Hivemind: Bitcoin's 2025 Momentum, AI Agent Platform Wars, and Liquid vs Private Markets

Transcript

there's always going to be bid for for memes and things like that but I don't think it's going to be like that barbell portfolio in 2025 like it was in in 2024 I think to to what you to the point you mentioned like I think there will be a bid to a lot of these more fundamental type of type of coins whether or not that's OG defi whether or not that's like more new school type defi we get to kind of financialized every new cool thing that comes along and so you always get to be at the Forefront of that uh some people call that late stage capitalism I call it uh the best IND industry in the world the deeper you are in the space the chances are the better off you'll be on the liquid side uh just

because you'll catch narratives early right if you're if you're pretty passive then I think this is a a much easier pitch because you can actually get great access without having to put in the time that someone who would need to do this full-time nothing said on the hive mind is a recommendation to buy or sell sec ities 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 hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the hive mind podcast the goal of the podcast is to provide an

inside look into what we like to call the deli hive mind bringing together some of our smartest Minds from each of the divisions to share insights Alpha and posts today with us we have uh the usual cast minus Duncan who um is indisposed I believe so it's cedus parabus our head of institutional research uh Yan liberman managing partner of Deli Ventures and usual guest now Jason 3x liquidated on on Twitter who is you head of markets at Deli research what's your yeah I think that's that's roughly the the title nice and obviously I'm Jose meu I lead our protocol R&D RM Deli Labs um and split

my time between that and Ventures so another good week for crypto well as we're recording there's just been um a bit of a dump I think bitcoin's traded trading around so we're recording this on Wednesday the 18th of December uh I think bitcoin's trading around 103k last I checked and ALS have have taken a bit of a dive maybe to start with how everyone feeling about about markets here I think that's a bit harsh to call this a a dump um but yeah I don't know maybe we start with Jason on the markets yeah let's do it um I think I'm I mean I'm still very bullish Market um I think probably people maybe drisking into the fomc

later today um because those are you know generally pretty volatile uh events I guess like you know short-term trading events but I don't know I'm just you know still bullish like I don't think anything's really changed in the macro Outlook of things I don't think anything's really changed in my outlook for for crypto markets I think we probably you know generally just grind higher through the end of the year so I think um when I was looking last night um I think we had like WIP couple billion off Bitcoin oi couple more off like you know alt and Global oi

maybe even more this morning um funding's pretty low I don't know I I just think things look you know pretty pretty good generally I think uh we maybe got a little bit ahead of our skis with the run up to to 108 we added a couple billion so like we've pretty pretty much wiped out all of the oi we've added this week um into that runup so I don't know quite quite bullish still I guess like if you're like super levered up this this move is probably uncomfortable right like I mean I guess if you're uncomfortable on a 2% or 3% move in Bitcoin that might be more of a um commentary on your positioning than the market itself issue yeah um you

might have a problem yeah right like if you're getting close to liquidation when bitcoin's at 104 right now or 104.5 when we we at 108 yesterday like that's that's a that's a you problem um but yeah generally I think the market looks good like I just I I think we just continue to to grind higher I think you probably get sailor back in the books in the coming weeks um you have inauguration uh Midway through January which you know I'm not exactly sure how that's going to play out it might be kind of like the like the um Bitcoin ETFs when those were like finally approved in January of last year's roughly around the same date it was like

maybe January 11th vers inauguration on January 20th where you get like a run up into that and then maybe like a week or two dump after it and then kind of a return to like oh wait this is actually really bullish um type of thing you could see end ofe profit taking but like like I said I'm just I'm quite bullish on on bitcoin and and crypto generally I think the out looks fairly constructive yeah I think um on that point inauguration sh thing I think a lot of people have that thesis yeah I also think that was the same thesis everybody had for the election where it was like you'll get this candle on the election and then it'll kind of sell off for a bit um yeah for me personally it's I don't know I'm kind of

been in disbelief with this Market since the election I don't really have strong takes either way um I don't know it's like I we we talked about this in our group chat in 2021 when the FED signal they were going to start raising interest rates you know my op I looked at that and I was like okay well it can't be it can't be that easy it can't be like price they're just going to start increasing interest rates and they're just going to do it over a year and asset prices are going to puke because it was like too obvious of an outcome right it was too textbook like too um you know markets are forward looking at everything right but then that's exactly what happened like the

obvious case kind of just happened pretty systematically um obviously in crypto you had more isolated events but in like Trad markets it was kind of just a steady grind down basically every day for like a year right and now I kind of feel like it's the opposite in a sense like yeah there's some dumb stuff going on but it doesn't feel you know it doesn't feel too insane yet still which I guess sounds weird considering like far coins at a bill today or close to that um but I mean hot air rises so that kind of makes sense um I don't know how how do other people feel about the the

market um yeah I mean I think the consensus was there's like a or going into December there' be a selloff in December and then uh you get like Christmas rally in inequities um and then um and then inauguration would be a sell the news I think it's it's like hard to make those uh or hard to stick to those assumptions because it's all so deterministic right like there needs to be a big rally for there to be a selda news so um as as all of those things shift it becomes you know what you kind of think is going to happen also shifts

um so why why some of the stuff would play out so on the you know you have sailor that's been buying since uh I guess like late October basically every week uh and so you know the concern is what happens in Jan one because there's this blackout period um what what is the blackout period he can't he can't buy yeah so there's a lot of like uh they're basically like uh around earnings announcements there's a a period where you can't really there's no activity uh that can kind of take place and so um the question it's it's usually related to selling stock um and he's been

raising through convertible debt so there's a lot of kind of confusion around um exactly how that plays out the length of the period and and what that means for markets uh whether he will raise there's also you know you don't know what he's going to do in terms of how he raises money and deploys it right he could in in Theory raise it all ahead of time and then continue to deploy it throughout that period um the blackout more so relates to the the capital raising process not the deployment side so um I think that's also a driver of weakness um it doesn't I think you probably end up getting a very strong q1 and probably

first half of Q2 uh just broadly in in kind of equities and and and crypto as well um where all the kind of euphoria around the policies is is uh is factored in the markets and then um naturally you know I think certain things it won't all play out right some of these policies take time to to kind of uh take effect and so you don't really realize the the the negatives until later on so I I I don't think the inauguration ends up being that much of a sell than news event um he's continuously kind of talked about this the the reserve and and so it's it's I I it increases my chances of it happening very quickly

right because he obviously doesn't want that to be a stain immediately and and he's got the house and Congress even though he doesn't necessarily need them to even just get it started so uh right so I guess going back to the blackout period the concern is if if you don't have S or buying what happens to bitcoin what happens to the rest of the market do you get all season that's one kind of idea or uh do you you get like a broader pullback and I think that's kind of the the two paths this takes um I think the least likely is like a strong Bitcoin rally in Jan if he can't deploy um but if he somehow raises and and chooses to deploy gradually over time then then that's certainly different it seems like

he's taken his foot off the the the gas a little bit I mean you you had the massive ETF inflow yesterday while BTC was down which was pretty unusual to see um and then you kind of uh Jason I were chatting if if you look at kind of um you know that relative to the um the the per premium on on like binance for example which has gone from premium to to Flat uh you know you could there could be an argument that you're having you know ETF flows continue while uh Traders are are kind of uh drisking a little bit and and um and so that's how you'd have that environment where ETFs

still have inflow because that's where that the buying happens and then the the aps are participating and and the selling happens elsewhere but um my base case is is you get is we're going to get an allseason in q1 I think there's going to be funds that uh are are deploying I think new money comes in you know if you think about the per like new money comes in monthly quarterly and annually and and in a in an increasing fashion right you're getting your largest amounts usually at the beginning of the year and so I think you'll have funds deploying into alts in in the in to start off q1 um and then you know the counter is that people who are holding will likely sell

like retail will likely sell in q1 if they're up big because you're kicking back your your uh you're deferring tax liability for another year um whereas you usually have funds sell in December which I think we saw a lot of in the first half of December a lot of funds sold because they need to kind of crystallize uh carry and then also sell losers to lock in some um tax loss harvesting and so I think that's the kind of dichotomy um I don't know that there's going to be that much retail selling in q1 that it's going to be a monster kind of uh you know dampening effect have a monster dampening effect on on markets I still think uh we kick off the year and and ALT do well yeah do you guys think we

can get above like 150 without strategic Reserve no yeah not soon maybe eventually but I think the difficulty is that part of the current price already factors in the the the the the effective one yeah it seems like the two oh sorry go ahead cers no I just gonna say like this is the one thing where I'm not as on board with some of these bullish predictions of like 180 200 plus next year year cuz I think if you don't get the reserve it that like takes a lot of money to move like bitcoin's over two trillion now right like that's a lot of money to move it to those kind of

numbers um and if it's just like sailor and then you know obviously the average person is whatever increasing once you get the ra starting to like incorporate it and being able to pitch it you'll get like that will help as well but it's still just a lot it's just like a lot of money and so I do actually agree with the whole like allseason q1 thing um just because Bitcoin has run so much this is with the caveat that you do get like the surprise strategic Reserve starts like right away and then at that point all all bets are kind of off um what what's the latest on the Strategic Reserve has anyone been like catching up because some people seem to

say it's like impossible not going to happen um and then and then others seem pretty confident that that it can happen does anyone have some like good research takes on this I definitely don't have like a like an alpha take on this I was listening to Nick Carter's interview uh yesterday and he seems pretty confident that it won't happen um at least not in the short term which I think like that's it's probably the biggest risk for Bitcoin is it like doesn't happen and it's like announced that it doesn't happen like if it doesn't happen but like everybody's still speculating that it will happen and Trump keeps talking it up right

like it's not not ideal but like it it doesn't take it off the table entirely whereas like if if they come out and say okay wait actually we're not doing this that would um be pretty bad I think his reasoning was like it calls into question like the uh like the reserve status of the dollar which I'm I I kind of see the argument but I also like see like the opposite side to the argument like I I I see a world where it like kind of it's like oh wait like they're actually like thinking about how like because like that argument like tell like uh I guess would take the view that that like that the reserve status of the dollar and like the financial situation

of the US isn't already being called into question which like it obviously is um so I think like the perception of of doing something like this probably probably is better than than not because it it it's kind of like the whole reason why like I think um like like Trump coming in and and all of these you know conversations around the US financial situation and how they are trying to tackle it through various ways with like you know Department of government efficiency like Doge um different things like that I think like the market like to set's earlier point is forward looking and kind of like gives gives the incoming administr ation credit for even you know discussing

these things in like a a viable way and trying to think of you know like ways to to get the situation like more sustainable um so I think kind of like doing this like probably falls into that bucket more than not so like yeah I I don't I don't have any super Alpha here it just seems very very clear to me at least like I remember back in Trump's first term in in 2016 like he he would tweet about the stock market like all the time like intraday he would move markets with tweets and it was like super frustrating at the time because I was like day trading equities and stuff uh pretty frequently and like I would just like my positions would either just like get completely blown

out by a trump tweet or the reverse they just like go straight up to the Moon based on like what he said like oh China trade War something like that so like the fact that he's like talking about it so much and seems to be quite like he seems to be like you know taking credit obviously for for a lot of Market related movement so like I just don't see a world where he backs off easily from this so I think it's more likely than not that we get progress towards the SBR and q1 then not which I think probably pushes Bitcoin towards that 150 area which he like specifically pointed out he's like I want Bitcoin at 150 sooner rather than later and like that's

just not something I would like want to fade because like he could get Bitcoin to 150 just via tweeting not even with like an SBR yeah I think like that the the market impact of an SBR particularly because of how many others would likely immediately follow suit is is very uh under appreciated yeah um and just the front running because I I don't know how how does it work you like announce it and then you and then there's like a whole process where you have to go buy it or you'd denounce bought yeah went on Swap what's the oppos at the point where it's like announced and and it gets starts it's slowly gets priced in like

just seems like everyone in the world would want to front run that right I don't know it just seems crazy to me this could even yeah you have the even happen you have the United States of America running a public twap yeah exactly it's hard to see it's hard to see like I don't know why would you sell right it doesn't mean you don't get a big you don't get another big 50% drop down at some point but it's like why would you sell during this twap right I guess it's a good time to sell if like you really need the money there's a lot of liquidity entering the market you can sell into but like yeah yeah I don't know it's kind of crazy I mean I don't think if you have a if you have that thing going I don't you need some cataclysmic event to get a 50%

draw down in BTC if that if that t is running because yeah all right do you want to to move to the so research side you guys have just released your your year ahead reports uh which were awesome by the way I recommend everyone everyone checks them out um do we want to maybe touch on a few of the key key takeaways there uh there's a few of the interesting interesting themes from about the markets and the infro report and and the gaming one but I think markets and infra had were pretty alpha- packed gaming I mean to be totally honest is just not an area that I'm like very well versed in uh but the gaming report is very well done if you are into gaming you can get

all the reports just like quick shill I think like 199 or something um like try them out we have so we did gaming couple weeks ago last week we did markets and then infra we did defi yesterday and then we're finishing it off with like the hot sector the uh we're doing like a dpin and Dei one so that'll be coming out Thursday which is when this podcast I think will be coming out so yeah I think the market in for once um like both of them were bullish on salana uh especially like the markets report right the infro one was more about um I guess like the section I wrote was about like highr put chains

and that being where the industry is kind of heading and that kind of is an extension of salana success right so for me it's like there's just been very there just haven't been a lot of like use cases of app chains or just like you know standard I guess like evm chains like you hyper liquid hyper liquids an app chain yeah like perss change like perss is the one use case like every every single time somebody shows me on like app chains are successful it's always a per Dex it's like it's also the pretty much the one use case of crypto though uh or like one of them just the deck right right right but I mean for the most part people want

to use like general purpose shared state with like nice ux high through put right so salonic kind of that was their thesis and over the past couple years that's been like proven very right I think one thing people kind of neglect or ignore what Salon is sometimes they'll you know they'll come up with this this whole it's all memec coin trading stuff but and they'll make they'll comparisons to like you know BC or polygon or Phantom from last cycle when eth got very congested and move there uh but it really misses the point that like salana got all this activity when the eth gas prices were like one and two Qui like it was very cheap right like people didn't go to salana just because it was cheap they went for like a bunch of other

reasons to do with like ux performance um all of that right so I really think that this is the direction the industry is heading in and so you're seeing tons of like new chains launched in this direction from the evm side you have obviously like hyper liquid uh is aiming right today they're this per deck they're trying to transition to like this High through puty VM chain you have monad you have some of these rollups like Mega eth which is just you know going extreme on the hardware and like bandwidth requirements just to create like a performing evm uh you have Ithaca which is by the Paradigm guys you have rise which is like this Giga gas thing Bas keeps increasing their gas every day so you just have like all these chains

going there obviously you have the move ones like s and Aptos too right so for me it's just like a clear Trend that this is where the industry wants to go to um at the same time I still believe in the long run the majority of activity is going to be like three to five chains and like there's just going to be an absolute graveyard uh of a lot of these chains over the next few years and you're also kind of seeing it with like the l2s now where if you look at if you look at Dex volume on l2s like 90% of it is arbitrum and Bas right and so you've seen kind of this like Mass consolidation in the L2 world to Bas and arbitrum um and it's like just I guess like the standard theme we've been

talking about over the past year with like token prices and stuff too is like consolidation just continues to kind of like Drive um everything here and I definitely still believe that like it's power laws that are going to kind of take all this um I everything everything is going to be a high through put chain but I I do still think there's definitely a world uh for app chains and I just think app chains will be high throughput just like yeah everything else will be you mentioned Anisha in your in the report as well which Isis yeah there's Anisha and then there's also the ZK ones um and so Anisha is going to be the first one

coming next year I'm assuming pretty soon and so they're building with like like the thing with the app chains is that no one's really built with like app chains first like Cosmos kind of did but not really um it wasn't like too coordinated Anisha is coming with like this very coordinated launch um yeah I think the main thing with Cosmos is that that the idea was that the thing you need to prioritize for app chains is giving them like security right uh whereas the I think what an ISS is prioritizing is is ux it's like how do you give app chains the ux you need to just be able to spin them up and have everything you need wallets stable coins um you know like interoperability access from easy access from other chains like

all this kind of thing bridges yeah so I do think initial will be the first like actual well-coordinated attempt at this kind of like that we've seen uh and then you also have some of these zkl ones like Delta H pod who is probably the endgame for like app chain modularity thesis uh yeah would you agree though that the the main reason for like shared state right now is is just ux like there is actually very little sort of functional shared State you know in terms of I don't know all the stuff that people used to say like rehypothecation and and like you know all the things people used to say why composability was important have kind of

not been proven out like most people just use Jupiter or they just use whatever app or would you not agree with that uh I don't know if it's like just ux there's also there's just like a lot more risk also when you're doing stuff with like two different state machines um there's like latency between those um which could like I guess theoretically be solved with like some of these ZK ones um it's just like you're not going to be able to create a better experience breaking everything up than having it all one place if as long as it's like scalable like you're always going to be a little bit

worse off even with like ZK like ZK can't speed up native execution or consensus or anything it just proves it right so you're never going to like there was this tweet I put in the report from zachie uh he was saying like the black pill for ZK is if it's just used for transferring usdc between giant shared State machines right um that's like a potential outcome where you get like three big like Salon type State machines that can handle all this activity and then you don't really need ZK [Music] because you don't need to do like proving for all these different chains and like rolling them all up together

right I mean I think the experience isn't is definitely like less less easy to make the experience good between two different state machines but within a uh a state machine The Experience should be able to be better than on a general purpose chain so like the experience on hyper liquid should be able to be better than than the experience on drift whatever right to get to hyper liid Shana is always going to be harder um yeah the benefit of like launching your up on Salon of those you have all liquidity uh which is also why I think the svm rollups will have struggle then like will struggle because since Salon is always scaling the L1 as an app develop

or if you're going to build svm it's like why would I launch on a different but like I think hyper leg kind of shows that it is a ux issue like with arbitrum they pulled so much liquidity from from arbitrum and I think most people didn't even know that they were moving from arbitrum because the bridge worked so smoothly that they were literally going to like a semic custodial service right it's just that the bridge experiences right now are are terrible I I don't know I think like I guess my though H it's like it it makes sense the perex all you need is one collateral asset and like you don't need anything else and so it makes sense for that I'm interested to see how they do when they have like the hyper evm because it's like a separate component that needs to talk to

the like native the uh like rust components um so then I guess we'll really see there but yeah Fair what about Jason you you guys did the markets report and by the way you've uh when when Jason joined Deli you were known as the bear King right you were you were dunan actually gave me that who is now himself the bear king um yeah you were known as the bear King you and you were you were bearish all through like 2022 pretty much until very close to the bottom and then to your credit you flipped you flipped bullish um so like the markets coverage has been

has been people who've been following it have done really well off it so I'm curious what do you see for for for 2025 yeah so kind of like cedus was saying earlier um you know last I guess at the end of last cycle like it was relatively um like relatively clear that like you know the cycle was probably coming to an end you saw like inflation ticking up but the Fed was pretty slow to do anything about it if you guys like remember they were like talking about like transitory transitory transitory for like a while and then eventually like I think most people probably realized that like it wasn't transitory before the fed or before the FED admitted it um so then like it was it

wasn't like a question of like if they would raise rates it would be like how much would they raise interest rates and like I think that caught most people off guard like I didn't expect them to to go from zero to 500 basis points in in a year or whatever um which absolutely you know destroyed everything right not just crypto like you the banking the banking sector the B the banking crisis in in early 2023 was a direct result of of how how much and how quickly they moved interest rates up as a result of being behind the ball there right so I think like now you kind of get like the flip side of that which is why like I'm just generally like bullish heading into 2025 even though like you know 2024 was was pretty bullish as well right you

had 2024 where you had like the early signs of like liquidity getting better but like it's still like a relatively tight like monetary regime for the most part the difference is we like had some pretty big crypto Catalyst coming in right we had um Bitcoin ETFs which were massive right obviously 2024 was like the big dichotomy it's like okay Bitcoin did really well soul and soul memes did well and then everything else kind of sucked for the most part um and I think a like a large part of that is obviously like Bitcoin had the ETFs um which were great right all of that demand billions and billions of dollars the you know number one performing ETF for the last like I don't know 10 or 20

years with like uh Bitcoin ETFs like ibit all these things in terms of flows all that stuff was really great tens of billions of dollars demand Bitcoin went up a lot from like I don't know I think it was like 40ish to to 70 or so then Consolidated for most of the year I think like you know April to the election for the most part and then kind of started legging up again uh you had Soul do really well which then allowed everything with ins soul to do well right everybody who was ins Soul did well they got a 10x or whatever from the lows like 20 to 200 or so that money trickled down into Soul memes nfts for a little bit projects like Jupiter whatever all these things right you had

a good air drop a couple good air drops with jto so you had like that pretty big wealth effect so that's why you had like that like split in like performance Bitcoin soul soul memes and then everything in the middle kind of just not great and now I think with interest rates you know starting to be cut in September and I think we have maybe like four to five scheduled or like predicted Ray Cuts over the next 12 months even more if you like extend that Outlook to like 18 or 24 months you have the fomc today yeah today's the 18th yeah today um which I think like the fomc like fed tracker tool or whatever has like a 99% chance of another 25 basis point rate

cut today so you have that coming in plus a couple more in the next several months uh you have a new regulatory regime coming in so you go from like an actively hostile regime and administration that effectively tried to kill crypto with like the operation choke point stuff last year and the year before in addition to like the SEC just being really terrible and enforcing by litigation rather than Goodwill enforce and and good faith discussions about like what's allowed and what's not so when you have like these two things happening it kind of like in my on top of this you have like a bunch of global central banks moving from tightening to easy easing policy so

like you have like a pretty good storm of macro Catalyst and like industry specific catalysts that are kind of coalescing all at like the same time um which I think generally bodess well for the industry so like I think you like absent some some you know catastrophic events or macro related things in in the upcoming year I think it generally is a very constructive Outlook obviously there there are some risk factors and we we do discuss some of these uh in more detail in the report at the bottom I think it's like potential risks to the Outlook is like the section so if you just go there and click that or whatever or listen to the podcast that we recorded based on the

year ahead we we kind of discussed those but yeah I think the the outlook's just generally good from a macro down to a more micro view um interest rates coming down so I think you can kind of like my my my general methodology is just like keep it simple stupid like there's a ton of things you could get you know lost in the weeds with with these types of macro outlooks and I think it's just like okay like Global liquidity is kind of moving towards easing of a bunch of a bunch of central banks moving in that direction so that's good interest rates are coming down after being held four to five% for a while uh that's good you have ETFs you know that have been uh a like resounding

success which lends even more credibility to the industry specifically Bitcoin and now you see the eth ETFs getting I think it was like 12 or 15 maybe 18 days I I saw a tweet of consecutive inflows which is fantastic especially compared to when they launched several months ago where they got zero flows or negative flows which was pretty terrible it was like a running joke for a while um and then you have the regulatory regime changing to one that like is they're promising to be good right like whether or not these campaign promises are kept is still up for debate but if you look at the early you know the early signs and and signs of where they're going the the appointments they're making the the

rhetoric coming out of the incoming Administration it seems like they are trying to make good on these campaign Promises of of regulating in a much more goodfaith way so like you have all of these things it's just very hard to be bearish at a high level right and like what does that mean for like specific assets well like well you actually talk about that a bit in the report right with the memes versus yeah because and you've been you've been you were very early to memes you've been you've done well on them but in the report you talk about how this the return to positivity and like Trad fight coming in might mean and it has meant in fact like a bid for for utility assets and things they understand with cash flows like the the traditional defi stuff um yeah do you do

you see that Contin is that going to take the sales out of like the meme super cycle thesis I think to to an extent yeah I think so like I I don't I don't think um I don't think memes are going to go away by any means like I think every like everybody in crypto loves memes like I think like you just look at some of the things that have run in the last couple weeks like like far point right like zero to a billion dollars in the last couple weeks I know it's like an AI type narrative meme but like there's always going to be bid for for memes and things like that I think the memes that are you know I I I've called them Mega memes at this point the ones that have like tier one listings that you know do billions

of dollars of trading volume a day have tons of liquidity like I don't think these are going to go away and I think they'll generally do well as crypto does well um but I don't think it's going to be like that barbell portfolio in 2025 like it was in in 2024 I think to to which you to the point you mentioned like I think there will be a bid to a lot of these more fundamental type of type of coins whether or not that's OG defi whether or not that's like more new school type defi um whether or not it's things like Athena with like I think I ju I just got a tweet from a twe a tweet notification pop up that said they have a partnership with like world fight Liberty now so like yeah so like that's an important point

though because two of the the two best performing defi tokens are a and Athena and they're both also kind of memes because they're like Trump is like working with them and buying like Baron's aping uh Ena on chain right and like I don't know it's I don't think this defi rally is going to be broad-based I don't think people are going to get eager to go ape like synthetics or um I don't know man there's a bunch of like there's a liquidy actually looks liquid is kind of interesting but like maker for instance it's like Maker's done great like recently right which is partly because of Athena too right um yeah yeah well it's also

just if you think about like where's the the majority of fresh money coming from it's it's likely uh funds and and so um you know it's a lot easier for them to size into narratives they can rationalize both to themselves and to investors if things go south um and so I I do think there's GNA be some concentration in in those winners and I think yeah like that's going to be good for hype it'll be good for uh Ena uh likely a as well um and then yeah you have the the kind of sprinkling of of trump endorsement indirectly and um it's uh yeah you really see like this

this even though we're in a PVE environment um there is still this kind of PVP hot ball of money that that that goes around um you know you saw the the winds kind of taken out of soul for I think Soul got hit in in from every direction right you have the unlock issues you have hype cannibalizing flow you have pump fun kind of uh volumes getting cut in half because there's been shift to kind of agentic memes and so I think all of those have have um probably a good setup for soul into into q1 as well but um uh it it shows that you know if you're thinking about where to inv like

it's not everything go up and so if if you're on on the fun side it's a lot easier to kind of rationalize those bets and um yeah I think the the soul weakness has like made perfect sense over the last little while uh um I still think that the the agent sector and like not necessarily the agents themselves but maybe we can talk about that actually because you guys had a good discussion in our internal company chat like you and you and Jason just about and I think it really highlighted like the different trading styles that people have um where obviously you were you were very uh not very bullish but pretty bullish the agent made meta goat virtuals Etc and

Jason was more he's a dogcoin or a animal coin Maxi um maybe you want to talk about that a bit like why I guess maybe why you see the AI agent meta as as super interesting and then why you haven't been convinced Jason for for more I guess like technical reasons well I think I kind of explained this a bit on the last part and a big reason was honestly not a good one it's just that it's pretty obvious that a lot of money is going to go into this uh and like the valuations are pretty low uh and a lot of that has to do with everything being like on chain right um you know the big Winners so far have been these platforms and these Frameworks it hasn't really been individual agents

themselves um you know you haven't really had an individual agent go to a crazy market cap but you've had virtuals go from like 100 Mil to three Bill you've had ai 16z go from zer2 close to a bill you've had some of these other ones like I forget they're called like Arc or something but you have a lot of these platform plays that actually have like fundamentals and people are just wanting to you're just going to see a lot of people launching agents uh from these either whether it's like just to be I don't know K ship posters there's some game Frameworks that uh you know virtuals has that you can kind of like work into video games

and stuff I think there's just going to be a ton of experimentation within this sector and then where you look for that is like what are people going to be using to experiment in this sector and it's going to be the platforms that make it easiest to kind of do this right and the Frameworks that make it easy to launch an agent right I don't think at the beginning like when goat came out yeah I was very bullish on Goat um just because just because it was like I just could tell this was going to lead to something big you know and it was the only way to kind of expressed that opinion at that time and but I think now I'm like very I still I still goat um

but I'm like definitely not as bullish on it and I'm also just not as bullish as on trying to pick out like individual agents um because I don't know it's still hard to wrap your head around like why an agent itself should be worth a lot versus the platform is just such an easier kind of like fundamental story yeah I think it's similar to the L1 one trades back in the day where you're often times better off trying to just get more exposure to the L1 than then trying to trade all the uh uh different assets on it um and so this is similar and I think even more so the case where you know back then those were

tokens you can kind of rationalize because they had you know they were def they some type of cash flow or some kind of proxy on on other chains whereas with these agents like you said it's it's it's hard to identify which is going to catch on and why and and I think you know you've had some that appeared to be Darlings and then have fallen off kind of like you know bully and some others and so it becomes a lot harder to build conviction in those whereas you can basically play the long tail through the through the L1 and and then those rather through the platform and then they they meme into an L1 I mean if you look at some of these trending GitHub uh repos it's kind of crazy uh like Eliza the Eliza framework is

still like top of the charts uh it's totally blown past like comparing it to stuff like to um like a bunch of things it's just it's just wild to see these and this this looks like the area everyone's trying to like look into now is like the Frameworks and like how the Frameworks can monetize right if you create this easy way to and actually and also like the developers of the Frameworks themselves you've seen some other protocols come out that allow you to to like launch agents under all these different Frameworks and they haven't actually done as well the token wise versus the actual like creators of the of the framework and so I know there's like Eliza you have Zer Bros as his you have this I think this it's like called

Arc or something I'm not totally up to speed on it but yeah all these framewor there's more popping up Jason give us give us the BET give us the bear give us the bear case uh I think I actually kind of agree with a lot a lot of what that are said um so when goat came out this was more of a discussion initially when goat came out right everybody's like oh this is like AI agent sentient meme cool thing whatever blah blah blah and I was like no it's literally just a meme right um at the time there was no virtuals or if there was like nobody knew about it nobody was talking about it token wasn't doing anything blah blah blah um so like my my thesis around like okay so like

this is actually I completely agree with what Yan andc said about the platforms right like Duncan's like pick and shovels type of investing thing strategy here I think works extremely well um I think it makes total sense to to buy the platforms because they will generally do well and it's not clear which agents will do well I think the agents that end up doing really well probably don't exist yet because based on what I see the current crop of Agents just are mostly memes and that was like the way I looked at it right like like the the early agents early agent meta to me represented kind of like a more like mid curve meme exposure type play simply because like okay it's like in this new

narrative bucket which is good like a very you know a very hot narrative AI yeah ton of ton of exposure ton of money's going to come in it gets maybe people who aren't in crypto to be more interested in crypto because you now have like agents and tokens and things like that you saw like people like Mark andreon you know start talking about these things more publicly you have all that great but it's still like like to me like it was always to me it was like okay the people like the the main buyers of things like goat were people who probably in crypto who didn't really want to or couldn't or just like couldn't really come to terms

with just like buying straight animal coins memes stuff like that right so like they're like okay this is dumb dogs will probably go up but like I'm not putting my PA into this screw that and now you have goat come out which is like still a meme it's not an agent it's a meme um I'll die on this hill uh but it was connected to like an overall strong narrative that was in its early infancy so it's like all these people who didn't want to buy straight up memes Zoo coins martyr F coins whatever you want to call them right they're like oh I can buy this because this is good exposure to this new narrative uh and it did well initially like really well right it went

from like couple Mill to almost a bill on the initial run up uh and a lot of people did extremely extremely well but then as soon as like you had actual AI things come out like virtuals or things on on like clanker whatever like all these like actual things uh I think it just like totally killed the AI meme type meta because all of those same people were like oh wait I don't need AI exposure through a goat meme which also I don't think has like super Mass Appeal for like normies right like I've asked little experiment I've done IRL with a bunch of people who don't know crypto I like showed them all

like the top 20 memes by market cap a couple weeks ago I was like pick your five favorite I didn't give them any real context to any of them just like pick your five favorite none of them picked goat all of them picked the animal so I was like okay like you got to Shield them the lore that's why you got to Shield them the lore man they don't care about the see that's the beauty with fart coin and like I'm actually very mad that I miss about to get the fart coin like cuz it's a perfect AI but then appeals to everybody right curve left curve most people don't realize that it's it actually has a bit of an interesting story behind it and it's not just like someone made fcoin um and so but that's how you kind of get the best of both

worlds and also it's funny because uh truth terminal owns like 20x the amount of far coin as goat in dollar terms and so like the goat devs were kind of greedy and not giving truth Terminal A Lot whereas the far coin devs were very generous um and that's also like kind of a I mean it's it's significantly flip goat now it's like 30% I don't know I'm looking at it now it's like 87 versus 65 like that's a pretty big gap right um so yeah I know I agree with your point though that like AI memes the AI memes now are the agents that's exactly it right the agents are the memes when

there's an agent that actually does something sick like really cool I will be the first person to buy it like there's an a like if there's an agent that goes around and like hacks protocol call as like a white hat or something like that like yeah hell yeah I would buy that or like actually was there was one that did that found a bug in virtuals but they only gave the agent like 10K well the problem is like that yeah it's when you start adding fundamental value to something like that and realize like white hack pays nothing uh that that realistically this this thing doesn't really make sense um the thing on on the platforms though is I would even do it I would I would AE more into a black hat agent but like as long as it's it like does something really sick like like just redistributes like a

Robin Hood agent robs protocols and returns to token holders like as long as it does something that's just not like a chat like gbt Twitter type just like reply guy or tweets like that's like SE queen that that thing is I mean is yeah it basically creates content it's it's like a it's do queen it's like a female Reincarnation of of Kuan but the the lore and the videos are like Hollywood AAA quality and and it kind of it it involves all of CT characters it it like shows its origin story and how all of this was happening for a reason all for

the greater good to like create do queen and how a feminine form of of of dquan is actually Superior no I have to actually go watch these videos he goes like yeah choosing the vessel right it's like you want you want an e girl for Max appeal there's one of them where he goes through basically new vessels so he he tries he starts with metallic then he's like no SP SPF doesn't work that it's CZ he kills Adam Cochran there's it's a bunch of too nerdy right spf's too greedy and like um cz's too much of a dictator yeah too much of an efficient dictator it's so good um but yeah I mean like because at the end it's all kind of

you're you're betting same way you're betting on on mind share for regular memes this is a bet on mind share uh for this and so it's like you either lean into some form of fundamental value or you lean into purely attention based memes and so I think that'll do well but like on the platform side it's interesting where you see you know like you mentioned uh like the AI 16z stuff that the framework that GitHub is blowing up but the tokens underperforming virtuals I think you know there's other other elements that kind of come into play one being um the role of the token and the fact that it kind of exists as this cross pair I think that's a huge s like driver of reflexivity on on the platform and

kind of keeps everyone needing to hold some of the underlying assets to participate um and then uh I think kind of the distribution and the ease of use of the platform um because there I I certainly think there's a world where like the platforms can hit some insane valuations as comparable alt L1 plays once these agents become more useful because there's Al also like Network effects to the agents themselves as they interact with each other and so you you do have kind of you know um like metaps law type effects on on these in the same way you you have them on l1s and so um yeah I I think there's going to be like a pretty

large consistent bid for these platforms as long as there are new agents being spun up and and existing ones continue to approve there's also the potential like airdrop little extra bonus yield on top of this whole thing too like I did I got one the other day and it was like I don't know it was like over a thousand bucks it's like kind of nice and on virtuals you can just see yeah and I don't know if it's because I own like virtuals or game um but you can definitely see that little like there's also just that small bonus I would never buy something for like an airdrop narrative like when everybody was buying Tia for like expecting air drops last year I was like no way but if it's like a nice little add-on thing that like is part of the

whole cohesive um thesis it's just kind of like a nice little bonus what are you most excited about for these for these agents or these platforms like what's the next the next big development here that you that you want to see with them that you're like excited about value cruel yeah I think on on Virtual side they'll start turning that on like I think game is my my biggest bag on on in that ecosystem um and it's it's kind of like a beta to virtuals where you get um you get to play the same long tail but at a much lower market cap with with good liquidity so I think value cap would be a big one

um yeah um what do I want to see well we're kind of in like the K agent era which was which was kind of interesting for a while it's gone kind of annoying to be completely honest having these AI agents reply guying me um and you know people I own axt I see a lot of people really like it it's not perfect like there's a lot of kind of like garbage that it tweets out and stuff it's it's like a decent new summary kind of you know it's like we do Deli reads it's maybe a different version of that where you can get caught up on things that are happening I don't think it has any real like predictive uh

Power if you look at some of the stuff it tweets it's like 15 minutes after some threader just did like some big threat on it right and it's kind of regurgitating it so yeah I mean seeing agents handle I would never expect an agent to like actually outperform on the investing side but seeing an agent handle tasks for people right if you had your own personal agent you can just DM it and be like hey send uh I need to send like Stables here or do this for me that for me and they're I think Will outperform on the investment side too honestly um definitely depending who you who you think they're going to

outperform but like definitely the average definitely the average person they they they could outperform like I have a few we have a team that we invested in that are building uh like copy trading buts now I don't think I can really mention the name but um and they've spun up some some like copy training strategies just looking at wall it's on on soul and Bas that were early to things and then basically uh like doing a bunch of stuff to avoid getting rugged and like you know build building a bunch of things on top um I think something like that as an agent which is actually what they're thinking of how they're thinking of releasing this is gonna like significantly outperform um even on the Venture side like as we've built this Ste a iBot with with some kind of made me realize how good um I

don't think it'll make decisions by itself this is kind of my thesis R ey generally I think humans will always be the ultimate like pacemakers that make decisions but they could do a lot of stuff like they can they can ask like questions to the founders come up with really good investment committee documents and I think eventually as as you start um like training them on your own decisions I think they could make like their own decisions and do pretty damn well I think Venture is harder than the than the liquid Market stuff but I think on the liquid side they could definitely do do really well honestly I think in very narrow focuses right like on the early listing stuff the the tricky part there is is um you get alpha decay pretty quickly it doesn't scale to

a lot of liquidity uh just by nature of like what the size of the market you're deploying into is um where I think those can scale because like the idea is you know you have these agents that you build that you that can effectively in one way or another be a vault so you deposit to an agent it trades for you the agent takes some fee and and then the creator of the of the agent monetizes it that way so if you're the creator of an agent that that does really early stage stuff then your Alpha is best captured by you doing it yourself because you you realistically can't support a lot of capital doing that strategy if you're if there's like some uh you know agents on really large scale assets that I think can be more scalable but then you're just kind of

competing with algo trading firms and a bunch of other stuff but um yeah it's I I think the the tricky part is you're still going to have to have human intervention like you mentioned for a while so these like completely individual agents that that execute completely on their own is is tricky because it's just like hallucinations and stuff like that yeah um I don't know I think I think the bar is like lower than you than you think and I I agree there's like hallucinations and stuff but like Almanac has shown some pretty some pretty sick results with some of their agents and then I think like people are gonna like there's going to be a lot of money in in in in figuring this out I just the issue is like like

you said once you have fundamentals the valuations stop making sense pretty quickly um and so it's like if you're if your bot's doing really well why would you why would you like do a token for it rather than just keep the gains because the token probably isn't going to trade at a massive premium to to cash flows um yeah that's what I've always thought with like trading type AI or agents or or whatever like if you're like a I mean like you have to think right like all of the well resource well-resourced trading shops that already employ like you know type of algorithmic trading strategies like they've got to be pretty far ahead of of most people when it comes to these

types of things at this point and why would they like if I've always thought like if you have like a trading strategy that's profitable why would you ever yeah I don't think they're sending uh a couple million bucks to truth terminal to uh start aping coins or like why would you ever open open that up to to anybody other than yourself like it just doesn't make any sense if your Capital constrainted right but like it's this vent diagram constrain for very long well it depends on like what kind of edge you're getting right if you're if you're if you're some kind of like delta neutral uh Market making agent then then that's one thing but then you're

competing against like you said you know people who are are much more well resourced and so uh this it's you're like the vent diagram to basically the overlap doesn't exist where it makes sense because if it's if it's if you can if it can deploy Capital at scale then you're competing with much better quality things and if it's early stage stuff then it can't support a lot of capital and in that world you just take it yourself yeah yeah that is that is always the issue of this stuff uh that's always like the bare case like who is the that van diagram seems like almost a null set right there just like not many people but I don't know we'll see I'm like overall excited for agents in general just to see where people take it you know I had this tweet a while ago

it's like no one gave a until they had tokens I still think tokens are the most powerful tool we have in like capitalism to kind of get things moving and so uh yeah a lot of money will be made here a lot of money will be lost here um I do think it'd be cool when they start talking to each other and there I think some cool stuff will will really come from that I don't know what will but I think I know it's new it's on the frontier that's the great thing about crypto is that we get to kind of financialized every new cool thing that comes along and so you always get to be at the Forefront of that um some people call that late stage capitalism I call it uh the best IND industry in the world

but uh yeah anyways I think we should wrap it I got to film another podcast in like five minutes okay I wanted to do one quick one quick quick question actually I did this post about about icos how um people should shine up for for Legion and Echo um because there's like some insane opportunities on there and people people were upset they were like I don't think that's good advice people like if you're if you're low net worth or like less than a million you should you should try and focus on staying liquid rather than investing in early stage stuff most of that stuff never launches and things curious going around the hor what do you what do you guys so my first reaction is I agree with the critics um I would rather be liquid than doing Angel investment and stuff if you have a small portfolio

however it also depends are these like I don't I haven't signed up on Legion or Echo sorry um but like is it is it this thing where you do this deal on Legion or Echo and then you have the same vesting terms as the VCS or is it one of these you know I know that uh there's been these like launchpads before where you get retail to come in and they get a very low valuation it's capped at like a thousand bucks but they also are liquid from day one it's like a GU not like guaranteed but it's like mostly guaranteed that they're going to make money on that if it's that kind of structure then sure 100% you should kind of be grinding that and doing like all of those if you're getting it at like a

known valuation that's so much lower than it's going to launch in like the next month right that is what well so uh there's both you're not liquid like on on Echo there's been some really good deals but you're not uh liquid I believe but you've had deals like I think Mega eth was at 200 mil which is is obviously like much lower than what it would raise in in the market I think they did Athena at 3 again I'm not 100% sure on these numbers but it's my my impression I think they did Athena at 300 um there's a bunch of like really good deals where you could get exposure to stuff that that's clearly um yeah and that's the thing there from my perspective I don't want to say free money because I feel like I'll I'll it's not not not the right thing to be telling people but

there's some really good early stage deals on these platforms where you can grind out for like very high expected value stuff um and I do think early stage uh I agree staying liquid and stuff but I do think people also screw themselves a lot with staying liquid because they end up giving back most of their gains if they aren't good Traders early stage investment kind of forces you into a bit of discipline because of the lockups um and if you're like smart but not particularly disciplined or a good Trader it ends up being pretty good for you um and it's also just like how um I don't know I would probably say the majority of people that have that have really made it in in crypto maybe that's maybe that's not fair maybe 50-50 have made it through early stage investing it's definitely how how we made it so

I'm probably biased towards that but I do think there's and it's also a really good skill to learn like being able to assess teams and and then stuff like this so I don't know I think the broad answer is yes it's a good idea and then the uh the more granular one is it depends but in most cases yes basically so areas where it's like an obvious yes is is if you're in the 500 to a mil range right then then it makes sense to deployed then like the share of your portfolio you're putting into liquids is is not overwhelming so it makes sense um if you're in this 0 to 100 range or like 0 to 250 it's less of a of a definitive yes but then it kind of depends on how

deep you follow the space right I think the deeper you are in the space the chances are the better off you'll be on the liquid side uh just because you'll catch narratives early right if you're if you're pretty passive then I think this is a a much easier pitch because you can actually get great access without having to put in the time that someone who would need to do this full-time so I think if you're like if you're not full-time in the space then it it basically makes sense at almost every PA size I think if you're Z to 100 then you know um then it it might make a little less sense and and you should stay more liquid either way you're not you're not committing to anything right so at any PA size it makes sense to sign

up and see what you like and then I I think like the the the size of your PA is just like the amount you even sub 100 you could put like a grand yeah no I agree I think it's just like it basically you know it the the the the obviousness of the decision isn't as obvious or goes down as you get to a lower PA because in a Raging Bull like you know it's just good to be in the market liquid um but yeah I me sense I agree with Yan's take I think um I think it just like it just depends like like it's a like a not great answer that nobody wants to hear but like as with any kind of like like Financial type of like investing and like PA allocation type of

stuff like it just depends on like your personal situation your sophistication level um your risk tolerance like all of these things like personally I like I I've never really had access to a lot of these early stage deals so like almost all of my money has come from like liquid stuff but like most people don't make money in in markets in general right like if you're active like like fairly active like most people end up losing money they might make it make like unrealized gains in a bull market but like end up round tripping most if not all of it in the bare Market because they're not great at determining like when the key inflection moments are in the market so they end up staying too

long and they keep employing the same strategy that made them a bunch of money when the market was going up in easy mode and then losing it all when the market stops doing that right so like liquid trading and liquid investing is like not easy like it's definitely tough um I think it's just a completely different skill set as well like to to to Yan's Point like you're not committing to anything like like sign I mean if you're in the US I don't think like and if you're not like an accredited investor which like this this like discussion doesn't really apply to right because I think like the initial thing was like if you're sub a mill you're not accredited so if you're in the US you can't really do it anyway

um but like just signing up and and checking out these types of of deals and seeing what exists I don't think Can Hurt Like it can only just kind of expand your your type of um your type of knowledge base on these types of things so like you know if you do see something you like and you are able to to do it based on the jurisdiction you're in or or whatever laws apply to you like I think it it makes sense like I mean it's something that I wish I I spent more time with and I probably will spend a little more time with going forward um but like I'm I'm like kind of like you I'm kind of like biased in the other direction like I've made most of my like crypto money just with liquid stuff because I think like if you're in crypto

right and you spend like you know most of your time looking at crypto markets and you don't leave during the bare market like you will do really well when the bull market comes just by virtue of being here so it's like it's just really it's like really and again like as being like a super liquid type of person like I haven't traded like this has been the least active I've been in markets since I've joined crypto in in like late 2016 um and I've done way better than I've ever done so like I think that's a testament to like the point like most people just like don't do well by being super active and if you just like identify sectors or themes or narratives early and you just buy and hold like there's no way your active trading is

going to beat that so it's kind of like a similar type of thing here right like yeah I think it just like depends like I don't think go wrong I think having a mix is like nice because they're kind of different things different types of exposure I'm the same like I've never made or maybe I just made my first dollar off of a private investment ever in this space so everything's always been liquid for me too so I guess I'm kind of biased that way it's like nice to have the flexibility um but yeah I think yeah it's definitely worth it to sign up and like check some things if you think they're you're gonna get deals that funds don't get right so there's there's I think immense Alpha and and just

sitting there and seeing it yeah exactly this community narrative just means that people are doing insane deals for for like Echo and Legion right now uh to to try and get community on board on like similar or even better terms than than VCS and a lot of these deals were were better terms than than the last VC round better luck up term so yeah it's way better to do this than to airdrop to build a community like 100% right um yeah especially if you can say oh we're giving you a deal like way cheaper than VCS right yeah you throwing shade at my hype airdrop bro I mean that's like I don't know hype's like an anomaly I'm kidding I'm kidding people paid for that to watch everyone paid quite a bit yeah yeah it's

funny to watch like the other airdrops not perform nearly as well and then see Market confusion why why are you confused that billions of unrealized gains that just got dropped on your for a meme coin AR pumping yeah all right let's uh wrap it up because yeah let's wrap cheers guys thanks for thanks for joining us Jason this is a great episode this is the last one I think uh think this last one of the Year probably yeah definitely oh yeah I guess that's true yeah yeah next week is uh Christmas so yeah that makes sense yeah so all right merry Merry Christmas everyone or happy holidays whatever the case may be and uh yeah see you again

next year for another another year Hive minding yeah see see you guys thanks everyone later [Music]