Hivemind: Saylor's MSTR Premium Playbook & Financializing AI Agents

Transcript

no one gave a [ __ ] about AI agents until they had tokens right people like to [ __ ] on it but that is still crypto's main use case is that you can financialized things and get people interested in them like all of these infr plays I feel like are well positioned because they just get all the volume through this and and they're the real winners like they're the people extracting the money like the photons the boxes the bananas the Trojans like you know I think Photon made like 17 Mill in fees last week like those are the real people winning from this they don't care if the market goes up down sideways they just want volume nothing said on the hive mind is a recommendation to buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is

strictly for informational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our own opinions not Financial advice [Music] hi everyone my name is Jose masu and welcome to another episode of the hive mind podcast the goal of the podcast is to provide an inside look into what we like to call the deli hive mind bringing together some of our brightest Minds from each of the divisions to share insights Alpha and [ __ ] posts today with us we have the usual cast cedus parabus who's our heads up our institutional research arm also known as cedus Yan liberman managing partner of Deli

adventures and Venture partner Duncan also also known as flood Capital self-proclaimed gem Hunter I split my time between Ventures and Labs our protocol R&D arm so as we're recording here today Bitcoins which is Wednesday 20th of November Bitcoins just hit new alltime High 95k um markets in general doing pretty well do we want to start by by asking where's everyone at with this do we want to talk about maybe micro strategy or yeah maybe we can start with micro strategy I know Yan you wanted to to enoy that pretty important thing that's been happening last week yeah no it's uh it's likely been the the primary driver of of kind of all the the price action

right now um you know sailor came out with the announcement um that he was buying after the election and then another uh big chunk uh in the past week and a half or so and so it seems like the initial expectation of what he said about you know 20 million 21 million debt 21 million equity over the next two to three years is getting and he mentioned it might be getting accelerated that that definitely seems to be the case right now and so he's deploying quite a bit um part of of kind of his deployment strategy and and uh the approach has been through the fact that um mscr is trading at this monster premium and so I think it's been a bit

of a point of kind of confusion for many in terms of you know why does this continue to persist um and so I I think it's kind of worth going through how he's gotten here right so um micro strategy has deployed about 16 and change billion dollars into um into Bitcoin over the past four years through through kind of a variety of offerings it's been uh about half debt uh uh there's some like there's like a billion cash Reserves um about uh six million or so in in debt and then

uh the rest in equity so it hasn't really been too heavy in in one or the other um he's he's kind of been deploying since since 2020 and and I think the the the so just to try to understand why there is this premium so the way that the the debt works is it's all very very low interest rate right ranging from zero to like one and a half um it's the the the upside is mostly in the convertible debt element right so basically the idea is these debt investors uh at a at a certain point in time uh are able to convert this debt for for Equity uh the the debt isn't really convertable until uh 2028 2029 for for uh depending on kind of the

round and uh it it converts at at prices uh the the most recent one in 2024 was actually a pretty cheap conversion at like a buck 85 but the the previous Convertibles were all at at really high prices so ranging from, 1500 to uh around 23 $2,400 uh per share of of Master and master at the moment I think I hav I need to check but I think it's like 450 500 range um so a lot of that isn't really convertible yet so how does that it's that far out in strike yeah um some of the the the the the initial stuff so basically the bet that people are making

is that you're you're kind of buying a call option is that pre split though the initial stuff um yeah that actually might be pre spit because there's no way he's selling it for 2,000 now at $500 a share so so basically the debt is convertible once it reaches uh either the specified time which is many years out or um 100 30% of the strike price for like a 24 day window or 20day window or something like that so the idea is he's able to borrow cheaply uh nearly free and and kind of temporarily delay the dud of element use

that cash to buy uh BTC and sit on the balance sheet so the question basically becomes you know who is bidding Master at these premiums and why right because the idea is you if you're buying Master here you're you're making a bet on both Bitcoin and the premium itself because if the premium compresses from you know I think it's about three right now um premium three and a half right so if compresses and Bitcoin goes up then you're still losing so it's a it's a pretty tricky bet because I think there's a lot more risk than just betting on BTC alone so it's kind of um I think that's part of the the the

confusion um the the upside is that you know you're able to I think it made a lot of sense early on because you were able to basically use debt to grow the ba the value of the equity by putting BCC on on the balance sheet of the company uh but now at this level of Premium it's a bit tricky so you know part of why I think he's also deploying rapidly right now is because this massive premium exists so he's able to issue shares at a premium and uh buy up a bunch of Bitcoin and throw on the balance sheet and so you kind of want to strike when times are hot and so it's it it seems like he's probably the biggest driver of the bid right now just

considering you know uh how much he deployed recently it was in the billions over the past like uh two weeks and so it it doesn't seem like he's looking to slow that slow that down so I guess the question is what happens after like he stops deploying and does he stop deploying because the he's just taking a break or because there's a potential compression in the in the in the premium and and is that kind of going to be the signal for a potential like temporary top in the market or can the market just stay flat if sailor is not bidding the the person who can compress the premium the most is him right and he's been trying to compress the

premium um every time he does one of these offerings he's like right now he's selling dollars for like $3 and that's how you get the premium down is he just keeps doing this and keeps buying Bitcoin and he's the one that can Arbitrage it the most it's it's like yeah it's it's a I saw something someone talked about like how you need to look at them as bitcoin's Investment Bank there's some like interesting theories out there I think that they're all a bit too like I don't know at the end of the day I think this premium is definitely going to close at some point but you know when the premium closes it's just the bid the the strong bid goes away but it's not like they're

they're like forced to sell or anything like that right so for the market and for like Bitcoin overall this is kind of just like a nice Dynamic that exists in the market right now I'm I'm confused why like who is buying yeah strategy yeah don't you believe you just have to believe sailor right if you believe sailor then he's going to issue micro strategy to buy Bitcoin until the premiums closed basically no that's like his that's his game so like why would you buy micro strategy I mean does stre like 5% yeah that's what I was going to say smart money the the piece that makes sense when when he talks is that so basically

these converts are you know limited downside like you're just lending the company money as long as you have like confidence that Bitcoin like Bitcoin would have to go to something crazy low for them not to be able to pay back their debt and then you essentially have a call option on the upside so it's like these fixed income funds can essentially buy like a call options on bitcoin through these these notes um and take out a lot of the downside volatility which I think is actually like a really interesting instrument but that only I would I don't think that accounts for like that much the premium like that makes a lot of sense but then when it's trading at 3.5 times that wouldn't really impact the premium right those are like that if anything that would compress it over time as they convert

and sell like the premium and and the convertible debt are are kind of separate where but like he has the tool to essentially like lever up which is like like in a unique way which should give him some premium to BTC if the Market's going up right but it doesn't account for the full like 3.5 times premium which is just kind of getting crazy that's some some uh theories there's just kind of gamma squeeze situation yeah so it did micro strategy traded more options than Nvidia yesterday I tweeted that out I couldn't believe that right so like Nvidia is you know 40 times larger than micro strategy and uh like the biggest company in the

S&P and it did more option volume than it explanation there is basically as people want to go buy calls market makers are are typically delta neutral and so when they're selling you calls they have to go out and buy spot so that they're not selling you naked calls and so if people just start sizing in calls that's a lot of notional shares that they have to buy to offset that activity and and that causes a monster run up in price and we kind of saw that with GameStop in in 21 and and others Bed Bath and Beyond yeah it's just like this why are people buying micro strategy calls I guess rather than because they think it's GNA Gamers yeah you can get Bitcoin at 95 is

not going to give you you know a 5x in a week but if you buy some short dated calls you might be able to nail something but you could buy short dated calls on on bitcoin itself though right on this premium expanding that just happened that just got approved so I think like the the major options expiry is in January 2025 and now that there's options on bitcoin maybe me strategy loses some of it appeal but it's definitely very circular argument on how this works and I feel like no one has a really easy to understand way to like explain it which typically means that like there's something is a little bit off so I think this premium definitely

compresses over time but um while it exists right like sailor bought 4.6 billion do with a Bitcoin last week the ETFs bought 1.7 billion so him alone is doing like three times the volume of of of the ETFs and in buy pressure and like it's premiums expanded this week so he's probably on track to do more than five billion this week um yeah but I definitely think if mic strategy cracks like you know you see a day where it's down like 30% or something then that could be a temporary top signal because we saw this with the German government in in the summer right they were selling like a billion like less than a billion dollars of bit coin but it was like

Telegraph selling and that held the market down right so like that's the type of size we're talking about now you have sale or like Telegraph buying of like five billion a week as long as the premium's up which is you know obviously making the part the market go nuts but if that were to stop it's like very reflective because it's like people are buying because they also know sers at the bid and like micro strategies up but they all all these factors feed into each other like if Bitcoin goes down micro strategy goes down and it's kind of it's a difficult reflexive Dynamic so I think um yeah it would be it's important to watch looking for like a temporary top in in crypto to to watch micro strategy and the fact that it did more options than Nvidia I think is a

bit concerning that a top is probably close yeah I think there would be some level of pullback just based on you know the telegraph like you men Telegraph buying brings in a certain type of crowd that that's looking to just trade that event right and and so um you're both getting increased buying from them and then you likely get some degree of selling from them and you know there's not an insane amount of Leverage in the system right now but there's definitely some and and you'd expect there to be a potential flush um but yeah there's no reason to yeah you it's a it's a tricky one it is a tricky one but and how we maybe pivoting to to markets how are we

feeling generally like it's kind of wild today that like mic strategy is up 15% bitcoin's up 3% and most of the other alts are red it's like and like like uh stocks are red dollars up yields are up it's like kind of like the the lone soldier in the market right now but obviously this is just like a one day thing it's just pretty yeah ALS outside of like Soul have not been really trading well over the past week or so um you also saw uh some you know the apps obviously that's like something people track um the app app store apps and abore rankings have kind of have trended

lower right so not higher being towards first uh they've kind of reversed course a bit which I don't know if we've seen that I'm sure we've seen that in previous bull markets but I don't remember that happen the first time the rankings rise is because people log on to sell a break even is that your theory yeah then it goes back down and then they come back later and then that's the one that really matters it's just kind of weird because this cycle feels like it's really dominated by micro strategy and like the ETFs and the Strategic Reserve which are all centered around Bitcoin and then it's kind of like taking last cycle but like put it to the

extremes it's like okay like that's the institutional side where it's like institutions are coming and buying Bitcoin and then on the other side you have like memes going nuts right like xrp Doge uh cardano are all up 100 and these are like okay xrp and aren't necessarily memes but they're like retail bags and they're up 100% in the past week which is like 60 billion in market cap so it's like you kind of have a a weird scenario where it's like the institutions on one side and then like the gamblers on the other side like the very gamly stuff I don't think that cardano and xrp is retail though obviously there is some retail buying

the xrp thing was um so everyone's everyone's very bullish about like a trump presidency right because he's going to be very Pro crypto and everything I think the risk here is that he's so Pro crypto that you're going to have a lot of these different groups trying to like make their bag right and get like regulations and get things put in place that only benefit them and don't necessarily the industry right and I think there's been like discussions with the with the Ripple guys right um and there was that rumor about Charles hoskinson you know talking to Trump too and it's like I don't know if this is retail per se buying this because I've seen a lot of like I've seen a lot of

smart Traders buying xrp and stuff right that know it's complete garbage but they're like playing this narrative right uh isn't Alexander good building his project on on xrp I heard this somewhere he's very I know he's very long xrp interesting he does all the like socials analysis though right like um he does a bunch of like ad impression cost and stuff analysis so interesting there anyway also Bitcoin dominance is like chart looks great even like a year even if you zoom back a year do you think this is the trend that keeps going or is it is is Bitcoin is it like like other Cycles

where Bitcoin pumps first and then and then there's a major alt cycle well Bitcoin dominance right now is is eth right it's like versus e is basically all of it and so too Soul's a soul becomes a bigger chunk of it but like I think you have to make a case for why eth is gonna turn around and it's like we've been trying to come up with reasons there's been like 10 chances it feels like for over the last year for eth to turn around and I thought that even as someone who's in bearish eth um I was like okay this this makes sense after when Trump got elected people are going to unwind their e shorts um you're going to get more like speculative

non-bitcoin flows and stuff it still hasn't happened like I just pulled up my BDC DOD chart which I guess I haven't used in a while and I zoomed out and in 2021 when it goes from 60% to 40% I was having all caps all season so we're waiting for that this time but but there's been Pockets right I think the difference being though that that uh previously it was kind of a lot of in a lot of the investors in Bitcoin were kind of in crypto right and so there was there was a much more rational path for them to kind of move further out on the risk curve but now you have these very Bitcoin sticky Pockets being the ETF and

sailor that you don't necessarily see the same rotation so unless something changes on that front I I I don't necessarily see btcd returning to previous DG sold their Bitcoin well in in previous Cycles they would right everyone would kind of get a taste and then but I guess you're saying in this one they have none left to sell and distribute out no more so just have a massive bid that's very specific to bitcoin and that won't move out further on the curve right but normally you'd have that even if you had that bid you'd have people who own Bitcoin and sell into that bid and distribute to alts right and sell or or just like yeah yeah sell some and then go nuts like because like dominance is market cap based right so like you know a dollar going into

some of these alts moves market cap like crazy and so you kind of have an outsized impact on on on the rest of of the uh the market caps for every dollar of Bitcoin you kind of sell I mean you can still have with Bitcoin dominance Rising like this though we've seen lots of speculative Pockets right um because it's just such a small market cap that these things are doing right the the obviously meme coins have been all year and then you had some of the zoo stuff but like all the all this AI agent stuff recently has been hot over the past like week or so um it's just like they need to it's so small so it's not gonna look it's not going to show up in Bitcoin dominance right but it's not to say that there

isn't like it does more so to btcd won't return to those lows I think yeah but like for for a reference so Bitcoin dominance in January of 2021 was at 73% and it got as low by may it was 40% so like it literally fell off a cliff and that was like the all L1 trades like really heating up last well it's also that people genuinely believed in the flipping right and people do not I think it's fair like people need to stop believing in that at this point and I don't think that you know I think e if like eth BTC gets to like or something you know it's going to be hard

to to see it go higher than that right cuz the whole reason it always went higher than that is because people genuinely believed in the flipping and I think that's like completely off the table now and so that's why you won't see Dom go as low as it has in in past Cycles yeah so this is probably like the most interesting conversation is like is this cycle different in the fact where you know you have these institutional BTC biders on one end and then the retail is going straight into like the trenches and and the meme coins on the other end does that just kind of leave like the tech alts or the there's also no new like narrative to to really like pull that people can believe in to pull

Bitcoin dominance away like there's memes but I don't really consider memes a a narrative right it's it's kind of just gambling which is fine but in at least in other times you had gambling but you could sort of um talk about a narrative whether it's def summer um or like metaverse or whatever it was well I do think the agents is that yeah so let's move on to that because that's probably the the main narrative that's that has any legs although I'd question like to what extent this still mostly don't get me wrong the agent stuff is still mostly like mem coins and like very SPCA but it is there is like a bit um there is a bit there there's like a little bit go on give us your then

what's the what's your bull case for or like what is the what is I mean I don't know if I what's my bull case I think if you if you think that I don't know if I have a good bull case I just think the sector is going to grow a lot right now just like pure speculation because people want like an intellectual meme coin type thing people want a new narrative to bid um memec coins aren't like really new even when they're popping off last year uh people want like a new defi summer and you know trying to figure out what role like agents play in the future are they going to become these like kol's um everyone's like launching their own agents

now um are they goingon to become like I don't know are they going to become like celebrities some of these agents is it is is it more than like is it just being a KO with Tweeting or they are they actually going to start doing stuff right um I think you've seen a little bit with that with the zerro one is has actually done some different stuff like they actually launched their own token like the AI actually did it um I think what they dropped like a mixtape or something um and yeah a lot of Art and some other stuff and so there's yeah I don't know if you need to have like a

long-term you don't need to you need to know where this is going with agents I think you just need to recognize that it's like a bit different and like worth paying attention to yeah on the agent side I mean you know crypto aside most people agree that over time more and more agent interactions will happen whether it's human to agent agent to agent right so a lot more kind of internet traffic and and just activity will happen via these agents and so previously there it was it was difficult to kind of monetize them in a in a straightforward way right it's typically you one of the major companies owns the agent and so they get to kind of charge and so if you can actually create a

useful agent that gets a lot of utility um you can kind of monetize it right by by basically charging a fee or or or using tokens for permissioning I think there's a lot of experimentation that's still happening on the uh the value acral side uh still early most of them are just purely mimetic um but I think as these agents become more and more useful and and the ability to to charge for their utility becomes more kind of uh you know normalized it'll make sense for for them to have a token that they can ACR value to use to to gain attention you know it really depends on what the purpose of the agent is but I think you know a token around them makes a lot of sense

naturally with with very low barriers to entry uh you're going to have just a lot of noise as well and and a lot of kind of just silliness but um I think this narrative is certainly going to you know grow as the utility and and interactions with agents grow yeah to me it's also like there's a acceleration uh sort of narrative that this plays into and I do think AI agents take over more and more of economic activity I don't know I've seen a few people try and categorize them uh I try and think of them in terms of like end sort of end user product so kind of think there's like influencers right um celebs cult leaders

that uh Sam is moving robot or whatever on virtuals that's like traveling around the world and posting posting selfies then there's like the financial agents like Traders the VC funds you know Sequoia and AI 16z um you know people that things that people will ape into to kind of follow trade then there's just like the jobs to be done agents which are like the very simple ones that kind of exist already researchers like personal assistants that book flights for you this kind of thing and then like chat agents right where you're just going to like the e-girlfriend thing all the only fan stuff um maybe not even chat but like interaction like multimodal interaction agents where you're going to probably pay to talk to them digital twins like character AI

talk to characters from from your favorite games and stuff and I do think all of these are going to exist and tokens uh and and I think there will be tokens around a lot of the successful ones and they will trade kind of like absurdly um I do think there's a lot of infro missing for these to for these to exist um there's people building them obviously like launch pads but even like with the virtuals and the platform stuff you haven't really seen a successful agent be built like on a platform by someone that isn't an AI expert you know like every platform has its successful agent but in in almost every case it was built by the people who develop the platform itself um and there's a question as to like you know normally

these these sort of abstractions like these platforms or SAS tools or like the Shopify come in like later in the cycle when there's been enough experimentation for you to know what the sort of standard practices are and you can kind of productize them and build build rails around them I think it's like a little bit too early for these for these platforms and you're you're kind of seeing it with with uh the the stuff that's coming coming out of them you know the most successful ones have all been built by just like individual devs or or groups of devs um and then obviously there's the te Tech and stuff that's missing to actually make sure these are AI because the majority of these are just people laring as AIS which is hilarious because like the history of the internet is AI laring as like robots laring as people right uh

and now we're seeing like the flippening um but I I think the infra doesn't exist yet and also like the all the stuff that's happening now is like I don't know there's there it's definitely there's some interesting stuff there but there's also a lot of a lot of crap I I would take the other side on on the I think there are some I mean so if just thinking about the platforms uh the usually the the developers of platforms are kind of dog fooding it via the creation of One agent that they hope is hyper successful and and can be you know an example of of what can be done but I think you know these platforms need to exist as to be successful as a kind of two-sided marketplaces right you you want to

create on the speculation side a platform where users can come invest speculate and and and the reason why is because then you can attract the developers to to come onto the platform and bring the highest quality of agents and then that gets the flywheel going um I feel like virtuals you know the only one they really did was was Luna and then uh game is another one that's more of a a tokenized piece of the kind of infra that helps other agents but I think the rest of them have been pretty uh organic in the sense of you know Builders coming on that aren't related to the platform um but which of those would you say have traction uh the AI xbt one um uh Sequoia one

what's funny about that one is that AI that one just shills Salon all the time but it's a it's a base AI yeah it's I mean Shalon Salon of tokens yeah it actually has like nailed a lot ofand trades yeah wait so so do we feel like this is big enough so in 2021 like what was the big enough narrative is like yeah like eat flipping Bitcoin uh these l1's like big no this reminds me of like def summer in a sense not that it'll get is the biggest narrative like yeah it seems like it's big enough so it's like yeah so you have virtuals which is like the infrastructure play and then all these agents on virtuals like you guys were just talking about and then what

happened isn't that AI 16z one like weren't they scammers or something like that one is like yeah that one I don't know if we have to really go into a put it I don't know it seemed kind of sh it was more specific to Eliza but yeah we don't that's need to go into that one too much but I mean if you but if you want to see if you just want to that was a good example just though of like the exuberance and that that thing was trading at like half a bill with like 8 mil nav or something and it's a decentralized fund right uh like it run by AI agents I also don't think that like do we really believe that AI agents are going to outperform

qin's investing in tokens the only way I can kind of I can only see that in the near term is that everybody just copy trades the agent of like yeah a fund I don't think that they're actually I don't know like I was not bullish on uh that AI 16z thing because I just didn't think they'd make good Investments right I think there's there's gonna be an insane pace of kind of iteration though and and just the amount of information they can consume and make decisions on and just beond 247 is definitely an edge over humans but it'll it'll take some time before they can consistently outperform like in in very closed environment strategies they can do it but once you start

to open up the world of kind of yeah all sorts of information it's harder yeah I'm just scrolling through the virtual stuff like it's definitely pretty interesting yeah I feel like this could this could be a big up narrative this in rwa and I think like are big enough to because defi was very immediately tangible and understandable right it's just this whole world to trade and and hold your assets and they just make sense that you know there's going to be a consistent Trend I don't know if it was understandable because most people don't really understand Finance right like most people still don't really understand how how an amm works even in crypto I think people just hated Banks

so it's like quite easy to to jump on the Financial inclusion and it was like easy to to understand the meme I guess but I feel like a is actually easier to understand like uh or at least the the impact is like clearer to understand and like the narrative is easier to understand um yeah but the connection to how like Ai and tokens and and and right now it's kind of specifically just on agents I think isn't as obvious as like there's just going to be a bunch of money on chain and you're going to have NASDAQ on chain and or nysd on chain and and kind of banks on chain and I think that element makes sense whereas here it's still a bit nebulous um yeah outside of like the platforms where like

people are launching agents yeah you could make a case for all these different D5 Protocols of like why the tokens would be valuable and stuff uh which obviously a lot of them just became way overvalued and were essentially wrong but they're still like around right and they still a lot of them still have like very valuable tokens you know you can't really say for something like for instance like goat right which like yeah I own but it's it's like a meme coin attached to an AI Twitter account right you can't make a strong as strong of a case that it's going to be around in like two years than you could the first like money market right so it's definitely reminds me of defi summer but it is also way more speculative than defi summer um and

there's not really it's mostly just buying the tokens it's kind of like popularity contest like you buy tokens of the agents that you think are going to go viral and then the token goes up with them right it's like the attention economy But but so is is virtuals like the pump up fund basically of this like that's yeah there's there's there's a few of them but yeah the idea is you you you pair an asset you pair your agent token with virtuals and so it all runs through that token got it and they take fees or what's what's the deal yeah there's a 1% fee on swaps part of it is used to cover inference costs and and then part of it is is value acru to a

treasury yeah Mr pix and shovels over there I feel like if you're gonna virtu is I know well I looked at virtuals and saw it ran like so hard and then but maybe I'll re I'll I'll re look at it well the thing too is like so that's a good example right it's like I had this tweet the other day uh no one gave a [ __ ] about AI agents until they had tokens right and it's like an important crypto but it's you know people like to people like to [ __ ] on it but that is still crypto's main use case is that you can financialized things and get people interested in them and now like we'll see where this goes now because all these people are coming in now we talked about this I think on it was like a month ago when we first started talking

about like goat and all that stuff there going to bring in a lot of developers right and you're seeing that over the past month um this definitely hasn't been like a flash in the pan fad maybe it pH I just don't I don't know I just don't see it like I think like yeah most of the tokens go to zero but I but I just think that there's just going to be a lot of people building in this area I agree and and agents are going to be able to do more and more have like the ability to trade tokens have wallets tip like get paid in all sorts of different ways like subscriptions and and like friend textile bundon curves and like people are going to build out the infra to just make these to just make what you

can do with agents how you can charge for them way uh more granular bigger and I think the experiments will get more and more interesting there's a really big spread between confidence in in the narrative uh you know persisting and then confidence in the underlying assets themselves right where like in in 2021 you you can be confident in defi then confidence in defi translates to all right if that's the case a is going to be you know a permanent fixture and all these are going to be permanent fixtures whereas here there's a really big spread and and you're you can be confident in in agents being prevalent and and the growth of of them cons you know being consistent but there's not a

lot of of I think protocols that you can confidently invest in and say in three months if this continues to grow this will be very prevalent or you know even longer time Horizons I think that probably gives a lot of people pause in terms of deploying and and also just you know reinforces the whole flipping mentality too which you know that adds to the isn't that wouldn't the best thing just to be like where there like something like a virtuals like uh like basically that's the pump up fun of of yeah agent I think that's the the the one of the safer bets right is just because you're betting on both the success of individual agents on their platform and the idea that there's going

to be a long tail what what are the other ones that are like that that are more infr plays about it there's one on salana but it's it's like a rapper of pump fun like they didn't really build their own they're like yeah but they're um they're like you know burning I think some of the token based off fees and stuff right yeah so you do have some of this there's a bunch being built too um we' spoken to a bunch that are building one in the recent Labs incubator it's called qar now I think they're called Mima been building been building in this for like nine 10 months um yeah then then I think the features are going to

kind of blow people away once once some of these new ones launch in terms of what you can like what kind of Agents you can build because I still think goaty uh or like ter of Truth is is by far the best one yeah also like I'm just looking at the prices of stuff stuff and so I mean so goat is down like I don't know 3% today but I look at all the other agent related stuff and it's it's it's half to 2/3 has been like shaved in the last day and so yeah these things are just yeah I think Als in general though that that applies to right everything has been kind of dragging it it's one so you know sometimes you have the environment where

Bitcoin rips because uh and an act as a liquidity vacuum where people selling alls for Bitcoin um seems like now it's it's more just a very Bitcoin specific bid and and you know eth is kind of flat like when when Bitcoin doesn't go up eth BTC kind of chills and then the second it starts ripping eth dollar price doesn't really move much and so it just kind of goes down but on on the alt side you're definitely seeing a bit of a drain although I I don't really see that being more function of of people selling those alts for Bitcoin but rather just kind of rotating in and out because there's not a great deal of conviction in in some of them yeah there's just a

lot of coins in the middle I know we've talked about this so much but it's just hard to as like a liquid investor it's just it's hard to get behind a bunch it kind of just feels like dead money yeah because like when the tides wash out on this stuff it's just like really like it's G to be difficult but yeah we've talked at the dilution [ __ ] to death one thing we've seen recently has been uh increase in appetite to list right I think that's part of like with the presidency that that was uh pretty interesting I mean it's been all memes which I think are more of a reputational hit than a than a regulatory one if if you want to

think about downsides um so we haven't necessarily seen I guess I don't know what like I don't imagine there's a great deal of regulatory risk with those but um yeah I guess that's most of what what's launching right now anyways a little bit sad I I mean people are yeah like people are buying coins because they're just praying for a listing it's like that's the thesis and it's you know that's not that interesting um I also think that's it's somewhat of a you know if you were to take the like the lifetime p&l of onchain Traders and

you can just say skill issue and whatever free market they deserve it but if you take the on like the lifetime p&l of on train onchain retail versus centralized exchange retail it's like these memes get listed when they're over a bill and I don't know it's just yeah except but it's just it just they're just like that's why people buy them because now you have like this exit liquidity right and it's just I don't know did did you guys see that pump.

font I bookmarked it the pump. fund chart okay so I'm eyeballing this I'm gonna say 70 perish didn't or wer weren't profitable maybe like 5% made nothing 20% were profitable I it looks like less than a p and then it's like you have made over a 100 bucks which is maybe like 10 just looking at is that just looking at the bonding curves uh yeah this is well does it look at trading after the bonding curve because there's a lot of like I've never bought something on pump bonding curve but I've bought a lot of pump means when it's like off The Curve you know yeah I can I can look into because yeah they launched definitely like

before the bonding curve you're hyper gambling yeah it's also though these people that put $10 in and it's 20 mil like that's why people like it right yeah is that the story gets glorified and then everyone yeah it's the survivorship bias of like yeah agent meta is like also the best sort of candidate to pull M share away from memes just because you have like a meme that's much more Dynamic like in the worst case you have a meme that's like more Dynamic can evolve keep being like iterated on obviously they also have a chance to [ __ ] it up um but yeah I don't know and and also people who don't want to do memes can kind of rationalize

they're buying something that's not Pure Vapor um because there's like an AI thing Associated to it um but you haven't really seen it to be honest yet I mean obviously it's early the counter is like retail likes a picture of a cute dog or or a cat and they're much like more likely to bid that also all the agents are still memes they're all listed they're all created on pump for the most part or like on these rappers I guess virtual is a bit different um and I wonder to what extent this stuff will will get regulated or not like memes I've been thinking about that recently yeah I was thinking about that too meme coin regulation and so here's thekey gambling right it's like and gambling has has is is regulated everywhere and it's like a it's also just like an activity that that's

doesn't really give anything to society okay but here's here's the here's the the thing that's a tough distinction though what do you do with all this AI agent stuff because they're essentially meme coins right now it's just you believe that they can transform into something more over time right and so if you're going to regulate meme coins you know a dog with a hat a frog with whatever frog guys um like if you're gonna the all the meme all the AI agent coins are on pump fun they're all essentially meme coins um and so I don't know I think that I think that the AI agent speculation is a net positive um I I like I do think even though it's mostly mcoin still like I do think that

money speculating on that is a net positive um yeah it's also tricky I think conflating it like the regulatory side with with gambling like part of the regulatory reason around casinos is to ensure that you know they operate fairly and and not you know the odds are what they should be and not rigged whereas here it's not like player versus house in a very controlled environment it's it's kind of just PVP and like yeah I mean I think like pump. fun did a good job of like some self regulation in terms of protecting people because it forced you know liquidity to be locked and and so that

that helped avoid like the early day rugs and and then it was more just kind of you know user to user um I just don't know how you'd regulate the mcoin sector it's not just that though right there's like age restrictions which you know we've seen today aren't obviously happening with with meme coins um there's like advertising rules about how you can like Market these things there's tax stuff um yeah I I don't know and there is also like the tech safeguards in Level Playing Field where a lot of these things are like getting sniped by by by Bots that are that that are dumping them like I don't know I think

there's a lot of ways in which this uh this is like kind of squarely should lie squarely in the in the gambling thing but or at least in they're not going to be left alone they're not going to be left I don't think that they're just going to be left alone forever the the last administration had this like what is it techno Anarchy is that the right term I'm thinking of where it's like you go after the lawful and leave the Lawless and that's kind of what they did you know they'd go after Unis swap they' go after coinbase um they wouldn't go after FTX they don't go after like a lot of pure drugs and stuff uh you know maybe that changes now right maybe you do get stricter I think

there probably will be something though that like touches meme coins I don't think they're just going to be left alone forever now agreed agreed how about defi bull market e November 5th to 6th 2024 well that's the thing it's just like I think yeah honestly like the the marad stuff is becoming more trer it's like you just you're kind of stripping out like even though all the def summmer St was insanely overvalued like there is the narrative there that you could like you know you could believe in it and now it's like you're just taking out that [ __ ] side of things where it's like it's just all the memes and attention now that definitely feels like that's

where we're heading more and more maybe that Meme reverts um on some of these projects that actually you know aren't like are reasonably valued but for the most part that seems like it's just gaining steam which is yeah I would not have predicted this uh yeah kind of wild is there World R reverses I mean listen if mem coins led to the AI agent mem coins and then the AI agent meme coins led to something useful with like crypto AI then you can say meme coins are worth it right so that's like the optimistic I mean there's a lot of legit don't me wrong like the mcoins capture a lot of the attention and we talk about them a lot but there's a lot of legit stuff

being built in crypto AI too um and I think the other most exciting area for me is just the stable coin adoption and some of the payment stuff we're seeing like with especially stripe some of the stuff they're releasing but yeah they do capture a lot of attention I also got to imagine being a builder like just building heads down on one project and working really hard on it and seeing like meme coins happen and and and stuff pumping while you're while he just heads down on one project it's got to be pretty demoralizing like the the the D5 builders that are unlike the the projects that aren't quite tier one that didn't make it uh but that have built really good products it's got to be

pretty I don't know though are they really good products if nobody's using them though uh that's fair um some of them have a lot of people using them and still don't really trade that well though like you know something like I mean cow swap I guess got listed recently but like that was an example for a long time something that has like loads of users but doesn't really trade not loads of fees though I think you know going back to just the he start to trade on fundamentals and if you kind of look under the hood for some of the stuff it's hard to rationalize a very high V yeah it's like the old startup thing you you don't want to have cash flow actually it's better

enough to have it Russ no Revenue yeah it's definitely yeah definitely interesting where it will go but like I don't see it changing at least on the retail side like retail just wants to buy memes like they don't care like the level of diligence is so low they just want to buy stuff they think's G to go up and like but there's pockets of things that do really well that are like grass um and like has has performed really well um yeah there going be strong yeah but this is honestly probably healthy for the market over like not the meme stuff but like you know if the other stuff isn't

because the meme stuff I feel like will sort itself out as as gambling but I think people realize they're taking a real gamble when they bet on a meme versus like you can kind of get tricked into buying one of these little float High FV things that you think is going to like change the world or change finance and then get wrecked on it it's just calling a spade more a spade one thing I'll say on the memes though is like if you're listening to this and you're like new here or something don't believe this like you know Meme coin super cycle memes will never go down all this stuff um obviously there like memes are going to get pretty wrecked at some point um now I mean we had this debate internally it's like will more wealth

be just like destroyed through memes and or like just how it is every cycle and yeah I didn't really have a good answer cuz like everything goes down like 80% 90% every cycle yeah but in the I don't know like uh that are the jokes still funny when the price is down 90% right like a is still running doing liquidations um you know like there there there's at least like a few and memes had sector winners too obviously but with with uh the utility coins or whatever it's clear that there are some some things that just keep plugging long and working uh yeah I mean I'll say winners too right because that's that's the big thing I think is that yeah some

of these things will be intercycle winners and I think a lot of people aping memes are just going to like Miss the forest for the trees yeah I mean last cycle listen I thought I like generative art I thought it looked good and I I don't think generative art looks good anymore well that that was like there's a famous tweet like whiff was pulled back from four to one and then somebody tweets oh I get it now the dog has a hat wh is at like a dollar and everyone on Twitter's like bro this isn't the time but yeah no I definitely think price is like price continues to be the most important fundamental for everything in crypto right and

that's yeah it's just like don't delude yourself into thinking that you know well I think it's easier but like the positive is like for people getting is like I don't think I think it's easier not to like get duded that this meme is going to like change the world and it is a gamble versus buying something like last cycle well no if you believe in the cult thesis though people do believe it's changing the world like I know me and you we'll look at memes and we'll realize that at the end of the day these are still valueless meme coins I don't know if everybody feels especially if they buy into like some of like the Morad thesis post the black Print I don't find the Morad

thesis very very compelling we kind of discussed it before but I do think that the black Print by uh you know Alexander good like the idea of an AI native internet religion with a with a coin around it I can definitely see something like that happening at some point in the next decade like having an actual internet cult based around some kind of AI religion um I could see see that like gaining traction at some point this going to be pretty bearish for society though very bearish for society I think all of his I think he's one of the most like interesting but also depressing people to to follow um yeah I think very bearish in society

he's like everyone everyone celebrating Bitcoin 90k is actually celebrating like the demise of the US like uh like the us fiscal situation or whatever like the the bursting of a sovereign debt bubble to round it up with with markets do we see uh you know we've had a scenario Bitcoin up alts kind of down Bitcoin sneezes and fall off the cliff yeah that's what that's why I keep on looking over like Bitcoin is g to if Bitcoin goes down a bit like like alter already down with Bitcoin up like I think they're just it feels like stuff's

going to fall off a cliff if Bitcoin sneezes but obviously like you can have shorter term pullbacks and the market can still go up but it is definitely like it's a lot more difficult to know what's going to perform while long term it's than it felt last cycle like I don't know yeah last cycle you could just buy anything yeah it's like ta for instance is down like ta is down like it's down a good Chun like 20% or something since like goat launched and since all these AI coins started coming out right and you would think like largest liquid AI type play would rip in that scenario right it was like the only one right the only one

and now all these agents are launching on salana so it's like and you couple that with with just like the the the flows issue on to right you're still going to have a pretty decent amount of selling that always needs to get absorbed yeah it's just like the stuff that seems like it's safe from dilu I'm bearish are is are people bearish here then you you I know you're beish Duncan or or slightly bearish short I'm not I'm like right I think that yeah I would not be surprised if we kind of like take a Bree there for a couple weeks here after what we saw but I don't think we're like getting hammered or rocked or anything yeah I'm more so worried about is there going to be like the all

that we like the alt season that we saw in 2021 that's more what I'm kind of like fighting with it it definitely seems like I missed radium and radium seems like it's you know on Salon just like really well captured like all these exchanges like binance is probably crushing it right now like radium hyper liquid's doing real well um like all of these infr plays I feel like are well positioned because they just get all the volume through this and and they're the real winners like they're the people extracting the money like the photons the bulle xes the bananas the Trojans like you know I think Photon made like 17 million in fees last week like those are the real people

winning from this they don't care if the market goes up down sideways they just want volume and yeah I think that that's like the safest way if you want to get outside of the majors um and not risk just like being diluted over longer periods of time like even like we just talked about to uh is to own these exchanges um just those things seem to dump with everything else though and you don't and they don't pump as much I guess is but they don't go to zero like they Sur they survive through the cycle whereas all a lot of this stuff will like be hot for a little bit and then just die and never come back yeah that's fair so what do you think you you played you play this pretty well you levered

going into the election pretty vocally long how are you how are you feeling now I would have expected there to be more alt exuberance with how BTC has run up um and what's coming in in the next Administration so uh I think just structurally if we get a BTC flush you definitely get a slightly bigger um alt one I don't I don't think it goes to absolute [ __ ] though because it's not you know in during the summer chop you would see really bad alt moves on BTC moves because there's so much uncertainty about you know what the next several months look like whereas here I

I do think there's still going to be a decent amount of capital that's actually looking to to buy um because the the longer term view is still really positive so um you know there could be a scenario where you get like a a BTC flush uh uh Al move with it and then they'll kind of bottom while BTC bounces around because you'll you'll see some seller exhaustion and and some Capital it's actually looking to buy because you know if you're if you're thinking on any longer term Horizon it it makes sense to be bullish um there's all you know going into it there the the I think the common trade was like you know buy the election

sell the inauguration and then as that narrative gets kind of prolifer proliferated uh it starts to get front run and so it's it's hard to make any of these things uh any of these kind of calls far out because they're so path dependent right if if we flush early then then you don't necessarily need to see what inauguration whereas if we really run up beforehand than you do um so I I I think the the biggest risk to a large flush is definitely Master Premium compression um like a big one I I think you know you'll see some temporary one but uh he's going to continue to bid and and it seems like there's some positive

movement on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve right if you think about that and and you think about the probability of that happening if it's if you if you assign any decent probability right if you're like thinking 10 to 25% then then you know the price that it would be if that happens times that probability is is like what the expected value I guess you can say cc is and I would say it's it's much higher um so it it's hard to be bearish on on longer term Horizons I think you'll get these periodic flushes and and this kind of seems like one of them at least on the alt side but um I'm I'm basically a buyer of any meaningful flush here um uh

but we kind of feel like we're in no man's land which means you s some or you have you have uh I I kind of hedged out yeah I've sold some and then i' I've like shorted a bunch of eth as as a head um but I I feel like you're not seeing it's funny eth BTC doesn't really didn't really go down when BTC came pulled back it's mostly going down when BTC goes up so perhaps there's like seller exhaustion on the east side and and that's not as attractive as of a short anymore um like fundings come down on eth and it doesn't seem to to Really nuke on E BTC bases as much when BTC pulls back although it's kind of coming down now um but yeah I I'm I'm kind of kind of a a I'm a buyer on any decent

flush and I think um you know we we've seen people trying to do the buy memes that haven't been listed and play the uplisting game so I think that made sense to some degree uh the question is like a lot of these memes seem to stall out in the high single digit or the mid single digit billions um you know you're kind like whiff in particular and potentially like the the podcast like post listing there isn't as much upside and so people are shifting so I think there's probably some uh upside in in the memes that are like high eight low nine figures that have caught on and and and there's a chance for them to get you know a five to 10x on on attention and then a subsequent listing so I think

there's probably better bets to be made in that area than on the absolute major memes what what are you g to buy if we get a flash what do you want to buy what are you hoping to buy if we get a flash I would definitely want to buy some I I I still think if you get a major flush on on on memes like the big ones even like popcat and whiff I I think those are are decent bu I'd like to I think like getting a longer term Doge bag makes sense um if so if we get a flush there uh I think that that's that's going to be a good buy um eth I don't really have a strong opinion on here I don't really want to be like short or long it to be honest um just cuz how much ECC has come

down I think you can kind of make the argument either way um but I don't yeah it's not something I really want to hold um and then and then like some of the smaller mes I'm still accumulating so I'm not going to share those okay but so it's memes it's mostly memes it's mostly memes yeah and then like fundamentally I I think uh I I like the NL lot here you know they're G to The Tam keeps expanding as as oi goes up price goes up and funding stays elevated and so I think there are pockets of fundamental value that that make sense and that's certainly going to continue being one of them although um that that's kind of just being thrown out with everything

else got it what about you yeah I definitely was in some cash before the election because I was worried if the election went the other way that we basically see what we're seeing in reverse and um so more cash on that side and then uh I think probably just the the stuff I was talking about like the the pick and shovels types Exchange Place because I'm not super confident betting on any one single name that is like a which it's price is is a function of attention I'd rather just buy you know stuff like banana that I've talked about in the past probably not

more banana because I have a lot but like other things that benefit from just overall trading volumes because that's like one thing I'm confident is Bitcoin keeps on going up there's going to be a lot of trading volumes in the alts it's just you know it's less confident on which alts Really Gonna outperform over a long period of time uh yeah I'm like I'm I'm still paying attention to all like the AI agent stuff and then we're working on our year head reports too so uh stuff like that um I don't know if I really change I'm not really looking at anything I'm not like looking at now most of my time I was looking at this AI agent stuff I was not as aggressively positioned leading up up to the election

and still still I'm not I had like 25% Stables or something just because the Athena yields are too too juicy to pass up um but yeah I've sold a few of the I did ape uh a chunk of memes and I've sold a lot of that um recently and I'm not sure what to deploy it into my main alter yeah definitely Ena is the biggest one and then banana and are like utility alss banana and meta as well um but I'm kind of just most of my exposure comes from Majors honestly right now like my biggest positions are just majors and stable quins same I'm kind of just like waiting for the soul alltime High

because I don't know yeah going through alltime high could make onchain Soul go even crazier right it's like this reflexive Loop in a sense I feel like majes and stable coins are probably just the safest with how yeah yeah with all the dilution that's happening yeah yeah cool guys all right good episode and I'll see you all in two weeks [Music]