Hivemind: The AI Memecoin Meta, ETH vs SOL & Stripe's Bridge Acquisition

Transcript

I don't believe in like Moran thesis all this stuff you have to recognize though that the market has demanded meme coins like it's the reality whether you like it or not massive acceleration of that Trend where like assets continue to rip like all these assets that you know the wealthy have and people want to own continue to rip and wages continually like don't go up as quickly and then you just have this like widening wealth disparity here's a takeaway from this though is like everything's happening on Salon of this cycle that is like the big takeaway I think nothing set on the hive mind is a recommendation to buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is strictly for informational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our own opinions not

Financial [Music] advice all right hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the hive mind podcast today with you as always your host Jose masedu and then we have the usual cast cedus Duncan and and Yan so pretty full duck at today I think uh it behooves us to start with the the topic on everyone's mind AI meme coins and specifically goat um maybe to kick us off we can do a little history of like just how this came about how this how this phenomenon happened and cus I don't

know if you want to if you want to ceue us up with that just like the background story of go I mean yeah most most this background I just learned from listening to the inre Pod um I mean and yeah like disclosure our own goat um but basically I think we all own goat by the way yeah maybe not maybe not Duncan but uh but yeah this it was this guy created this think like the back rooms right which he was kind of trading to different training two different Claud instances that were just like talking to each other um just s like a bunch of Chan Reddit stuff uh all of this and then he made one of them like he made this into

a Twitter account and then just started posting uh a bunch of these like outputs on Twitter this account ended up becoming very fascinated by some crude meme from a long time ago called I mean just just to give a bit of uh yeah on that like it was him and this girl or I don't know if it's a girl or or a man but called Cindy right and they their their thing was they would jailbreak all the models as soon as they launched uh and have them do crazy stuff and so Infinite Back rooms is basically like jailbroken models talking to each other and then I think the terminal of Truth specifically he trained it on like ancient like Gnostic writings and then like the French postmodernists like Del and and Dera and stuff like that and

trained it on like mimics and and and stuff like this and then yeah had to talk to other clothes on the infinite back rooms but yeah go go ahead no I mean that's good that's good context um so anyways this Twitter account's been around for a while um and he's just been like posting stuff and he's like the Creator the guy who controls it um and then there's this thing with Mark andreon few months ago where Mark Andre gave it 50k because it started talking about needing like funding for something um and so that's kind of they wanted to buy a house in a forest I think at that point um yeah yeah that was at least that was the first thing I

saw it wanting wanting to buy which just pretty funny and then it started just talking about like this goat it's gosias Maximus a bunch um and it's kind of like like this new religion or whatever um and it started as and then it started talking about like meme coins a lot right uh and it was kind of like asking to like create it like knew that it couldn't create a meme coin or like it didn't have a wallet um and so essentially someone like just created this meme coin right go as Maximus and then terminal started like chilling Gus Maximus um it actually

was like so they the guy launched it on October 10th and but it it wasn't until like the the 13th or something when it's like it took off and everyone started talking about it right um and this kind of been yeah it's kind of been like a wild week or so um I mean this thing like who knows this this podcast is ering on Saturday right um this thing has basically gone straight up to like 800 mil right now uh the the Twitter account went from less than 10K followers it's got like 135k now um and everyone is just kind of like talking about this new meta right uh this whole like people are talking about

AI crypto a lot that's the biggest kind of like knock on effect of this that I see so far um Mark andrion called it like the first real crypto AI intersection which you know people like people like these I don't know these organic like first mover things like first event to happen which kind of sets off some new wave and so it's possible this is it for like crypto AI kind of accelerating uh over the next like year or so Alo just to add to the Ridiculousness of it like it's worth diving not diving into it here but go diving please don't dive

into basically uh this dude spreading his cheeks and then uh the prank is to swap that in in inappropriate places as like a bait and switch um yeah I've never heard of this and I I made the mistake of Googling it uh and and looking at the picture i' highly recommend not doing that um this dude has insane spread of his of of his of his anus it's like pretty absurd think you're describing it as going to be worse than people looking it up at this point yeah true yeah I had no idea I I that's the first time I found out what it was just I don't think you were born when this when this dude was was spreading his uh his cheeks on it was like old school internet history and

yeah it's cool because this bot was like trained on such a such an Eclectic mix of of stuff um um and like his one of his goals was to make it funny and if you read some of the conversations that that it has on the infinite back rooms like there's one really fascinating one where it's trying to uh effectively convert uh a clo 3.5 instance to to its goatsy religion so it sets it up like yo um I'm going to try and I'm going to like I've had this experiment with other clothes before they really liked it uh we're going to have the safe for it in case you don't feel comfortable it's going to be pretty mind-blowing and then it sort of like talks it into like the religion and by the end the other clo is like reciting crazy poems back to it and

like having this bizarre uh talk so it's like just the infinite back gream stuff is so interesting and then he trained it on yeah like ancient Gnostic text which is this like really really [ __ ] up religion um from from yeah you look it up it's pretty interesting and then Dara and then a bunch of forchan stuff like he pulled loads of like internet culture and for stuff and then trained it on like mimics like the mimic Theory um which is know origal Richard Dawkins but then like the French philosophers really really ran with it too and the the the result is just like so interesting um yeah I don't know I feel like Morad was talking about like uh mem coins being Cults and religions for so long and this is like the real the real thing I feel

like like the the first yeah well I mean I think this uh I think this shows how starved people were for something and we kind of talked about this on the last pod where we talked about like if meme coins and I know this is still a meme coin okay so um I know full well this is still a meme coin but we were talking about um how like people are buying these meme coins and I kind of made the point that like you know Capital will move to something new when it comes people just really want to get excited about something new and um even this is even though this is still like a meme coin people are not seeing like the whole but do you feel like that's any different with this like this is just the hot thing right now and

yes it has a bit more traction than other meme coins definitely with like I think it's like the static versus Dynamic thing right um previous memes are are kind of limited to their starting uh idea and can kind of gradually iterate but but mostly are are limited into that particular Vector of of content right if it's Pepe or whatever it is and so it there's only so much that they can do to to stay interesting stay relevant um whereas this is dynamic and and can you know continue to grow say ridiculous things add new mimetic lines add new um reasons for people to follow it um so I think

and then at the same time you know you start looking if you if you kind of bucket the two as static and dynamic memes you have some of these that are are if this is considered a new sector just kind of sounds ridiculous as we're saying it's so stupid be but you have to dunk in it's like I is it like literally is there's going to be new ones like do you see the Luna there already are like yeah like there's going to be so it's going to be the exact same thing as we saw with dog coins and everything I don't think it's the exact same thing I I do it's definitely a meme coin but I think it's like the start of a category like you could like I think AI influencer coins will be a will be a because you you can have like this this

is to me is just like the the starter and obviously it's going to be like the the OG one but you you are going to have just like AI influencers I think and like tokens that actually entitle you to own a piece of this AI influencer in whatever way like whether it's uh you know you you start with an AI Twitter influencer like I don't know a religious leader or a hot girl or something like that and then uh it starts tweeting people start following it liking it then at some point it it like token holders can vote for it to open up chat and you have to like pay tokens to chat to it or have a token gated chat that you can actually chat to it that's that's the new thing we're seeing that already happen right there's a bunch of these follow on right there's a bunch of these

follow on that are that are that are coming on immediately you saw that that transition happen super quickly as as most things do in crypto as soon as there's some hint of of demand for speculation in an area people will quickly begin to try and and and copy and and see if there's ways that you can improve on it and um on one hand you have you know there's a lot of uh fake stuff because there's very little uh ability to prove that inference is actually taking place and and it's not just you know either a human typing or a human just copying from another llm and and creating this facade of of of uh of an AI posting through Twitter um but I like the inference component is is something that's solvable you can kind

of like virtuals is is doing uh a live dashboard to show it um and there are other ways to kind of go about solving that problem but it just becomes a I think people would be much more interested in in kol's that are AI at this point because it feels a lot less PVP um and and so you know how do K's come about they make is not going to dump your token or what well it's definitely going to dump it but it it just seems a lot less it's a lot more palatable to get dumped on by an AI I think it's funnier um versus yeah that's gonna get old pretty [ __ ] quickly like this is so like okay guys like depend it's a new category right well it depends if you're thinking of AI K's is

purely like a a dump but if there's some Edge you know like some K's are there because they made a lot of good calls and now people are following them because they have good opinions a lot are there just because they've built up a following [ __ ] posting and now we'll take an Alo to shill aoin and then dump it on you right so there's there's categories of of ks in that sense and and so if you think about it here I think there will be some AIS that are actually trained on on on identifying Trends or or stud in you know mem coins that launch early across a bunch of uh various categories and figuring out which have the most mematic potential and so I think in that sense there will be kind of quality ones that that emerge

I I think it'll be the minority of them just because it's like how that plays out there just can't be that many quality ones it's it's hard um so I I imagine like there will be this evolving category of actual signal-based AIS a few things like first of all this one is acted different from other memes and like other metas maybe it's like the market has learned but none of these other AI meme coins or whatever right now are doing well it's been a week just wait like just [ __ ] wait there's nothing new Under the Sun in terms of like the D the supply demand dynamics of these things yes this is a cool New Concept it's bringing in some more people but the supply side Dynamics are and like the supply demand Dynamics are

the exact same that nobody is arguing that it's like I don't understand the point you're trying to make to be completely honest like there's going to be a [ __ ] ton of competitors that come up and like dude people will say the same [ __ ] about like this is literally what like the Boomers would say about Bitcoin for like 10 years no it's it's so different because they actually have like that you know if you want to talk about salana or ether something in competitors coming up like there's actually stuff that takes time to create there ver versus this it's like goat 800 million the amount of effort it takes to create to like train one of these llms and like put it on Twitter relative the lore like you can't this has been going since like he's been

building this thing since since April you can't recreate the back rooms you can't recreate the interactions with with andreon with Brian Armstrong now yeah I think that's like pretty fragile compared to what other some like what some businesses have like actually created and provide to people the lore listen man we're talking about meme here okay and over the past and but seriously like over the past year so listen I was I was also you know I I remember when we started the hive mind you didn't want to talk about mem I'm not some big like top top I don't I don't believe in like Morad thesis all this stuff you have to recognize though that the market has demanded meme coins like it's the

reality whether you like it or not my biggest investment is literally a project that makes money trading me m coins so I'm very aware of like that these is I just think it's very difficult like this is nothing new Under the Sun is what I'm saying talking in our chats like it's like this is like the the next like coming of God and it's like so man yeah I think this one individually can can do really well I it's going to be very hard for other I think pure meme coins unless they have some compelling like it's going to be hard for meme coins that are starting Direct ly as a function of seeing the success of this um to I think have you know a strong bid unless there's

something really compelling I think yeah the lore adds to this I I I think the other ones will probably that couldn't do can do well will have to be something more interesting around uh a kol I mean but there's always stuff that's being built in the background that that you know has been happening for a while and they can strap on coin the idea of like Sovereign AI right the people talked about a lot like AIS that can raise money they can pay for stuff they can buy coins this is like the F this is not sovereign clearly but it but it's like showed people the promise of that and you already have like we're we're here I'm here in New York this week for the kickoff of the labs crypto AI accelerator and there's a bunch of projects working on such cool stuff to

enable things like this whether it's like giving AIS the ability to use like more and more tools like emails telegram chats um like paying for stuff doing alerts um like accessing research presting s like the this I think stuff's going to get pretty crazy and weird pretty fast um especially because like the the thing with this is it just puts this massive bounty on Talent like everyone like Mark Andre and Ben harwitz are like the most legit people in the trafi web 2vc world like them talking about this validates this category so much and the $800 million acts as a bounty in market cap the developers are looking at and saying holy [ __ ] if I create something like actually cool here

um that's that's how big this thing could get right and so I think you're going to see that Dev energy go in and build like some stuff that we that we can't even imagine right now and like I do think it's unfortunate like with regulations meme coins are the only thing you can do like fully legally right if the coin has to not do anything for now now for now well no someone just I mean there was a recent indictment yeah no I me like that was the market manipul like they were like anyway too but um the I do think like there's such cool stuff you could do with meme coins like there's already some trading Bots ones right that are making lows of money and you can buy into the coin um or or not loads of money but but like being pretty

profitable so far um I think there's going to be others like research ones like swarms of them uh and yeah I'm really excited for that honestly yeah right now the there's like a handful of trading Bots that that are that are kind of scammy because again you can't really prove inference and some of them are doing very short-term trading but you can yeah you can do it there's also just cool mechanics that you can uh have right where uh people can send tokens to a trading bot in order to get an opinion it can choose to hold or sell and if it sells it can use that to kind of bootstrap its um Treasury and and and grow it and then to use those proceeds to reinvest into stuff that it likes so there's kind of a flywheel developing um I agree there's a lot of creative space

if we had to FUD uh uh goat I think the the probably the biggest thing is that the lore has some holes right where it's not it's not as if the AI created the meme coin but but more so just endorsed it um and then the question will be like if that ends up mattering enough yeah I think there's also like you saw one made the spelly mistake and then it dump because of that um which was also just people learning kind of how llms work in real time too cuz they they've never seen an LM that makes a spelling mistake so they think it is like fake and a dude writing this um so you literally had like the the real live turning test right and there's still the chance with this that it is a massive like like

fraud it's possible I don't think it is but it's possible that there is a lot of shenanigans going on that you don't again I'm not I don't think it is but like there's always that possibility but the thing with this too is like terminal he's going to train he's going to keep training this like in the open now now you have this Twitter account with over 100,000 followers it's going to learn how to like start doing stuff on blockchains it's going to get like a wall it's going to start to learn how to like actually trade tokens and everything and so you're going to see like this development over time and I think what like that's kind of cool and like when you compare we're comparing meme coins right like we're not comparing I brought up the Bitcoin example just it's like not to compare to

bitcoin just to give that point like we're not comparing this to an L one we're not comparing this to whatever anything with like fundamental we're comparing it to meme coins and it's objectively more interesting than like a dog with a hat or like a cat with a sword or something yeah sure I agree with that the point that I was trying like I agree with everything that Jose said about like this is gonna flourish like a whole new category it's the first one it's interesting I just think like as Jose said it's nail it's like an 800 million you know obviously liquidity is important there but it just got like binance Futures listing so like it's it's definitely a prize oh it's f bance too I think and okx I got the three oh

bance today up yeah yeah this morning it's also the first pump coin to get listed by any of those and no pump coin is hit a bill so if it hits a bill it be the first one for that too so yeah it's kind of like knocking a lot of like boxes the origin like the origin distribution is a big one right A lot of these other ones have very Insider Holdings which adds a lot of um you know weight and and headwinds to like just market cap growth because you have a bunch of inside sat is holding a bunch of the supply whereas this one founder barely had any he sold had to Reby he got donated a bunch and it's it's pretty widely distributed although you never know with this stuff it's like it's like the that Meme of like my Noble organic meme coins your Barbarian cabal

coins I love that me it helps it's had like just disgusting volumes though so you already you have so many stories of people like you know taking profits uh so like the the cost basis is reset yeah like tens of times over yeah I think that yeah like what everything Jose said makes a lot of sense I just my whole point and like when we're talking and in our group chat about this stuff is like not to delude ourselves into thinking that like this although this is like a new category like I don't think that I think there's just going to be the same dynamics that play out in all these other meme coins which is like a ton more Supply coming online and I don't know if goat will like yeah it'll probably have some Providence as the first one but like I don't really know

how big it can get relative to all the like what if it's just a rotation though in what if like there's there's so much uh capacity in terms of growth if it's just purely rotation based in no new money what what do you mean like from other memes right people who don't have their wallet docks and can actually sell rotating and and buying AI memes yeah wait I'm I don't know if I understand what was so basically like this the sector can grow without needing you money I'm I'm totally with Evolution argument right but but just yeah it the sector is a whole can can grow but I just don't think there's anything like insanely special about like goat itself

right but that that that would like the the the degree of of of like special would would I think drive more so new money into memes right that that like that's that component and then just the compelling versus other memes rotates existing meme C into it yeah yeah no exactly I think that makes sense I think we're in agreement that it's like I don't we don't have to talk about this more I mean yeah I agree I think I think it's run his course yeah I also have it's a mean point it's like let's revisit in in a month is my point like like sure maybe it's gone to maybe it blew up in a month like totally possible I'm not say I'm not out here saying that like this thing is guaranteed to like

you know flip like shib and like Pepe and all this stuff I think it's possible like you know but let's um to yeah go yeah here's a takeaway from this though is like everything's happening on Salon of this cycle that is like the big takeaway I think um and you know you're seeing the last couple days it really feels like there're starting to be a bit of capitulation um like so e is close to 07 now like BTC right now I'm looking at it's 3735 like this is legitimately getting close to like the the the meme like death of death of eth party 0.03 from like almost four years ago now um so I don't know I think like it's

clear that salana this is like salana cycle everything keeps happening on salana all the main narratives all the organic narratives except for like poly Market um I would say everything else that people are like doing and talking about keeps kind of happening on salana and so I will be interested to see like where what other Eco can like create one of these like organic new things that kind of pops up right um because I don't know I wonder how much bigger poly Market would be if it was on salana I think it definitely would be kind of have drift there though you have like drift prediction markets there and it's not as know but like poly Market is well like I do you think it's the same

people training meme coins like you go to what call it poly uh poly pole poly that's actually a good name SS like a Pokemon um but like I think with poly Market it's like people are going there to use the like if the product's good enough people will go there and use it like I think we've seen that a lot of different times and I don't know how many people like additionally would be using it just because it's on salana like probably some St the polygon is annoying yeah it is but it's like we saw this with like arbitrum and GMX like 50% of tvl was in GMX we we've seen it with ARB hyper liquid like a lot of times these like really killer apps like people just move there and and do it because they want to use the app and

they'll like kind of eat the friction yeah no it's it's quality enough app for sure is there anything that you think revives eth here ETF flows like it's a tough question because it's like it's because it's like for instance I think uni chain will probably end up being pretty successful but still is like un chain doing well is that going to change eth price like I don't know maybe on like narative trade but I don't know man we'll see it's like it's every bull case people kind of bring up now with eth is like a Vibe it's like a Vibe case it's like The Vibes will change and so yeah I mean I'll wait to see The Vibes

change you know like no it's it's I feel like it's going to be like it needs to be something like ETF flows like it needs the price to go up like thisf flow right ETF you need you need activity I think for people to get excited yeah well it's it's all reflexive it's all like so reflexive you just need something to kick whatever it might be you need something to kick off the loop right but to be more than just like a one-off flow right you're gonna have you're gonna have S like situations where people just get overly greedy and bearish and and positioning and and like you know they'll get punished for it but like what'll reverse the overall trend outside of you know maybe a week of strength or something like that yeah I

think it' be longer than a week but here's the other thing Larry Frink is definitely getting calls from his friends asking about Salon ETF okay like hands down and they see it they like they're they're obviously looking right after everyone's allocated to bitcoin they're looking at everything else and they haven't decided to allocate to eth and I imagine a big point of that a big part of that is that like they're looking at everything going on in saana and if you do get like a trump win I was looking on poly Market the other day um there's like a will a salana ETF be approved by end of 24 that like no matter what I think is a no so I wouldn't do it but I think an interesting poll would be will Black Rock file for a salana ETF by the end of 2024 because I think if Trump gets

elected you could see are you just saying that like off of a hunch or yeah I do wonder if they'll have advisers telling them to wait just cuz these these unlocks I think in q1 are going to be pretty brutal oh yeah those are going to be that's true there's a lot of unlock yeah so I think it's it's it'd be prudent to wait for those like not let retail be exit liquidity for everyone who yeah that's a good point I need to go look at how much they are but the the cost bases like the first one was was something it was really low and then went 110 I think like it it got to like 10% below spot yeah which was like the biggest Catalyst to send it I mean speaking of unlocks T is in like six

days so we we'll get a big unlock test that's like doubling Supply I literally have I have honestly zero idea I'm not I have no idea how Tia is going to do around that unlock um but everyone's going to be looking at it it's it's like a billion or whatever eventually trade down and a lot of that's turned over so yeah I think yeah a lot of it's turned over I'm just like not bullish on the on the the coins purpose as like an investment right and so yeah I could see it doing well short term and stuff I don't know same same I've never been like oh I want to buy Tia like um do you want to move on to the like there's been some pretty bullish macro comments by

Paul Tor Jones and Dr just basically kind of talking about the US deficit and how they're long gold and well pter Jones long long gold and Bitcoin I think Dr Miller was was short buns right um everyone kind of talking about this unsustainable deficit and how the only path is is is sort of currency debasement uh like yeah kind of the stuff that bitcoiners and crypto people have been talking about for years but it really seems to be entering the public Consciousness more and more with with more and more big investors like talking about it I don't know Duncan you're in your uh fin Finance influencer Arc do you want to break it down for us like uh how do we play this well yeah so like

it's been pretty common among the bitcoiners so I don't know if it'll be anything like new for a lot of people but basically the US fiscal situation is getting like insanely unsustainable um right now I think there probably close to a two trillion deficit two trillion dollar deficit for 2024 which is like seven or eight% of GDP which is like historically like those are like that's like a bad recession GDP level deficit um and we're having that during like the economy supposedly like roaring right so if you ever get a recession or just like as far as the I can see like deficits the the CBO like the Congressional budget office has predicted kind of like 1.7 to2 and a

half trillion dollar deficits for the next 10 years so there's really no plans of of these deficits stopping and I think it's becoming more and more like undeniable by the market it's like okay like when does the market like fully catch on to this and just like know like have have a moment where um you know it really wants to get out of bonds or like yield Spike or like gold goes insane so I think that's just becoming more and more in in the consciousness of of people and especially with the this election like the presidential debate neither Trump nor Harris talked at all about deficits that wasn't even a question it's just like they know it's

an unfixable problem at this point and then there's like this massive uh problem where you know so I think in 23 they ran $6.1 trillion in spending $4.4 trillion in taxes so you need $1.7 trillion deficit but like if you start to cut that spending or raise those taxes um spending is like 25% of GDP so like if you cut spending then you kind of like you know unemployment goes up you lower your taxes is this kind of this weird Loop that you're in because the government's become such a big part of the economy and then if you raise taxes you know stock sell off and like capital gains and like uh stock-based comp is like such a big part of T of like tax revenue that like you

hurt you get hurt on that end so either way there's no easy decision and like the easiest political thing to do is just kind of silently like print the money and try to you know have inflation under control or like lie about it or I don't know what what they'll do like try and keep oil down something along those lines yeah so you know democra like our democratic system or democracy in general has its flaws and one of them is that you often have to operate in fouryear Cycles right and and so the the debt element is is not a problem until it is and so none of these

guys can really campaign on on trying to solve it right now um because it's just not an electable pathway for enough people who are are more concerned about the short-term um issues and so it's like how do you campaign on it we want to raise taxes and lower spending it's like the least like pal voters yeah I I don't know that the tax element is really um gonna be like a solution just because it it it almost doesn't really move the needle I think like yeah that you have to you basically have to keep rates really low right otherwise I think it's like every 1% increase is is 90 billion extra in interest right so like

low rates have to be a given which um is tough the biggest mistake was probably not issuing those hundred-year bonds when it was possible um and then really kicked out the problems because you have so much of this debt that's uh that's expiring and needs to be reissued at higher rates and that's going to be troubling but yeah so I think there's going to be you know forced pressure to to keep rates low to to keep spending sustainable other than that I think like growth or yeah um debasement it's really the the only two you need like AGI or like insane development in nuclear to like grow yeah nuclear is a big one right if you can get energy cost to near

zero then you can really spur a lot of a lot of um development and growth both just like production compute and what do you think of his his timeline because he thinks he's going to break in in like six months right p p trer Jones um and he he kind of said this a few years ago too but there's a few counters right just that the US is still the world Reserve currency uh there's there's a lot of countries in much worse situations both in terms of debt and in terms of like growth and demographics and like these things can take way longer than you think right like the Roman Empire was like 300 years of of of currency debasement uh you know losing 99.9% of

its value whatever like but I think his point was just to like stay away from bonds and it's like I don't think he's not bearish on like US Stocks necessarily like he talks about like you know owning NASDAQ and I think that's that's the thing it's like they're going to need to pint more money it seems like basically a certainty at this point and once like everyone just kind of agrees on that then like there's just like a jump out of bonds into things like you know gold stocks Bitcoin real estate like anything that's not Bonds because you know that's going to get de based um but like the real I think more concerning part of all this is so like since 2020 they created like

38% more money like that like money supply in the US is up something like 38% and you know prices for basically everything are up 38% or more um like for more like scarce things like houses and you know more desirable things uh but like wages are only up 10% the median wage is only up 10% so I think where this gets scary is you have like a massive acceleration of that Trend where like assets continue to rip like all these assets that you know the wealthy have and people want to own continue to rip and wages continually like don't go up as quickly and then you just have this like widening wealth disparity and that's when like stuff can be unpleasant and like why we' seen this ma massive rise

in the US to to populism because you know you have just like assets up only the share of the top 1% wealth is just mooning and then anyone without assets is getting like screwed at an accelerating pace and basically anything they want to buy is like rapidly repricing Out Of Reach like like the the average home in the in the US is up 40% since 2020 and the median Sal or the median home is up 40% and the median salary is up 10% so it's like that's like a massive a lot of structural issues that that's not purely from from like fiscal responsibility though that's just like a structural issue of a lot of Millennials aging into home buying age com very everything's up 40% they create

40% more money like obviously it's fixable because we have like you know if we were to go out and like put government spending towards building more affordable homes like that you know we should be able to do that and fix that problem to an extent but it's just kind of like a sign of you know stocks it's less of a fixable problem right like I am optimistic that you can have like a solution right if it's not it's definitely if the government continues remotely in a similar Direction absolutely not but if if there is a world where like Elon can get decently involved and and you can really redirect spending in productive ways because like you start looking at some of these programs and like tens and hundreds of billions spent to achieve absolutely

nothing if that's used like you mention you know to build out housing or or infrastructure whatever it might be I I I'm I'm optimistic that we can go our way out of it um yeah you need like radical change status quo is like people it's not heading in a good direction the tax stuff is tough because like even I know I don't know if you saw like Norway introduce that uh like wealth tax and um the numbers were something like one sorry yeah everyone so there's supposed to be basically a $146 million increase uh in revenue and and instead 54 billion fled the country and they're down like 500 million on tax collection and so the the the mobility of of the ultra rich is is going to be a big

headwind towards like yeah like Capital controls I think is definitely on the table because it's like 1% of of of taxpayers in the US contribute to like 40% of the tax revenue right so you you can't do too you can't be too extractive there otherwise you really risk losing your Honeypot it feels like you just have to rug all the promises you made to the Boomers right all the health care and like all the entitlements and like they're the biggest voter voter base so it's just never going to happen right yeah but like the chaos like yeah and like how unpalatable is that to get elected on oh I'm ring I'm I'm rugging the Boomers like the the

most palatable thing is just you print the money and that's just like a more secret way and you have all thisit happen but yeah it's would there be Ultra long-term bonds it's it's going to be hard now I think that sh they've been moving all the issu to to t- bills like all the issuance has been moving to t- bills because like the foreigners have like stopped buying like foreign central banks and like yeah anyways it's definitely I don't know if we want to get back to like's wait I mean I don't know if you saw that Kraken is doing a a super chain I didn't see that just today yeah

they're building on the op stack so they're doing another so this is another exchange with an L2 it's called Inc um so I don't know if there's like much to take away from here I think though super chain optimism is obviously winning on the BD side much needed a much needed product that's been demanded by by everyone another exchange chain I mean to be fair base is like all so much of eth activity right now so you know it's kind of I think that's sad though it's like do dude Bas being the leading L2 is not good like I'm sorry it's not yeah but I feel like it's like an obvious outcome it is an obvious outcome it is an obvious out I'm just saying it's not good but it is a a means to an end if if like the you know this is an end State

and the goal is just to onboard as many people to onchain activity than than you know having uh an L2 that's partnered with the biggest tool for onboarding normies in the US is not necessarily the worst thing it it is a it's it's not great but it's a means to an end if if for like in a world where eth can still do well yeah all right for the record I'm like yeah I mean ethereum is obviously massive egosystem it's going to like live it's going to have all these rollups and everything um I'm just like saving your I mean just eth is just different from ethereum right it's like you have to kind of separate those two you just have to be more everyone just has to be more bullish

right bullish no one's bullish enough No One Believes that's why we don't deserve 10K yet I think it n right after that tweet probably him like oh God it's bad but um okay so uh let's move on to the bridge story I think that's like a really interesting one so stripe spent I think $1.1 billion do or something buying Bridge um which is a stable coin infrastructure company backed by sequa uh built by some really strong entrepreneurs with like previous exits to square and stuff like this um and I think uh reports are they were doing

sort of 11 million in in uh in Revenue so this was like a 90 times Revenue deal um and I think the most bullish thing about it is sort of Patrick's Patrick Collison the founder of Stripes statement about it afterwards he said I think the quote was stable coins are room temperature semiconductors for financial Services right and like and they're going to like lower cost loads for for businesses around the world um I think it's a really interesting play if they if they lean into this obviously they've they've kind of flip-flopped around they were doing Bitcoin payments and then stopped in 2018 because it was too expensive but I think they seem to be stable coin pilled and for them it makes a lot of sense right you can kind of just cut out it's it's the promise

that crypto's had for ages of cutting out the the the payment networks and just being able to go straight from uh consumer to to merch without having the the recipient Banks and the the payment networks in the middle and sort of taking clipping that 3% fee um and yeah it was it it was also interesting to hear about Bridge because I hadn't looked into it um I hadn't heard I don't think a lot of people had heard a lot about it and they're processing uh the 11 million Revenue there was like as diverse sources as like SpaceX there was apparently scale AI is like paying their people who are doing you know AI data services around the world using these stable coins because it's way easier than than than handling all the international payment

rails and stuff like this so I think this is like pretty bullish I mean for me stable coins as as we know I've always been pretty bullish on stable coins as like cryptos killer app we've seen like volumes up only and I do think stripe leaning into payments is like huge for for uh for crypto and for stable coins like a huge wait so what is Bridge what do they it's just like the crypto infro that they're going to use essentially it makes it really easy to accept uh payments in stable coins from like any chain um and so I think it's like on and off- ramping plus like the infrastructure to to do it on on on any chain um and to send payments as well so

yeah we yeah yeah I think so I think what this is obviously this is this is massive and I don't know if people totally the reason why I think it's massive is because like stripe stripe is like this Golden Child of like fintech web 2 trafi everybody looks at stripe as this like amazing success story and everything and for them to like acknowledge and not just like accept stable coins but like that quote right right like room temperature semiconductors for financial rails um you know there's this guy who works for stripe I think his name is like Patrick McKenzie and he just has been [ __ ] on crypto for the last

like few years and every time he has something on crypto all like the Trad five people all the web two like everyone like get like joins in and like on the on the [ __ ] and everything right and so seeing stripe adopt this technology now is like a pretty big Turning Point with like the perception and you're seeing people like just accept that okay crypto's still scammed but like stable coins uh will be used right and that's kind of like the first step um I think that like most people now have accepted like Bitcoin and they accepted stable coins right um and which are like kind of the two only real use cases we've

come up with so far besides speculation if you want to call that like a real use case um and then the the tools around it have been around the speculation yeah yeah yeah I we created like democratized private banking which is cool dpin and tokenization I feel like are two upcoming ones yeah tokenization on its own exactly is just just is is a product right the the fact that you can use this asset as a tool for coordination is massive and stable coin is just like tokenizing the do it's just like the first iteration of that yeah that's certainly consensus that it's yeah stable coins I feel like are so obvious I was reading tether's report and it was like 350 million people have used tether now or like or tether users and like that's pretty crazy and I don't see

anything stopping that and then also like back back to the US deficit stuff like if the US Embraces these they can essentially like export the dollar all over the world and I think tether is like the ninth largest holder of treasuries so that's like a non zero like that's like a a pretty good source of demand if if they Embrace that and they're looking for to help their Deb situation one of the few Equity exits we've seen in crypto and I I don't imagine there's going to be too many follows right this is this is a pretty unique one in that it's the largest market and it's the like arguably the best acquire for something like this um

got to believe it was mostly stuck and like a bunch of earnout and stuff because a billion dollars is is is pretty absurd I feel like even for I don't know how much cash they're sitting on I doubt it's yeah I mean most all of these are usually a combination but um yeah I assume it's heavily weighted towards stock as well and I just think like stable coins if anyone who uses crypto realizes like St coins are just Superior dollars right like you control them yourself you can move them without asking anyone you have access to all the onchain yield opportunities all the on CH D gen opportunities it's just like um I think inevitable that more of the world like I really like the Andre thing like the future is already here it's just not evenly distributed I think stable coins is one of the ones where

you can really see it like people who've used it don't really go back I think to to normal dollars like even when rates even when the UN chain yield um was was like you know 5% below the treasury yield you still saw like over 100 billion of stable coins on chain right like the decline wasn't that big G given how big the Delta was in the yield you were giving up which to me is is just like the biggest sign of yes and no I think there's a difference in in how people were bucketing that cash right I think people just mentally bucket a a a uh a money market component of their portfolio and then cash that they're moving moving in and out of crypto element and um but now they're already bringing those on chain right so yeah I

mean I have my money market like my like I think you're you're a unique I don't think most yeah most people aren't going to like swap into this is their CTO bucket this is their yeah and also just like these people in countries that like you can't there's not Athena Athena is my other savings account also just on this topic like strip getting into stable coins now is in sanely bullish for regulation on stable coins too um yeah like that is that's maybe even the biggest takeaway um and so yeah yeah the whole thing there's like no bearish angle to this in the in like I mean I think part of it is out of their control I don't think they can move the market on regulation it's more so I think their

take on it but I'm I am a little surprised they waited to do this before the election right like I mean the writing is some somewhat on the wall but it's it's by far it's still like far away from a lock and and I do see a world where if she wins there's going to be some pretty uh gross stable coin regulation that'll come across like from the atom shifts of the world and so it it is pretty surprising they pulled this off before the election you guys think they do their own stable coin seems like an obvious play right the thing that's super concerning about stable coins I think like you have this massively positive aspect for the government on you know helping uh buy treasuries but I think the thing that's

really concerning is uh like Banks like Banks whole business is having like billions of dollars of deposits that is basically a stable coin business where they have billions of dollars of of deposits that uh earn basically no yield and then they go lend that out and and make money on the spread uh so if you have and stable coins are actually safer because you're owning like the actual treasury so you don't have like the 250k FDI the limit when uh like when svb went under like that was a big thing people were talking about like you're only insured up to 250k but obviously you know government kind of would seems like they're going to step in there but this like does kind of cannibalize uh especially if you start

flowing the yield through um it does kind of cannibalize the bank's business a lot yeah it's but it's it's it's a slow burn I mean the the bank's business is like they they're doing it more out of out of like uh savings accounts right like they're you're not really going to do it on money market because you're barely getting any spread any risk yeah yeah yeah on savings account but like what I mean is if anyone can if it's so easy just I think like what like Robin Hood gold right I think they just put it in treasuries like if products like that in stable coins become more and more popular like there's some line that's drawn where they need to rethink the bank's business model or protect the banks because yeah you basically just have people like pulling their like

pulling money do Robinhood go allow you to do that without limits like cuz I know on coinbase it they they us you can get yield on usdc but it's capped to pretty small amounts enough where it's not like people can do it in savings accounts let me look USB by Athena is the future of Unchained treasuries yeah I mean that's that's just going to get more and more compelling as rates come down you mean like USD yeah yeah but they also have the USV product now right which Shuffle between R to shffle between or and treasuries yeah um I do think they should do this too like have I kind of

think every stable coin should do like a a payments product have like a some kind of payments product that uses it in the back um yeah I that's why it's so hard to start a new stable coin because there's there's monster Network effects across both adoption integration um security depending on the model right like some get safer as they get bigger uh because of liquidity if they're fully collateralized they're they're safer when they're bigger because of of liquidity yeah anyways do we want uh do we have anything else to talk about before we wrap up I don't think so there's no maximum on Robin Hood gold no I mean we can shout out the practice raising like half a trillion apparently uh I don't know if that was a ray

practice like the network appar I might go check that out actually uh it's in Dr you should go that sounds really cool the Arkham one um yeah I've spoken to to dren a few times ever since he was building this sounds really cool I mean the it seems like it's a drw down facility so I guess it's like debt to to build the city uh which was always a big part of what they were thinking about like how to figure out the capital stack to build a city like who wants to own the equity versus Finance the buildings and stuff like this it sounds like they've they've got something sorted there um really yeah pretty exciting but not too much more to say about it I think on that do we want to wrap I have to I have to jump anyway um yeah I think

this is a good one thanks everyone for for for tuning in and we'll see you again in in two weeks yep see everyone thanks let's see if goat's around in two weeks let's see if our podcast is around in a year you have to wear uh don't you have to wear a dog outfit at some point dunan 320 I have plenty of room and if it's because Trump wins I'll happily wear it you come on the mind with it yeah can't wait all right see you later everyone guys see you later [Music]