Hivemind: ETH Pump, Solana’s Edge & the New Meme Meta

Transcript

I'm still holding my my ETH and uh ETHBTC is back to prices as last seen two months ago and I am euphoric. It's like it's like that meme. It's like you bought here draws down 90%. I can break even. I'm a genius. Exactly. Yeah. You get one ETH pump after two years, three years of underperformance and everybody's coming out with like these new threads on why ETH's going to flip BTC and it's like guys shut the [ __ ] up. Nothing said on the hive mind is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is strictly forformational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our own opinions, not financial advice.

[Music] So you were saying uh one of your one of your friends from school live stream she she videoed her birth. Yeah. Like put it on um at home. At home you could go see that's bizarre. Straight up live birth. But like what what what was the angle? What was the POV on the on the breath? Was it like a candid shot? Um, she's just like very into motherhood and all of that and like just showing everything about being a mom and just kept going deeper and deeper into the

what she was showing and it just I think like showing a live birth is kind of the the furthest you can go. Jason, by the way, good way to bootstrap uh an influencer arc. Yeah, I don't even think she's like trying to do an influencer thing. I don't even should see. Yeah, you're you're not you're not your idea is not working, Jason. Thought you're a bit quiet. Um yeah, I haven't had any of those that I remember. Just a lot of uh breastfeeding. Yeah, I think the strangest thing is is breastfeeding past a certain age, right? So basically the the the book is if you do it with you

want to do the first three months like that that's really where you get the lion share the benefit and and you know plenty of people go beyond that and that's fine. But when your kids old enough to ask for the boob when it's like two three-year-old kids with a full set of teeth and hair asking for boob in public that's when it's like holy [ __ ] this kid's going to be [ __ ] Uh, the Tullies in Game of Thrones. Dude, you built some real bad mama issues that way. Are we done talking about uh births and like breast milk and stuff? How many times did you watch that video, Satis? Yeah. Uh, just on 5x speed. Just once. And then everybody I shared it to was like, "Dude, what the

[ __ ] Why are you sharing this to me?" It's like, I saw it. You've got to see it now. All right. Hi everyone and welcome to the Hivemind podcast. 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 brightest minds from each of the divisions to share insights, alpha and ship posts. Today with us we have Cedus uh head of our institutional research arm, Jason 3x liquidated. Are you head of macro? Yeah, markets macro. Yeah, whatever. markets macro and and Jan and myself. Jan is the managing partner of Delphi Ventures and I lead up our Deli Labs arm. So, this should be a happy podcast. I was actually looking forward

to this. It seems at this Oh, yeah. And by the way, congratulations to Yan on his new child, Leo Lieberman. Welcome into the world. Thank you very much. you were back on the podcast literally less than a week after people say giving birth, but you didn't really give birth or like were pregnant or whatever, but but yeah, you're still a still a Yeah, you're you're you're a bit useless early on. Um because it's it's really just like breastfeeding and sleeping for the most part. Um you're not breastfeeding? No, I'm halfway there, but but not not quite. Um, yeah, cuz yeah, we also have a 21-month-old and and honestly, there's a pretty strong relationship between age

and difficulty that kind of keeps going and I'm just waiting for that line to to the flattening of the slope a little bit. Um, because yeah, you can't really control them, but they're fully mobile and now they have attitude and uh manipulation skills and all this stuff. So that's basically where the handful comes in. And then um yeah, you kind of just suffer on sleep for a while with the newborn, but there's not much that I can do for for a little while outside. None of us none of us know that feel. We're all just your classic crypto forever alone uh in South. What's a woman? What are Well, bull market's back. May we all

find women. I actually have a girlfriend, by the way, because she probably goes through this. That's fine. But uh yeah, subtle flex. Oh, she was he was also born on the day of the ETH pump. Wow. Wow. Was it May 7th? Yeah. You didn't want to call him like ether or something or I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure it was like the main I remember. Was he the catalyst? Yeah. We have some inside baseball now. Next kid. Um, all right guys, so it looks like we're back. Are are we back? Maybe we can start there with how's everyone feeling about about markets.

They look pretty good. I don't know if we're uh I don't I don't know, Jason. I'm actually curious Jason say because Jason is uh I think Jason's pretty cautious here. I think like the difference though in this rally is that um obviously the ETH pump, right? Like if I'm looking at looking at our sector dashboard since our last podcast, it's like 44% ETH, 10 Bitcoin, 20 soul, right? And this is like the first ETHLled rally. And what you're seeing is while like while like while like ETH ratios have gone down on most of these tokens um it has been more like broad-based with ETH leading versus kind of like in the past when it was just

Bitcoin and you would have Bitcoin go up like 10% and you'd have these tokens USD prices going down a lot too, right? Um but I'm not sure if that's like I honestly don't know the real reason for the ETH pump. Like there's this one entity on chain that's bought like 500 million recently and is like borrowing against their ETH. So they're like lever longing ETH and so that has like a bit of an impact. You haven't seen any like ETF flows yet. So it's like that meme, right? The two guys on the bus. Um like this is either a good thing or a bad thing, right? the the optimistic way to look at it is that the institutions haven't bought yet and

the bad way to look at it is the institutions aren't buying, right? Um, and I really don't know because there was Yeah, there's been like this I don't know, people get upset if you call it a pivot. There's been this like re um rep prioritization of scaling the L1 recently right? Um but yeah like I'm looking at even yesterday ETH ETF flows again Black Rockck Zero Black Rockck's had it had one day over the past so over the past four days well ETH has added like hundred billion dollars to its market cap the black rockck ETF for ETH had zero zero 17 mil zero okay so it's like ETH did get if you

look like ETH did go down an absolute [ __ ] ton like even year to date it's still down 23% versus Bitcoin up 11 and sold down 6 and a half. Right. So, it's really hard to say if this is anything else other than just like a bunch of shorts getting unwound. That's what it is. I think it's just a positioning pump. It was just the favorite short leg of any pair. Um I think people loaded up just to get levered long other stuff. Play it cautiously and and so you've had this this big unwind. I mean, it's crazy. It's like outperformed even soul by quite a bit recently. Um, yeah, I'm I'm euphoric. I'm still holding my my

ETH and uh ETHBTC is back to prices last seen two months ago and I am euphoric. It's funny, but uh yeah, I don't know. Huh. It's me. It's like you bought here draws down 90%. I can break even. I'm a genius. Exactly. Yeah, it is. That ETH ETH pumps are just are just wholesome though. Like they just pump everything else. Like ETH pumps are the most wholesome, I guess. But you get one ETH pump after two years, three years of underperformance and everybody's coming out with like these new threads on why ETH's going to flip BTC. And it's like, guys, shut the [ __ ] up. Like, yeah, by every metric, it's just like it's hard to be optimistic on an asset this large.

um to have anything more than positioning really move it like to have the amount of fresh capital you need move this thing from here is is is a lot. So I think the the most bullish thing for it right now is is that shorts haven't necessarily unwindound and and if BTC keeps chugging higher regardless of the ETH BTC ratio, ETH will chug higher and people are short on dollar pair ETH. So I think you you have like this this short squeeze that that can continue happening. I think ultimately it's just a good opportunity to hedge against ETH using stuff you're you're bullish on. Yeah. Like even with this rep prioritization fighting words, but even with this rep prioritization,

let's say they scale the L100X over the next few years, that still gets you to like 2 3k TPS years, which is over like four years, and you're getting to like 2 3k TPS, which is what Salana and like SUI and these other networks can kind of already do today. Um, and like in in four years from now, those networks are going to be scaled a like [ __ ] ton from here too, right? Um, so I don't know. I think it's good. I think it's good that like money has gone into nonBTC biggest, you know, alt.

Um, but yeah, I just like don't really buy that. I don't think I need to like own ETH. I don't know. Maybe I'll listen to this podcast in a year and be like, "Wow, that was stupid." But I just don't see a market environment where ETH just continues chatting solo for a really long time. I think to own ETH, you have to believe that it can catch the narrative of like flipping Bitcoin. Like I don't see I think at this level you don't need to believe that as much but once it crosses like 04 or something and it gets to like that range going 05 then you need to Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, which which I do uh believe deep down in my soul. I'm

not ashamed to admit it. Like I I definitely believed it more at the ETHBTC top which is a classic but I yeah I still think it's the only like coin with actual like working economic model like the this thing is is like slightly inflationary and net deflationary like Bitcoin has not figured that out. Like this is the actual thing that Bitcoin kind of wishes it had. Um, plus I'm just bullish on the on the on L2s. Like I I don't think they're value creative to ETH. I think that's clear. But I still think it's it was the right move for them to for them to pursue that roadmap.

Like it might not be the right move for ETH the asset um in the short term. Maybe maybe not in the long term. I'm not sure. I think I think the the history of technology is that if you have something that has traction, the value capture tends to figure itself out. Not always. Um, and L2s like clearly have product market fit. Like I think that's hard to argue against. Like uh yeah, I agree. So I think the the Yeah, the right framing for the L2 is not necessarily does it help ETH? But is ETH better off with or without them, right? And without them you'd have even more activity on Salon and in other places. And so it's a good way to put it. Sure, you can argue it doesn't help, but like ETH is

certainly better off with their with them existing. Yeah, it's just like I think the problem that they realized is that you don't need to design like it was kind of weird. They kind of just gave up on doing a lot of stuff with the L1 thinking that that wouldn't be thinking that like that wouldn't be beneficial to rollups. But look at Salana. People are starting to launch random like extensions and roll-ups on Salana and Salana does like not give a [ __ ] about roll-ups. That's like not their thesis. But so I think Ethereum kind of took some of those learnings where it was like, "Oh, Salana, people are launching roll-ups on Salana now and they don't even really want them. Why is that?" Right? Um and again, we talked about it on last pod

about all the benefits of um having like a more performant chain like single slot finality, shorter block times, why that's good for the whole rollup road map, right? So, all right. You initially asked Jason for his opinion and then we we just continuously interrupted each other and Jason hasn't spoken yet. So, I'm gonna I'm going to pass over the mic to you, Jason. What What are your thoughts on Marcus? I know you're a bit cautious here. No, that that was fine. I I enjoy listening to that stuff. Um yeah, I mean I'm just um I'm just yeah slightly cautious here.

Um like Bitcoin like 104 105 to me is like the like um no man's land. Yeah. It's kind of like if like I look at it from like a couple different types of like perspectives like if so like if you like longed like you know somewhere near the bottom like 75 76 77 you know somewhere in that area and you're like looking to take profits right like you probably would have done so around like 90 maybe 95 and c certainly like 105 like it's like the range high it's like very clearly like an area that you should sell if you're like not somebody that's like buying for like

six, seven, eight, 10 months, right? Like it's it's just a very clear area to sell from that perspective, from like a trading perspective, right? Like if you like bought the range low reclaim at like 90K, you would want to probably sell range high, right? That's like a very common strategy. If you're somebody who's like tactical and trying to hedge out, right, you try to think of like where's it where is the optimal place to hedge like 105 range high, like 104 makes a ton of sense. Um, and if you're like wrong, right, on like, you know, shorting or hedging at like 105, like you're risking all-time high break, which is like 108, right? It's like right there. Your invalidation is super clear. And the like one of the best trades that you can like generally do in

crypto or in in like most markets is like buying the all-time high break of an asset after it's, you know, spent months or more below it, right? And once you get that like final or like that that push through and you you get like a breakout above all-time highs, like it's a very clear long. Like you just go back and look at uh go back and look at like any chart with assets. Like it's almost always like a good uh good buy over any kind of time horizon. So when I look at it like that, I'm just like, okay, like if I if I want to hedge, like this is the area to hedge for me. Um, we've and then like to the point about the ETH move like I don't think there's anything that's like happened. I think it was um mostly just to Yan's point just like

positioning related. Um, you see it in ETF flows like he was saying like there isn't really like a huge spot appetite there from what I can tell and uh like a 25 30% move in ETH is like like this is the area I would be looking to to like short ETH and long some other things. Like I'm not like trying to short it immediately now. Like I'd like to see it go sideways or whatever and and like just like generally lose momentum before I I short or whatever, but like I don't know how you buy ETH at 26 or 2700 and be like, "Yeah, right now is a good buy." Like I seems tough for me. Um so when I look at it from like those two perspectives, I'm like, "All right, like this is an area that I would probably

derisk or I am like I'm hedging. I'm not like selling spot bags from the lows. I'm just like putting on some hedges and I'll take those off. If we blast through alltime highs, I'll lose a little bit, but everything else will go up a bunch more, so I should be okay. Um, and then when I look at like ETF flows, none on ETH, and then BTC ETF lows topped like two weeks ago, more three weeks ago, they topped April 21st or 22nd. So e like Bitcoin ETF lows have been consistently decreasing over the last two and a half, three weeks as we've grinded higher up here, right? So like you don't really see too much appetite from institutional buyers up here. I I know Sailor you had a couple other

people, you know, unload and and buy stuff in the high 80s to mid 90s. Um so it seems like a fair amount of that dry powder is probably done. Um, and then the Fed like obviously, you know, is in no rush, right? Like I think they they could maybe miss the boat here a little bit if they continue, you know, just not doing anything. Like, oh, we'll wait and see. We'll wait and see. We'll wait and see. Well, at some point that'll be a bit late. Um, so I'm just like looking at everything. I'm like, okay. Like, everybody's super super super super bullish. And obviously everybody gets more bullish the higher you go with price. So, I'm just like looking at all

of this and then I see all of the um the like trench onchain stuff and and the behaviors going on there as like another kind of like um just like you know red flag warning sign. Uh I mean mang is a major red flag. Nobody Why is anybody buying mudang? I woke up and I had a lot of that's positioning too though Peanut Fred people like I had like 10 DMs messaging me about Muang Peanut and Fred and I was just like all right like like as much a lot of those got blown out though because they had like that OI that was bigger than market cap in a lot of these scenarios and so they were just

right for that's fair that's fair yeah there's been a lot of that the Zerbro was like that too um before the dev faked his and so yeah I just see all of this stuff and I'm like as somebody who is like pretty tactical at least with like a you know a portion of of of my book like I it it's just like a very clear area that I would you know hedge and derisk. So I'm just like cautious and if we break all-time highs on Bitcoin like the hedges come off or whatever and we just go into hopeful hopefully price discovery towards like one you know 120 125 or or higher. Um so that's just generally how I'm playing it. Like I'm not bearish by any means. I was talking to to Quinn Thompson um yesterday and a couple days ago. I know he's fairly bearish on generally

everything right now. Uh I haven't gotten his like his like full thesis, so I don't really have much to share, but I know he's been he's been pretty spot-on, at least with his like macro rotations over the last um you know, several months to a year. So, I'm kind of curious to to see what he has to say when he flushes that out uh more publicly. But that's something else that I've kind of Yeah, I did some de-risking yesterday and and not Yeah, definitely not bearish, but just thinking about we've had a lot of good news. Um we've had a lot of buying happening from Sailor and and the Caner guys. Not to say that Sailor's done, but you know, he they they they upped their um total amount and it seems like there's still a

lot of appetite from the debt market to to buy Micro Strategy and those shares have done well. So, um doesn't seem like that's going to slow down soon, but it definitely, you know, oscillates between 300 mil and and and one and a half to two billion a week here and there. So, it is interesting to see how how how varied it is. would love to know what the driver there um is. But so you have him consistently betting which is which is great, but we've yeah there's been quite the runup and it's just it seems less likely that we just blast through all-time highs considering all the info that we had to get us here. Um you know macro is still not really out of the woods. uh

you you know you have some of the the the pain that's going to exist from the the the China situation where there have been quite a few delays on on shipping and and and then at the same time like even with low tariffs are still not negligible. So it's kind of you know weighing the impact of that versus the you know the the endless bid for AI uh whether it's capex and and and everything that comes along all the downstream effects of that. So, you know, you have the two kind of pulling on opposite sides, but it seems like, yeah, labor market softening. Um, uh, housing markets rolling over a bit. So, it's, you know, I think there's there's some rationality risk. I'd love to see

just kind of a puke lower. Um, because it, you know, like Jason mentioned, there's a lot of profit taking that happens at top of range. And I I think we've had all the good news that's come through. So, it's it seems less likely that we'll just blast through all-time highs in the first try. I think you kind of need to absorb some more supply at these prices and and have the the endless biders come in and buy. Um, and so what that kind of means for me is is yeah, I'm doing some hedging and and ideally would like to buy a puke lower that that punishes late longs, but still longer term bullish, shorter term kind of cautious and waiting. and then you know have it be wrong if it just keeps going. I mean to be honest like I

I played the uh the move up from um like 95 or whatever to 105 extremely poorly to be to be completely frank. Like I I just didn't expect us to go from 75 to 105 in one move without like any pullback at all at like at all. Obviously, a lot of that was like, you know, headlines from Trump negotiations, the China deal, right? Like that or was there even a China deal or was it just they're talking about a deal, whatever it is, right? Like I just wasn't they've reduced their baseline rates much much lower so they're not these catastrophic ones like 10 and 30 for 90 days. So like yeah, I just like wasn't expecting that

magnitude of a move without anything like pulling back. Like I'm I'm glad I had like some positions from the local lows, but I I I played it like pretty poorly. So, like I'm not here to be like, "Oh, I'm I'm fully right on this." Like, I could definitely be wrong and BTC could easily just [ __ ] go to 108 in the next 5 days if something happens or whatever. Um, but that's just generally my take and and how I'm feeling and and how I'm I'm positioned currently. Yeah, crypto just always surprises you. I feel like just when whenever things are most bearish, right? It's it's it's just such a reflexive like asset. I think Pesu actually had a good post on this. Um, but yeah, I kind of agree with that. Well, you guys are cautious. I was

busy buying jelly jelly at the top. Be greedy when others are whose post. What are you talking about? The one when he was like, E went back up for no reason. Yeah, basically. Yeah, but the post was like it went down for no reason. I was like, what are you talking about? ETH hasn't been going down for no reason. I mean, I I think there's definitely reasons, but I don't know. Should we go should we should we move on to internet capital markets or do you want to talk about like maybe what what are people bullish on fundamentally uh here other than majors? Because I feel like soul has a very interesting setup.

Uh obviously like every time I think the market comes back, it's clear that like it comes back the most on Soul. Like there's the most interesting stuff happening on Soul. whether you like I'm not very bullish on this internet capital markets thing. I think that believe is really cool. It's a really cool flow. It's cool that Nikita is is advising. I think this posting a link to launch a token is is dope. And there's a bunch of other cool stuff happening on Soul. Uh this platform called uh dev.f fun. It's like vibe coding. Um sort of vibe coding an app linked to a token. I just think um so I think that that's all and and also the superstate thing launching on soul and ethereum I thought

was a big statement given it was Leshner who's obviously compound founder um generally more associated to ETH. What I thought was big with that is that the regulation compliance is done at superstate level. So no DeFi protocols the protocol itself needs to worry about KYC or any of that stuff. And this is a pretty big win for like general purpose chains to me because a lot of reasons people say, "Oh yeah, all these institutions are going to launch their own L2s because for like compliance reasons and all this." Uh it's like that's a pretty bad outcome to me if we're going to get a bunch of institutions launching L2s for compliance reasons because that's like a

terrible product at the end of the day. Like having a lot of L2s is just genuinely a terrible product. Um, so if you can actually just kind of do this compliance right at the asset level, then D5 protocols and the underlying protocol don't need to worry about it. Like that seems like a pretty big deal to me and it's a part of it that wasn't really discussed a ton. Um, so yeah, I think that's pretty bullish. I think it's worth just like unpacking what that means. QC down at superstate level. Yeah, I don't actually know to be totally honest. Like, but you the DeFi protocols for trading it, they don't need to do any KYC or anything themselves. Like, Superstate

handles all of that. Yeah. Uh, somebody uh something about this on on our portal recently. I mean, I think this stuff's going to happen. I I I think ipoing on chain seems like it's going to be a tough tough sell. Um, I'm really excited about by the way we we sidetracked from the point I wanted to make Bat Salana, but we can go back to it later. But the it seems like uh I'm really excited about what Gab's doing and we're obviously like investors and incubated it with but with Metallics just the idea of being able to tokenize startup shares and make it extremely simple to just raise money, do a safe like the way it works right now, recommend everyone goes and checks

out the demo. You can literally just sign a transaction from your wallet. It automatically signs the the safe as well. Money is sent. There's no like I've signed, send money, please send funds, you know, like all this all this chasing around that founders have to do. It just gets done. It's sort of like a docuign plus funding. And then eventually you could have like Carter like functionality on top of this um and have like actual tokenized chairs on chain. And I think if that becomes super easy like you can just set up a company in one click and raise raise money that can facilitate an actual like pump fund or dev fund but based on equities where people are actually entitled to the you know have like legal protections around the cash flows and and efforts of people which personally I think is is much more

interesting like I'm uh and I'm aware that I'm I'm I'm midcurving the this but I just think internet capital markets around memecoin s just aren't aren't that interesting and sort of never will be. Like the incentives are too are too screwed up and you can't really fix them easily. There's always whether it's sniping or vesting or moving the cash flow somewhere else or or rugging. I think you either want fully onchain protocols and cash flows like OGDI. Um or you want like tokenized shares where you have legal rights and you can sue the founders if they and and there's like a whole body of of company law that protects that. And I think Metall is the best position to that I've seen. Uh would be curious if if you guys seen

anything else to facilitate that. Just one quick thing on Superstate. Um so yeah, the KYC is on at the asset level and so basically you KYC with Superstate. Um but then they can trade freely like basically any any any address that has done the KYC with Superstate Yeah. can then use the assets anywhere. Um Yeah. Yeah. So, the dexes and everything and like protocol are totally oblivious to all of that. Um, it just like wouldn't allow you to like the address. It would just block the address basically. It's just like a weight listed pool of addresses.

That's always been how security token security tokens would would work, by the way. Like even the old security token standards from like securitize and stuff back in the day when when Gabe wrote his like OG security token post back in the day. Yeah. But like a lot of banks have and stuff haven't been on board with this and a lot of institutions they've been like, "Oh, we need our own environment and there can't even be anything else going on on the chain." Um, like that has been cuz I've talked to people about this that have talked to like banks and that's why a lot of them do these like avalanche subnet type things where it's their own only their own people are like actually using the the sharing the same state. Um, this is

definitely the only model that really works long term on the launchpool stuff. I I do think there are still ways for this this to to do well or rather some of the things built underneath it to do well. So, I know you know the app itself is pretty cool. you basically have all the stuff listed there and then they have a you know it's permissionless so naturally you're going to get a lot of crap and and grifting but um they they have this like featured section right where it's a curated list and and so you do have you know the issue is you don't have true ownership of these assets but you can have tie into the economic activity and I think you can you know make some adjustments on the

um on with lockups align incentives long term, right? And and and all of that can be kind of advertised. I think it's difficult to make a venture bet on something like this because it seems like it's probably going to be, you know, a temporary fad, but there will be an EV, not a temporary fad, sorry. I I I think it's hard to make the bet that this will be the final form of it. Um, and so, you know, you're going to have this launch, there'll be a lot of activity. You'll start to notice issues that were initially probably obvious and then some that weren't as obvious. And then ideally you kind of have things that that iterate on these issues and and land with a better product. So I think you'll have a flurry of activity.

Some cool stuff will come out and ideally you know this sets the stage for the next iteration and and a better version of it. But this is like a way to speedrun um and and test and prod which I think crypto is really great at in terms of you know uncovering issues and and accelerating progress because it's not academic but it's very much live for sure and internet capital markets happening on Salana is no Salana's really well set up here with like the the purchases not really having happened or maybe not being announced of the of the public companies that are buying or investors in one of them Full disclosure, right? Yan is the name of it. Um there's soul strategy. There's

the other one which name now uh escapes me. But I think given Yeah. Maybe Yan, what are your thoughts on it? You've you've you you led this deal for us and you probably thought about it the most. Yeah. No, I mean I think it makes sense, right? Like what you've seen it work with Bitcoin quite a bit. Um and now you're you're seeing like Meta Planet, right? So now that the Bitcoin play is just about tapping into different international markets, right? So you have uh the Caner and and the and the uh micro strategy in the US. You had MetaPlanet in in in Japan. I think they're going to try and and run this playbook in in other markets. And it it works until it doesn't, right? So So it

it's going to keep working as long as you kind of have others buying in. And there's a lot of kind of fundamental agreement around this asset being something that's worth holding long term. Um so you going down the stack, where else does it make sense? I think you know Bitcoin is is stands on its own in terms of this the value prop of it. Um once you start going further down, you kind of want to find other edges that you can um take advantage of. And so what what a big one with Salana that doesn't exist with Ethereum is that you can buy locked soul at a discount. And so uh because you had the FTX estate and and and others and basically people selling large tranches of soul that that that they needed to do in a hurry and

and so in order to facilitate that selling they needed to create an incentive which was a a locked amount at a discount. And so, um, I think that helps with the bootstrapping for a lot of these. And so that's been the strategy for AEXI, right, to to try and secure a large trunch because the market will value it at book, but you get to buy it at a discount, which helps your price to nav and and kickstarts the flywheel. And so, there's been quite a few of these. I think, um, the other element is the yield on on the sole. Um, it it helps adjust. So, you know, part of what was good with Micro Strategy was it was kind of um a a sustainableish business and and so you were able to just buy without needing to sell to fund

operations and and that was kind of the idea of, you know, looking for these what's the ideal shell. It's something that's listed, something that that has a clean cap table, something that that can operate at at relatively break even cash flows. And so with the yield on top, it helps you service debt or or whatever else you need to do, expand and improve the uh the premium to nav. So I think Soul is in a unique position there. And you've seen quite a few of these. They still have a lot of them haven't really deployed too much. Um they're all they've talked about raising, you know, mid nine figure, some even uh billion dollar facilities to help deploy. And I think, you know, some have deployed in the 140 to 150 range, but this move back to, you know, now we're at 175, I think.

So um 176, there's still a lot of dry powder from these. And I I think if you see the international Bitcoin versions do well, I wouldn't be surprised to see international versions for Soul as well, just to, you know, you're going to copy what works. So I think there's this idiosyncratic bid for soul there particularly relative to ETH which I so I think that like the sole ETH pair is probably going to do well from here because you kind of had this you know positioning led ETH rally while after that it's hard to to to see where a sustainable bid would come from whereas on the soul side we know that there's quite a bit of dry powder ready to go and and as you're seeing you know all

all the new kind of launches happen there um it it kind begins to eat further into into ETH's lead. I think I think both and Soul Strategies have over 100 mil now. I think I saw both of those. Yeah, they bought a big clip at a discount. Why do you think there's none of these for for ETH popping up? It can't just be because you can't buy ETH at a lock ETF and it hasn't really had any demand. I think it kind of makes it less exciting for people to do this stuff. I think the bootstrapping part is is important, right? It increases the probability of success if you can get at a discount. I agree that's that that's not the thesis on its own. Uh but I think it's a contributor to it. Surely somebody's going to try this with ETH, right?

Like I would like I as as I mean I'm sure people have tried and there's been zero interest in Huh. Because I've been thinking about this. I'm like all right well BTC so like why wouldn't like it seems like it's been skipped. Like we've seen one with Tao. there's more for there's gonna be others. Well, it's more so debt markets being able to tap into these assets, right? That's what you're that's what you're doing with these. Yeah. I think Micro Strategy like the reason they kicked off this flywheel initially at least was because there was no Bitcoin ETF, right?

So, people would buy this thing from Yeah. proxy exposure to Bitcoin. And I think the soul that's why the bet is sort of clean like there's no uh like way to get public markets exposure to soul. So this can act as as that and then you have like the flywheel of of the the sort of micro strategy ponzi you can throw on top. But I think with ETH it's tougher because you can already get ETH in public markets and no one seems to want it even when it's up like 40% in a week. Like no one no one really wants it. So it's hard to I don't know that that's my theory on it. Um yeah. Cool. Going back to what about on fundamental side? like what are you guys excited about that you've been seeing in crypto or trends that you're

that you're excited about like etc. So you still are you still a Celestia bull? Yeah, I mean Celestia they on like a protocol level they keep uh getting more stuff moving over there. I think Celestia has like a ton of like lowhanging fruit that they can do too. Kind of just waiting for them to like launch their own TF focused big rollup or something. Um, yeah. I still I'm like I'm like I'm not going to sell, you know, I've been buying Celestia between what, like 2.5 and like 4.5. I'm not going to like sell it here.

If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. Like I'll just ride that to zero. But um they they got they had a what? They had a few rollups move over the other day. They've got Inisha. um that has sort of performed better off the bottom. Initial was a great launch I thought. Yeah. And I mean the tech the tech there is still good. So um one thing though this is kind of I guess embarrassing to admit that I didn't realize is that Tia's vesting is only two years. Um so it's like actually a lot more aggressive than I thought it was. I thought it was like four years.

It was like oneird up front and then Yeah. Um, and then the the 2/3 over two years. So, it's going to be like all the investor unlocks are going to be done in October, which so it's still pretty aggressive until then, but I guess like I don't know that. Yeah, I just I think the cost basis is pretty much reset on Yeah. Celestia, honestly, at this point, like given the volume that's happened, like I think it can run fairly cleanly from from here. Yeah. And it's and it's like it's it's it's only it's only like a couple bill now. It's going to come a point, okay, where Celestia team is going to have to

like just build uh a really good like execution layer or something. It's going to get to the point where the writing will be on the wall. Like this thing's going to zero if you don't pivot a bit from just being this like neutral DA layer. And so you see and then it'll be priced probably like a normal L1 at that point. Um and so yeah, I just think there's a lot of like pretty lowhanging fruit for them to do. Yeah, I'm pretty Yeah, I'm pretty bullish in it as well. Driving some more DA demand there. I think a lot of the um minishes are going to start going live

over the next like few months. they have they've been having like a lot of organic demand there. Um yeah, I think that that could be a good driver. But I do agree ultimately they need to do their own their own like economical roll up. That's sort of the lesson of crypto I think because there's like nothing to do with TIA, man. Like I have TIA and I want to get some I want to like use it in DeFi and do some other [ __ ] with it. Bro, there's really like nothing. There's like flame which has like less than 10 mil TVL.

Um I think there's like 100k in an osmosis pool or something. It's like there's just like just [ __ ] build a like a a scalable because they can make a really good roll up too with Celestia as the DA layer, right? Um, and so it doesn't really seem like too complicated to me to like get a decent bid for TIA by just making a good like scalable mega rollup sort of deal, you know? And so I think that eventually I don't know, someone else will do it or they'll just be like, "Okay, let's just do this [ __ ] ourselves because it's going to hit a point,

right?" as I said. Yeah, agreed. What about you guys, Jason Yan? What have you been seeing that's that's exciting you? Um, obviously I I still I still still really like hype. It's my biggest bag outside of Bitcoin. Um, by a pretty wide margin. Um, I'm also I've started um over the last like two weeks or so just started buying some some RWA stuff. Um, I don't have like a a clear favorite by any means, but I I think um I think with uh with all of these

like uh like conversations around uh tokenizing securities, I I think it'll be a fairly big narrative assuming we can get yeah a move across crypto like you know Bitcoin breaks alltime highs, you get excitement back into the market. I think there will be a pretty big like institutional meta or narrative around that. So, I've just slowly been buying some different um RWAs. I don't really I think maple I guess I guess it's syrup now is is slightly interesting. Um uh but I've started just buying a basket of those mainly because I I think there will be some kind of uh decent decent meta or narrative that occurs over a couple weeks or or several months

uh later this year especially if we get a a move higher in in Bitcoin to new highs and we kind of reignite that bullish sentiment across the board. Um, but other than that, it's, you know, I got even more bullish hype, uh, when when I saw like Hip 3, the the recent thing. Like, I I actually think like there's a real potential for people to build their own exchanges on top of Hyperlid. And I never really saw that before. Like for instance, let's say for Athena, like what they could do with this is they could add cuz like with with Hip 3, you can basically stake like 1 million Hype and you can add your own pairs uh that to to the to the Hype

exchange and and they they list them on the front end too as far as I understand. Uh which means they could basically add like a BTC USD pair, an ENOUSD pair, like all the USD pairs here, right? Um, and then they could they could say uh they could build like an HLP with with with USD in it and they could say um everyone who holds USD as collateral and trades these pairs on hype, we'll just pay them out the the USD yield similar to what they're doing in buy on buy bit plus some points, right? And effectively they can like this this ethereal initiative they're doing. They could sort of like uh have another another shot at go of having their own exchange by building on top of hype. and they're actually capturing

like 50% of the of the builder fees, right? So, I can see it at a time when uh when like funding ticks up, this being like such an interesting move. Again, I've just sort of thought about this very recently. I need to go look at if if if everything's possible, but it it makes a lot of sense, right? You already have a lot of this flow. Uh and it just creates these these these ways for people to build exchanges on top of your uh like very easily sort of deploy exchanges on top of your liquidity uh and and your like front end which yeah it's super super interesting. Yeah, it seems you know new stuff generally moves the hardest, right? So, you've seen uh you kind of just need to blindly

throw money at at minorly compelling new things and then look into them afterwards. Um so, yeah, that I think that's the case because you you really don't have much of an opportunity to to to do diligence u before you know that the thing moves wildly in your face. So, I think that happened with Launchpool. I know uh Simbach on our on our side has been super bullish on uh KTA uh which is kind of like the the permissioned high-performant DAG hybrid chain. Um lot of words there. Yeah, exactly. It's a big big word salad.

Um so I know that stuff's moving like the move on has been kind of nuts, but I I don't know how much more it really has. I think you're probably better off repositioning that into newer L1s. I think Initia, yeah, that there's still a lot of room to run as these launch and and there are reason we're investors in initia by the way, just to be just to be clear. Yeah, I think that that's got a lot of room to run. So, it's these new launches that are still in price discovery that don't have a lot of new supply hitting the market and have a lot of kind of catalyst. I think, you know, you kind of one directional price action for a bit. So I think the setup is is strong there. Particularly I think SU is is like top is number 16 or something

like that as of yesterday. So it's it's hard to see how much more it can really run right if you're if you're buying here what are you really targeting? And so I think you kind of get a gradual rotation down the L1 stack. Um and and so thinking about what you can do initially seems like a really solid one because of yeah kind of a lot of uh interesting DAPs launching there. Um we'll see what happens when Monad launches, right? I'm sure that'll kind of eat away into some of this specul speculative L1 demand.

Um the the memes I think you know you you kind of want to wait on a puke for those because they've brought up quite a bit. Um, but it just shows that that the demand is there. It's just they they move violently. So, I think if you're patient, you can get a pretty good entry on those. Um, if you know BTC takes a leg down to the high 90s, I think you kind of get a a temporary blood bath in alts and and not that it's just over, but it's more so just late entrance puking leverage. Um because I think there's been pretty strong FOMO across the board when when BTC just kind of doesn't even give you an inch to to get in.

Um but yeah, ultimately I think yeah, BTC will be driven by by the the the big guys buying and so you kind of need to hope that that continues. The um yeah, I think the the the all L1 stuff is probably some of the more interesting ones. And then, you know, if you're in the trenches, like the launchpool internet ICM stuff is is basically the the new trenches now. Um because it's you can argue it's not purely mimemetic. So, you can actually begin to have some conviction in and what you're looking at and and have some fundamental basis around what to invest. In one way, is it not purely mimemetic? Uh because you have some you can tie some economic

activity to the value of the token. Um, isn't the economic activity just the trading fees from volume? Uh, they have other ones too. Like you could like there there's some activity that I think like dupe has dupe is like a furniture aggregator type thing. It's I think it's like Wayfair and like Overstock or some something. It's like the way I kind of like look at it. It reminds me a ton of like the AI platform launchpad and agent meta. like it it's like a perfect mirror to that almost like there's some there's like you know a couple things in there that are like kind of interesting and and have you know uh some semblance of of like a fundamental backing or you know floor I guess you could say like with

virtuals right like uh I guess like your like virtuals or AI6Z or whatever you could like kind of look and be like okay launchcoin is similar to that right like I guess like if this meta uh you know kind of pops off or or or whatnot. Like the launch the the main launch pad's probably a fairly good you know buy in that sense. I'm not saying buy it now that it's, you know, up like 10x in the last 36 hours or or whatever, but um it has that and then you have just like pure mimemetic coins like like Gooncoin or whatever. But then you have like some things that are kind of like in the middle I guess like dupe or like fitcoin or whatever which are like kind of it's

like weird the way 99 or 95% meme 5% maybe something cool comes out of it is the way I'm kind of and if you think about how it plays out right it'll rhyme with previous scenarios probably uh meaning you'll have you it'll be this gradual euthanasia roller coaster for sure right of just like slowly declining ones. But you the initial setup is is good in the sense that you have money rushing in and not enough disper not enough dilution in terms of where that money can go. So um it it forces concentration into a handful of plays and then they tend to

run and then that brings in you know kind of the the a combination of grifty and and new builders. But what that ends up leading to is just too many places to park your money and then lower highs on a lot of these tokens aside from, you know, potential standout few. So, I think it's like the easiest money is made early on. Um, and then and then it gets harder because there's just too many things capturing attention and flows. Yeah. But what do you own then? You're you owning Launchcoin or I have Launchcoin and Dupe?

Yeah, you could go there's this uh believecanner.com. Yeah. It kind of shows you all Yeah. Yeah. It kind of shows you I guess like all the main uh main coins that I guess have been launched through this uh through believe through through the believe app or or whatever. Um so yeah like the way I look at it is like this is like almost all meme, right? like the way I mean you have dupe I guess launchcoin is is you know the the launchpad and then I guess you have like dupe which is kind of like a real thing. Fitcoin might kind of be a real thing but like other than that most of these are kind of like memes. So the way I look at it is like you you you own

like maybe one or two of like the real things and then maybe like a meme exposure to it, right? But I don't I don't really know. I was I was kind of like uh sick over the last several days. So like I kind of really missed missed most of this meta. That's you know that's how crypto works. You're off the computer for 48 hours and you miss an entire meta. Um but yeah like it's to me it's just like a rerun of the agent platform launchpad thing. So I think you could probably run the same playbook to that like you you barbell into like the useful thing is Eliza like am I going to get uh or or is it

not Eliza? Sorry. Is it Luna? Actually maybe it's not like a launch dupe is like uh what's the website? I was literally looking at it um this morning when I was waiting. Dupe.com. You just feel like you're gonna get Yeah, just dupe.com. Uh, so like you it's not like a lot you don't like launch coins through it. You don't build anything on it. It's to I think it's literally just like a furniture aggregator across like Wayfair. It's like I like this um uh Ames chair that's eight grand. Find me a knockoff. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Um so I mean like there I guess, right?

But this token should be worth $1 billion mainly because financial advice. No, I'm in the uh I'm in the jelly jelly. Jelly jelly jelly. I was looking it was looking real good there and then it just got cut in half like a few hours ago. Share the thesis. Uh no, there's no real thesis. It was just like early to ICM. They're actually they are there. So, they're giving a presentation at Salon Accelerate next week. Um, and they have a real like product, but you have to like I don't think people really know about it. You got to like do some uh wait list to get on it. That's Sam whatever guy VC the guy who like originally made the token.

I mean it went to like 250 right like a few months ago and then went to zero. Can easily go back to 250. So, I mean, I don't think the token, the thing is, it's like I don't think the token is ever going to be meaningfully integrated into the app. And so, then it's just back to this pure like dumb gambling. Cetus really just needs the hyperlquid uh exploer to go back and pump jelly jelly again. Yeah, the the thing is there's a decent amount of lore with Jelly Jelly. like from the terrible launch to being a part of the I saw a good tweet yesterday from Sisphus that was like um you could have bought hype at like $10 but you were busy longing jelly

jelly. Uh, I mean I I bought uh I couldn't I can't bring myself to buy launch like yesterday when I was looking at all of it and I was going to buy it at like 8 cents and I was like this is stupid and now it's like what 25 cents or something. Yeah, it's 225 mil market cap right now. Um, this stuff is really just not my game from 10 mil 3 days ago. So yeah, I'm not too interested in this this I just like have no I just have like no confidence and so I have like a bucket that I use just to buy random [ __ ] I feel like that's smaller. Yeah. I don't have any meaningful exposure to this stuff. It's just like um Yeah. Yeah. It just me

honestly. And then Yeah. I don't even Yeah. I don't even find it interesting. Like it doesn't take that much time to figure it out for what it's worth. Right. You just like it's it's like 20 minutes of reading and then you're like, "Okay." Yeah. It's like, "Okay, this is basically the same, slightly different because it's like web two." Yeah. I mean, I was on a call with uh with a friend yesterday. He was explaining all of it to me. I'm like, "Wait, so you're pretty much just replacing AI, agent, and Launchpad with ICM, meme, and Launchpad." He's like, "Yeah, pretty much." I'm like, "All right, fine."

Yeah. I'm surprised at how well virtuals has come back, to be honest. Same. Yeah. I mean, their their hackathon was actually pretty good. Like uh I know Stean from Cyber Fun attended. He was pretty impressed. Then he I I looked at a few of the projects and it's pretty high quality hackathon or accelerator or whatever. I think the biggest critique with virtuals is like it's just a launchpad, the tech sucks, all this stuff. And that might have all been true, but they've seem to just done a good job on BD. Uh you know, I was going to ask you guys since you're deeper in this stuff. Um, I was like looking at, you know, everything pumping a lot. You know, memecoins kind of back with, you know, this meta plus you have like Bonk and Doge and Pepe and Whiff

all like, you know, doing really well in the last like week or two. And it seems like a lot of the attention has shifted away from AI stuff. And I was like, "Oh, maybe this is my chance to start, you know, like maybe getting into some things that I was missed or whatever." And I'm kind of curious like, are you guys buying more AI coins? I I know like Jose and and and Yan are definitely very um you know bullish AI in general. So I'm curious, are you like buying more AI coins? Are you the only big uh it's actually the biggest position I've held in an AI coin is is Worldcoin.

Interesting. Yeah. Uh give us the shell. Yeah. Yeah. Give us the shell here. I'm pretty sure I gave us the [ __ ] Didn't I give like a You gave it I don't think I think you gave it internally in in like a really on one of our calls like a research call or something. I mean, honestly, I just met with the with the CEO in SF when uh when we did our our trip there, and I just got really bullish on on on him and and the team and like their vision, their ambition. Um, and like the very simple the very simple take that that that he sort of gave me that I took away is that like uh identity used to be something a cost for business. like it's

something you have to do for compliance reasons like you need to do KYC and all this stuff and in the era of AI it's going to turn into like a value that a business can offer its it's real customers which is that you can certify that they're actually real people using your social network or your dating site or or whatever it might be. You're not just interacting with with a bunch of AIs. Um and yeah, that that just made a lot of sense to me. um like the their goal I think they want to do like 100 million users this year and I think it's like a billion users by by 2027. I think they're at 25 million users right now.

Um and yeah, I just think it's like super ambitious. Um I think it's like one of the one of the biggest sort of ideas in in in crypto. Um, yeah, that's So, I'm I'm I bought a I bought a bag and I'm I'm holding on to that one. Do the emissions not bother you? Uh, yeah. The the emissions the the emissions are are annoying. They're but they're they're paying for users. Like, I mean, investors are are unlocking too, but they've I'm pretty sure I need to look at the latest numbers. We're actually I think working on a world coin

report right now which at at research um which should help demystify a lot of this stuff because um yeah I don't think people fully uh fully understand the dynamics there. Um, and then I do think there's like a lot of potential for for for value capture actually in terms of charging businesses to use this stuff like an API to basically verify your your your users. Um, yeah. I don't know. I'm I'm I'm really excited about it. And that's your biggest like AI position you said recently that you've bought? Yeah, I bought like I bought game um like I thought I got a really good entry and

it's it's up like 5x from the bottom and I'm still down 50%. Uh like uh so that's my only other real like I I I never really and that was just a FOMO honestly uh like uh bet. Uh but uh yeah, in terms of AI coins, I'm really excited about some of the stuff that's happening in private markets like Prime Intellect and and Noose uh a bunch of the stuff. We just did an accelerator in cryptoi and had like the teams here in Portugal for for about two weeks ago for a week and yeah, there's people building really really cool stuff. But um in public markets, I haven't seen Yeah. anything super exciting. I guess

the real question is, Jose, did you get your eyeballs scanned when you were in SF? I did. Oh, you did? Yeah. Yeah, I'm officially uh scanned. I think the easiest like biggest bare case. Yeah. Against world. There's three things. It's the the emissions are pretty bad. That's number one. Number two is regulatory wise. There's already countries that have kind of like tried to ban it and you'll see more of that. And then three, just like bad PR from like checking in gangs, could uh human trafficking people to scan their eyeballs. And you could see how that could get like worse, too. And so those are kind of the three main bare cases for it. Like

uh for the bull case, I do agree with you. It seems like they're building a lot. It has kind of this like mimemetic thing with it with like AI. Um, it actually is trying to solve a pretty big problem, the civil problem. They have like this whole ecosystem with the world app and all that stuff. So, yeah, I don't own I don't own world myself. It's just like I mean, it's hard to buy it at at like whatever it is like 13 or 14 bill, but but uh I still think also the connection with Sam Alman and OpenAI is sort of underrated. Like OpenAI is working on a social network allegedly. Um, they obviously that's underrated. I feel like it's rated well. I mean, I think it was it was max rated when it was trading at

100 bill on launch with like Yeah, that that was sort of like it was trading like uh the the the OpenAI to to coin chart is like is awful, right? It was like it was trading higher than OpenAI at some point and then proxy exposure. Yeah, exactly. Proxy exposure to OpenAI. Um, it's a synthetic open AI law and I actually think they're like trying to design it as a protocol. Um, I don't know. It seems like one of the biggest I'm I'm very excited for this report actually. I'm meaning to catch up with with uh Lucas on it because I think it's it's it's interesting to model out how big the the business could actually be like from a from a cash flow perspective because it's hard to reason about right

now. Mhm. Well, thought this was a decent episode. Yeah agreed. Agreed. Oh, the only other thing that's interesting is I have been catching up like I was going to do this tweet like two weeks ago and now it's a bit too late. But I it really felt like the trough of disillusionment for crypto, you know, like in the paralleta Perez hype cycle or whatever where everyone's disappointed but actually there's real stuff happening in the background. And I've even been catching up with with a few like 2017 blast from the past ICO projects that are now like actually getting traction on their on the stuff they were doing like these really big ideas. um whether it's energy on the like putting putting the grid on chain

or like some other crazy ideas that that are now actually getting traction and the use case seems to make sense and I think we're going to see a few of those come out of left field this cycle. What's crazy is that I realized that power ledger is still like a thing. Power ledger. I forgot about that one. Apparently, apparently it's still like a thing. um they've been at like deep ppin events and stuff whereas some others you just never hear of again like what happened to Gollum like those guys must still have so much Yeah those guys massive treasury I remember I looked it up like a while a like a year ago or something and they'd

released like a an alpha um I was like sir it's been seven years how are you releasing an alpha it's like you know Elon's built like [ __ ] Neuralink in the meanwhile. Like, yeah. Anyway, cheers guys. Thought this was a good episode and uh yeah, we'll we'll catch you all again in two weeks. Maybe we'll do a live one for a for a for a change. Yeah, I'll try and figure that out. See you. Peace. Thanks. See you. See you guys.

[Music]