor um but yeah they are working on something very similar to tara um have you tried out um aurora chain or do you know anything about near um well i've heard has good you know my understanding and is that it is good technology and the way they've done it and you know again i don't try to be like oh it's gonna be big it's right now it's not the biggest as far as

i understand and it's in the top i don't know do you know size if you're measuring by users apps and total value locked is it number what size do you know yeah i think it's i mean i i think it's i think it's top yeah it's definitely top like six of uh layer ones or layered twos yeah so i mean you know i um so i i sort of follow it it hasn't so anyways i would watch that now as far as stable coins again i just want to be in the biggest i'm like okay ust which i downsized i made i got really lucky on my channel and i was

like you know what i like this luna it was at five dollars like this is in may i think this thing you know and literally the day after my video started going straight up everyone thought i was a genius i just got lucky and then and then i was like okay it hit 90. well actually what happened was it was like at like it went up to 60 i'm like okay this is crazy in like three or four months and i was like okay i got too much in this thing and i want to reduce my exposure and i go to the thing and it's like you can't take you can't withdraw from steak for like you know it was like three weeks i'm like oh yeah it'll be back to 20 by the time i can take it out and it just kept going up and up and up

and then finally i was allowed to take an episode like 95 like holy i got lucky with that anyways downsized and i was like oh i'll just put it in ust and earn 20 and then i started panicking about the ust and i'm sort of like just i'm scared of that that whole thing anyways i'm way off topic your your question was so with this new one so i like the biggest the ust the frax die you know who are the leaders so there's a new stable coin like i would just watch it and like yeah it starts to threaten and they're gonna copy ust which is on yeah they're gonna give the same exact model in the same model and i'm worried about ust so i'm certainly gonna be worried about a brand new one

and yes t is mostly i think so it's successful because they have anchor paying 20 which is by definition unsustainable they're just paying all that money to get users and until they can't do it anymore so even if they copy the model unless they're copying the 20 i'm not sure they'll get the adoption i think they are copying the 20 oh they're doing that too okay yeah you know um and that's you know the other thing it's just like is this going to be the recurring trend here just launched you guys are young and like how old are you can i ask you guys look i mean i'm an old man i'm 53. when i was in my 20s you know i started a business i was uh you know i

bought sex toy.com for 70 and i was into every marketing gimmick and i loved it i would go to one marketing thing you do this and you come up on google and you do that you there was always a new gimmick to and i would run from thing to thing which is like yield farming today you know 150 oh that's going away i'm over 150 and i i loved it yeah i'm an old man i want to just put my money somewhere and go to the beach and not look at it you know so if you're crazy and you want to run you know so they're going to launch and it's new and they're 20 and you're watching it also but you know one thing that takes time like i can see when something's gonna it's gonna collapse like i get out ahead

of time like i'm pretty good at that and that takes it takes a few bruises to gain that knowledge so you run into these things quickly you you know it's you know it's like oh extra yield and then it goes to zero that all that yield didn't matter like you know so i i don't like i don't like running around i like holding i love that you know i got a bitcoin held it for five years and then traded most of it january 2020 was my i made a video which was that one was also good timing instead of 70 bitcoin in your portfolio there should be 70 heat right at the low of that and now i'm and i so i've been holy since 2017 like it's just

easy life when you get these long term and i'm hoping and honestly fxs and fpi fbis i'm like it's too early to say but it's like if this thing wins five ten years from now just horrible block and hold that's what i think so i don't chase the brand new things but you young kids yeah just be careful the uh the leaders are you know they're showing themselves especially ethereum with regards to like the leader in usage and security um and we're even seeing some of these stable coins become too big to fail in a certain sense like usdc getting adoption from blackrock that backing just kind of adds to the

legitimacy of the their their issuance um and you know we covered the layer ones kind of those wars the stable coin wars and there's um redacted cartel that andy brought up a little bit earlier which is kind of winning like the liquidity wars if you will where we have like this you know gigantic pool of liquidity on curve um and redacted is starting to scoop up all of this protocol owned liquidity governance tokens so i think uh terra and fracks are the two largest holders of convex which of course is you know the the governance mechanism to incentivize curve um and then redacted

cartel is the third largest holder of convex and now we're seeing redacted cartel ust and frax all team up as the three largest holders of convex and kind of form this like super team of like the the three leaders in the curve wars so it you know it's interesting if they end up directing a significant portion of the incentives and that all goes kind of kind of flows back to the the stable coins of the four pool you know i i think as you pointed to fxs has the uh most effective value capture model back to their governance token um you know tara is a little bit shaky with ust

fxs is really captured like you know as f um as fracks becomes more widely adopted fxs is burning uh their supply and their you know of course supply and demand that leads to the token go up so kind of as the uh the liquidity maybe there's less dry powder entering the ecosystem um these these kind of individual teams start to team up um i'm curious if uh you know you you uh you see this as a bullish indication or maybe something you know not so bullish uh yeah what are your thoughts well you know this is so redacted cartel first of all

i've been watching and that's just like you know if you can wrap your head around that one i don't know but i i i sort of understand it enough to be like okay this butterfly token my understanding is it's sort of a way to outsource the bribing so you don't have to buy crv you can just rent crv for a promo or something i'm like okay i think that sounds different and that's cool and they just um what's the name of the guy um who's mr tokenomics there and that was into that project anyways there's a lot that they're doing they're just like it's like the cool crowd round that right they're just everything they do is all the um the new d5 i mean i was at d5 3.0 i

think i don't know where we're at but it so it looks interesting i can't tell you i understand it enough to be too confident but i feel like so butterfly the thing that kept coming out that i think is kind of cool is you'll be able to lock it and it will earn the fees or the income so you get like a dividend on it i think it's going to be uh i can't remember you know two letters before butterfly you know every token now is has all these prefixes but so my thing is so one thing is i don't just like dividends because i need income or whatever i like it because i can value it so now so i literally so i've been watching this butterfly and i was like oh if i can just go below 200. you know that was

a lot of times just in d5 well someday maybe it falls and it's like you know three weeks later it's down you know so it's and the other so anyways i actually just for research purposes picked up a little butterfly literally today and because it finally fell and i want to just have it so that as soon as you can lock it and earn dividends i can see what the dividends are and if the interest in other words if it thinks at a hundred dollars and the dividend is whatever ten dollars a year then it's a ten percent dividend and i can be like oh that's really valuable that's a good price and then buy more as opposed to you might not know what the dividend is unless you own it and lock it but that hasn't even launched yet

plus they have this v2 coming out i believe another version you know and when that comes out i bet the price jumps anyways and then i got the butterfly i didn't even know and then it's like stake it i'm like oh it's mistaking the yield on the staking is like it's like 20 000 percent yeah oh so this is one of these stupid like olympus dow which is another one i'm watching where i was like what is the point of this friggin 2000 percent because what they want is you stake it or you get diluted out within a year or two you know so you have to stake it but when they have that crazy staking thing you can't watch price because you have to watch market cap because if you stake it

you know if the price stays flat but you get 200 you get 100 more tokens your value went up 100 so you can't just watch price you have to watch market cap and so i noticed butterfly price keeps going down but the market cap bottomed a little while ago i didn't even know about that it's like you have to really test these things out but don't test with all your money i always tell people it's like a tiny bit so i'm watching this thing i find it really um fascinating and and then um i'm not sure what you're i forget what your question was did you participate in olympus style at all or another one of my most watched videos was when it went down 90 but i don't

remember if i made one when it was that high i remember when it was i'm like okay so the treasury is this and the price is up here like you're all morons you know and again it just feels like it's never gonna get and then it came down and so i've been i like i like olympus down but it's like i want you know for me i'm greedy i want like the price of the token to be equal to the risk-free treasury i want the treasury bigger than the price yeah it is actually now i believe i believe it just got to that point in the next it hit well there's it hit uh it got down to a low the market cap was only 350 million and the re there's the risk free treasury and then there's the whole treasury but the whole treasury

could shrink so anyways the risk free treasury is 250 the whole thing was 400 it went to 350 million i think it was the market cap was below the total treasury yeah but not the risk to it i see what you're saying and it just got up again i think it's coming back down i i'd like to get it but i would also get in so i feel like with things like that all those people who bought it when it was way higher than the value of the treasury are the same people who are going to sell it when the price is well below the treasury like it's like if i get so cheap so i don't want to get in too quickly but i like it i think you know some of these things i don't and these things are so crazy for me i

mean you know yeah you know i own berkshire hathaway and you know no mortgage i like boring stuff as well you know so i try not to get too crazy but these things can really moon if you get the right one yeah so so i like i think your question was you know what i think i mean i love all this stuff i think stable coins and this new this fpi stable coin linked to the basket of goods that's a decentralized stable coin linked to the basket of to a basket of goods yep is the holy grail of money yeah basically yeah it really is stable with regards to purchasing power

yeah i mean that's everything like that's it it came out like that's the holy grail of what we're doing here you know because then that's a decentralized coin can't be controlled to anyone but what is the price the price is the basket of goods and there's a million things that make that difficult but and so this fbis what i think is fascinating about that is they didn't take any money from private equity guys and venture capitalists who are now dumping in on an ico whatever nobody's in that thing early the valuation is like 100 million how is that not a billion dollar token unless it all breaks or something crazy but they everything they do seems to work so i'm like it came out at 100 million i don't know how that doesn't 10x i mean if the whole market crashes which is definitely a possibility

you know i i it probably goes down with it but certainly not but i have a long-term vision i don't see i mean if that works at all 100 million is frighteningly inexpensive so um and then there's more info about so there was the airdrop if you have fxs locked up and then now i'm understanding there's going to be more air drops if you have it locked up i don't know if it's from the original thing and so i mean i like the fxs too but so all of this stuff is just exciting but it's very very fast moving and you know it's hard to uh play it right yeah when did you first start yield farming like what was your

first experience well um you know so i i mean i've been in d5 again that was you know in 2019 and making my videos and nobody wanted to listen to me that defy is the thing and and then you know compound started it i mean i remember when compound was coming out with their thing and we thought oh they're going to give you tokens if you're depositing and interest rates used to be a little higher and it was like maybe the token's going to be worth 30 dollars i'm like oh that sounds fun like i'll get into that and then it launched and then the token starts mooning and i'm like oh i'm earning interest and i'm getting their token and like and then

you know so i was in it from the beginning but again i was not chasing every crazy i'm very conservative and lose my money but i've been accumulating you know in last year so i remember basically after bitcoin went right at the beginning of april you know bitcoin peaked at 62 in february of 21. in april i made a video start planning your exit strategy here because and not that it's not going to go higher and honestly i thought it would hit 10 000 but it's like you got to have your plan of what you're going to do am i going to sell and everyone's like you're crazy you never sell and then that what's that bitcoin guy a plan b

he posted in april the switches started and i made i was like this is irresponsible he's telling newbies we're just getting started when bitcoin peaked and then he blocked me and anyways but start selling you know start well it's not even selling like me yeah i'm gonna say like what is your what is the ultimate exit is it is it play the cycles and use stable coins is it you know is it get out to the fiat system and buy a house is it you know like what's the well it's like it's all about managing risk and you have a portfolio so let's say you say i want 20 stable coins and well if you're looking at your whole

life you i don't know you want 20 in a house you want 20 stable coins you want five percent fiat dollars because you gotta pay rent right or whatever your percents i mean everybody's different it depends and you have income or you don't and you own a house or you wanna buy a house or there's a lot of variables but i look at what those percentages are so what happens is like in 2019 i was like each should be 10 of your net worth you know this thing is great and then it goes up 10x if now it's like if you don't do anything it's like okay eath is aiding this is your network it can't work yeah and the market's been booming that's irresponsible like i like to say i'm irresponsibly long ether ethereum but

that's like beyond irresponsible it's like insane i have children you know so um so you you manage risk and meanwhile too it's like oh the market's high you know um central bank just printed a bunch of money maybe i should have some stable coins what percent do i want that to be and you and everything's gone up so the stable now i have no cash compared to oh my god all of a sudden i get millions and i have no cash so it's not oh i'm gonna sell all my ethereum it's your portfolio goes out of whack and i wish i i didn't even learn this until much you know like literally 2017 because i loved stellar in 2017 which turned out to be one of the best runners

and i i capitulated in 2018 got out of it but i literally liked it at a penny and a half it hit 90 cents i mean at one point it was like probably 80 of my net worth was stellar but i didn't have this discipline of the spreadsheet looking at my numbers and i still liked it but it was like it doesn't matter if you like it you should know enough to not have some crazy new coin to be most of your net worth you know what it's like so that's for me is mostly managing risk i try to think in general what percent of my net worth or what percent of my crypto portfolio do i want in this thing and then look at my actual numbers and

adjust if i like something i'm never getting out of it completely it's just i have less ethereum you know than i had when it was in 2019 but the total value is higher and then maybe if there's a crash you know i'll increase the numbers but it's just i want to keep it and keep it in line yeah so kind of uh what is your what is your percentage in uh illiquid jpegs also known as nfts well first of all i'm not you know i've never been the cool guy for a minute in hollywood though i i was cool but that was only because i was throwing the parties and so they couldn't keep me out um

but when it comes to style and fashion i have no clue and originally i was like you know i'm defy i get numbers like i understand that like i was like nfts i'm like how much can that be a profile picture i mean who the cares this is stupid why are you guys all excited about it i did not see that one coming you know and so now i do get it and but i also i you know this is i think this is my seventh bubble like i've seen this movie before i believe my theory is my plan at this point is i'm gonna buy a board ape right i want one of the two biggest board names and crypto punks okay so i believe those will be 95 percent off their highs

and a lot you know that's all i that's uh that's the plan so so no no messing around with any of the smaller ones no i'll just one of the biggest i mean i have no listen if you're like cool and you know what's going to be a trend yeah that's great but i would be careful everything's super expensive right now anyways so yeah even if you're right i mean think about being right it crashes and then you hold it and then it comes back yeah but when you're wrong it crashes and especially nfts if you're if you're not if you're wrong it's not coming back in the next bubble you know and then you got nothing on your scrooge so like ford apes it'll come back in the next bubble

assuming that it even crashes in the first place but i it has to i'm sorry you know so yeah and uh the cycles are are different they're not aligned with kind of the d5 and the other cryptocycles since nfts are priced in eth um so we see like when eth really really rips uh nfts don't quite keep up their floor prices kind of drop a little bit and you mentioned the merge kind of at the top of the podcast uh you know i'm expecting you have a bullish thesis um so i'm kind of curious on your on your kind of expectations to the merge and yeah how you're gonna play it yeah that was my thing remember i said in january of 2020 i decided that i should be my main hold should be ethereum instead of

bitcoin and that was because i decided that ethereum is digital gold you know ever that the common thing is you know bitcoins digital gold ethereum is a smart contract platform and those are two separate things and whatever but i believe once i understood how this proof of stake works i believe it is more secure with a better monetary policy than bitcoin they already a big ethereum you know they talk oh i we don't know how much they're going to print and this and that ethereum already creates fewer coins per year than bitcoin does and i don't think that's going to change anytime soon but not only that it's based on a model of tremendous amount of research

and the securities guaranteed whereas bitcoin's like well we'll just stop printing but we'll stop praying bitcoin i mean granted even that's in 100 years but we'll just you know what if the security they need to print more bitcoin that'll work out don't worry about it we'll pay for it with fees but no one's doing any fees i mean like it's just like i don't think that's i think ethereum is safer more secure i i decided you know that people it drives me crazy because everyone's like oh well bitcoins digital gold they have that i'm like no we're taking that from ethereum's taking that uh so that's my thesis and then as far as the upgrade coming you know ethereum's been pretty good with the

upgrades of the forks and everything relatively on schedule as of the last several years this one is you know it was like it was supposed to be january and then it was june and now you know but it doesn't i'm not not worried about it this thing is so long in the making and they're on the final stretch and there was just that podcast with bako timbeko if that's how you pronounce it on lara shin i listen to that and it's like normal tech stuff and he was very honest i mean there's a lot of unknown unknowns and there could be a thing i don't think the whole i'm not worried about it not happening and i'm not really worried about it not working so it's just a matter of time and i remember sometimes that could be a good opportunity i remember with

tesla i'm not really into stocks but i have been a i was i mean i like tesla now but it's no longer like a thing where it was like people would get mad at you if you own tesla and like it's the oh they don't they can't make cars and nobody wants them i'm like you drugs you know um i remember you know right before that when that before that moon the year before that thing went up i remember sitting in my first of all i'm looking at numbers i'm like i'm sitting in the car and everyone's like elon should go to jail and nobody wants to i'm like am i crazy and i look at the car and like i drive down

the road and i see a lamborghini comes by i'm like look at that old piece of like i'm sorry there's no way this thing sucks so um anyways when they launched the model 3 factory there were a lot of problems and it was like behind schedule and elon member i don't know if you remember he was sleeping on the factory floor and it was just like you know it was three months behind or four months to before it could really ramp up but in the long like now does anybody even remember that story so like if the merge comes in june instead of i mean instead of june it comes in september or even if it's november four years from now is that gonna matter

i don't think so so i i think that but that if everybody panics about that oh my god it's gonna take another two months or now it's never to happen because they got to write five more lines of code and get everyone to approve it uh to me that can be an opportunity so um yeah i think the general narratives too is like it's not going to happen or it's just going to keep pushing back so i think the uh the concept of it actually happening is i mean it may even be the uh against the majority consensus at this current point which is kind of astounding because they've always they've always delivered um but yeah it's like i mean when it comes there's no going back that's like forever a massive change in security and scalability

we tend to align with the thesis as well like if you're going to hold bitcoin you might as well just hold ethereum hold a little bit of both bitcoins kind of like that if all the other block chains fail you you'll still have um bitcoin and monero to you know live off of right um so so yeah those those are like the backstops in my opinion of the entire ecosystem but you know not predicting a a fallout of all the other chains right it appears that you know it's like at first it was like oh there'll be no other coins and then at that point it started to be like there's still a bitcoin maximum list it's a little like like these everything's not going away and then it's now like with other chains of course there's gonna be you know who

knows what they're gonna be but um yeah it sort of makes it a little harder i mean sometimes i think maximalism is just like a dream for life to be simple it's like oh i just need to hold this one thing about anything else yeah unfortunately it's not easy i mean you know charlie munger has a great quote a year he would say a year in which i didn't get rid of one of my best ideas is not a good year and i was like i didn't even understand what that meant and what it is is you have these ideas and it's just and it's worked for you like you've owned bitcoin for years and you made so much money and that was your best idea and now it's like you know there comes a time where you might have to drop that doesn't mean you

have to sell it all or hate it but just like it's no longer the best idea let go and and then and go to a new one and it's a very like it's a psychological thing that can be difficult that you you sometimes have to go through and then if you're not as smart as charlie munger like i am like i got to get rid of my best idea once once a week because you know yeah with the with the pace of day just keep hold on to those fbi s and fxs you'll be all right huh you know i'm already all right hallelujah but um i'm hoping i get another yeah i'm just this one it's i don't know it seems like luna to me if it feels like early stage luna is so are are you viewing fpis as like a a stable

part of your portfolio because it's certainly not it's certainly not a non-volatile coin no there's for decentralized coins you have the risk asset associated with stablecoin um and i just i'm in love with stable coins i think this is a big story so you know i've got dye and i have mkr i have you know now i'll have fpi and i'll have fbis and i'll have fracs and um fxs yeah what else is there you know i have a tiny bit of some crazy fae in this i'm winning the tribe awards and i'm like i don't know sam kasamian seems to think that i think that they may survive so yeah i think so too i actually think people are sleeping on

that yeah i don't and i'm not sure why i i don't i don't know why people are but it's smart people seem to think it's good i'm like and i'm and i've got a good yield thing like there's this but you guys seem like you're uh crazy d5 people it's a lot of people don't get into these things or be big enough to pay all the fees but like this gelato you know there's a there's a fae die and then there's a frax i think it's frax die too where you lock it in gelato and it's managing it on uni swap and you take that token and then you can lock it at frax or you can take your fade eye one from gelato and lock it at tribe and the interest rate i don't know it's like 30 or

something percent you know and it seems pretty safe to me which is and anyway so i'm holding that tribe so yeah that's where i've been um and then even you know in a sense when i like this redacted cartel it's just another play off the stablecoin thing you know the curve i looked at curve i just made a video about that one where i'm like i don't know about the crv token it it's uh i'm also really worried i want there to be a bear market to test all these things i want everything to be tested and see what survives and i am definitely worried about i mean i don't know what you guys think of this but i'm like is it so originally it's like oh you have the curve token and then you lock it

and that's how you can vote and it's like okay it's only long-term people because they lock it up and the longer you lock it the more vote rewards you have but then it's like oh so now there's convex where you can vote but it's not really locked it's still liquid like so doesn't that defeat the purpose and then it's like oh then you take the con but you're locked in convicts but then you can take that and you can deposit in this other thing so you can do these other things and then you can borrow against it it's like this it's this uh pyramid of taking tokens locking another thing and then you take that one you're taking a lock and another one and then you break it into two and you borrow against one and then you can lock it in the mic please serve my family sir please no

bear market sir yeah i want the bear market and see what blows up in that terrain of focus i don't know you know something something's messy there's a bunch of words for whether it's a pyramid or you call it rehypothecation or you put an optimistic spin and call it interoperability like it's you know redemption tickets it's like you're it's like your receipt that you can go claim but then people are giving these receipts use cases you get enough receipts and they're a bribe you get enough broads you can direct where where people are going to pay for the next receipts yeah i don't know something either it can just be that it's i can't wrap my head around it

or it means something's missing and we will find out what you're missing again will you find out who's swimming naked when the tide goes out my family dave it's been an absolute pleasure that i was kind of wrap up here where can our audience find you and uh i assume youtube but um yeah where else so i'm all i'm dave levine is my name and i'm dave levine.com my you know my apologies for my boomer address i do own a dottie's but so dot co dave levine dot com which actually points to my youtube but if you go on twitter i'm dave levine the number zerocom and wherever else i am it's usually dave levine on youtube it's dave dave levine

d-o-t-c-o-m you know if you search dave levine you'll you'll find me and if you want to laugh you search sex toy dave that was my previous persona i sold that business a few years ago i stopped working there in 2015 um i created one of the first affiliate programs on the internet back in 96 and um was one of the larger you know sex toys russell brunson fan maybe i am a fan of his uh but i that was like later you know i was yeah 90s i was like you know i was making html pages by hand you know i would go to kinko's with the sex toy catalog and scan photos you know at 11 at night

wow bro now you're getting around in d5 let's we we love to see we got to hang out with the young kids but relive my childhood dave you totally seem like a tesla owner man yes yeah you know like an older fella into all the new tech for sure yeah well it's it's the best i've never been into cars i'm not a car guy but that car that's the best car i've ever driven my life as well it's fantastic well and this has been great guys because i have um one of the guys from my channel he he was like you should uh go on shows i'm like i don't know can he you get me on a show i'll go i don't you know and then he was like i don't know if this is a good trip i don't know if you'll like it i don't know if it'll be

like don't worry about it now i don't really care i was expecting sort of i don't know what i was expecting but you guys are great you're on top of it and um you know you're you seem like you're in it and you know what's going on so uh this has been fun yeah i appreciate it anytime you want to uh you know check in again let me know yeah we'll do a little channel hop maybe i'll come on yours or something fabulous yeah cool i don't know anything about you guys either i'm gonna look it up now because you seem cool thanks dave all right thank you