The Fed’s Big Decision | Roundup

Transcript

and it's just very interesting to see Tron taking a shot at salana it's you know it's it's interesting because you haven't you've seen just SOL just kind of like Insurgent versus incumbent for so long and now the shoes on the other foot which is a different kind of perspective for the market to take hey everyone this episode is brought to you by NADA the shielded asset Hub rewarding you to protect the multichain so not only can you protect your own data across any asset and any chain but you also get shielding rewards for strengthening data privacy protections for everyone so you can check them out at n.net and follow the domain net launch stick around you're going to be hearing all about them later in the program all right everyone welcome back to another episode of bell curve before we jump in quick disclaimer the views

expressed by my co-host today are their personal views and they do not represent the views of any organization with which the co-hosts are associated with uh nothing in the episode is construed or relied upon as Financial technical tax legal or other advice you know the deal now let's jump into the episode all right everyone welcome back to another round up of BC you got Michaels one and two and fance fellas good to see you been a minute been a minute be back yeah Michael how is Laguna Beach just in and out for the day you know what's better than uh you know what lagona beach is better

than Grand Rapid Michigan Grand Rapids Michigan Grand Rapids Michigan dude I uh I got stranded there I was visiting some of my girlfriend's friends over the weekend we were supposed to fly back on Sunday and I did American just cancelled shed me up there for two days paid for nothing I did like the most Karen tweet of all time and just tweeted at their at their saw that tweet public thing and you know what the funny thing is uh they actually followed me and I went and like I slid into their DMS the last time I talked to them was 2017 and I actually got a Twitter account to tweet at them because the last time I flew americ they dumped me in Dallas for two days also um it was a connecting flight

from Miami where I was for fire Festival which was probably the worst travel experience of my entire life yeah uh so we never talked about the fact that you were going to fire Festival yeah D we were I was going to fire Festival me and Yano and like 12 friends we're all go we were going the second weekend and we saw those like ham and cheese sandwiches and we were like thank God we did go to this uh the first weekend so anyway yeah well round round two of firefest and Grand Rapids yeah yeah exactly um all right so uh yeah I feel like maybe um we could actually just kick it off by uh you know we're were talking about just the general sentiment

and everything on uh on CT and I don't know I know maybe Vance I can kick it over to you here because I I do feel like just zooming out you know prices are actually are pretty good at the moment and you know I've been seeing some tweets like hey Bitcoin is over 60k you know what's with all the you know we're not dying here right we've basically been ranging this entire year but feels like everything's very PVP and just sentiment not that great and I don't know just what's your what's your sort of thought process about where we're at uh the zes out at the moment I mean we're uh we're very very busy I think first thing is like there's a lot going on kind of in the back ground um and I think a lot of funds are kind of in the same mindset of like

preparing for what's to come and you know thinking about the 2024 to 2028 time frame like we're not playing for the next 74 days um and I think you know outside of that Michael and I are enjoying our summer it's like the prices are pretty good you know e at you know 26 2700 bitcoin's above 60 uh the eth and BTC inflows have been pretty healthy Health y um and I think look like everything is ranging even Nvidia has been in a $20 range since March so like if you show me someone who's you know absolutely having a great time in capital markets today I'd be pretty surprised like

there's maybe a couple of Trades across like traditional Finance crypto Finance traditional Venture crypto Venture that are really working but I think people are just kind of setting up for what's next and frankly like I don't blame the markets uh for for kind of being like in a mindset of let's see what happens the election because you know on one side you got Donald Trump saying tax cuts I'm gonna be the you know the FED chairman I'm gonna do all this deregulatory stuff on the other side you've got KL Harris saying like unrealized gains will be taxed um you know all these different policies and so markets want certainty um and I think you will be paid to take the uncertainty risk that

exists today um but as things move closer and closer to the election I think markets are going to kind of turn back on and you know poly Market flipped uh back to Trump over the past 24 hours kind of boosted by the RFK um rumored Dropout and it seems like that is going to be the main thing that starts to move markets if they can get Beyond kind of the margin of error uh in polling you know they're going to kind of either go you know really really in our view high if it's Trump and and if it's Cala it's probably like you know more flattish um in terms of the Market's perception of where things are going to go so I think it's just like we're working with

Founders building real products very bullish on crypto in the future um and then just seeing kind of the alignment of nons and like bearish people on CT tear each other apart is just like mute those people only I agree with all that only thing I'd add is um there's also just like this isn't just crypto's problem this is sort of like everybody's same thing August is the time when basically Europe is on vacation every single person and half of the people in the US are and you've got you know the largest revision of payroll uh that we've seen since 2009 um and these happen every year but and typically they're low but

they're not 88,000 low um but you also have you know the jump in unemployment and so I think the the macro kind of side of it as well is people are like are we in a recession or are we not in a recession we know rate cuts are coming but our rate Cuts going to be 25 bips because it's a you know we're cutting rates because we don't need to have them at 525 anymore or is it we're cutting them 75 bits because like we're about to go through a bad recession I don't think that it's the lad but I think that people are still waiting to see that and as well in the same thing that you know we're waiting to see what the election results will be and I think we're going to find that it's going to be like we just saw payroll uh come in at exactly

232 which is exactly what it was expected to be um and so I don't think things are falling off the cliff uh as people were maybe cautiously preparing for um as they went on their summer Riverboat vacation but I I do think that uh you know we're going to come back in a couple of weeks here in September post Labor Day and it's going to be like all right we're back to business what are we doing and people are going to be like all right we're waking up again just anecdotally you know from the people that we talked with who aren't Founders who aren't the ones that are building day in and day out and probably not taking months long vacations when we talk to we're starting to see them come back as well um and I think a lot of people took some Bay and took some time

and you know these next couple of weeks are going to be when everybody starts responding to those emails that have been sitting in their inboxes for the last four months or four weeks and the the other thing I'd say just to cap off Michael's perspective is like that Nik crash uh basically forced people to unwind things and like even our friends who work at these pod shops are like yeah we just cut everything and you know their bonus uh periods get calculated in I think two months so everyone's just like why am I going to take risk going into an election year if I've had a pretty good year which the S&P has had you know a Very Good Year you know I'm just going to kind of sit here and wait and like people are still you know the Yen carry trade is kind of back on maybe

not but like people have not put positions on and you know the amount of out of office emails we're getting when we hit people up is is substantial uh so I wanted to respond to because I wanted to get your guys take on uh some of the policy positions that it seem like um have come out of the DMC from Kamal Harris's Camp um and like just the predict or the the odds on poly Market in general but there is a seasonality uh component here this was a I'm not sure if if you guys can see my screen I'll zoom in a little bit but this is uh from a Twitter account called 2x dog which I have to imagine is a Russ hanaman reference but what we're looking at here is the the returns so funny I just I just put that together yeah which

is maybe we can link that in the at the end like the this is the Russ hanaman you know the 100x uh Pure Play becomes a 2X dog type of thing but anyway this is the what he he's put together a pretty interesting chart this is the monthly returns of Bitcoin going all the way back to 2014 and what you can see you know title of this tweet is hunt for green October October is historically you know the best returning month for Bitcoin in general with the average over 10 years being 20% and then for November it's 5.6% and for December it's just under 10 per. and so there is a big you know outside of just what's going on in Trad markets or maybe because of it um you know it's historically been a pretty good period for Bitcoin and crypto and if you put that together with the

election and yeah cutting R yeah I feel like there's a lot of reason to be really positive going into the last half of the year or the last quarter I guess but yeah I mean the other the other data that I've seasonality is is a real thing well exactly so uh Q4 seasonality Q the S&P 500 oh I'm GNA mess this data up the S&P 500 has peaked uh in Q4 it's something like 75% of the of the times going over the last uh uh 16 years and it's 55% of the time in December yep like the so so if you think about it it's like 55% you got 12 opt

and you've got 12 options that's that's absurd yeah the the things I remember from like the years of crypto that I've been in is like the summers are usually like pretty slow SL bearish uh and then like the the Q4 kind of time period is is usually the most bullish and like I remember one summer uh I rented a house in Malibu and like you know I was like you know had a big q1 and it was like you know summer's going to be awesome and I'm like sitting in this house in Malibu and like crypto's like crashing sideways I'm like [ __ ] and then I remember and like a lot of the times it's like I'm at my parents house in Canada like in uh in a very small bedroom and like crypto's ripping and there's like you know old like hockey jerseys of mine like you know and

Michael has the same thing in Palo Alto but it's like it's weird it's it's whenever you're kind of back home and like not in the most uh gregarious you know setting it's it's um It's usually the most bullish which is a bit weird why can't we have green candles green God candles when we're in Malibu I know that's that's what I want you know it didn't ruin the experience for me but um it's that was a good summer that was a great that was a fun summer but you know you just got to wait for this stuff like nothing is going to happen overnight and you're not playing like look if you're playing for the next 75 days of crypto like I don't know what to tell you probably just like either develop a perspective on the election and bet that

way or just sit on your hands and we're sitting in our hands in some ways we're still leading deals um a lot of stuff is happening in the background for funds people are people are kind of getting ready for what's next um you know what else about is sort of nice about the Q4 seasonality is Thanksgiving conversations are very different whether crypto is going up or going down and yeah if you've ever suffered through like a Thanksgiving when crypto's just tanking it is like those are those are rare though those are r i mean like I mean let's be serious we we had truly the Pico top of Bitcoin and eth in 2021 and then we literally had SBF in

2022 just that that back to back was brutal I know that wasn't great not much you can really say but you know do think that crypto has even just anecdotally I was going this weekend to visit some my my girlfriend's friends where I was in Michigan and I was asking like they have like three kids you know young kids they're not like taking huge risks on investments or anything like that but yeah he was like yeah I've got some crypto I was like just out of curiosity like what do you have he was like I got Bitcoin and then I got cardano I was like that is a barbell that is a he's like what do you think about cardano I was like yeah um not a lot not not at all don't think about it at all it's a choice I mean the other thing I've been

looking at is um it looks so Nvidia earnings are so it's like we got we have like a big actually like kind of week or so of data you've got Jackson Hole yeah um and Jackson Hole is usually when there's a a policy pivot like that one year where he said like we're gonna start hiking rates by 75 basis points until you start crying that was J no no no no no no no no no no he had already started the 75 basis points J jhole was like the 30 second speech where he was like [ __ ] them kids just like you know the market needs to feel more pain right and so you had the the FED transcript get released I think yesterday and it was um the vast majority of partic this

is like the key language the vast majority of participants uh agreed that easing in September would make sense uh you know half and half or so you know agreed that maybe even July would be go time and so we have that we have obviously the debates coming up um it's just such a newsy couple of weeks and usually debates don't matter but like the last time we had a debate one of the candidates got absolutely shell and had to step back so I mean we'll see I just I don't think the market is in a mode where it's going to take a lot of risk at the moment but and and then we have Nvidia earnings next week on the 27th and if you remember from last year the May earnings for Nidia is what sent the market into a frenzy upwards yeah and

then the q41 was kind of like okay Yep this is all kind of like par of the course priced in didn't really do much for 6 months when Nvidia starts to top out that's going to be a huge indicator for risk markets that like it's time to move out further on the risk curve there's probably not a double left in Nvidia we're not adding another three trillion if market cap and so people are going to look for 2x's in other places and I think you know one of those places is going to be crypto hey everyone this episode is brought to you by NADA the shielded asset Hub protecting the future of the multichain NADA is a chain that's near and dear to my heart because in previous seasons of Bel curve we've talked about how the Cardinal original sin of most blockchains is not thinking

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click the link bottom of the show notes so I want to get your guys perspective on I'm looking at the poly Market odds right now and uh I think Trump is leading by about seven percentage points so that's that's been a a flip uh it looked like Kamala was leading there for a little bit and you know outside of us trying to like read the te leaves and be like who do you think is going to win this election I guess I would love to get your guys perspective on how different you think the reality would be from a markets perspective under a a CALA or Harris versus Trump Administration and you know I I I guess the one thing that I can I can see I mean frankly a lot of the policy that uh you know it seems like Harris is suggesting are just not roads that we

want to go down probably as a country like taxing unrealized gains I know the idea is like that's never going to happen or that would never pass but these are still being suggested right the fact that they're even being suggested it it could definitely pass yeah if there if there's a red Senate it could or a blue Senate it could definitely pass and the 40 I mean the 45% cap gains tax that feels like it absolutely could pass I mean like the the the super nerd election Insight is like there's been so um for things to pass the needs to pass obviously the house and then needs to pass the Senate yeah and you know there are rules which say that in cir certain circumstances mostly budgetary circumstances you only

need a simple majority of the Senate to pass things but um just wait just wait um and so if it's a 50-50 Senate and you know basically it comes down to this one senate seat in Montana you know if if the Democrats win that senate seat it will be 5050 they probably will be able to pass things along party lines TBD how many Democrats are going to be going along for no capital gains but the polls that have come out of Montana over the past two weeks one of them showed the most recent showed uh sheii who's the Republican Contender up seven and another one showed on the presidential side Trump up 23 and so if Trump is up 23 it's going to be very hard for the

Democrats to win that state and so like I am personally pricing in a senate majority for the Republicans which would mean that like this unrealized capital gain stuff the most Fringe and extreme stuff will not pass um and so I think over the past honestly two weeks it's become more of a if Cala wins it's probably something looking like a lame duck Administration just because there's not much you can do if the Senate is Republican controlled so we'll see um I obviously think Trump is going to be way more positive for Capital markets but like Common's policies have kind of been defanged from just a an electoral standpoint in the Senate and just to so that's on the let's let's put it this way that's on

the policy pieces that she has talked about or has put out which is the unrealized capital gains the no more capital gains treatment um or the unrealized tax but what she hasn't talked about is anything crypto related and all that we've gotten so far from the one of her advisers was a yes we are open to the idea didn't even mention crypto or blockchain just open to the idea of positive policies for Innovation economies that could mean AI that could mean robots that could mean crypto that could mean nuclear that could be anything but I think what they're trying to do is basically not say no to anything at this point for fear of

cutting off any sort of potential votes what now what you really have right now is a number of Democrats or people who are democratically leaning in their political views who are also big or you know involved in the crypto industry and they're just looking for any sort of oxygen from the Democratic side they're just looking for an inch because they need something to be able to justify voting for her if voting for the other person is going to be you know voting for their industry versus voting for their political persuasion and that's basically what has been provided which is you know you got a breath of air but that's it and what uh you have on the opposite side is a

plan policies and a track record of people who want to make change there is a specific you know there are specific items that Trump said at the at his speech in Nashville the rumor is it hasn't happened yet we're recording this Thursday morning the rumor is that RFK is going to drop out tomorrow and he's going to join up or be endorsed uh or endorse Trump um probably with some position like ahead of I don't know NIH or CDC or EPA or I think the CIA thing was a joke but uh pretty funny nonetheless uh or or potentially the one is attorney general uh because he is a lawyer um any of these things uh would be I think very positive because it just

builds it bolsters the perspective of who is making decisions and who is promoting new laws and regulations leading these institutions and how do they view our industry RFK I would say was even more positive than Trump was in terms of what he said in Nashville and so if you combine forces and you already have Elon who said I am ready to serve and Trump saying we want him in the cabinet you probably going to have a in some sort of role and you've got JD Vance all of these positive perspectives mean that the White House if it was to be Trump would be fundamentally Pro crypto and and we know that to be a fact because they have plans in place and and

bullet points that they that they speak to not waxing poetic around hey we're we're we're gonna innovate we're going to promote Innovation like that's that's what we're going to do so that's just on the policy perspective but going back to the Senate on the same points what the Senate also controls is the governing bodies and basically who is promoted into roles like this SEC and cfdc what really does matter is that both of those entities have a five commission uh body that of five uh people as Commissioners whoever is in the presidency gets to have the sway so right now there's three Democrats and there's two Republicans at the SEC but and Gary gensler's term is up in I think

January or February 2026 um so there's at least another year and a half but what you would have is if there is a Republican Senate the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate itself would have to confirm whoever it is that would be the next person who comes up so not only is it important that the Senate becomes Republican uh it's also for a number of you know holding these I would say uh pretty um profound uh policies or ideas coming out of the democratic platform um you also want to have that flip to be able to have checks and balances in terms of who gets put into these roles um and who who becomes the

leaders of the governing the regulatory bodies for for this industry um so there there's a lot that kind of you could peel back on who's going to be in the White House who's going to be in the Senate but I think it's very important who's going to be in the Senate and then it's it's very you know bullish if it's going to be the Republicans in the White House yeah I just I don't think her policies are going to be enacted even if she does win but we'll see I mean I think it does spook the market yeah um is there so it feels uh just as like uh you know to to take the Devil's Advocate view here it feels very consensus right outside of crypto like zooming out of our industry where I I feel like obviously you know one side has talked

to us way more than than the other um it feels very consensus that like if Trump you know gets elected it's going to be very positive for markets and you know if Kamal Harris gets elected it's going to be negative to neutral sort of thing and just whenever you start to see like everyone kind of line up on one side of an idea it kind of makes you think well you know you see consensus ideas be wrong a lot is there any Steelman for the other side of this that you know so I I think I've said this before uh on on this podcast I I don't think that it's like crypto is over in any case but let's play out kind of play both outcomes I I think and this may be kind of like a weird way of saying this but I I think basically innovation

in crypto basically anything that is not Bitcoin is going to flourish if there is a regulatory framework there's people in the white house or people in in the regulatory bodies who are trying to help Foster this industry um and that's what you get with Republicans in charge and on the flip side what you would get and it's you know it's still Pro crypto but you would have Bitcoin and eth do really really well because those are going to be the only two those are going to be the only two ETFs that we have for a very long time time and you're going to have more uh enforcement actions you're probably going to drive a lot of the Innovation and the startups overseas I mean it's it's kind of hanging on by a thread right now in the US but there's

going to be no reason uh if we have if it looks like it's going to be another four years of it um regulation by enforcement and so you're gonna have the bigger get bigger or the biggest get bigger and that's going to be Bitcoin and E they're going to do really well um and you know that is still Pro crypto but it's not the crypto that frankly like any of us care about we want to see this industry move in the direction of application categories that are built on chain defi becoming you know infrastructure for financial services uh stable coins being a major part of the payments ecosystem and the financial system like all of these things probably will not happen uh if you have if you don't have a a positive regulatory

environment in the next four years period full stop Bitcoin like we know the Democrats will do they're going to probably print more money and so Bitcoin will probably do really well that's what we get and and and frankly like eth Ethan Bitcoin have these straty inflows and like I think they do well kind of under any Market regime where they're printing money in a propagate sense I think about like who really needs um Trump to win and I think it yeah the Innovation economy to a certain extent I I do have some hope that the Democrats are serious about a proon inovation crypto policy but like you know I think specifically about salana and like you know they have that four and a half five million token

unlock coming or starting in March of next year like they probably really need that ETF to soak up at least some of that demand and so like I do think you know I heard Obi say that you know eth is Trump trade bitcoin's all weather you know Soul whatever but it's like I I think eth and Bitcoin do well under either Administration but Soul really needs that ETF and I don't even think in a trump Administration comes next year and so maybe the timing is is even off if that happens so it's so asset specific yeah I agree um and you know I guess we'll just have to we'll have to see there's a lot of daylight in between now and the election um yeah I don't know if you guys saw also but there was a pretty big spread in between predicted

and poly Market which I thought was pretty interesting it's probably just the cost of arving those two markets is very low I also I mean I think there's been a lot more that's been bet on poly Market there's like an $800 rtion for predict it something like that um but there was sort of an interesting debate because you know probably there's a bias in crypto um you know for Trump because he'd be friendlier towards people in the US that type of thing but it was interesting to see the spread in between those two prediction markets uh for sure um I think the liquidity the liquidity on predicted is just not a fair compar makes it not a fair comparison yep y um all right last last question for you on the um before we get into some of the more crypto stuff but just on this jop

revision number and you know what you guys sense coming up so we've got Jackson hle um we're recording this on Thursday so you know Pal's going to address people tomorrow um and Vance like you were saying this I feel like this is when he sort of makes these big uh shifts uh and he used to more speak to the mind of the FED than any specific policy decision I feel like what's being debated right now is a mix between a 25 basis point cut versus potentially 50 um and with maybe even 25 it I guess it depends on depends on your view what would be more bullish I think a 50 basis point cut a couple of weeks ago would have been more bearish because there was the idea that there was actual trouble in the economy whereas today I don't really think that exists quite so much

anymore um and then what do your guys take on this huge revision number you know I'm I I know that there in in previous minutes the fed you know indicated hey they were a little bit skeptical about the jobs numbers that they were seeing but it seems like a massive revision to me um and you know I don't want to like mid curve this because I don't spend a lot of time you know the BLS d and I don't know how common this is and all that type of thing but seems pretty significant from my standpoint but what do you guys think it's very concerning that we are 800,000 jobs off yeah and that the employment rate is 4.3 unemployment rate is

4.3% if I'm poell I'm kind of thinking um we hiked too late we did beat inflation I mean like let let's just throw you throw these numbers up um I just put it in our chat you know we we did beat inflation inflation is in the twos and you know we'll see what September looks like but with oil dropping and gas dropping I don't know if you guys have noticed but gas costs a lot less right now than than it did even a year ago like are we going to get sub two and I think that's where this deflationary bust type idea really starts to come into play and so I would expect his

tomorrow to say something like we believe we are you know effectively done bringing inflation down to its Target uh we will do whatever we can not to cause it to rise but I think their sense is that they're going to shift more towards the Dual mandate which is full employment and inflation uh versus just focusing on inflation they may even say that their focus is now the unemployment side versus inflation so what do the risk to tomorrow's meeting you know Powell comes out and says look like you know next move could be a hike again but like I don't know that that that wouldn't fit with how I understand the FED to work what what

does Joseph Wang say that's a great question I'm not actually sure I'm sure he's probably doing some sort of overview or something today um but I would uh I would I would definitely we've probably we've referenced him on the show a couple times he's fed guy on Twitter and he used to actually be a traiter uh at the fed and he's got a lot of great perspective on not I mean he's he's a great reader of marcet but he's got a lot of great perspectives on how the FED tends to think about things um just from having worked there for a number of years and so yeah we should see what he's got to say he literally does not miss no no that man since 2021 has been spoton and you know he's not like bare hold like a lot of you know more macro

oriented accounts are where just feel like I've been reading Perma bear stuff for years uh and he he's been pretty bullish the last couple years so he's still very bullish last time I checked on his views a couple weeks ago like still bullish this year um the under 24 so I mean I I'm just looking at his tweets right now uh he thought the the N selloff was over done he bought that and he's not going to feel comfortable until post election he's got some comments on the FED never really believed that the employment picture was as rosy as some people said it was it it like it seems like he's messaging that they're going to be pretty doish tomorrow do you guys remember we talked about on the show a couple it might have been like over a month ago now but there was this article

in the guardian where people's s like various sentiment gauges from people was was not matching up with the data that was coming in from the economy so they pulled people and they asked what do you think the unemployment rate is and do you think we're in a recession what's the price of that like how much has the S&P 500 gone up or down this year and everything that was kind of uh pulled was just very bearish everyone assumed the S&P was down um that unemployment was way higher than it was and it's just interesting now to see this revision come back because maybe people maybe that sentiment gauge from people was actually more right than the data was you know it feels like people knew something a little bit uh it always kind of is but like it's just like which people it feels like real economy people

are very much in that camp but like you know macro Twitter people have been calling for a recession for I mean like I don't know if you know David Rosenberg is but dude was the chief Economist of Goldman Sachs and he's been calling her for recession since like 2022 and it still hasn't come um and I think when it does potentially come will be next year but by that time like we may be out of this recession but like again everything will lag you know Trump will come into an economy that looks like it's kind of on its knees and he's gonna kind of do whatever he needs to do to bring it back up including just unilaterally cutting raides yeah it actually was I mean uh Rosie did but it was I think it was like 99 economists surveyed by Bloomberg out of 100 czy amount thought that there was

going to be a recession and yeah just wait you got you got the the yield cover inv version now you've got the PSM rule you've got like basically every rule that has been a prediction of recessions is either going to be all the bunt or this is going to be like the Astro tier or or you know we're heading into something but I I agree I mean look the the data doesn't suggest that we're in a full-blown recession right now it may feel that way way um but it's not you know it's definitely not something that is uh that's actively happening I I I also think back to like if you go back and reread some of the reports and some of the um perspectives from late 2007 into early 2008 because

technically the recession started in 2000 like mid2 2008 before leing Brothers collapse because remember bear Stern sold in in March of 2008 you kind of had indications and I I was literally taking my first econ class in the fall of 2007 and I remember like the big question on the test was like do you think we're already in a recession and it it is it is like kind of a question as to when these things start and when can you feel kind of the directionality heading in that way um and does it actually ever get there so I I'm not counting it out um a possibility but I think frankly if it is one it's going to be pretty like mild or medium it's not going to be insane um if it is if there is a technical recession uh but I also

think you know we could we could ultimately just move past this yeah we could we could I I have noticed like I still um there's so many industries that are kind of still in purgatory I still keep tabs on entertainment companies because I used to work in kind of I used to work at Netflix so like you know it's interesting to kind of still track them they're dealing with the loss of um lab Sports you know they're trying to restructure basically all of the traditional entertainment companies like they're kind of pushing along On A String commercial real estate very similar traditional Venture very similar like there still is so much digestion to happen and it makes me kind of seem or feel like a little bit like it's all

going to happen at once either rates come down and all this stuff gets restructured or it hits a hits a wall at some point um you know I asked uh we used to work with you guys know Ted sides of capital allocators and he he was the guy that actually took the other side of the buffet bet on hedge fund versus S&P 500 performance like 10 15 years ago um right right yeah he's kind of an OG like fun to funds guy and he's he's actually just really nice dude and got a really solid head on his shoulders but he I remember I asked him once we recorded a podcast and this must have been years ago and there was some you know some macro thing that was on the horizon that I was like worried about and I was like how do you deal with this

like how have you dealt with it and he was like look I've been in the room when people tell me this guy is falling and it actually is falling like he was he was part of that you know uh that big short trade in 2007 and then he's like I've also been in a room with Jeremy Grantham in you know 1994 when he said we're on the precipice of a huge recession and then it's been a Non-Stop bull market for 15 years he's like No One Ever Knows I just stay fully allocated the whole time and don't worry about it I was like that sounds right like that sounds like it sounds dumb but it is the actual correct strategy like kind of any stock think from 2010 to today maybe except for the financials has done extremely extremely well it's never really paid to bet against stocks

especially American stocks and leading economic IND indicator macro is so tough because like you're dealing with a sample size of like okay the last time you know this this curve or that curve de inverted you know out of the past six times you know five have been a recession it's like well that's still only six data points yeah you brought that any serious data science in a tech company they just be like what am I supposed to do with this um so especially in an era where these numbers seem less and less reliable like I I'm just kind of like stay long is the mentality you know what also this is a funny kind of meta commentary to make on a podcast but there is almost like a negative correlation with people that sound

really analytical and smart on some of these podcasts versus actually great investors like it I don't know it's because you're right it sounds better right to like walk through a chart and point to some indicator and say seven out of the last eight times this happened and you know in reality a lot a lot of the people that have the gift for making money it that's not I mean you guys know guess what guess what guess what Mike guess what Mike the best macro or the best hedge fund traders who are making these trades are not going on podcast yeah no and and you know um the best macro Traders are up like five or six per. yeah you know then bad years they're down two or three% and like Billman right he's up six% on the year

and like you know if you think about I I always find the anecdotes are like I spent a lot of my career manipulating data and you know putting it into presentations and all that stuff like the data can kind of always lie to you because at the end of the day there's some analysts tagging the data with specific things and that can manifest weird but like if I look at the people that I know who've gotten very wealthy off of stocks or crypto or whatever they're not like pair trading in and out whatever they're just like going into a coma on conviction assets that's just kind of how you do it there's a great uh I think Mark yuso gave this anecdote a number of years ago but he was like the Fidelity at one point produced a study of who did the

best in their brokage portfolios trade over a long period of time and people that did the best were the people that passed away because they just never traded stocks and they held it for a long period of time but all right I wanted to get your guys perspective actually on the there's been a little bit of drama around the uh the launch of story protocol so story is a an IP specific blockchain U and this was there was a big around that they raised they raised a total of 100 this was a little bit confusing in the announcement so they raised an $80 million series B they raised 40 before that for a total or 60 before that I guess for a total of 140 I think is is the actual story and uh there's been I think that people are a

little bit split I don't know that much about story myself I'm not an expert but I think people are split and there are some people that say look this is great because we've had a lot of very infra specific stuff and this feels like a real world use case and then there's another group that says hey maybe this feels a little bit like kind of one of those big party rounds and you know do we really need IP on the blockchain and it was just interesting and you know I don't mean to criticize here at all but uh one of the uh the founders um don't store s Lee on Twitter s yeah he you know kind of specifically called out uh both monad and bar chain um you know he said s y story seems to be playing a radically different game from other crypto info players like monad and

bar chain uh that person was almost daring me to consider whether I could be confident about carving a new Niche and not the usual um same old infra masturbation or or playing a different slightly technically better generalized blockchain and you know both uh you know ke jumped in the comments was just like hey I hope your team is successful and you know Smokey from bear chain was like Hey dude there's a little bit of weird shot to take uh you know in your announcement and it kind of started this beef and I don't know what you guys think about this or it's maybe it's just more indicative of this kind of PVP you know attitude on Twitter these days in general but I thought it was kind of interesting uh announcement kind of like the dawn Draper meme in the elevator I don't think about you at all

yeah I mean I'd kind of forgotten about story protocol and I I I do think like IP on chain is is a it's kind of a nebulous Market but like I do think like selling digital Collectibles putting know IP on chain that does you know hopefully address the or expand the addressable Market but you know there's a lot of different shapes that that can take like be chain is developing IP like the chain itself has a mascot people are starting to build different types of derivatives of that and and start to push it out more broadly beyond the bar chain ecosystem especially in Japan and Korea and so it kind of like Biz like a fundamental misunderstanding of what specifically bar chain is going after and then you know monad it's it's like look like like

you're you're just going to hate on these guys for developing a fast and cheap blockchain in a space where these are the largest outcomes I I don't really get it it just feels like you know to Michael's point we don't think about them at all and they're trying to get into the conversation which I understand and respect but they're going about it kind of the exact wrong way like trying to use the bully pulpit to uh beat people in the submission and convince them that you're the right kind of way to play the space I don't think I've ever seen that work but I guess we'll see you know only one way to find out yeah I think that there's you know I felt for a little while that there's opportunity for some protocol and this could actually be either like a new layer one or an L2 or any any any

developer platform to sort of counterposition this infra fatigue narrative and just say hey we're really open to apps or something like that but I think there's probably a line in between you know respectful counterposing a a narrative versus calling specific protocols out as just a general PR strategy personally but maybe there's some back story there that I'm just missing but it's it's been kind of funny and this has come up a couple of times with people that we've been talking to recently um whether it's other investors people in the space or people who work for these actual like other protocols they'll the the presentation uh of sort of like the market assessment of what's

really doing well right now it's sort of like uh well you've got bechain and you've got monad and then you've got us and it's basically just the three of us that are competing it's like wait it's only three of us it's only three of us one one of these is not like the other two funny it's uh I look you know respect to anybody that can jump into into the fry and um want to put their name in the Hat and try to go for something big I I don't um never would uh put shade on anyone who's ambitious like that but you do have to understand where you're positioned in the market what you're going after and why two of those are very successful probably

should focus on maybe the why and doing some of those things as opposed to just throwing your name in and like marketing yourself as like the top three yeah and the last thing I'll say is like the the hyperfocus on the next billion users I totally get that but in our view you have to build that sequentially like Bitcoin worked because there's a strong group of core believers they built you know Financial Services different things on chain they slowly evangelized it to kind of the the concentric circles moving outwards from them and then it broke out same with eth same with salana same with any blockchain that's had real adoption trying to go from like zero to one is a lot different than going from like zero to a billion people so yeah I'm kind of

suspect of the story strategy and I think more elements of the story strategy are contained in bar chain than they'd like to admit but you know that's why we have markets let's decide who's more valuable I've got a so that that really resonates with uh you know just in blockworks have seen a lot of different companies protocols crypto CI companies whatever try to go to market and I think the ones that do it most successfully are thoughtful about where they are in their current stage right so if you're a if you're a new L1 or L2 or something very crypto native you your Market isn't the concentric circles outside of crypto yet right your Market is people in crypto today and then you get to a point where you've saturated your existing market and then you try to you know get concentric circles outwards

but I think and look I understand it's it's really tough as a Founder actually to stand up there and tell create a mission which is simultaneously inspiring enough and I think that's why you got a lot of the what we're getting one billion user type things you know but also realistic at the same time like we can deliver and it's just something that you gotta figure out as you go but I I would definitely say the teams I've seen do it the smartest are like all right this is where we want to be on a one to twoe time Horizon this is our audience and then that's going to change and build you know once we hit XYZ sort of point so just something that you probably gota evolve as you grow um last thing I'd like to talk about is the uh the Tron Sun pump I don't know seen this

but um oh yeah basically Justin son and and Co have kind of launched a pumped up on competitor and they've actually succeeded in getting a lot of people over from salana at least from the timeline on Twitter it seems and like the other chart that I saw was just like this Dex volume that was like you know 70% down I think like week over week just from pumped out fund launches slowing and some people going to to Tron and like this isn't meant to [ __ ] on salana but like the mcoin market is extremely fickle um and it's controlled by you know a small handful of insiders and and their kind of Leverage and an ability to you know promote their thing and it's just very interesting to see Tron taking a shot at

salana it's um it's you know it's it's interesting because you haven't you've seen just SOL just kind of like Insurgent versus incumbent for so long and now the shoe's on the other foot which is a different kind of perspective for the market to take so to agree with all of that I I was talking to Kane about this and uh he he made the point which I think is hilarious which is there is a big marketing Miss on this they should have just called it just pump yeah just pump just. pump uh but and because everything else is called just in in that uh in that ecosystem right yeah the uh the I think one of the things um you know that's

interesting about it is is this going to be like the the continuation of the meta of you see one thing working on another platform and you just whitewash it into this ecosystem of everybody else boom we have the same thing rip replace and I think that's kind of a a question as to where value acrs and and this is like it's pretty insane the amount of activity that happens on Tron and I think most people don't know this uh but like USD t on Tron is one of the primary forms of payment in Middle Eastern countries in Southeast Asian countries and it's one of the most used

applications of crypto probably RIT large and where I you would kind of say okay well it's just Justin Sun maybe trying to like misdirection against this whole rap BTC you know Kur fluffle that that popped up a week or two ago um and and misdirect but it's also uh I think something that if you have a universe of users that are bought into your ecosystem that are yeah exactly that are using and have a ton of capital on your platform and you have an application that you think would really work we saw this at Snapchat we would invent you know stories and Instagram would copy it a year later it's and it doesn't it doesn't matter you know good artist copy

great artist deal but I think this uh this one could potentially have some interesting ramifications because of the amount of activity and users that are already on trone there is a little bit of an uncom I I don't know how to square this circle I'd be curious what you guys think about this but I think there's a little bit of an uncomfortable reality where some of the chains that are actually doing pretty well at acquiring users are the more centralized ones than we'd like to admit like Tron is a really good example of that I whatever maybe it's decentralized I don't know that much about Tron but I'm assuming you know it's not as caliz ethereum certainly and uh the other success stories here are bass um you know which is cool as bass

is and it's awesome that they're doing well it's it's a pretty centralized platform right and uh and then the other one is uh telegram as well like ton um you know the alliance guys are uh I'm recording a podcast with them tomorrow but Jason went and spoke to their like cohort and he said basically everyone there was building on ton as a blockchain and I don't know I I don't really know how to square this circle that I'm I would consider myself like a true core believer of the you know decentralization principles but also you can't really argue at the market that these more centralized chains are doing a better job of acquiring users in a lot of in a lot of cases so how do you guys square that Circle I mean centralized chains maybe not the best description but like you

know there's there's varying degrees of decentralization and I think the l2s like to basis point like they do pretty well at acquiring users and they're all just native to the evm ecosystem um I do think with Tron specifically it kind of dispels this narrative that like the evm is incompatible with onboarding user retail flow so like you know we we've kind of dispelled that with ton I think the question is like what are the actual you know daily user numbers like we've taken a few pitches in the past couple of weeks where people are like the 200 million they claim is more like five million uh if you can get them on chain and like the people who are playing uh we we got really good data on this

the other day it was like the people who play games only 25% of them connect to wallet so it's like you know 1% of the the 200 million are are using the game then 25% of those are connecting a wallet and so like all forms of onboarding are not creaded equally but I think where my head goes with Tron is like okay how hard is it to recreate this mem coin ecosystem and how durable is it because like Bas had meme coins for a while like dgen and you know the different kind of meme coins that were popping up there you know soul I mean it just looks like pump fun is slowing Tron kind of feels like it's just starting to hit that Crescendo of like okay there's a lot of people bridging people are making money but even now like you know one of the

guys I follow who does a bunch of meme coin trading on Tron is like I went from Smart train right or sorry Tron they were like you know I went from uh 120k and profit to losing you know 50 Grand I'm done with this so like you know the sugar Highs are lasting less and less with mcoin specifically oh yeah I was saying that I think there's even a rotation from Tron to binance Smart chain now I think yeah to yeah yeah so I'm with you the the mem coin thing is just really tough uh I still Michael you gave a definition a little while ago that they're like kind of similar to like early internet viral videos which is still my sort of favorite mental model for thinking about it um but yeah it's I don't know I'm on the fence about

like I think I I I kind of have a allergic reaction to people moralizing about it I I don't really like people being like oh this is a bad no moralizing not allowed yeah not allowed but at the same time yeah I agree with you on the Dynamics I mean we've talked about this there's just so much Supply and I just see the amount of meme coins getting created on pump. fun seems like more people are losing money than making money I I don't know I but but you now have this very interesting dichotomy of you know low float High FTB Tech coins on one side people hate those for I think good reason um but they can become huge you meme coins and the pump fun trenches infinite Supply on the other side and I think like we're getting to a process of elimination where people are

going to be like all right I'm gonna evaluate this on user count or fees or some fundamentals like I just can't keep just like getting the euth in Asia roller coaster done to me um and it's like D5 1.0 is catching a bid these days which is pretty interesting like a is doing very well you know Maker's doing well snx is doing well um I would not be surprised to see that continue yeah especially if uh Kane uh knocks out David at at permissionless that'll be the that'll be I just want I just want to know if that if that poster his real real body or uh or who whose body he used for yeah I don't I can't comment on whether or not those are real bodies but

I think it'll be a good fight actually yeah let's finish with this who you got yeah I mean I feel like I'm I'm much closer with David I I got I'm gonna back my boy here uh and uh I'll give it to I'll give it to David here but I haven't really seen either of them fight and I haven't seen Kane in real life so I don't know how big he is uh I think K's taller he's big he's lanky you know what a lot of it is reach too I think reach exactly yeah I'm I'm gonna give the advantage to Kane based on reach okay yeah I'm I'm gonna go with Kane too he's uh he's got some pent up rage you know as well so let's see what happens okay I've got another one for you guys actually just a fun do you guys listen

you guys listen to The Joe Peter teal interview yes yep what do you guys think about it takes I mean Peter is remarkably consistent he's very smart he's a really smart the same it's the same talking points he's been espousing for the past 10 years I think they've become more and more true the mo the interesting ones that he's come up with recently I don't know if they're on this pod is like we've gone way too far in the direction of like quantification like even like people like studying engineering at school like his new thing is like you know the English majors and the lit majors and the humanities majors are going to have a big up in a world where just like prompting chat GPT to build an app or doing creative things are more valuable than just like kind of monotonous

repetitive tasks um and I think crypto is a pretty good example of that you know like you have to believe you have to be creative you have to kind of acknowledge that this is a different path of technology so I think it's that was probably the most interesting take as a Classics major I endorse that message [Laughter] my my kind of like meta theme of that entire conversation is um it was like a master class and how to how to think uh um from a contrarian perspective uh by default and you take basically every single pre presenting of a situation the Epstein situation with Bill Gates you know how to think about you know the

over quantification like how to think about you know markets like everything that he talked about the the basic understanding that he started with was what if everything that we know is wrong or everything that everybody believes is wrong or maybe it's a part of it but like what if it's just a simpler answer and I think that like that's what I took away from it is just like the the best way to have most thought-provoking uh conversations or perspectives is to start with a straw man you know what you know what I appreciate about him as well I've never really heard him talk that much I I'm like kind of familiar with some of his bigger ideas but he does a good job of being contrarian but not crazy

contrarian all like sometimes you listen to contrarians and like are you just doing this for the sake of being a devil's advocate or is this your brand or there's always another conspiracy theory or something and you you had a lot of aams Razer in him it it did you know he was good at being like no you know joean I don't think that the pyramids were battery H you know that that that wouldn't actually make that much sense and yeah it was an interesting intellectual matchup yeah for sure one Joe really wanted to talk about aliens and Peter was like got a couple theories let's move back Joe was like no no no let's like let's go back let's keep it's like just just dude it's so funny I yeah I did feel a little bit going through the conversation like a a sort of descendant

to Madness as well but he had one he had one point where that I thought was kind of funny he was he was talking about the Bill Gates uh you know theory about maybe he like locked up his wife Melinda you know via this foundation and I was like right brother brother you got a foundation you you got a foundation too and uh little little uh you know little boyfriend on the side you know I was like okay man it's a little projection there but uh yeah I thought that was funny for people who listen to the podcast um I thought that yeah I was gonna say everybody everybody now needs to go listen to it understand sorry that was such a deep cut on like two hours into this podcast uh but anyway last uh last thing maybe I was watching the DNC

last night and this is kind of on that same Epstein thread what exactly happened Etc and Bill Clinton spoke last night and I think like older people know Bill Clinton as a politician um philanthropist whatever I feel like all young people know him as the Epstein guy like that's all the context that we have and for him to be on that stage with that context was very very weird on a night where they were celebrating like women and reproductive freedoms which you know we we believe in obviously but you got Bill Clinton saying that stuff which is a bit weird you know what I was thinking about this it in even in the context of like conspiracy theories and

and all that type of stuff is there there are some things that happen in history like I listen to this podcast I've told you guys about a million times the rest is history but you know they'll go through things and they'll just say things very matter factually uh like you know during the French Revolution oh this guy was supposedly on this one side but he was doing this other thing and you just don't even question it you're like yeah of course they were doing that and right there are lots of things right now like I was just thinking about that within the context of the jobs report it's like no well you know it's not some you know there's no meaning behind it right it was just like an innocent mistake but if you were listening to this as a podcast a hundred years from

now it's like oh yeah the economy was slowing down and yeah there were a little bit of a fib on the numbers you'd be like oh yeah that makes sense but it feels very conspiratorial in the moment you know because I don't know I just uh just just to get the tinf hat back out I think we got to get the tin hat back out here yeah all right fellas uh this was a really fun one um Michael enjoy your your offsite and uh yeah we'll do it again L next week peace hey everyone hope you all enjoyed today's episode wanted to give a final shout out to namada again a team that is near and dear to my heart they are building the shielded AET Hub which is protecting the future multi-chain talk a little bit about how that works in the mid roll but

for now what I would highly recommend that you do is go check them out they're in their main net launch phas you can follow along with everything at n.net you can start rewarding Yourself by shielding your actions and strengthening data privacy for all across the multichain so thanks again to MA for all the great work that you're doing