How To Fix Crypto's Token Problem | Weekly Roundup

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The best businesses in my experience are dictatorships because they can move quickly and the person at the top with the strategic mindset. They gets the right people around them and they make decisions and they break break things and they move fast. That's what Hyperlid did. That's what um the best businesses offchain have done and I think we're going to see a lot more of that happening at these protocols. >> Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Block Works. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the company's funds or projects

discussed. Ladies and gentlemen, you have here a rare Rob headache with a new haircut. Rob, tell us all about that, please. >> Tell us about the new haircut. you know, I'm just I'm trying to look good for you. So, and and the the three people who watch the podcast, >> it it looks that's true. Right. Right. Um you know, in many ways it's great that like you assume that no one really cares and so you're just more just spontaneous when it comes to these things. You know, I there there was to be fair there is a pretty decent group chat on the Empire.

Some good discussions. Rob was in there just, you know, we Rob and I were fighting in there just putting up a good fight on prediction markets and continuations. >> I was firing away yesterday. I was in the Empire group chat. There's like a thousand people in there. >> I was like, Rob, you're on Telegram. Jeez. I'm kidding. Rob has a fast response rate. Um uh but anyways, so you got a haircut. You're in Miami. You're in New York. Undisclosed. >> York Miami was Miami is done. Miami was a failed experiment for me because I went down there and I was like, "Oh, I'll do I'll be a little bit more like between two cities and, you know, maybe I'll get out of the the bad weather in New York." Uh, and I realized that Miami is where people go when they're retired

and I'm not ready to retire. So, there's no business happening in Miami. Like, people are lying to you on Twitter that business is happening in Miami. It's not true. >> Interesting. >> Other than Palunteer, I guess. So, >> yeah. I mean, I I think there's been a couple of firms that like moved offices. I think Citadel obviously made a big push and then I've heard that it like wasn't working out as much and like they were looking to relocate because productivity just people just didn't adjust well for whatever reason. But anyways, >> it's actually hard to be productive down there. I mean, and Dre set up an office down there, eight months later closed it down >> really.

>> It it's it's one of those things where you go down there and you you have the best intentions. You're like, "Okay, well, it's going to be great during my time off, but I'm going to still going to be as productive. I'm so gonna, you know, just I'm gonna live a super healthy healthy life, you know, etc. And I just find that even with the best intentions, that just does not seem to happen. And whether it's for, you know, that was true of me personally and so maybe, you know, people will say, "Oh, that's a skill issue or something, but it was also true of like all the other people around like the other people I knew like you're just like chilling or whatever or like you just are more inclined to do other things." more inclined to go for a walk, you know, more inclined to spend a little bit of

time outside, more inclined to, you know, like I I'll, you know, maybe it's really nice outside. I I'll work on the balcony, you know, I'm definitely not getting as much done on the balcony as I am, you know, sitting in my office, right? So, um, you know, just had to So, I gave up the place in Miami, back in New York. It's 60° and rainy today. I'm locked in. I have no idea I'm going to go outside. I'm going to shut the blinds. I'm going to have no idea what time it is later. I'm just going to be, you know, crunching Cloud Code all day. >> There you go. There you go. Yeah, I I go back and forth around like what does it mean to be maximally productive? And I feel like as a team you need to have workers, you need to have thinkers, but I I don't buy the

idea that you have to be chain of a desk to be productive, but some sometimes you do need to like like zoom out and then really intensely focus and just go to the cave and like focus. Um I can appreciate why Miami doesn't really let you do that. Well, and I think it makes it I I'm um I tend to one I I'm a big inerson meeting guy. I think as you know, I like to meet people in person, and there's just a lot less of that in Miami. It's much harder. You're on Zoom a lot more. And two, I I find that I like to work sort of like differing hours, right? I like to, you know, maybe work in the really early in the morning, maybe I work all day on a Sunday. You know, I like to, you know, be really

flexible about that. And it's much harder on like a Saturday or Sunday especially when like everybody's outside like people are at you know at the beach or whatever and to be like no I'm actually today is when I want to work because I'm more locked in today or whatever. So it's just it's it's um you know I think the reality is is like it's there is some business getting done down there. Obviously it works for some people maybe it's a skill issue but as a whole like there's just a lot less going on. And so my team is here in New York so I'm back for good. you know, obviously I'll go back to my normal my normal travel schedule, but you know, I'll I'll reconsider Miami in 10 years.

>> Yeah. My that was my biggest fear when I when I left San Francisco um when I was still paraphy. I was like, am I going to be totally disconnected investing in tech by being somewhere else? And I don't know like I think uh probably just it's like hard to verify like what would happen in a parallel universe. Uh obviously co happened and you know working from home became more of a thing. Um but it's I think it just comes down to your style of working honestly but but in person is >> Yeah. Well and I I will tell you this too. I was in San Francisco last week and for the first time since co I finally feel like it's actually

worthwhile for me to spend time in San Francisco. It wasn't really worthwhile for the last few years. It was worthwhile if you were an AI if you were an AI investor. where you're really focused on AI. Obviously, that's the center of gravity. That's where everybody is. But in crypto, that was not true. In, you know, even in broader fintech, that was not true. And all of a sudden, it feels like, you know, some of this fintech, neo bank, stable coin ecosystem stuff is starting to come back to SF. I I still think New York is the center of gravity. And if you look at the you know by company and the fastest growing companies u both for crypto and for call it broader fintech New York is still the best place to be but San Francisco is back to a close second and is accelerating quickly and so I think

San Francisco is back. Uh I mean real estate prices reflect that because uh everybody's getting so rich on in AI and I think that San Francisco is a place to be again. I really think if you want to do really really deep work and you want to be, you know, around and surrounded by the people that are, you know, really building for the next generation or building for the future, the investors are investing for the future just to learn things. You're better off being in one of those two cities. And those are probably the only two cities in the country right now uh where that can be true.

>> Yeah. this idea of learning like positioning is something that I it keeps coming up which is you're never going to be I think it was the guy who runs the sovereign wealth fund of Norway which is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world um per capita I think it's close to like a couple hundred thousand bucks which is incredible like they've um and he said look every every year he meets with like some of the largest most sophisticated investors you know like in the middle of the woods and and they write down their predictions he's like time and time like every year was so wrong But for the most part, the smartest guys are just positioned really well, which is to your point, like if you want to be in tech, you want to be, you know, in in finance, there's really

a very few handful of cities where you're just going to be living and breathing it and through osmosis because, you know, part of the journey for me like in starting version was like I I I really discounted my ability to like start a company because I felt this imposter syndrome of like not having not being technical. So, I said gosh, I really need to find like a co-founder or something like that. Now, I think it's a bit different. Um but but you have to position yourself like to be in the right place to have these spont spontaneous things like founders podcast was so great for me because I kept hearing the same story of like Estee Lauder like she would have literally shut down her idea. She went to a party was left in the elevator met the person that was like the purchasing like

department at I think Neman or Barney and had that not happened probably wouldn't created this massive empire. So anyways, um you're back in New York. What are we talking about this week? I think there's there's a couple things that caught our eye thanks to Will, our producer here, but what's top of mind for you before we run through the list of things? >> I I think the across thing is probably I mean it's not the most mass market point, but I actually think it is has the biggest ripple effects and the biggest implications for what is happening in our space.

So I think we should probably start there. >> Yeah. You tell me if you disagree. >> Oh, I agree. I saw it yesterday and I tweeted about it. So, for context, across is like a bridge protocol, right? Bridging protocol. >> The 35 billion of lifetime uh volume. It's been one of the biggest. There's um you know, it's it's very core to a lot of uh a lot of protocols and a lot of crypto. >> The team I've gotten to know because they were I think also the team behind um um UMA, the Oracle protocol. I think >> that's right.

>> Hart exleman guy. pretty sharp. Um has always kind of like innovated. Every conversation I've had with him, he's like, you know, always thinking about like really is the kind of person that will challenge like pretty much everything from first principles. And it's interesting here. So what they're doing just to get some context here. Maybe I'll share my screen just for folks to see it. Um while we're at it. So this was I think was Yoga from the block. So, Across Protocol wants to become a private company.

Um, they posted a temperature check proposal exploring the move from a DAO to the US to a USC Corp where ACX holders token holders would exchange tokens for equity. If approved by the community, holders could either exchange token for equity at a 1:1 ratio or redeem tokens for a fixed price at a 25% premium to the one-month average price. Interestingly, the token is up 33% since the proposal. Um, well, so I mean the pricing is interesting that that because they uh you this this this premium to the trailing price was approximately I think like 44 cents or so is what they told you they' buy you out and it traded up

yesterday like all the way to like 63 cents. I think it's back down now to about 50 cents. But what does that actually imply to you? And we should we should talk more broadly about the implications here. But that probably implies to you that the market believes that a cross is more valuable as an equity business than the tok uh than the token is. And so you would rather you would pay a premium here than what they value the token at to get access to the equity in the future.

>> Yeah. I'm sorry. I was looking at this chart, but this is all time. Yeah, the token was up massively yesterday. It's down a lot from the alltime high. It's sitting at 50 million fully diluted, 35 circulating market cap. But yeah, that that is I think the the that is a sound bite here, which is the market very clearly tells you that it it's much rather be an equity uh play. I wonder what the mechanics are. Like you probably in order to convert need to satisfy some KYC criteria and just go through general like standards, right? like presumably there's a subset of people that may not want to do that may you know or whatever but you you probably need to comply with some KYC stuff right or you most definitely need to do that >> yeah so so what they agreed to do was

that um I forget what the actual cuto off was but for some version of the people holding the token uh they would get converted to directly onto the cap table and then for um you know people below a certain parameter or a certain like dollar amount they would get uh put into an SPV that would be on the cap table that would have so you'd have some sort of like equity you'd have equity exposure of course but you don't you probably don't have the same rights somebody has um uh kind of fulfilling those rights on your behalf but yeah either way you're going to have to KYC of course whether you're in the SPV or whether you're uh in the equity of the company

>> um >> I'm reading the go >> they also have to go through a Dow vote, by the way. So, you know, the Dow vote hasn't happened yet. I think it happens in two weeks and it'll come up to like like I think Hart posted publicly that if it passes by basically like one vote, they will they will do this. Like it is very clear that they want to do this. They they talked a lot about I think you know quite interestingly what this meant for their ability to just like acrue value, right? because they believe that there's just an ability for them to do more like like actual deal making and to go businesses and to operate in a way that like allows them to acrew revenue even

better than if they are you know a DAO. So, it's literally not just that, okay, well, we think we can operate more efficiently. The token's not doing well. You know, we're not able to figure out how to access or give value back to the token holders, but also we think we will operate better. We will do more deals. We will create more revenue if we are if we don't have that public token out there. The token is a hindrance on our business. >> That's interesting. So, so I'll quote, "As institutional demand for across infrastructure has grown, the current Dow structure has become a bottleneck." The team said, "Enterprise partners need enforceable contracts. Revenue agreements need a legal counterparty.

The kind of deals that would drive the next phase of growth require a structure that a DAO today simply cannot provide." Pretty interesting, right? I mean, I think there there in context of W there's like a Wyoming DAO right structure that's >> been pushing. Yeah. >> That's been pushing. I I saw this firsthand like pleaser DAO which is this like art collective and I could tell you you know it's just I think a pretty sober reality of the state of Dows and uh the other element here which is interesting is um the company itself will house all the IP to your point around like this disconnect that we

we've talked at length about here right uh we just saw this with a uh a lot deepend projects have this like there's there's different entities and there's the disconnect in value acrruel right um and and yeah I think to my knowledge this is the first crypto project that has done this right um collapsed every and and the idea what this will look like and you buy people out that don't want to convert in equity at a premium people that like large holders like paradigm multicoin bane some of the investors I think they raised 50 million in total would you know presumably already have uh they're already equity holders but their tokens would be

>> so it depends I think the paradigm round happened after the token was already live >> so the paradigm round so what what typically happens in VC in these rounds this isn't always true but I think the most common thing has been that if you do it before the token's live you buy both the equity and a warrant for a potential future token if you do it after the token is already live you might have just bought tokens from the treasury Uh and so it's unclear to me if those people who are in the public round that paradigm led uh bought equity as well, but I I'm sure that HART discussed this with them and that they were supportive of this as well, right? And I I will tell you that I believe this is the first one of these happening in this

way. There might be another I'm vaguely recalling but I um I talked to another protocol today which is a brand name uh where the token hasn't performed but the you know hasn't traded at the fundamental or it hasn't traded as well fundamentally as you might think uh who's doing the same thing and they've been working on it for a little bit as well and I expect that we will see quite a few of these good protocols where the business of the that they are actually affectuating is doing well and the token hasn't performed that this will happen.

I bet you we see a dozen of these. >> U you read my mind. That was my first reaction. I saw it yesterday. I said tokens are now going to convert to equity then go back to maybe tokenized equity. Uh >> well and that was the conversation I had with this other protocol was yeah we want to convert the token back to equity and then if something happens with market structure or maybe we do you know something like um uh like what superstate is doing where it's a different it's like a lighter regulatory regime and you know it's kind of in terms of how they do that public issuance but natively on chain. We want to we want to be on chain but we want it to be equity. We don't want the drag of this governance token. We don't want the drag of a Dow. It doesn't allow us to

run the business the way we want to and it doesn't allow us to return capital or you know value to token holders or shareholders over time and we just think it's more clean to be able to do this and this is the best way to effectuate that and so this is going to be one of the things that we have learned over the last couple of years is you know this a conversation over the over the last few uh the last few weeks or last few months um a is the one is probably the only DAO that's figured out how to make this work and it's still very frankly it's it's it's very um what's the right word it still doesn't work very well. They're probably the best ones that have made it work with very contentious uh you know

revenue um going to the DAO with with things that actually matter to the bottom line of the business and they have the Dow really effectuating or really acting like an independent entity relative to the labs uh corp that most of these don't do that and then you look at and they're still trying to figure out you know how to run that the business appropriately and you look at like what a hyperl has done which you know we've seen some of figning of like decentralization and independent decision-m happening there. But it's very clear that's not what's actually happening there. And they've been the most successful protocol in crypto. And that's not necessarily why they've been the most successful protocol in crypto.

But it is part of the story, right? because it is the best businesses in my experience are dictatorships because they can move quickly and the person at the top with the strategic mindset that gets the right people around them and they make decisions and they break break things and they move fast. That's what Hyperlid did. That's what um the best businesses offchain have done and I think we're going to see a lot more of that happening at these protocols. >> Yeah, I definitely agree. I mean I think the the market doesn't like this dual structure. um uh you could look at like a protocol like Helium that you know I've been spending a lot of time there and to me it's always been a head scratcher but again I don't think the market's dumb like the community does not like it understands that there's a

disconnect um and and so what does this mean for like because because in many ways like what is a future state of tokens look like and and so I've talked to a lot of founders that before like a couple years ago you would have said a token is great like let's just get it out we're going to do like it's a go to market strategy. Uniswap in my mind probably would have stayed without having a token for a really long time had sushi not like try to do a vampire attack for people that are new.

Uh it's it's it's a classic like you know DeFi moment. Um and and I think after that moment a lot of protocols you would have heard them say we need to have a token to be competitive. When you have a token to subsidize fees to sustain our business model tokens I think not too dissimilar from stock they help you what tokens probably better than stock is let's get let's effectively give our customers equally that helps with retention and I think like there is some proof into that like hyperlid for example uses the token right to subsidize like the fees right and you know it has been a huge wealth creation for the active community. So,

it makes sense like tokens serve as a way to acquire customers, distribution, capture mind share. But for every hyperlquid, there's 99% other examples that just tokens and I've heard it from a lot of founders. It's like, dude, if I could go back, I would not have launched the token. It was distracting. I then had to, you know, uh constantly like respond to the community, manage a discord. um you know you look at the time like you look at traditional venture companies are staying private longer there there's a benefit of staying private you know and uh there's a lot of liquidity in the private markets too now there's reasons

why you want to go public um but I do think that this perhaps is a prediction here I think we'll see less and less teams issue a token or rush out of the gate to issue a token uh and maybe wait for the regulatory environment to clear up or just build a good product, acrew value in the equity and then maybe either I mean we've seen a lot of acquisitions right Coinbase acquired Tensor Team they acquired the equity not the token uh and I've had a couple other >> portfolio circle and Axel same thing >> exactly so yeah it's a it's a very interesting sign of the times no doubt right I think crypto founders are appreciating hey we actually built a nice product here we could maybe go

public or we could maybe get acquired and a token just introduces a lot of brain damage right now because the reality is a regulatory environment as favorable as this administration is is still not clear for tokens and you know you have to still dance around that right >> yeah but I will say the other side of that right is that um I mean look at some of these things like right you know would obviously not have ever been valued at the value that it was at if it was an equity business because if you were looking at a fundamental investor we're looking at the revenue that they make right it that wouldn't have been given that valuation and so a lot of people investors team members and some of the I'm sure early uh you know traders got you know made a lot of money

on that because of that right you look at some of these other protocols to your point you know could you have bootstrapped uh an Athena in the way that you had without a token right and even Hyperlid right which is making as much money as it is without the success of that airdrop, would it have gained as much mind share and as as many users as it has? I don't think I'm going to get tweeted at here because everyone's going to be like, "Oh, it's such a better product." And it is a very good product. And so, I'm not I'm not, you know, trying to dispute that. Uh, and Jeff has done a tremendous job, but not clear to me that it would have done as well as quickly as it had without the success of that airdrop and without accumulating or allowing people to accumulate wealth uh

on the back of using that. And I think we've seen that the exchange tokens are a little bit different because the exchanges have a reason or there's a there's a real utility for their tokens, but that's not true for all all protocol. >> Yeah. I mean, let's double click on or just like product. Like I'm just call spade a spade. A lot of the venture investing was hey I can have the venture-like asymmetry with short duration because if the team's going to launch a token within a year and I could unlock in a you know six months after that or a year the market tends to value these things at X and so I can probably take my principle out and then have like free optionality on on the rest. And you know, we've sort of assumed that the

market doesn't treat these things on a fundamental basis. So, we'll just kind of issue and play the help them with K rounds and go to market and exchange listings and focus on like certain geographies that you know, you have to have a good mind share. And if you do that, well, we're likely not going to lose money on this deal. And I think a lot of the I'm not saying you guys specifically, but I think a there's a whole a big part of the crypto venture universe that kind of operates like that or historically operated like that. I think the returns like there's so many protocols that are not only trading below their last round, they're trading below their first round valuation and

like they're just going to close to zero. Like I'm talking like sub 10 million, sub five million. um fully diluted market cap and and there's just no no willingness to bid that protocol. Now is interesting because it's still valued at like two billion circulating two and a half fully diluted. So it's I'm actually pretty interested in I don't know if you guys played in Ono or not but like on to your point on a fundamental basis like how do you justify $2 and half billion dollar valuation for >> I I put um my old firm uh that I the hedge fund that I was at in 21 uh Golden Tree we put a a check into to when it was a structured products business and

so people might remember the original and was just basically about how do I trunch risk uh in DeFi Okay. Um, and so had had some exposure to it through that, but the Dragonfly did did not play. And I I think, listen, I I think they've done they were obviously one of the first to, you know, um, some of the like RWA narrative and they've done, you know, a good job in in a lot of different ways. But, you know, very clearly this is a low revenue business, I'm sure, and and it's not a something that would be valued like this in uh, like a public market uh, in the equity. Um and I think you know this also belies a little bit of the you know concerns that a lot of the you know retail buyers of tokens have which is like we don't actually know how much of this float is

public and you know how many people are actually holding this how much sell pressure there is and so even though there's it should be transparent because it should be on chain and there should be this you know mechanism for um disclosure it doesn't in a lot of cases I think on the application side it seems like a bit of a facade and That's what part of what people have been been concerned about. I I think it's also important to say that you know everybody talks about crypto as as like a monolith or all these tokens are a monolith but you know the L1's the L2s the infrastructure layer is very very different than the application layer for one you know what purpose does the token serve and how should they serve that purpose and why do you want to hold them

but two in terms of like the games that people play or the ways to return value back to the holders of that and So, you know, I don't expect to see, you know, an L1 go private, right? Uh I do expect to see a lot of DeFi applications uh do that over time, >> right? >> I was thinking about like a here's like I I I get why a wouldn't want to go private like this. >> I think it was the episode with Tar. made a good point which is like if you want to truly like there is um small but interesting probability that a like becomes this like money market layer for the world effectively um and if you're operating as a permissionless protocol

you're essentially like there is this regulatory advertising like you you can you can basically operate across jurisdictions and it's just code like you just you know there's there's fees is trickling into token holders and uh there's like um you know from a monopoly monopolistic standpoint like you can become a monopoly and like it's harder to clamp down on that like it is effectively a protocol right and so you wouldn't want to privatize it that way um so I I thought that was an interesting take that he had which which I we're discussing like hey would you rather own a versus like a neo bank because obviously a trying to push into that direction um but I I could see why you wouldn't want to privatize or you wouldn't going to want to like just not

have a token for something like a >> well the incentives are such in my mind that the things that have traded well youro your a unis swap like your you know hyperlquid uh you know obviously there's a wide range of valuations between all those but for the people who have traded well and you know the founders the investors you know some of the retail investors have all made a lot of money and the token continues to hold up with these billion mill multi-billion dollar valuations for those guys the token is probably worth the annoyance right and there's the point that you just made which is like okay well it's like easier to expand my TAM and to go international and be permissionless kind of tech layer for you know finance globally but

there's also just like you know a lot there are things you can do with tokens that are interesting the group that is going to I think see the you know going private in mass are these protocols that, you know, you and I know are actually doing pretty well in terms of getting adoption and people using them, but the tokens are trading at sub $300 million or sub $400 million. And you just haven't seen the tokens trade at all with, you know, fundamental growth. And for all of those guys, I would bet that every single one of them is thinking about this right now and that a lot of them end up doing this.

>> Yeah. Ono, just to double click and it's I'm looking at a DeFi Lama dashboard. Um, Blockwork, sorry, you didn't have one. 50 million of annualized fees. Um, they've had some growth, but at that level, you're like 50 times, you know, revenue or fees, I guess. So, obviously from a fundamental standpoint, >> but also what does that, you know, what are they actually they're doing a lot of sharing, right? And so, like the fees are different than what you would actually see as like net revenue, right? >> Yeah. The the take rate. Yeah. I think this is aggregate fees not like net but >> anyways um any any suspects without leaking too much alpha but like of which protocols you think like where is this

actually like name one protocol that this makes a lot of sense >> I can tell you one >> I'm not going to name protocols uh in my seat but what I will say is like if you go on DeFi llama and you you know look at uh or coin gecko or coin market cap for any of these guys uh and you like you know go to the DeFi page and like you know you sort by uh by market cap that you know a lot if you go and you start looking at people that have you know sub 300 sub $200 million market cap who are also protocols that you think are growing and doing well and like serving customers. Uh I would bet every single one of those guys are are are

thinking through this right now. >> Yeah. I mean, how on earth and I don't I I know nothing here and I'm not saying this will happen or or and I whatever, but like some of these things like Ajito, right, is a uh a core piece of infrastructure in Salana and it traded at multi-billion dollar valuation for a long time. Uh and you know, it's a 200 I think it's got 123 million uh in you know, market cap now, right? And so I I literally know nothing. I'm not trying to imply anything. But you know, some of these things like there's the teams are still very clearly working very hard at building something very important for

their ecosystems and for customers. And um you know, maybe that'll just be easier if they don't have a token. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean token's down 80 almost 90%. It's at 275 million. >> I mean Camino Camino's been growing a lot, right? and it's you know 78 million >> Camino is trading at like a fraction of the multiple of a uh obviously has way less TVL but it's a dominant player in in the Salana ecosystem so if you know I'm I'm an investor there and uh again discuss it with the two they're also investors in Camino and there's a very different multiple there for Camino I think Camino's trading like h quite literally half the multiple what a is um yeah I think um I remember Like whenever

I meet founders, I ask them like, "Why do you need a token?" And and sometimes I get very compelling answers to that. I think I think the reasons why you want a token for an L1 make sense. Um but for everything else, it doesn't require as much coordination. Um it starts to look contentious to be honest. Like like okay, pump pumpf fun it just crossed a billion dollars in revenue. Huge huge milestone. And again, I'm an investor there. they they ended up raising a round uh I know why sort of the rational to raise another round is because they want to really invest in social and they want to just they're competing against becoming like a hybrid of Binance and Tik Tok and they feel like they want to go hard at that and that that takes capital but um you know

the token's been it's just at that point noise like why have a token like clearly you created a launchpad people are going to use it um in many ways you you wonder like did the token do more harm than good. Um, I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is, but I could tell you like the brain damage of having a token and and they're doing buybacks and whatnot, but it's like, is this the right structure? Because there's a whole other set of businesses in crypto that are widely profit like Bird Eye.

I Bird Eye doesn't have a token as far as I know, right? >> I don't think so. I can tell you they're printing >> deck screener. Same thing. >> Deck screener I've heard is like like just printing >> to make a lot of money. Yeah. >> And I've looked at some of these to like I know it's not sort of it's not our mandate, but I could probably see someone like Arthur Hayes that has that buyout fund for crypto businesses like uh you know a coin gecko doesn't have a token, right? Uh so I I would really push back on this idea that uh I think I'm glad to see the market finer realize like hey there's only very specific reasons why you want to have a token uh think twice

before you launch it. really maybe go talk to other founders and this conversation is kind of irrelevant like in a state where prices were all-time high guarantee you we wouldn't be having this conversation right it's like irrelevant six months be like god yeah yeah we were just we were >> the math wouldn't work right like you wouldn't you wouldn't have the capital to go buy out these people if they wanted to >> yeah yeah I do there were some investments that uh I've made where there's a pretty um especially like infrastructure as a service um where a big part of like there were the cap table was sort of mixed of like traditional VCs and a lot of them were like hey don't want a token like just continue to capture value like you're can run this as like a software as a ser

like a infrastructure as a service business forget it and in many ways I think it's it's the right answer yeah we we always tell everyone who comes to us we tell them like listen like um you know if you're going to launch a token there needs to be a reason for and you need to be able to clearly articulate what it's going to do and why, right? I think that's the world we're in right now. I do think there's a risk of us getting or reading too much into this and swinging too far one the other way. Like there are a lot of reasons for tokens to exist and for tokens to play a role in you know the future of value acral and for these businesses and I think there

we'll continue to see innovation at the token economic level. So, I don't want to to this to be taken as if, okay, well, like nobody should launch a token and tokens are are stupid and it should all just be equity. But I do think it just underpins how challenged the token market is right now, how the investors are viewing the token market and how much change we need to see and how much thought people need to put into launching a token if they're going to to be honest. >> Yeah, ZKYNC is the bank stack of Ethereum. ZKsyncs Pervidium is the only Ethereum secured platform that is purpose-built for institutions that demand privacy, compliance, and full control of their data. ZKsync enables financial

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Robin Hood, and more. Follow the link in today's show notes to buy tickets and make sure to use code Empire 200 for $200 off at checkout. All right, at risk of overthinking it, let's talk about Mastercard. They launched this uh recently. Um this Mastercard crypto partner program, global initiative brings together more than 85 cryptonnative companies, payment providers, financial institutions. A lot of familiar names here. What's I haven't looked too much into this, but what's what's the deal here? >> Yeah, I mean it's there was a lot of, you know, um excitement about it yesterday. I I think really what they're doing here is they're just saying, "Hey,

listen, like we're going to try to make coordination across companies that want to build on the Mastercard network easier." So it was a little bit light on details in some sense because there wasn't hey like you know we're launching this product or that product. It was really I think the quote said something like hey we're we're creating a forum for meaningful dialogue and collaboration. They really want to just help create and provide access to their team to help create you know new interesting products and services that are on the Mastercard network. That's great and I'm very excited for that.

They've there's been um I know the head of crypto there, the head of digital assets there uh pretty well. He's been there for a number of different years. They've been focused on launching different types of products in this space for a while. So, it's not necessarily new. They've also been investing in but they have this thing called crypto start path where they invest in kind of early stage companies. So, it's not new that they're focused on the space, but it does seem that they're trying to maybe coordinate more with a broad set of, you know, innovators and service uh providers and companies to to build on them. And and it makes sense because Visa is very far out in front of where they are in terms of the just the interactivity space. You know, Visa is doing over six billion of annualized direct stable coin settlement on the

network now. And if you look at basically all the stable card uh ecosystem or market, you know, almost all of it is in Visa today. Uh and Visa has been I think further along and thinking through what future products look like. And so they need to catch up. So I I'm interested to see what comes out of this. But at its core, this announcement itself wasn't particularly helpful. >> You know, I'm going to go there, but would you rather own Visa or Mastercard? And to lay the context, Visa 65 $650 billion business. Mastercard 500 billion. Uh Visa trades kind of 24 to 33 times forward earnings. Mastercard bit of a discount. Um Visa has better margins marginally like I think like uh

Visa has like 67 68% uh operating margins. Mastercard has a bit lower. Uh I've actually only have one Mastercard and that's tied to the business because that's like you know our banking provider has that. But um I think from a from certainly from a crypto standpoint, the team of Visa has been to your point like way way far ahead here. Um but uh what does this mean for like Mastercard? Like is is this is this just a nice announcement or what does this actually mean for their business model? What could this look like in like a year or a year might be too early, but like three to five years from now? What does it does this even show up in the P&L?

>> Well, I I think I think it has to, right? So you know at the end of the year Visa was doing about three billion of annualized stable coin settlement. I think in the first two months that's doubled. I expect there to be I I and I've said this a bunch. I don't think traditional like networks tradition a lot of the traditional rails are going to get uh like impeted away or get brought out of the value ecosystem from stable coins or AI or agent commerce or anything like that. I think a lot of that this obsession around like P2P stablecoin transactions doesn't really make a lot of sense within the realm of

like the way that merchants and businesses and banks interact with the payment system. But what I do think is going to happen is that we're going to see a significant amount if not someday all of the settlement layer exist on stable coins and tokenized asset reels, right? And so what does that mean? That means Visa is growing very quickly. The fastest part of Visa grow the fastest part that's growing in Visa right now is two things. it's their services business. Then on the transaction side, uh it's what they call Visa Direct, which is its non-bank transaction business, right? So you're outside of the traditional banking network, outside of the traditional Visa network. They're um the fastest growing

transaction business is Visa Direct. Mastercard has send, which is the same product. And I actually think Mastercard send is a little bit bigger than Visa Direct today. And I think when you look at that, you look at the continued I think emergence away or the continued just um excitement about these alternative payment methods, these alternative rails even outside of stable coins, the future will probably look like a thing or probably look like a place where unless you do business with like a gib, everyone else is transacting off a traditional bank network and on something net new and that net new thing in my mind will be stable coins, right?

But that doesn't mean that Visa or Mastercard who say play significant roles in off and uh settlement and fraud and detection uh are going to go away. I think they're going to be continue to grow uh tremendously. I just think that they're going to start putting a lot of their infrastructure on stable coins and the banks, the issuer banks and the acquiring banks are actually at the most at risk at getting cut out of that payment flow. >> Yeah. Is it fair to say Visa's been like Visa captured I mean you guys are invested in Rain. They capture most of the onchain like crypto card volume. That's an area where like they've just dominated >> like the vast majority. Yeah.

>> Like 90% of it is from what I'm seeing. uh whereas Mastercard they've sort of focused on more in the infrastructure layer like programmable money, agent commerce. I don't know what that actually means in practice and like why Visa couldn't just do the same but um I mean Visa has a like an agentic um like tokenized identity thing as well. Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh going back to that couple months ago uh some of these acquisitions didn't go through, right? I think Mastercard was in the running to acquire was it BVNK? They they they made a run about BBNK and Zero Hash. Uh but neither BVNK or Zero Hash have actually transacted. Uh as far as I know at this point, >> is that like on their behalf or they

just uh are buyers just not really buying the valuation? >> I I I think there's been a and you know I'm not in these conversations so I don't this is me speculating. I don't know anything but the I understand because if you remember then then the >> never >> uh then I mean it's part of the job. Uh but if you remember then the the news that came out was that you know BBNK and and Coinbase were likely to come together and then that didn't seem to have happened either. Uh and I think there's some discussion around valuation of these things. I think there's some discussion around you know the actual customers that are doing most of the revenue at these companies today which are

like all history if you look at the history of payments companies that have built big businesses and payments usually started with higher risk customers and that's either okay well I started with like longtail startups and then I grew with the startups that's the stripe story righte uh the company that that Shopify made right and now of course now stripe is a behemoth and and does everything else well. Um or you know it's people who have done or served you know gambling or you know uh really like far tail emerging markets or porn or or things like that and you know eventually grown into and be able to shut off you know some of these you know call it more

high-risisk industries and so I think when people get under the hood of some of these companies we're seeing the market shift we're seeing you know the biggest tech companies and you know the biggest fortune 500 hundreds come and say, "Hey, I want to do stable coins." And like this market and I still strongly believe that a lot of our payment systems are going on to to stable coin rails. But I think when you look at the current set of where most of the revenue is coming from for the service providers, it is more high-risk for a lot of people. Not everyone but for a lot of people and because of that it makes it hard for I think some of these you know public companies especially to acquire that revenue and see cross-ell opportunities to see

synergy opportunities versus decide to maybe just build inhouse for specifically for their current set of customers who are maybe not as high risk uh and they don't have to pay you know the same type of multiple for that. >> Yeah. No absolutely. cuz I think we can move on from this was just interesting announcement. Um um and I guess the the other element that I want to touch on is Ripple doing the tender offer I guess for share buyback at a $50 billion valuation. This comes after doing I believe they sold equity last year at a similar valuation and it was uh I guess they they have like a bunch of tokens on the balance sheet.

>> It was like 40, right? 45 or something and and and the math there is I think roughly like they have a ton of XRP tokens in the balance sheet at the current valuation then it was like a pretty steep discount. Uh yeah, it's interesting. I guess they're buying out former employees, investors. Um why not use that capital to go buy something else? >> Well, so they've had a a buyback program for a while uh for the equity holders. the I think they run it twice a year and they've been doing this for years and there's some limitation on how much you can sell of your holdings. It's only up to like a certain amount so it would take you a while to sell all of your all of your holdings.

uh they you know to your point that $50 billion valuation I think by my math and it's impossible to know exactly how much XRP they still have but by my math they have something like 75 80 million uh a billion sorry of XRP on on balance sheet and so you know it's a discount to that and I think if you look at all the acquisitions they've made so they have ROUSD obviously RLUSD probably does 50ish million of revenue right now it's like 1.3 1.4 4 billion outstanding. They do a lot of incentivizing the ROSD pool.

So, I'm sure net or gross profit is is is below that. But then they they acquired Hidden Road, which I was I was intimately familiar with, investors in G Treasury, which was a big, you know, 40-year-old treasury management business. And they acquired a few other things, rail and and a few others. I think they probably do call it 400 million of revenue, right? And so if the whole business is 400 million of consolidated revenue, you know, what do you think that's worth? It's a, you know, a prime broker, a a treasury management, you know, platform, SAS platform, you know, payments uh orchestrator and you know, a custodian, you know, what do you think that's worth on a blended multiple basis? And then the rest is, you know, XRP value, right, on on balance sheet. And

they've been using that XRP, I think, you know, for, you know, they sell it occasionally. They have a they have a program where they can go sell it into the market. So, they've been using it for operating. I'm sure some of that cash has been used for for acquisitions. And so, they're clearly growing the business with with you know, some of that uh XRP, but um you know, if they were to know a need to like liquidate Ripple today, what would they actually be able to repate liquidate that $80 billion of XRP worth? Uh it's definitely below 50 billion. >> Much below. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah, that's always tricky. I mean, obviously for every Ripple, there's another failed experiment like like Axi Infinity, for instance, obviously did like a a treasury diversification deal and same story, right? They had a bunch of AXS in the balance sheet like token

on the balance sheet and that clearly just didn't. Now, Ripple's kind of divide gravity for for um and it's interesting like to your point if they're actually making 500 million of revenue, what's like their operating margin here? like 30%. 40 maybe higher. >> Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I know they're they're reinvesting, right? So, obviously the the stable coin business, if that's 50 million, that's um you know, typically a high margin business, but they're giving away a lot of incentives. Uh Hidden Road, um you know, they should be, you know, at least when I was still um you know, going to board meetings there and whatnot, like I I would have expected them to have last year been uh been profitable. So, Iba

positive uh and you know it's a that was a very good business um and I'm sure that's doing incredibly well still. G Treasury I I don't know if G Treasury was profitable not old business I think they were profitable and so you know how much you know net profit or IBIDA or is that 400 million of revenue doing I don't know it's not I'm sure the margins aren't super high but you know >> let's be generous like maybe 200 million like >> yeah probably less to be honest yeah >> less but like assume 200 million of profit like operating like this thing is now trading at >> well how do you think about it right it's like it's it's you can do the same math on Micro Strategy, right? It's a pot of Bitcoin and then it's a got an operating business that does I think

like 300 million of revenue, right? And so, you know, what is what is the operating business worth relative to the Bitcoin? I think it's pretty clear that you know the value the way people are thinking about it more as more like a a holding co. So, >> would you buy it? >> Would I rip? Would you would you have bought well would you buy would you rather own XRP or or get this rapper uh does the operating business that has now subsidiaries that you're familiar with at 40 say you got the deal of bre and fortress like 40 billion at the time I think like the tokens were worth 90 billion on the balance sheet so you know that was a pretty interesting discount with optionality that they're going to continue to grow you know prime broker

and a couple other businesses but like would you have taken that deal at 40 billion. >> Um, it's not our mandate. It's a little too too late. >> Yeah. I um listen, we don't invest in stuff like that. I I think I think there's also something to be said here, right? Which is like Fortress and Brevin Howard did that deal. How do they invest? they're probably not investing uh naked long in some equity, right? And so there's probably >> these are the same guys that are doing that.

>> So there there's probably some structure around that that makes sense for them that uh was, you know, not uh not not what we do, which is that we are long-term, you know, long only investors, right? And so I think um I think it's tough today to to buy I mean and you see how like like if Ripple went public today, do you think it would trade like an operating company or you think it would trade like a DAT? >> Yeah, >> because the DATs are trading on average at like a 20 to 30% discount to NAB right now. >> Yeah. Some worse, but yeah. Yeah. Is is there now maybe transitioning a little bit into that? Is is there a a bright light into that universe?

I I think the DATs will do fine if the market does well, right? So, you know, if we get into a bull market and Bitcoin goes from 70K to 150K over the next nine months, like the DATs will do well again because they'll be able to do this financial engineering and some of them will be able to, you know, find interesting ways to create some value. Um, not all of them will do well, but you know, kind of the key ones, the larger ones will do. Okay. >> Yeah. and we'll figure out how to how to how to maximize value. So, >> yeah, I think it's important to make sure that a lot of the topics that we cover in a bare market are not buried in a bull market. Uh because you're bound to make those same mistakes if you don't actually like go listen to some of the

things that you were scrutinizing in a bare market. Um that's why keeping a journal uh like a trade journal or just ideas, right? Because you know this idea of converting tokens to equity like should not be lost. there are some businesses that regardless of the you know I appreciate that if the tokens at an all-time high this is not necessarily viable but before you go and launch a token just think critically right um but um yeah a lot of I think like there's other stuff on the margin that I don't think in the interest of time like I got to drop in a minute and I do want to go to content of the week uh but I don't know if there's anything else you want to cover before we kind of round it out.

No, I mean maybe we can spend two minutes just on the Kraken Fed wire stuff, which I think is interesting. I I don't know if we talked about that much last week. Uh but but I do think we're in a very interesting time right now for what is happening to banks and what is happening to the banking sector in the US. We've talked about this a bunch over time around, you know, Genius Act essentially allows for narrow banks and, you know, Kraken getting their Federal Reserve Master account, which gives it, you know, the ability to settle payments directly with the Fed and to avoid using intermediary banks and to to um basically, you know, be able to do to really innovate at the payment layer

of, you know, what they're trying to do with a few of their products. um outside of you know the traditional sponsor banking system I think it's actually quite quite interesting and I think we're going to see a lot lot more of that and so especially now that with the OC charter application seemed a lot more open for a lot of companies um you know Arabore and being one of them but we've even seen like non-corporate companies new bank and revolute and others start to look at this I I think we'll see a lot of innovation at the payment layer uh in where banks have typically been played that you know just like what we talked about earlier today with Visa and Mastercard will take a lot of the correspondent banking system uh out of the settlement flow and I think we're

going to see a lot more of that move on to these more digitally native like stable coin rails. So I think that's important and congratulations to to Dave and Origin and and team and um I think that's the first of a few but it it's going to be super interesting to see what happens there. >> Yeah. Yeah, for sure. kept kept thinking about that $20 billion round that they did last year. Um but yeah, pretty interesting. I think it's uh who else do you think can uh how like thinking about like Kraken versus Coinbase? Um does how do you think about what Kraken can offer versus Coinbase historically had been able to offer given this new access that they've

gained? >> Yeah. Listen, Coinbase has been I I think it's very clear that since Argin came on to Kraken, their product velocity and their their I think just I think intuition about where the market is going and what customers want has been better than Coinbase's there for before Origin for many years Coinbase was operating at a higher level and I think that flipped post uh post origin coming on it's done a tremendous Um, I think they have been, you know, they announced their deal with, um, I think it was NASDAQ earlier this week as well to allow for NASDAQ to be kind of the

registry uh, for their tokenized stock business. They bought XTOX and then for that to then you you know go and offer you know uh, XOXOX permissions which they already do. um but to work more directly with NASDAQ to to um on the registry side and to try to get you know do more distribution to um some of the the NASDAQ customers. So I think it's really interesting what what's going to happen there. That honestly has to scare Coinbase shitless to be honest because between that and what happened with OKX and and NY um Coinbase is kind of left out of these, you know, big partnerships because they've always said that, hey, listen, we're going to go compete with those guys directly. And so I think when you take all of that into account, you

know, Coinbase has tried to do a lot of things. Base has been very successful, but a lot of the other things have not been. And so that in that payments business, you know, they're they're still trying to figure it out. Coinbased commerce is a good product, but they kind of seem to stop focusing on it as much and they started focusing on other things. And so I think they're in for um I think they need to take a big swing if I'm being honest. Like I really think that Coinbase needs to they did a bunch of, you know, call it small or mid-size acquisitions last year. It's really hard to integrate all of those. It's really hard to do that transition. Uh, and I'm not quite sure that any of them have done particularly well to this point based on the data that I'm looking at.

Some of that might just be the market. And so they need to figure out what is the biggest swing that they're going to take for the future. >> Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you. I mean, I think like if you would rather own Robin Hood or Coinbase, I take Robin Hood. If you'd rather own um Coinbase or Kraken, I'd take Kraken. Uh, would you rather own Robin Hood or Kraken? I'd still probably take Robin Hood. just because it behaves better. Um, and it just has a more interesting customer acquisition funnel and product offering. Uh, but you know, a lot of it is just price dependent. I mean, Robin 65 billion. It's come, you know, 50% off its high. Uh, but they're doing some re they they again product like founder le. Um, and they just move to your point around product

development. It's just really interesting what they're doing around just capturing more of like their their titanium card, their, you know, to their IPO fund to get access to, you know, private companies. They just really understand their customer very well. I, for better or for worse, don't think that Coinbase has like really leveled up their product experience. uh they still have like mind share and brand and goodwill because they're synonymous with crypto in the US but you know again I I in a world where the regulatory barrier degrades it's it's probably more beneficial for the backpacks the krakens the Asian exchanges that you know coin I think

Binance just hired a new CEO in the US so you know you're going to see a much more competitive landscape in the >> by the way is a compliance Okay. >> No, you know, but uh but yeah, like I think it's uh product always wins, I think. And so I I think uh from that basis, Robin Hood and Kraken, I think, are doing more interesting things. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> All right, man. Content of the week. What do you got for us? >> Oscars on Sunday. >> Are hosting a party, which ladies, >> I'm not hosting the show. I'm not hosting the show.

>> What? >> Yeah. >> You get it every year. What's going is this is this >> I I this will be the first year in like five years that we haven't we haven't hosted something. So um or six years maybe but it's been >> I'm sure prediction markets are going to be all the rage. I I talked to a guy that is building like a prediction market. He's a number one uh like a parlay prediction like par parlay prediction markets. He's I think the number one on the leaderboard of the culture category in poly market. And I asked him like what how do you become like what's the edge? and he was just like had this really complicated but uh interesting way he sourced like just alpha for that. It was pretty pretty fascinating. I'm going to tell you the

uh if I was a a user of Polymark International um I might have put you know I might have seen that Timothy Shalamé was trading at 80% to win best actor like a month or two ago and I that movie was not very good and maybe some people are going to tweet at me about that and I did not think that he was going to win and now the favorite is um it's Michael B. burden and so it would have you know more than doubled my money had I taken the no on Timothy Shalom. So >> Rob looking I I know you guys just raised a fund but why not just I also heard about these guys that are launching a fund to do prediction market ar and stuff like that. Um why not just you know insource run your own prop

capital and just do become the number one leaderboard like trader in culture category. You know, I should I should have done that. Like, you know, venture capital new side gig. I'm gonna I'm gonna trade just like Oscar season's my my Super Bowl. I'm telling you what, like if I was trading Oscar season, >> I would be, you know, maybe I be making more money than just investing in Poly Market has made us. So, >> I'm just going to say it. Rob, the fact pattern remains. Rob moves back from Miami to New York, is not hosting an Oscar party, and has now four monitors in his in his home setup. You best believe what he's going to be doing this weekend.

>> Telling you what, you know, the the the voting uh it ended last Thursday, >> you know, like I'm I'm starting to see some leaks come out. You got to you got to get into like deep into the forums, >> right? There's pick up the phone, call the people you know in LA. Actually, on this point, I asked him like when when they were doing parlays, I'm like, "How do you how do you like mitigate like toxic flow and stuff like that?" And he had a pretty compelling answer. He was like, "Look, there's something that we can do on our end, which if it's a trader that is putting similar size bets across different markets, you're you're going to absorb that like reasonably assess like low risk. But if it's a fresh wallet that just put a massive amount on like a certain um directional

bet on a particular event, like in case in the Oscars, right? Uh if you see like Fresh Wallets just bet on like a number of things, it's like that's definitely an insider, right? And so you could decide not to, you know, you could like not take that, right? And so he it was it was just a pretty interesting discussion. I mean on this point by the way the the CFTC put out a basically this this morning and so Chairman Celig was on CNBC and he put out a uh a letter that was proposing new prediction market rule making process.

Um so we're starting to see you know the CFTC think through how they want to provide kind of new and updated rules that are specifically be made for prediction markets. So that was kind of the first step uh in the you know this process to do that and then they'll put out you know an issuance of uh you know kind of a proposed rulemaking issuance and take some feedback on that and so we should see more and more um come out of the CFTC in the near term about how to think through uh regulating prediction markets. They very clearly want prediction markets to be able to fit under the CFTC guidance. they believe that is the mandate and they want to make sure that they flourish and they thrive. Uh but they obviously want to make sure that people's uh concerns are

addressed and that there's there's real rule making out there and so that'll be something that we'll we'll see evolve over time which I think will be quite interesting for both both uh poly market and Kawashi who are very supportive of this. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so the Oscars for you this week. Um, for me, not much to be honest. Like I've just uh I do I've just been playing around with Claude, like primary research there. My my consumption for content these days is very much like how Mark Andre like tweeted about a couple days ago, which is like um a lot of it is just like good blog posts. I do subscribe to Michael Bur's one, Cassandra Unchained. It's phenomenal. Um, and it's pretty pricey.

Um, but I think he's making more money off of those subscriptions on Substack than what he was making as management fees if you're running a large fund. Uh, but really good content. I mean, he has one on Palunteer, which is fascinating. I think I might have mentioned it before, but really really good archive. It's well worth and and I'll drop my ref link below. No, I'm kidding. Um, it's it's just a very good uh I mean, he has just really good perspectives on on on markets and companies and stuff like that. So, um, one thing I was reading up, uh, yesterday was, uh, there's this massive acquisition. I think Google bought Wix, uh, for 32 billion. And I was just reading up on on like the evolution of that business. Um, like just cracked four person team from the Israeli like IDF, uh, second time founders. Um, just

really really interesting story. Like I always want to understand like what is the evolution of that business? And I think the guys were like based in Israel, so they were coding most of the day and then throughout the night they were just hitting the phones and selling in a US like hours. Uh just absolute just built different. Um so anyways, that was a really interesting uh story that I that I was poking around last night. >> Cool. >> Yeah. All right, guys. Um Rob, is there going to be a category in prediction markets around which tokens are going to uh be transitioned into equity? If there's not, probably should be one.

>> There should be. Yeah, there definitely should be. >> And parlay there. That would be nice. >> No, no, no, no. As Kashi would call them combos. >> Combos. Combos. That's right. All right, gents. Well, and ladies and gentlemen, thanks uh for tuning in. Um Rob, welcome back to New York, I guess. So, um we'll uh see you guys next Not next week, but a week after we're live at DS. >> Well, that's right. That's right. I guess we're This is a time where Yano would have said, "Go get your tickets. We're sold out. We're about to get sold out, but we're all be going to be there live and so it should be a great time."

>> Yeah. >> Okay. All right, guys. Thanks for listening.