Hivemind: Fed Cuts Rates, Crypto's Mag7 Moment & Why We're Still Bullish

Transcript

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] Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Hivemind 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 brightest minds from each of the divisions to share insights, alpha, and [ __ ] posts. Today with us, we have Cedus Parabus from institutional research arm. We have Yan Lieberman,

managing partner of Delphi Ventures, and we have Jason, also known as 3x liquidated, a regular on the podcast, who is heads up macro at Delphi Research. I'm I'm Jose, and I head up Deli Labs. split my time between Delphi Labs and Deli Ventures. So, should we start? We always start with markets. I think it's a good time to to start with markets given FOMC yesterday. Uh we're recording this on Thursday. So, FOMC was yesterday. It was kind of like what everyone expected. Pretty much a nothing burger. Markets sort of dipped and then and then recovered afterwards. Does anyone have any any hot takes on just like where we are in markets and Yeah.

Um, yeah, very briefly, right? To your point, kind of what the market was expecting and pricing in probably you could tell by the price action or like the lack of price action. It was just kind of like just like ALGO seismma graph type stuff in the after, you know, the immediate aftermath as they're trying to parse through the three-word changes in the FOMC statement or whatever it is. Um, the dot plot was like kind of interesting. like it's it's very clear that like the the committee isn't super aligned on what the um what the path looks like, right? Like as of now, it seems like we probably have another 50 basis point uh basis point rate cuts left throughout 2025. You had

that one really big uh dissenting opinion which was probably from the new uh the new the new Fed member Moran. Um uh so other than that right like I think I think it's kind of business as as usual right absent any you know massive massive um outlier data prints from say employment or inflation like it seems very clear we're just like starting to now like re-mbark on this um you know rate cut path whether or not it's 50 basis points 25 through end of year.

seems very clear that we're going to have several throughout the rest of this year and through 2026. So, it seems like kind of in line with what um what Kevin over here at Deli or myself have kind of, you know, been expecting. Um it's it's clear that they're starting to kind of pivot away from their inflation fears, right? they've been kind of hammering home, you know, tariff, inflation, blah, blah, blah, when the reality is a lot of the risks are probably to the employment side of the mandate versus the inflation side. Um, there was quite a bit of questions around like questions and debate after around like are they too focused on returning back to that 2%. Is that even like a you know a plausible or realistic

expectation at this point? Um, so it seems clear like everybody's now shifting away from the inflation mandate towards making sure employment doesn't blow up, which is probably a good thing. Um, and I think the, you know, the outlook from here through year end probably, you know, hopefully I don't eat my words here, but looks pretty good, right? Like I think the macro regime is is looking decent. I think liquidity environment starting to pick back up again. Um, and I don't know, I'm personally pretty bullish, you know, bullish, not like the broad spectrum of crypto assets. Bullish the strong like the strong names that I've, you know, talk that I've been talking about, Bitcoin, Soul, probably ETH, right? Um,

the revenue generating names like Hype, Pump, Athena, right? All of these types of things I think are probably poised to continue doing well through through year end. And that's kind of where I stand at the moment. Um, there's a lot of technical things I think that you could point to, but probably not worth it to jump into those. Maybe I'll just follow up this podcast with like a a Twitter thread on on some of those charts as well. Yeah. No, I'm I'm I'm with you. I think we kind of market expected some softness and summer just seasonally and and it didn't really materialize.

um every, you know, potential hurdle or just point of concern has been um resolved in a pretty good way, right? Uh whether it's inflation numbers, employment numbers, GDP numbers, and then the the Atlanta Fed come out projecting like another 3.4% uh quarter, which is is just yeah, bullish to see. I'm sure a lot of that's on the back of just the the AI uh capex spend and and kind of everything that's happening on that front. Um, yeah, I'm pretty long going into the end of the year. Uh, I think you you've seen BTC drag a bit, right? You know, part of that's been uh just a concern around where the incremental bid is coming from

since the debts are all seeing the MNABS compress, but at the same time, I think it's worth kind of zooming out and and knowing that there there's a bid that comes in outside of the the debts, right? Right. So the the concern is always if if you don't know the bidder then there isn't one and and since you know if we if we know that the the debts aren't really deploying a bunch then there's concern and there's no incremental buyer but at the same time when we saw the that big whale that was set selling um you know tens of billions over the course of couple days that got absorbed pretty quickly. So there is a bid that exists and and so I think you know gold's done really well in this environment and there's potentially a world where uh you see a decent catch-up

trade with BTC. Um, we had this period where BTC was kind of going down and chopping and alts were doing well, right? And and that's great, but at the same time, that's kind of reminiscent of a top, right, where where BTC is kind of exhausted and and everyone moves down the risk curve and and so um it's good to see strength in BTC again, right? And and it and so it seems like alts are kind of pausing a bit or at least most are. Some are still doing really well, but you know, pausing, letting BTC go and and ideally um you can get a strong move here. I think if you look at CT sentiment, there's there's a decent amount of loud bearishness, which you

certainly want to see, right? That means if everyone's a bull, then then you know it's chances are everyone's going to be wrong together, right? Versus everyone being right. And so, um I think that that's another constructive signal. Not to say that there aren't, you know, your whole host of of random top signals, but I think just because they flash doesn't mean that the top is in immediately. It's just it's something to be weary of. I think probably one of the the bigger ones that I know Jason follows that that's been a pretty high hit rate is when when Alti has um is is grown beyond BTCOI, right? And it's just a signal kind of froth and and and where uh the money is going. And so that has

historically led to some reversals, but you know, I don't think you have enough data points on any of these signals to really just think that when they hit that ignore everything else and that means the top. So, um, yeah, there there's plenty of reasons to kind of argue both ways and so it's not this the the the best risk return environment to be massively long, but I I still think there's u more upside to be had. I don't know if did you guys see the Dorman article tweet thread and uh he was like this isn't really a bull market. If you look at the percent of tokens that are positive year to date it's uh 25%.

the ones that are down 40% or more is uh over 50% of tokens and positive over the last five months is about 55%. So he kind of likened it to like the mag seven doing well and then the small cap index which has basically been pretty bad for a long time. like if you're a value investor in Trifi, you've got kind of crushed for like I don't know like two decades now. Um you know this is something we've been talking about forever and it's like I think people are kind of as much as people are aware that this has been happening. I think there's still a lot of hope that this isn't the new normal,

right? And I think that it's pretty clearly the new normal at this point. there's just like too many tokens. We have too much market cap. Um it's like even look at um again it's it's like what's done well this year. It's the stuff we've already talked about and then Soul's done good with the DAS. But even look at something like Pump. Like Pump has been crazy strong off the bottom. What pump coins have done well? It's like none, right?

Um, it's kind of this weird market where the it's like you need you want pump coins to start doing well at some point because to keep the game going uh you kind of need this like influx of money, right? And so you kind of want people making money. Um, but yeah, I don't know. It's uh it's still hard every time I think about like, oh, maybe I should sell. It's like every pump that I've sold for some like pump beta or like streamercoin or whatever, I've just lost like that money and I regret just like not holding on to my pump. And it's the same with like if you look at I went on our sector dashboard

uh today and it's like if you look at 90-day returns, right? Soul and ETH are both like 80 90% something like that. The average DeFi token return in both ecosystems is like 40% or so, right? You have a few outliers like you have ENA on the ETH side. You have um which one on the one of them on the soul side is is outperforming but I think Metapplex but it's like you're not even getting the beta within the ecosystems too. Um, so yeah, it's just like a really challenging market and I don't know. Do you guys think that I think if we do get an alt season, it's going to be like a

week or two, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think we kind of have this is alt season. It's just not all alts and I don't think it's ever going to be just this like broad bid on everything. I think you'll have rotations, but it's just going to like you're basically going to have this world where the the obvious ones run and then once multiples there get stretched, some people cash out, some people will end up round tripping and then others will will cash out and move into riskiered dog [ __ ] stuff, right? And so, um, yeah, I don't see a world where you just get like broad unless you have, you know, just break out on BTC to new all-time highs, then every all alts will just probably move up same percentage as BTC, which is not much, right? Because BTC is not

really moving massively percentage terms. I mean, last year, I think last week we had a like a few days where 75 out of the top 100 were were green. It's like the closest thing I feel like to an all season that we that we had. Um, I I still think I I I do think we're kind of have Yeah, I agree with Yan that we're kind of having an odd season. Like depending again if you're in the strong alts, which is kind of what you'd expect as the industry matures and what we've been talking about for ages. But even if you look at total three, it's still up like 10% this year depending when you start when you start measuring. Um, I think that's the best way to to sort of measure whether we're in a bull market or not. like the kind of trend in Total

3, but um you'll have those weeks where everything's up, but then you zoom out a little bit. It's like I look at TIA because it's still I mean I don't know about TIA anymore, but like I still own it and it's like I feel like every time I look it's like a$180. Like I'll see it'll have a really good day and it's up like it's it's up like 15% and then I look and it's like oh yeah it's still like because it just grinds down like every other day and then it'll have a couple days where it does really well. And that's the way a lot of these tokens are just trading.

And so, yeah, you'll get a few weeks where it's like, cool, you could have caught this move from down uh 87% to down 85%, but you don't want to hold it too long because then, you know, the next time that move happens, it'll be like down 90 to down 88. Um, I don't know. What do you think about this Sony DAT? I think it is kind of interesting. Like, I have never bought one of these DATs and I never will. They're obviously good for um crypto though like if they keep getting inflows I'm not totally sure why people still buy these things at like a 2xmn nav but you know the the new salon was trading at like 2xm nav when they

announced that equity um they'll sell up to like four bill or whatever I don't know how much they've they've managed to sell yet but uh I think the the soul one's interesting because the dats are kind of starting it's like sailor who just buy bitcoin And that's it. Issue equity, issue debt by Bitcoin, put it in. The ETH one was mostly like that, but then they started doing some staking, right? So, you started moving to a little bit more activities. And now the Soul one, it seems like it's turning. These things are like slowly turning into basically like yield farming funds or kind of like hedge funds, which is kind of crazy because there's no way you could go public with this kind of company and just like IPO is like a hedge fund

in the public markets, right? But that's kind of what these guys are doing now. And if you listen to Smani's talks on Forward Industries, we're really going full circle. Like people joked about putting debts on chain, but that's literally what he's going to do. And then instead of um doing these debt issuances through Tradfi, which they they're obviously going to do some of those, they're also going to start borrowing against the tokenized forward shares in like Camino and like margin and like stuff like that, right?

They did it on chain swap the other day. And so they're really these are these are quite bullish to me because they are now directly juicing all the onchain metrics right? So on one hand, I'm I'm all for deploying it into DeFi, right? Because you're just going to balloon TVL and then it's it's good for liquidity. It's it's obviously it's obvious why it's good. Um the the downside though if if you I mean it's it's almost this situation where the borrowing against the the equity on chain it's either going to be too small to make a difference but if it's enough to make a difference then it's probably enough to

blow up right like if if your bargain's like 5% of your float cool. That's just like it's it's sure it's more novelty than actual value accretion to the entire pie of the equity ownership. But if you're borrowing against the material amount then then you know these debts are when they're especially when they're at MNAVs above one and a half or whatever so pull back they pull back twice as hard and then yeah I wonder though if they're going to use like maple type credit facilities too like the unsecured stuff. Um but then they're still getting like they're still getting like stable coins on chain. Um yeah I'm kind of gutted we missed it.

Well, I I was on holiday, so I missed the the whole Dot, but I definitely think it was a good I I just think in general, especially one with with Smani, I really think he was born for this, like to be the sailor of of Salana. Like there is no for sure. I think that I think the dots are great, but like I don't really want to own it personally because it's I can kind of do all the stuff they're doing myself and I still don't think that these things will trade. I don't get it. like you you're literally if if if you can get in close to MNAV and you're just rotating some of your soul that you're holding longterm into this thing. I feel like if you have like a two-year time frame on it, you're always going to be able to get out close

to MNAV. I mean, these things have fees though, right? And yeah, but like the the I just think that the odds like for most of them you've been able to to they've you've done multiples on on your investment. True. You're talking though about doing like the pipe, which is like fair, whatever. I'm talking about doing the pipe. I'm just like, who the [ __ ] keeps buying these on public markets when they're at like 2xmnav, you know? Yeah. I just think the the marginal like there's there's a chat I'm in where there's someone that always posts that like who is the whatever alt thesis people post. He's like, who is the marginal buyer? And it's I think it's just like the most mid-curve like behold comment you can make. I I totally get

the flows matter and stuff, but like reality is like we don't know who the marginal buyers are for like all this stuff. But okay, buying any of these dats on the public market, you would have got crushed against the native. So it's not mid anywhere. I wouldn't buy it anywhere like but if you if you can get in in the pipe at 1x close to it, I just feel like Yeah, but no one no one's talking about that. Like no, that's the the obvious part of the trade. Well, we were talking about it. No, I think that the concern is what's happening in a afterwards once it's trading. Yeah, but we discussed actually the this one specifically, right? Or like these the these kinds of ones like I think you were less interested in the dot dots generally at a at a high it was uh Yeah, the ones

that had high MNABs. Yeah, I like sub one investing. Mhm. It was 115, right? I don't think it's even still I wouldn't like that doesn't really interest me. 115 to do just do a 2x long soul. Yeah, it's because you you know what's going to come. I don't know and and you get and you get liquidity when you want it if I I just think you're going to get Yeah, fair. I mean, I I I prefer the the spot on the on I prefer the the DAT trade honestly if you can get in any anywhere close to MNAV and like when you do the I've been I I ordered this book actually on the Cali criterion to actually dig into it on position sizing and stuff. I don't know how many of you guys

I read that book. I I bought that book too because I saw you tweet about it or something and then I opened it up and it's just like calculus book. Yeah. Yeah. Entire book is just formulas. I'm like, "Oh, this is I'm not going to read that." Like JPT. Well, all right. So I mean if if Sani the Sultan of Salana or whatever is going to um sorry ju just one thing before you before you jump in Sultan of Salana on the like when you run the the like uh Kelly or like EVM maths on stuff where your downside is extremely limited. You don't need that much upside for it to be like an insanely good trade. And I don't think it's necessarily intuitive all the time, but like I I do find running the the Kelly makes it a lot more obvious. But

yeah, but no one's talking about the the whether or not to do that. It's more about is there a better way to express the same bet? Yeah, but I don't I don't see 2x long soul being the same the same bet though. Um yeah, but anyway when it was announced it was so was what like two 20 two 200. Yeah, you could have just made 40%. You could have longed on the announcement and then or I guess 80%, right? If you're doing 2x. Yeah. I mean, the thing is up two 2x though versus like it's not liquid.

It's trading 2x. It's not liquid. Yeah. By the time everyone unlocks, dude, congrats on your paper gains. Yeah. Like Tom Lee. That was like Tom Lee retweeting people talking about his 30x on the world coin debt. It's like, dude, this thing is not you're not going to be able to sell this at 30x. I don't know. I think you'll be able to do more than 2x over the over time with on the on this dot. But um I'm I'm Yeah, I I I get the I get the sentiment. Anyway, Jason, you were talking about the the Sultan of Salana. Yeah. Right. So, like if if Kyle decides to, you know, start putting this stuff on chain, right? Like what like isn't the obvious play just to like long a basket of multicoin investments like

Drift or Camino or things like that? like they're very clearly have been running like a lot like I'm pretty sure like Camino's up 100% or some some something over the last week or so. Uh or Drift maybe Camino as well. um like when I when I look at this it's like it's it's super interesting obviously like like what the what the playbook is for forward industries but like if they are going ahead and and deploying on chain like what is the actual like is it 2x hole is it maybe looking into like where this stuff will get deployed and where TVL might balloon like on kamino right it's not up drift is up 100% this is up like almost almost 100% in the last week and a half two weeks so very

clearly like people are expressing the trade um via like a basket of multicoins investments, which I think make a lot of sense, right? Like if I'm Kyle, like I'm clearly going to take take the soul we buy and if I'm going to put it on chain, I'm going to put it in things that I've invested in prior, not just for my bags, but because theoretically, you would expect him to have confidence in these in these protocols, which is why he invested in the first place, right? are like clearly that seems to be a decent way to express like a trade around this kind of idea.

Um I'm curious if you guys thought about doing that. Have you done that? Like are you interested? I bought I bought GTO recently, but that's not necessarily the DAT. That's mostly that like um they have like the fee switch and uh the ETFs coming. Um, yeah. I mean, I saw that they use Dflow, which is one of their port codes. I don't think that I think I don't think that he's going to start like aping those tokens, right? Um, but I mean, Multicoin is invested in like most of the big Salana protocols, right? So, yeah, I I don't I I don't know. We'll

see with the Camino thing. Obviously, a lot of people thought about that trade. It's not like Kyle's the money that he hasn't put any money into Camino yet, I don't think. And so it's not like the It's not like fundamentally that's actually made Camino go up. It's everybody thinking about these. No. Yeah. It's the anticipation of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think I for me I was I wasn't really by my computer at the time so I couldn't really look into it deeply but I think the the math would just basically be um which I think the the price would you you m there'd be multiple expansion on all of these right u because it's not like the fundamentals would improve 2x based on the amount of TVL and so um the idea would basically be you know which one would probably

fundamentally improve the most or which one would be helped the post and then you know cross crossing that relative to uh unlocks and stuff like that and and are there going to be painful flows? Are there going to be a lot of profits taken into a pump, right? And so you basically see which protocols would would benefit the most incrementally balance that against unlocks and then and then do like a ba a weighted basket. But for me, I I just like didn't have the chance to. So I basically just kind of long soul and and followed it. This is where I just go 2x long soul actually.

Yeah. Yeah. like this a lot of DeFi tokens too have such [ __ ] liquidity. Yeah. It's just like you could do long soul in size and then just not think about it. I mean long soul is the trade I I put on. So I mean I was just curious if you guys Same. I don't know. Maybe somebody's going to start streaming on Pump. Want to get the get the get the Florida Industries. Uh nice segue. Let's let's let's talk let's talk Pump. Um, I think we're all uh bullish and and holding pump either participating in the ICO or or long on on perp so disclosures there. But it's been pretty impressive like uh both the obviously price performance off off the bottom. Um, but also just the the the streaming and like their their

execution. It feels like there's I mean and also GG Yan and and Anne Neil on your podcast with Noah. I think uh I was already long, but that really made me uh double down because I just think he's he's much more compelling than than Alain, honestly, in terms of the vision and and and stuff like that. Um and it actually made me made me feel like they they yeah, they could really win like that not only is it cheap on like a fundamentals basis, but actually like the TAM is huge if they execute on on what they're doing. Um, yeah, and and the I think streamers like some of the numbers on the on how much the streamers have made over the last like like week and and and 24 hours are pretty absurd.

Um, that said, going on the app, it's still really hard for me to find [ __ ] that I'm actually interested in. Like I I've spent I don't know, maybe an hour overall trying to find like a good a good stream. It's just like some dude sleeping. I mean, this is how it it like drips into the the Black Mirror episode, right? Just like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um I mean you're definitely going to have some you're going to have some bad publicity again. Of course. Um every streaming every every site that does streaming like man people do some pretty bad stuff that on like Facebook Live and and everything right?

um the fact that this is financialized now like you're gonna you're definitely going to see it go viral on like mainstream media like someone I don't know someone's like giving birth um but yeah I saw that too. Wow. Not the actual birth. I saw the tweet. Um yeah. Yeah. So I mean because you can you can moderate a bunch of that stuff out but the issue is what they do live afterwards. You you have no control over. I think the the tough thing is you have somebody who's been good for like half a year and then they do something and the whole time you thought that like you had kind of vetted these it's like you know Rasmer for instance that

guy's been on there forever. It's like if one day he just they're never going to moderate Rasmer at this point because he's been there forever. One day he just did something like really stupid. Um, so I don't know, but uh I think that it the economics as long as it keeps up, like as long as people are willing to kind of like spend money in this streamer content creator game are just like way too enticing to not get in a bunch of people trying to make some money trying to stream. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, because the bear the bare case is the tokens aren't doing well, right? And so you're kind of just churning through the audience, right? But that that's an issue if even if you zoom out for perexes, right? Most traders lose and and eventually people like run out of money to trade. But the idea is you build enough of a product where there's just like the the user base is massive. And yes, people turn out, but enough new people come in. And I I think in order I this thing hasn't been going nearly long enough for that churning to be enough to actually destroy demand. I think, you know, realistically people will will show up for cool streaming. And so you you kind of want to appeal first to the streaming side and and get the best content over and then afterwards you need to obviously

address the other end which I think there are some like solutions where you can redirect some fees into the token or or to the holders of the token and and enable features for holders and kind of a bunch of other things. But I think you know like the the most incremental improvement you can make is just onboarding a better creating a process where where streamers can make materially more like an order or two magnitude more than they would anywhere else. That's the other thing and I think there's just like what I see like I think maybe Jason you coined this with Salana or some someone did on our team like the narrative shots on goal. It just feel like feels like Pump has a lot of like narrative shots on goal where there's there's a lot of ways this thing could go viral. A lot like a streamer

making a lot of money like the Bag Work guys did, a big streamer joining up and and doing really well, you know, streamers putting ad revenue or whatever back into the token or or like gifts into the token. This this kind of thing. Um and and yeah, it just feels like there's a lot of ways it can go well. The concern is yeah, the tokens aren't doing well. you definitely need one to do really well to to tell that story. But also, I feel like the the having to have a token to stream is a bit limiting. Like I don't know, obvious obviously like we would never we like we would maybe stream the hive mind on there or whatever, but I don't think we would ever have a token for it. And so like it feels like there the the mechanism of trading fees is really interesting

because it feels like a very good proxy for attention and you can see it in the numbers right now, right? like these guys are making way more money than they would on that on those eyeballs being monetized via ads. But it doesn't really work if you don't have your own token. Like if if you start doing tokens, I don't know, like we want to do a stream and we do it for Solar or ENA or whatever hype like a portfolio company, but how do you obviously those aren't pump coins, but if they were a Pumpcoin, how do you like attribute the the volume from our stream to the token? There's probably some way to do it either in the on on the front end or have some like affiliate code or something like that. I feel like if you could crack that it could get pretty interesting where you

can like do a stream that for you know where you're kind of sponsored by a certain token and the volume that you send to it you get like a share of or something like that but you don't have to have your own token but um I feel like you need something like that because not everyone's going to want to have their own token because the these things go to zero and they create a lot of liability for the for the person. Plus people just don't want something tied to them because then it's just like yeah you get people yelling and to Yeah, I agree. There shouldn't be barriers to adoption on on either end, right? And so this is a barrier to to new streamers joining because ultimately if you have good streamers that join without a token just just to do it, right? Like people

in in crypto would, then you're just bringing more eyeballs to the platform, which will be indirectly monetized on the streamers that do have tokens. I I think like, you know, sending advertising revenue probably won't move the needle on fees for a lot of this stuff. Um sponsorship revenue could potentially. Yeah, you're just never going to make as much as the memecoin with the trading. It's just hard to like like it's a it's very high fee model. Uh but the memecoin does better if if you're if there's a narrative that you're sending all sponsorship revenue and stuff to it, right? Like even just on on pumpamentals, it kind of like does it's a better story.

Yeah. Um that but then it's like if you're a creator it's it's like if we did we're not doing this people have asked us to do this I won't talk about but let's say we did hive mind on there right um it's like I would not want to do anything that actually like made that token go up so like I would not want to like put our fees into it or sponsorship or something because It's like then it becomes too much like pressure and then it's something like eventually one day again this is the problem with all these things is like eventually one

day you don't want to deal with the token anymore. I think that these tokens would work for the very small niche people who are these like online celebrities for their whole life. So like if Mr. beast if this is like how he started his career was on like a pump stream today. I think that token would still probably be worth a lot um even if he was like not necessarily on pump streams anymore in a world where he guaranteed like 5% of all future revenue like you you do some kind of like tiered thing where in the first couple years I'll give up 20% and then over time I'll give up a smaller percentage that just goes into the token because I if we did it though

like it would be it would have to be people who aren't like financially necessarily incentivized right like we we don't do this for the sponsorship ship revenue. Um, so it would be a world where like we take no team tokens, all sponsorship revenue goes back into it, all creator fees just go back into it and then we're kind of absolved of any guilt if it goes up or down because we're actually losing money doing this to begin with. So, it's just like a fun experiment to bring attention. Yeah. The thing is is like I don't even know how that would work from like what do you have to pay tax on the creator fees and then you just spend it right away? You know what I mean? There's like these things that are kind of hard to figure out. Um, so and also you'd still get someone like

bundling it and owning it a ton and you'd still get people pissed at you anyways even if you made no money off of it. It's like because there's no way everyone would know that you're not making money off this, right? People aren't doing their DD. They're just going to Yeah, people would see the chart get like full stacked one day and they think that you were the one. I don't know. That's the annoying thing. It feels like there's something there's something there. There's like a way. Yeah, there's something there and a way to crack it. Um, and obviously people have have have gotten like some um like sort of fads have have have worked with this whether it's BitCloud or Frenz that lasted, you know, from weeks to months.

Pump is definitely the most sustainable um in the sense of at least like revenue and fundamentals and people coming back to this. But I still Yeah, it it definitely needs some iteration, but I feel like if if they if they get there, it's just so big. It's like it's such a massive TAM. Like I don't think it's even Twitch or Kick. It's sort of like Tik Tok, you know? It's like every everyone uh it's like just being able to ape creators and that they're actually making really good content and attracting the best content creators there. I do think that like yeah, so we can critique all this and everything. They are doing something unique in the history of crypto. Every time we onboard something, what is it? We onboard people to become traders, right? That's like literally every single time we onboard

people, it's they're becoming traders. This still relies on people trading, sure, but like new people coming in don't actually have to trade or anything. They just need to like stream. And so these kind of experiments when you're doing this where the person coming in doesn't have to actually like buy tokens and like trade tokens I think is good. And I think you know pump is always traded. People like to compare pump versus hyperlid because they both make money. They're like very different products, but hyperlquid trades are like a way bigger multiple than pump, right? Because people don't believe in kind of pumps. They think like it's just a launchpad. It's kind of this vanilla easily replicated thing. But I think that there is this scenario that if Pump does hit like these competing after like

Twitch and like Tik Tok and all this stuff, then you can make the case that it actually should trade at a higher multiple than something like Hyperlquid because now you're gone from like Hyperlquid is this per exchange cryptonative thing, whereas Pump now really if it breaks into the mainstream can be like this massive conglomerate and it can just do like [ __ ] everything. Um so I think that's kind of the bull case for yeah the pump has I yeah pump like the multiple is basically two things right it's it's growth rate which I think pump will get a a more favorable multiple and then it's predictability and and and kind of defensibility of cash flows which I think pump has less of an argument for and that hurts their multiple and then

if you look at what it's trading at right I mean if you do like 7day annualized that's uh 950 mil in in buyback and then if you do 30-day annualized it's uh what is it's 720 in buyback and and and what's pump right now um it's like eight bill FTV right so it's even on FTV terms it's still trading pretty reasonable obviously on on market cap just pure market cap it's trading in insanely favorably right it's like three to 4x well yeah three to fourx market they're not like you have the airdrop which they haven't really mentioned but that'll be the next source of liquidity but after that there's no liquidity coming for you know basically like nine months so for a

while it's going to kind of trade on that um yeah and then the cash they've raised right which enables them to do this buyback and sure they've upsized the team but like that that's just a gargantuan amount of money and it's like a huge war chest and so um it it's up a lot but it's still you know pretty reasonably priced some might say still cheap but I I I don't know if I would say cheap just because it's up so much, right? Like I I I think you you do need to disconnect the two, right? And say that price should be valuation is is separate from price trend over the past couple days, but it's always, you know, risky to to to chase something that's up quite a bit. That being said, I haven't sold a single token.

Yeah, I've sold like a I've sold like a small portion, but my position is still bigger than when I did the ICO. Um, but I do think, yeah, we're in the zone now where, um, it makes sense for it to kind of like maybe cool off a little or I mean it went up a lot. Like it was literally the only coin in the market outside of soul. Um, it's just like churn through, right? It's a consolidation. It's reasonable. People need to take profits, new people come in, bl the base, then like higher. Yeah. and streaming has like I think the bag work token was kind of the the flagship of the streaming success and that thing uh um I bought some well they did an NFT collection

like people need to know you can't man you can't do an NFT collection like it's just over at that point but yeah that's that's Pete Grift right there unless you're Donald Trump and then you can four. Yeah. And then launch a token and have a trade at launch a token and then launch another token. Well, I think the Yeah, I guess he was in Melania, but yeah, that was so funny. People were like lung the first NFTts. They're like, "This is a way to play the Trump presidency. Like, we're gonna, you know, like these things are going to pump once he becomes president." And then it did like three more.

Yeah. You know what's crazy is that those original Trump cards were very contrarian, right? Um, but you would have been you would have been so right about longing Trump, but those cards I don't like you never would have made money on those, right? That's the thing that is just Well, you got diluted by like 75%. That's that's the thing. I think they launched two more collections. I mean, the best Trump trade was the unofficial Trump token. Yeah, is that when you could get in pretty early on in decent size and it ran up. I mean the official one, didn't that go from like a couple bill to like 20 or 40 or something in like a day?

It went to like 80 or 70, but it that one just like so much harder to to size into once it's at 20. Like you're not you're not saying I'm going to get a 3 4x out of this at 20 bill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, World Liberty 5 was a really good trade. Yeah. You already made back your money on the unlock. I faded that. So did I because it was like the tokens are never going to be unlocked and then they just decided after and then you had the the Justin Sun thing. Although I don't think that he that just like that's not the way you'd pull off that trade, right? Like you don't need to have everyone give you their you can just short it on purp and and do it much more.

By the way, yeah, by the way, talking about Justin Sun and this is a good segue is it seems like CZ yesterday is doing this aster thing which is this hyperl competitor. This morning I saw a Justin Sun thing. What did What did you see about Justin Sun? He's doing again another Let me see who tweeted it. I think this uh Minion I think was the account. Yeah, I didn't I didn't see this. Let me see what is this sunper deck. Yeah. Jesus.

He said and he had a tweet yesterday. Sun is late but finally the big one is coming. See you on Twitter tomorrow at 8:00 PM. And there's this Yeah, Sunb Decks. So, he's he's doing what CZ did. Uh, it kind of looks like it. What do you guys think about the hyperlquid competitor? He sent it in the Telegram chat. It's on. Yeah. Yeah, that's I mean, he's he has, you know, basically infinite money. Infinite money.

Like actually infinite money. And so he he'll just pump this and like he can pump nine figures into this and that's just like bips of his net worth. That's so crazy. I don't think it's bips surely. Uh I mean low nine figs is is it would be it could be bips. Yes. Yes. It would be under 1%. You think so? Must be um where is he on the richest people in the world like top like 20 top 10? Yeah, I have it on pretty decent authority.

Are you guys buying this thing then? Aster, I don't know. I I faded it yesterday because I wasn't really I I didn't buy I saw it at like uh like 10 cents or 15 cents or something and it's like 65 or some nonsense now. But CZ took X uh X sub X Binance um off his profile. Yeah. Off his profile. Yeah. So, it seems like he's back. Uh, and there's that DOJ there's that DOJ rumor that they're going to come to an agreement. So, it seems like he's going to be back, which is he's never gone. Let's be real.

Well, he was in jail, but he's going to be like Yeah. Yeah. He's probably It's It sounds like he's going to be fully back. Um, which is quite interesting to say the least. Yeah. But what's the thesis for this for this thing? It's just like Yeah. What's the thesis for any B&B token? Look at cake. Look at cake, man. That thing when that thing came out, I was like, this is such a scam. And it's on this one. It's not B&B. It's not a B&B token. It's a token.

Cake is B&B. Oh, you're talking about Okay. Aster. Aster is B&Bs. Yeah. And Sun is this Justin Sun thing. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Aster is the the CZ thing. I mean, I think the the move is basically just like shift your majors trading there. That's the easiest thing you can do. Things at 72 cents now. Yeah. So like 400 have 5.8 billion fully diluted now. 5.8 billion you said for the CZ hyperl. Does it work well? Have you any of you guys used it? No, I have not used it. I was planning on playing around with it like today or tomorrow.

I think Marcus used it from the markets team. I think he said he did like 100x and so yeah they have that the same like roll bit thing where you could do like 1000x and it's like that line chart or whatever you know the same exact thing that roll bit used to have or I guess probably still has they have that and that works apparently that's that's peertopeer though that's not peerto house I I believe so I'm not swapping the order into the order book basically yeah I'm think so and like they they cap upside I'm pretty sure they like force you to exit at like 200 100% gain or whatever.

Like they don't let you hold it open indefinitely either. That's pretty [ __ ] Um I I don't know why you do that. I mean I I it seems much less necessary on a on a peer-to-peer deck instead of like a Don't quote me on that. I haven't fully looked into this yet. This was a today a today thing. Yeah, I saw that message, too. That's kind of not great. even if it even if it actually only affects a very small percentage of people, it definitely influences behavior and just like I don't really want to do that there if I'm trading a certain way. Like just in the off chance that you do hit a position that that triggers that.

I mean I don't know like I think you're right. I think like I mean I'm probably not going to go and just like buy the token. I mean I don't know enough. if I need to like do more research, but I think like maybe like farming it with like you know just you know like like you said Yan with some of your majors trading makes your with your entire fund to offset all the losses. Uh because I think they have like a 9% airdrop or or like they distributed like 9% for an airdrop. I don't know if there's like more coming down the line kind of like what'sed with um with Hyperlid or or some of the other ones. Um, but yeah, like what do you think about the Hyperlid unlock? What's your take on that? It comes in what is it like November?

End of November. Yeah. Yeah. What's my take on it? Uh, I mean, I think most out by then the team Yeah. You think it'll be bad? Yeah, because you get a lot of mixed takes. No, I don't think it'll be that bad, honestly. Um, I think the team has like an incentive to not make it bad. Like that's kind of like the the whole like image or like I guess a lot of the uh the lore I guess you could say around Hyperlid and the team. Um is that the only buy?

Is that buy Jeff? Only ideal cases you get a good dip buying opportunity right just they sell plus panic and then you get it to you give it some cheap multiple. Yeah, I feel like there's a number that is a good sell that's actually bullish, you know, maybe like to like lock in a couple years of runway or something. Yeah, it's like, oh, they sold 20% of their tokens and it's a lot of tokens. It's a fuckload at this point. Well, they could stake it, right? Like they could stake it and then just sell staking rewards and stuff. Like there's there's other things they could do with it that would that would, you know, signal like so little to the market. And I mean they could borrow against and buy more.

That's also viable. Yeah. Not going to do that. I'm I'm probably uh I mean I don't know what what price will be um in November, but like I mean if we get to November and it's like long-term capital gains on, you know, the air dropped portion of of my position, like I'm just I'm obviously going to, you know, lock lock in some profits on that. Um but like I'm not like super worried about it generally speaking. Um, what do you think the upside is on hype from from here? I'm I'm Yeah, curious. I was always at like a hundred to $150 a token is like where I think this this will probably end up once the EVM and everything gets built out, once the

ecosystem has some stuff going on. Um, and once they've had like a year to to like actually make make an effort at, you know, chunking away at Binance and Bybits, you know, incumbency. Um that's like all like that's always been like my my target like 100 to 150 I think makes makes sense. Uh obviously it's a very high val but again I think I mean it's an exchange token of the fastest growing exchange in crypto. Like it seems like these tokens historically just command very high multiples within crypto. Um, BNB is like a very clear BB hit 1K today.

It did. It's a Yeah, it's a great great token. That chart is ridiculous. Just like no dips. The ICO was what, 10 cents? Was it 10,000x? That's pretty nice. Um, so yeah, like I don't know. Like I just don't I don't see a reason to sell my stake or at least not yet. um in what I think is like probably I don't know the the best what top three crypto protocols to come out of the industry in the last 5 years or whatever like I don't mind holding it. I've held memecoins longer so like I don't I don't mind the L1 premium is probably going to start

being like less of a thing, right? just because it's the you know they're haven't really been delivering much on that front. Um and so it was highest when anticipation was highest relative to what they delivered but as it becomes more obvious not obvious but but just like clear that it's really hard to to deliver or perform an in L1. I also think with Monet and Mega ETH coming as like performing EVMs if you're like a real EVM builder, you still I don't know. I still feel like I and like yeah, I'm biased to Monet Angel, but even like just think about something like Mega ETH, right? um or base like bass just as I don't know the hyper liquid EVM is

tough because it has this weird like the throughput is still there's just a lot building an L1's hard basically is my point building and this is the thing with like the other day I saw people talking about like making pump and app chain again it's like guys like just [ __ ] stop talking about this like yeah let's take a project that's making millions of dollars a day and just totally move it to like a new infrastructure. It's like do I think pump will do their own chain in the future at some point? Like probably I think that pump should always be exploring like what is the best infrastructure for us. But I think that people don't appreciate like when Pump is on Salana, they have the entire Salana team and like all

those engineers continuously improving the infrastructure and like it keeps just getting better and better. if like if if Alpenlow ends up crushing it um you know and like Salana just keeps getting better and better and just keeps scaling and scaling it's like there's not really incentive for pump like people talk about oh but like look at all the transaction fees that were paid for people using like pump contracts and stuff and it's like okay but you're you're kind of you're just assuming that like everybody and all the liquidity and all the users are just going to move to pump chain um and they're not going to use lose any of their millions of dollars of revenue a day. Um which is like a pretty crazy

assumption to make in my opinion. And then anyways with like GTO launching BAM which is their application specific sequencing market. It's like pump is going to be able to start making a lot of these like me and priority fees and everything for people interacting with pump right. So which is like another bull angle to pump that I don't think people really incorporate into their revenue. aspect right now. Um, I don't think it should do any of that, but like it is a worthwhile thought experiment just because what would it trade at if they had their own L1 or what would it trade at if they had pers and that's like I think also some of the upside that can be baked in. But I don't think they should do any of that [ __ ] until until they've nailed the product and I think they're pretty focused on

that. Even on the podcast he mentioned like the stable coin which I think would be like a huge mistake. I don't know why everyone wants to do a stable coin. I don't see why a pump stable coin makes makes any sense really. I think all that stuff should be yeah secondary to them just nailing the the product experience. I mean an easy thing they could do and I don't even think they should do this but they could is like they could start pairing pump on launches instead of soul. Um, yeah. Yeah. I think part of part of it is just a lot of these projects in crypto when they don't get PMF for whatever they're building, they look at where there is PMF in crypto and it's like, okay, let's let's let's let's integrate that, right? Whether it's a stable coin or whether it's, you know,

the PMF of an L1 via the L1 premium. Um, that's they kind of gravitate towards that, but they actually have something here, right? And so it just makes sense to actually focus on the product and then the ironic thing about that is that you have the exact example of somebody who went after pump doing that like the bonk and everything right who they're like this meme coin but a big community they do all these different things and they went after all the launchpad stuff and it's like well pump just does that better right because they're just kind of like laser focused on that product. So yeah. Um yeah, I think that's it. I mean I think I

think is there anything else you guys wanted to Well, the what do you think about the what do you think about the base token? Yeah, I was just going to mention that after that's a good that's a good shot. Um I mean, yeah, probably going to be pretty big. Probably going to do pretty well. I wonder how how if they're going to airdrop it or do an ICO. um or well the big the big issue is what what happens with equity holders right and and um is that value getting leaked away from I don't know like you put billions of like let's okay first question where does base token trade if it was launched today

10 bill 20 bill 30 bill 40 50 like probably between 10 and 20 that's what I think It could easily It could do like more though. I think it could do I think it would never be less than 10. I would be shocked if it was less than 10, but I think it could be like 40. It depends. If it's just like a meme coin, then I I it's going to be hard for I mean, what's for Libertifi? Yeah, but that's not like that's like a low FTV or low CIRC, high FTV thing. So, I think bass would probably be too though. No, that's Yeah. So that's the other thing is like depends on how they do the dro.

I'm assuming there would be some pretty sizable air drop based on wallets and onchain activity. And one thing I do think is that like Bass already does basically all the EVM chain activity. This is just going to make it even worse for competitors especially competitors that already have a token because now it's like well uh now I can get this base airdrop if I move my EVM activity or whatever. even Salana users too theoretically although I don't know how much carryover there is but like thinking about like the optimism arbitum um all the other smaller ones um it's kind of like uh you have this you know you the thing

is sure a lot of people are farming it and so you're going to be diluted that way but it's going to have a pretty massive valuation um so that's going to put a lot of pressure on just there There's already a lot of pressure on all the other rollups and I'll tell ones, but this is just going to even make it even harder. Could you argue that if this thing reprices way higher than the others are? I mean, they're pretty beaten down at this point, they actually get a bid because the spread between them is so wide.

I don't know, man. I just cannot like buy an L2 token. Tight stops. Tight stops. I agree. Is there anything else? I feel like there's I mean the as a as a shill for uh for for labs, Legion has just announced the partnership with Kraken today. So basically Kraken's 15 million users get access to early stage fundraising deals on on Legion and Legion projects get access to Kraken's 50 million users plus tier one centralized exchange liquidity from from day one.

Are there any um restrictions for like users in the US on Kraken that want to do this or how does how does that not if you can participate in the as a I think you probably can but I'm not sure actually well one thing as an anidote and as a as an anecdote as a Canadian I was allowed to do the pump ICO but I wasn't allowed to do pump ICO on Kraken. Interesting. So, Kraken has their own separate risk that they'll take with offering ICOs even versus the platform that they're like using or well this is different I guess because it's a platform. This was Pump and so Pump probably just doesn't give a [ __ ] about Canadian regulators because

like small potatoes, right? But Kraken has a big business in Canada. They're like one of the biggest exchanges so they're probably don't want to take that risk and so that's kind of where that fell on the spectrum there. Um, we're sorry, but uh yeah um is a is a good model for how like Legion wants to to think about it is is that you should be able to access this on Legion but also everywhere that has distribution. So on all the centralized exchanges or at least some of the big centralized exchanges starting with Kraken um and then just making the API work a lot better and a lot more smoothly so you don't have what happened with with Pump where everyone got got got [ __ ] on the exchange

on chain onchain did great for pump like everybody on chain was easy I literally private the KYC was just like the easiest KYC ever too um one thing I one more thing before we go is do you see this a Salana Bridge. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How How are you thinking about that? I just think it's, you know, as we've noticed over the past year or so, there's literally three chains people use, right? And and I don't like Ethereum is different. It like a a lot of like whales and stuff use Ethereum, but I mean like an average like retail end user for the most part is using like Salana. They're using Bass and then they're using Hyperlid to trade, right?

And so this kind of makes sense that Bass and Salana now they're going to make it easy to go between these two chains because they're just kind of like what everybody's using. Apparently Salana tokens now when they're on base will all show up and like you can buy them from your Coinbase account onchain on base. Um I saw the Zora team yesterday is adding support for Salana now. So Zora this like EVM project Ethereum community forever they're on base and now the second thing they have is like Salana. It's not like arbitum. It's not optim, you know, it's it's Salana. And so at the end of the day, it's like chains and bridges, right?

That's what these things are. Um, and Bass and Salana are like been pretty big competitors in this respect and that they do, you know, they're the two leading chains for these kind of like social consumer apps and stuff, right? They're really the only chains doing it right now. Um, so I think it's pretty good for I think it's good for both of them and it's bad for other people. People will try to make the the make the I think people make the argument like, oh, this is going to like this is good for base and Ethereum because it'll get like Salana liquidity. Salana people might say the other way. I just think it's good for for this for both of them. It just entrenches them more as being like two chains that are going to grow in size

together. Was it really that hard to get from base to Salana? I feel like no you could use like a cross or something probably exchanges but now you have the official one it's not just the bridge it's the fact that now Salana tokens like Salana apps you can use like the Coinbase wallet and I don't I don't know how they're going to do all this because exactly but that's what they've said uh so how they execute that the bigger winner I think is Salana because yeah because you get Coinbase yeah already had that distribution Yeah.

Awesome, guys. All right, let's let's Should we Should we wrap it there? Yeah, let's wrap it there. It's been over an hour, so good episode. Good episode. And see you all again in in two weeks for another one. Be October Q4. All right. See you. See you. [Music]