Jordi Alexander on His 2025 Crypto Portfolio, Market Maker Dynamics, and Macro Outlook

Transcript

I mean, Bitcoin is definitely undeniably the only macro asset. I think these founders effectively selling out their, you know, some of their team allocation, but then also some of their personal allocation, you know, pret that if you try to slow down the economy by raising rates, you're actually printing more money because you have to service the debt and you have to pay all these dollars out. So like 5% rates at, you know, $35 trillion, it's a lot of money being printed. So you're not slowing anything down. And it's it's like this. Welcome back to the Rowup. We are your hosts. I'm Andy. I'm Robbie. And this is your home to learn from the biggest guest, the brightest minds at the tip of innovation. Our goal is to help spread

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Learn more at Magic Newton onx. Well, Jordan, welcome to the robe again in New York City. Um, good good to have you. It's alltime high day for Bitcoin, which is good. Yes, very good. Um, I think Arthur Hayes is calling for alt season after 10 or 110K. Um, so we'll kind of see how how that plays out. But yeah, I was just curious about your post today. Um, you know, you you wrote about how there's a couple chances every cycle or every year to kind of just pick money up off the floor and the rest of the time you kind of don't do much. And you you you wrote a post at like 74 75K saying like, "Guys, like come on. Like this is what are we doing here? Why is everybody freaking out?" Um, maybe we can just like rewind like a month ago. Tariffs

are out. Um, you're sitting there at your desk. What are you seeing? What are you seeing on the Seleni side? um you know what made you convicted that that was a good spot to get back in? Yeah, I I understood the fear that people were having because what Trump was doing was destroying like the economic value that was being created every day. Um but there's only like a few ways that it plays out. And so what I did is just like look at the few different scenarios that could happen. Um and in each one, Bitcoin was doing very well. So, it wasn't like a specific bet on one path. It's like in any of these paths that can happen, the tailwinds are just going to be massive because either

he's going to force the Fed to come in and just start printing because we're in like a deep recession and then that's generally going to be uh very negative for the dollar and very positive for assets that can replace the dollar like gold, like Bitcoin. Um, so that was one world. We ended up getting the other world I mentioned which was, you know, Trump would sort of back off. he'd just be forced to back off. Like he'd he'd talk talk talk, but then you know, a lot of people start walking in his office and and being like, "Hey, Donald, we got some really serious issues." So then he starts walking back. So that's kind of what we got. Um also obviously very good for risk assets. And I think the one thing that is consistent is that the role of the US dollar is top of people's

mind, especially internationally, maybe like not just in the US. And um you know the gold runup has shown that it's possible to get a replacement runup just like go I mean gold has had an amazing run. Yeah. And now Bitcoin I think is the fastest horse and my my belief is that it will continue to be the fastest horse and we'll have you know many more all-time high days um you know maybe like this year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think the the thing that scared a lot of people here in the States as well as just probably globally is that um you know we've we've kind of built this this empire per se around the dollar dominance and this kind of soft power globally, right? You you kind of get to

exercise this soft power through these capital controls, tariffs. Um and it just seemed like Trump was willing to throw that all away for um you know, just to get his way. Uh but yeah, as you said, we saw him back off. Um and and then gold was kind of like the canary in the coal mine for all risk assets. It was like okay like people are scared but it's not about being scared. It's more of that alternative um you know plan B type of asset. And I think Bitcoin has finally reached that status in investors minds as well, right? Like Bitcoin is no longer just this pure risk asset. It's it it is right for a lot of people. But but I think now it's starting to finally hit that digital gold kind of uh narrative more than ever before. It's definitely

been growing up for our eyes. Yeah, it's it's at a teenager stage now where um it really looked like it's going to be an adult. It's getting there. Uh you know, people like Michael Sailor who have just continued to double down in every possible way have done quite a lot to accelerate the process. Yeah. And um I think now it's it's definitely at the nation state strategy game theory level. Yeah. Um I think, you know, we're very early in the overheating. We're going to overheat and it's going to get messy, but we're not It's still cheap and there's still like a lot of forced buying that's going to happen once, you know, a lot of the sovereign wealth funds have to start rebalancing in.

Yeah. And so, um it's going to be, you know, it's quite an interesting time we live in. Yeah. So, we've been having these conversations on on the podcast and at these conferences about the game theory of Sailor then into um Nakamoto was recently announced 21 strategy and and these kind of lever debt vehicles to accumulate Bitcoin. Um you know, you're a big game theory guy, spent a lot of time in in poker. From my perspective, it seems like Sailor's got the best Sailor's got the winning strategy. It's like he was first. he's got the lowest entry point and he's probably got the most access to capital. Um, and then it just kind of seems like all these piggybacking is like who can be the the

closest one to to Sailor because they're probably the furthest from the blowup. But, but I'm just I'm I thought this cycle was going to be predicated on Bitcoin around spot adoption, ETFs, and kind of like more like mom and pop institution buying. didn't realize and I think other like Bitcoin maxis and Bitcoiners are coming to to terms with it that this is just another debt kind of fueled spiral. So I'm curious what your what your thoughts are on the game theory of Sailor and his current position is as well as these these other kind of Bitcoin acquisition vehicles are um like like what is the metag game being played here and then you know how does that then extrapolate potentially to you know sovereign wealth funds, nation states etc. Yeah, the the these

um type of micro strategy and and clones are playing this game where you know there's obviously always this zero sum element like some people putting in money and some form are losing to other people and there's different players and all you need to do is just make the people that are losing think that they're winning. And this is what we saw in 2008 with the mortgage back securities and you know how like those trenches were set up and people were looking at the different trenches as long as the you know my B trench and I don't care about the A trench there.

You just have to like make people believe that they're getting the the good shot. There's this um game that I posted about once on Twitter. My my game theory professor from uh my NBA class was playing this game where you auction off $100. Yeah. And uh people have to like bid how much they're willing to pay. And in the end, uh, people keep bidding up and, uh, you have to pay what you're bidding. So you, it sounds like a good idea, let's say, to bid $2 to win a hundred. Right. Right. But, uh, if you have to pay that no matter what, and I just come and bid $3, then you've lost $2. And so it's extremely similar to the micro strategy game in the sense that you have like people participating. They make a decision that looks like it makes sense, like, oh, I'm

I'm buying here. I, you know, I'm getting converted there. Whatever. This this all looks good. What they forget is that um the game's not over yet. There's going to be like a new guy that's going to come in and you know they can issue more stock, they can dilute. And so like how protected are you in that scenario? Like maybe right now it looks like a good decision, but you're forgetting that like more pieces to the puzzle are still going to come in and there's flexibility from like the Michael Sailor side to just keep tweaking the game and issuing more and kind of changing the risk profile. So um who are the losers? I mean, yeah, it seems like I mean, obviously like the dumb money is in essence people buying the stock at a premium. Okay. Uh that that's sort of what he's harvesting

constantly. You know, there's underlying value of the Bitcoin. You know, they have 600,000 Bitcoin, whatever it is now, so that it's not not a weak amount. Yeah. But also, the stock is trading at like way way past that. And so, he can keep harvesting this. So, that's part of the dumb money that potentially is coming in. I think you know the more sophisticated players that probably are winning are the people doing these uh you know converts volatility harvesting. They know how to you know structure things in a way where where they make money. I don't know if these copycats can get as much of this uh retail premium stock buying money strategy.

Yeah. Because it's kind of like a meme now. It's a meme and like you know how much how much is there like he he's he's on TV. He's really like hammering it down and he's done it for so long that he shows that he he's very good at the alchemy, the financial alchemy. It's very impressive. Like, yeah, he's quite the cult leader as well, that guy. Yeah. Uh I mean, he he's done tremendously well. He's kind of won the game. um I don't see it going badly in the next couple years, but as we see with um you know many cases in history if someone keeps pressing their luck and and pushes the boundaries more and more uh eventually they can they can go over their skis usually what you want to look out for is just you know the average price uh compared to the current price

like is that starting to get very close to the current price. Yeah. So, um I mean at the time of recording we're seeing a hyperlquid trader that's keeps sort of py pyramiding in more and more as it goes up. Yeah. And um you know I I saw that he he he was getting his average price from $102,000 to 103 104. It's keeps going higher, right? Um yeah, I mean that's that's a high-risisk strategy, but yeah. And Sailor tweeted today that he was that he was buying more now. He's like, "If if if you're not buying Bitcoin as it breaks all-time highs, then you know there's something wrong with you, right?" Yeah. Yeah. He has a psychological uh way of buying. Yeah. He's not trying to optimize his execution. He's trying

to optimize He's trying to scare people off from not participating. Yeah. Because he's he's like, "I'm not trying to buy the lows. I'm trying to buy the highs." Yeah. So, I want to keep pushing this as far as I can. Yeah. Um, what a what an epic bull poster. Yeah, but obviously, you know, some of this goes against, you know, the the sort of ethos of of Bitcoin. So, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Yeah. I mean I think the the ETFs as a whole are a bit of a paradox in terms of the uh custody with in you know institutions and then yeah the network ownership for somebody like Sailor is kind of a it's an interesting situation which kind of brings me to to this uh general landscape as a whole and uh bit

more of a broad question for you if you were to think about crypto's current situation and trajectory on a biological like framework uh level of development right? Whether it be an animal or, you know, an ecosystem, where would you say that we currently are in that kind of life cycle or or in that development? Um, broadly speaking, you you mean like what animal represents where we are? Yeah. Or like at what you know at at what stage of life is this is this uh you know industry in?

Um yeah, it's it's a very good question. It's it's hard to answer it. We're obviously like through a lot of the early experiments where we've seen, you know, this stuff doesn't make sense. I think we're still quite early. Um there's a lot of things being tried that also are going to fail. it's quite obvious and um the learnings need to get really absorbed before you know the next things kind of develop and and kind of get the V2 V3 before. So we're still quite early. We're seeing like a lot of new chains still come up surprising amount of like new L1s. Um either you're going after this speed game where you you know still trying to push the TPS.

It's not clear exactly what those TPSs are going to be used for. Um I think the reason why it's very early is because we don't know exactly, you know, are we going to be just tokenizing equities and trying to run NASDAQ on chain or are we more just going to have like a ton of AI agents. Yeah. Doing stuff and somehow like they're they're onchain TE or part part of the stack needs to use blockchain. Yeah. Um for verification or is for like the ZK element. Obviously, you don't want to be revealing everything um only selectively. I think if I um would say what's likely is that the

AI use case is the strongest for me. Okay. I think this RWA one is okay, but um it's going to be harder than people think and people are a bit too hyped up on how easy it is to just bring everything on chain and suddenly get liquidity. It's not that easy to get liquidity and efficient liquidity where the execution is going to be, you know, like these traditional, you know, we're in New York right now. Obviously, like this whole city's being built on, you know, creating this like financial market liquidity. Yeah. It's it's not as easy as um you know, make an SPL out of it and and throw it out there, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I I think we're kind of at the close to the maximum peak of RWAS and stable coins as a as a narrative kind of cycle thought, but but also ear very early in institutions coming on chain. Uh on on the AI side, we went through that first wave like the end of last year. It was pretty it's pretty like grifty and like AI memecoins agents. Um but there's undeniable kind of intersections there with regards to agents being able to use crypto rails. Um you know using then for payments for kind of like like different you know we've had guys on talking about robots and interrupt for robots in terms of communication as well as payments. So, um, yeah, I mean, early for sure, but like we're kind of past that. We're past

that. We're past the phase of people not having awareness of what's happening. And I wanted to talk today about this market making game and this kind of like development that's been happening over the last year. I'm just getting very much it like the gig is up vibes um, across the board, right? like that like the market, retail participants, exchanges, founders, people are now in the in the sense of like, okay, like everything's coming up, you know, everything's coming to light, whether it be the different types of market maker agreements, the different types of uh payments for different services. It like I'm I'm very much getting like the gig is up vibes from the space as a whole.

Now, you're like in a different world, have a different perspective. um what are you seeing behind the scenes with the exchange founder kind of like relationship that with the market makers like is that an accurate you know statement like is is the gig up or is it far from up it's far from up so like what you're seeing is uh you know part of the healthy let's say like natural rebalancing which was people get too short-term greedy so you saw this like infamous uh phrase from um the Hayden guy saying like guys we're going to max extract on When when that happens then like usually things get pushed too far and then like once there's a public awareness of it there's a push back and and so like

those deep excesses usually like get shut down and there's some so in that sense the gig is up okay temporarily I think the greed comes back and people find like other avenues to still max extract because the reality is like there's a good amount of u short- termism in the space not just in the space it's a reflection of society people want to get rich quick especially like the younger generation I mean the more I talk to you know this like zoomer generation it's maybe because they feel the angst of how quickly things are changing in their lives you know like for us uh who've been around a bit longer we don't feel this like same like okay by the end of this year if if I don't make it like you know I'm doomed kind of thing but they're not very patient they're not very patient they want to

get it done quick they want the multiex right away um and that's been leading to you a good amount of uh extractive behaviors and um you know we so we obviously saw the Libre situation that was more in the memecoin trenches. Yeah. The trenches sort of died after that like very badly like everything just died. Yeah. And we're starting to see a resurgence now cuz you know as Bitcoin goes up. By the way I disagree with Arthur Hayes like this alt season uh concept I think is is dead is dead. You just get pockets of liquidity and that's it. like it'll last for a little bit and you know these liquidity waves will happen but it's not an odd season in the sense of you know all these things are

going to outperform Bitcoin for for months like like we had no but regardless so the trenches are you know reeling from the max extract situation yeah like they've got a little bit of hope left like it's getting juiced back up a bit it's getting juiced back up now yeah and then similarly like you know you mentioned web 3 port which is you know more in the centralized side and sort of like those games Yeah cuz you guys got you guys were put under scrutiny recently at Seleni for the OKX auction stuff. Yeah. So, uh not under scrutiny, thankfully it was like very good news, but apparently from the internal communication of web 3 that somebody leaked, they're complaining about us um putting the right price on the auction. Yeah. They're like, why

don't you just let people buy at $7 if they want to buy like, you know, there was about Kaido. Kaido was launching and $7 is like 7 billion FTV. Yeah. Yeah. obviously like very overpriced. Uh but when you get an auction, some people are just, you know, they just put their bids at whatever, right? And it's up to market makers to clear it at a reasonable level. And in a healthy market, they're competing, you know, like us in Winter are just sort of like, oh, you're bidding $3, I'm going to bid 250 cuz I'm still happy with it and you bid 220, whatever. So, you know, this auction ended up clearing around $2, which is kind of what the price is now, by the way. Yeah. And um yeah, these guys are complaining like why are you not max

extracting from? So that was interesting to see that internal communication. It's a clear sign that um you know there are these entities and I don't think they're the only one. I think there's more web three ports out there whose goal is just u just very short-term max extract. Yeah. Yeah. So m maybe you could just unpack a bit what a typical market maker agreement looks like for Seleni and for market makers like when I'm uh when I'm looking to engage a market maker for a new token launch um what what exactly you know those steps are um and where you're you're seeing some of the you know let's just say bad behavior in the

market in specific spots um and you know how you identify that etc. Innovating finance Global, institutional and onchain. Deep liquidity to drive capital efficiency. Now maximize yields on institutional grade liquid staking with M. Unlock trillion dollars of capital via Fitbitcoin. All of this secured by Mantle's treasury of billions in stables and ETH capital pools. This entire ecosystem is coordinated by a vast network of seasoned VCs that are aiming to create the next generation of banking

and financial technology. This is mantle. So the typical structure you know historically in in the market uh has been this like loan call option model. The reason is projects they have a lot of tokens. Yeah. They don't necessarily like want to give out a lot of cash. So what they do is just um you know give you tokens. They lend you the tokens and now how do you get uh paid for all the work because you know you need traders and servers and tech you know like AWS you need you need all this stuff to pay for. How do they pay you for it if they don't want to give you cash? Well um they kind of give you a call option which is valuable in in so far as it's near the money. If it's way out of the money it's it's kind

of worthless. Yeah. But in so far as it's near the money, uh what they've been doing is um letting you repay back the loan with um with cash at a certain price. You can convert it. So right, let's say Kaido wants to give you a loan, call it like 250, then you know that you know if it goes to $3, you can sort of uh make the option basically and then yeah, I'm not a big fan of this uh model personally. me it's sort of something that has been the industry standard way before you know even my time working in the space um and I see why it's there but as you mentioned as you kind of alluded to there are some like mal incentives that it creates well it forces you to dump as the market

maker to to make money uh it doesn't force you certainly like when it's time to exercise it right then you know if it's in the money then then then you would um So that's that's true. But there's a lot of other games that we see being played where um you know people either are trying to influence the strike price of these uh call options and and and make the strike price lower like founders. Uh no like the market makers are trying to like get the strike price. They say like Right. Right. For Kaido I want I want to make my strike price $1, right? Because then because then I make more money, of course. Yeah. So you know how can you do it? Maybe you you sell a lot of tokens and and try to get the the the TWAP price down. Stuff like this and

then you strike a deal or something after it's down, right? Right. Like or you like heavy short it and then try to get it or something like that. Well, you can try to short it during the period where the you know the TWAP gets set. So we see people doing it now. They might say that they're doing it because uh they want to they want to gamma hedge the option which means like they're net long because they have an option and so like if they sell some tokens they can balance themselves out and become neutral because they just want to be neutral. Yeah. So we see like even sort of legitimate firms do this. Uh but again it's it's a bit of a mal incentive. So, uh, you know, I think generally getting some kind of small token grant to help out with providing liquidity is is more aligned way to do

it. And, um, you know, we're seeing other structures apart from the call option model start to be done that are just more like, you know, here's a few bips and, you know, help us out and, you know, no call option games and stuff like this. Yeah. But it's tricky. is tricky because um you know there's reasons why while those things are there. Certainly like if you market make a project and it goes up a lot and you suddenly have to like return the tokens and you don't have them because people have been buying them off of you because that's your job. You have to like provide liquidity all the way up. Um that can be a big exposure as well. So it's it's not a simple problem to solve. I don't think there is a silver bullet. I've seen a

lot of the talking heads on some podcasts try to talk about, you know, oh, there's a solution and just yeah, just put some disclosures and just do this and it's fine. Um, I think due to the volatility of of the asset, it's not the same as traditional, you know, um, products which trade on DCF cash flows and are predictable. It's quite different. Right. So, so and then on the other side of this story is is is the founders and and the and the OTC kind of stuff happening pre-TGE or even like post TGE. Yeah. Where where founders are able to just exit a ton of their uh you know you know there's like a team token allocation and founder token allocation and then there's like investor token

allocation but these these founders are effectively selling out their you know some of their team allocation but then also some of their personal allocation. Yeah. you know, pre-TG or even like post. Um, do you have a problem with that? Is that a is that a bad thing for founders to do? It depends how much, right? Like if they're dumping like half of half or more of their entire stake, skin in the game, they're supposed to be the one at the wheel like being incentivized to keep driving the car for everybody else to tag along. Yeah. So, if there's no driver, you know, they've exited and it's just the car going.

Yeah. That's not great. So, but if they're look like a lot of these guys u have been working with like just a salary, right? And uh you know on paper they're worth X, but their lifestyle hasn't changed. It I it probably is good if they just, you know, get some of their immediate needs covered so that they can just focus on shipping. Yeah. Instead of like, you know, how do I get, you know, 100k to pay my rent, whatever. Yeah. So, I in so far as it's like measured, I don't think it's as big a deal. Um yeah, it's just it's just a matter of uh sizing I think. Yeah. So then this must be getting cleaned up then in the coming months to year. Like I I I would anticipate you've already seen that um

you know start to see that shift like where do we go from here with regards to this kind of I call it like the like the shadow back office of the space. Yeah. Um have you seen like material changes or is it still kind of one and the same as it was you know six months ago? Well, the the main change that happened for the first time is that uh Binance started being a bit more interventionist. So, they're the ones that, you know, froze web three port and then started publicly disclosing that, you know, these guys are doing this, you know, bad bad stuff and everyone starts getting aware of it and and kind of um fighting back against it. So Binance I would say has actually been the the

one player that's changed their perspective now exactly like why it is that they you know they finally put their foot down because this stuff has been going on a long time and they've known about it. They I mean you remember like these like TRB charts. Oh my gosh. I mean I remember some stuff that was like pretty bad even years ago, right? So they've decided that they're going to start um saying enough is enough. And I think that's very good thing in the sense of okay like there's a limit to the crime. You can't get too like insane. And um I think like some of these web 3 port players are realizing like they can get seized and frozen and they have to be a bit more careful. And

also um the projects that are associating themselves with with those kind of uh market makers, it's really like quote quote unquote market maker. They're not really like providing liquidity. They're sort of just tactically manipulating price and dumping tokens. Yeah. Um so that's that's good. But the end problem is just that the the retail is still not doing their homework. M they're not like seasoned equity analysts like checking all the details. They're just buying tokens purely based on uh you know seeing it somewhere and and and hearing about it from some source that's maybe not super clean. Uh and in so far as

that continues to happen, it's it's not going to change the whole game. Um people have to get educated at the base level. So there's still going to be incentive to you know sell a sucker a vapor wearer. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's have let's kind of zoom out here a bit of the uh of the trenches of the market making world. It can get a bit bleak in there. Um last time you were on, we spoke about uh kind of valuing some of these different tokens. Uh we spoke about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Salana, Sweet, Tia, Mantel, some of these others and just kind of covered on on how we're thinking about these. I think that was I mean that was it must have been like six months ago. um the Bitcoin dominance kind of trend was happening but it wasn't as like glaringly obvious as it

is now. Um and since then ETH has gone through a whole whole like you know I don't know what to call a revamp let's just say in terms of narrative and in terms of um focus. Salana kind of has you know more or less I would say stayed on a similar kind of track. Celestia Mantle and some of the these other kind of altcoins have have just kind of you know stayed in their in their own kind of lane per se, but you know I'm just curious has your has your valuation thought around you know kind of like commodity money or community money as you described it has it changed much or you know is is Bitcoin still this kind of like special snowflake thing and then we've got all these other you know

assets just trying to grab 5 10% of that kind of remainder of community money left. Yeah. I mean, Bitcoin is definitely undeniably the only macro asset, I think. And Okay. Um, so ETH has just lost its chance at that. Yeah. Because it had a chance. It had a chance when the ETF, you know, it was a Yeah, it had a chance. I think the community is just too weak. Yeah. Very splintered. Uh, not being led. Yeah. In in like a strong good direction. And then just people kind of felling, you know, just one after the other just giving up. Um, I mean it got so bad that we just got this like, you know, monster candle one day because it had it had gotten like so over overhated. Um, and it's good to see. I mean, I'm still a long-term ETH

bag holder just, you know, just believing in the community dream, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Um, so it's good to see the signs of life, but there's a lot of work to be done on the Ethereum side and certainly not a macro asset by any means. It's it's not brought up in the conversation at all for, you know, sovereign wealth funds, you know, wanting to diversify to the dollar. It's it's not going to be Ethereum. Yeah. Um, so it's still competing with Salana. I think this like RWA game and this AI game, they they're both going to be trying to be like chains in which, you know, these activities are going on.

Yeah. Solana is is much more capitalistic and and you know they they'll do a partnership and they'll put incentives you know they structure it from incentive standpoint while Ethereum is neutralistic right idealistic neutrality can be good sometimes um so you know we'll see which which one does better and obviously you have things like Sooie that try to get better technology uh into the mix and then you have something like Celestia I mean Celestia has always been more of a um infrastructure type of play. I haven't really seen the other kind of endgame for it. Um and then you have you know things like mantle which have realize that the way for them to go forward is actually go straight to consumer and be you know be

in that sort of application layer in a sense um not just providing general infrastructure for block space because that's cool but like there's a lot of that commoditize in a sense commoditize. So you have to like really have a strong uh moat and and a strength that you kind of create a product out of. So Mantle is uh very strong with you know their distribution through buyid and like their defi and financial chops. Yeah. So it's very much like a a banking and uh consumer play on that side. Yeah. Not entertainment but like more financial based. I know there's like entertainment chains. You have Yes. Abstract and Son and these ones. Uh so quite different from those um and um you know I'm a bit more bullish those and these like pure

infrastructure uh data availability type of things which um are important. Yeah. But um you know how much revenue will ultimately go there and if you're not getting revenue what's the mimetic value that you know you're you're you're capturing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We should talk as well. I mean I I disagree. I think that I think that the you know I think Celestia will do quite well. I think that data availability will is is very important but the revenue game currently is just completely subsidized. It's effectively zero um by design per se but you know question is in like three years can can that be turned on at scale and actually matter compared to something like like

one and so that's kind of like what we'll what what we'll see. One thing that we didn't talk about there is Hyperlid. Yeah. Do you own a lot of Hyperlid if you don't mind me asking? Not a lot. Um, do you mind me asking what is your like L1 kind of like portfolio here? Like what is your uh so like the ETH side I would say is uh I just haven't touched it for like a very long time. It's just there. It's a meaningful amount. Yeah. I just leave it and one day if they get their together then you know I'll be cheering it on but I'm not um Yeah. You know I would say it's uh it's like a 10% okay kind of thing, right? Okay. Um vast majority is Bitcoin, some soul, probably similar

um maybe similar to Ethereum size in terms of just vaguely. Yeah. Uh but Bitcoin is by far the the largest L1. We have pieces of other things like and stuff like that. Yeah, a little bit because Ral Paul's very sweet right now. Yeah, I mean I don't know that I you know take my inspiration from from some of these public uh people that so not an Arthur A fan. had a Ralph Pal fan guy. I'm a fan of I'm a fan of them in some ways. Understood. But not following you necessarily like their uh investment guidelines. Understood. Try to try to make your own. Yes. Yes.

Um Yeah. No, and like you know love for those guys and but uh yeah I think some some assets like Hyperlid uh you know to be quite direct about it I see them as like there's a range at which I love them and a range of which I don't like them anymore. Yeah. So we certainly like you know bought bought a good amount at around uh $102. Yeah. And you know over 24 over that 2x sort of like you know like 28 now or something. Don't don't keep a ton. Yeah. Yeah.

Um and it's just based on, you know, it's not really hard to do some kind of P multiple on on its revenues. Yeah. Obviously, it's hard to know what the right P multiple is, but there's a price at which it's very attractive and a price at which there's probably other uh investments and um yeah, so I would say rangebound on on these. M um yeah and then you know there there's like tactical opportunities that appear. I mean we recently got announced that we we have um done quite a large chunk of Worldcoin. Um and I think with like this AI revolution that's coming and open AI getting into hardware. They just

announced that they've acquired John I hardware company for six and a half billion. Like these are so this proof of personhood thing is something that you're excited about or you think could do well. Proof of personhood is important. It's not the only element of uh of it. Certainly like being able to selectively um you know show that you're you're human is part of it, but also more details about yourself. Selectively show that you're Brazilian. You know that's it. You know they don't need to know your address. You know this Coinbase stuff we just saw is another like living proof that uh you know all this data not being like you know encrypted Yeah. is a huge problem. Yeah.

Especially in this age, KYC is silly. It's very silly. Yeah. Let's create honeypotss of all these somewhat wealthy people's financial information and then just put it in a single server and we have ZK technology like we can selectively like you know prove these things encrypt them and like so you know in so far as you know world can can capture some of this. this I mean obviously like they have very complex pieces of what they're building and you know there's verified humans and there's you know the chain there's apps you know there's this like free tokens they give away to people to sign up so it's a complicated investment I'm not trying to make it simple it is one that we we you know we've made in in quite a large size cool um so you know are you

interested as well then in uh humanity protocol yes also interested in humanity cool I think like this general category is um incredibly relevant to you know this the latter part of this decade. I've got a new deal for you that that I sourced yesterday. I'll tell you after. Okay. All right. All right. Let's talk meme coins. Sure. Do you own any meme coins? I have a lot of Puff. You have a lot of Puff, right? Uh we spoke about that last time as well. Um the game theory of Puff. Yeah. You know, like meme coins, we've gone through a few uh cycles with them now, right? And and we've learned a lot. you know, you kind of see, you know, unfortunately, uh, there's some that haven't done that well through the test of time. Yeah. Uh, quite a few.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, almost all. Almost all. There's still some that, you know, part coin people still think it's funny. Do you own any? I don't I don't own any. Uh I have at times, you know, thought that it was a good price, but um I think on the memecoin side, uh I've always understood this category of like the cult coins, like if you can really get like a cult around, you know, SPX, whatever. Even fan over here, huh? I'm not a big Morad fan, but um I think that he's correct in so far as like cults can, you know, uh really sustain. And we've seen like better staying power in

some of these. Yeah. Um uh obviously like a lot of these animal doggy cat coins. Yeah. If it's not Doge, it's it's it's probably not going to do amazing. I agree. Um and you know, so just to go into the call it stuff, I think if there's a philosophy like an idea concept that people can like collectively believe in, it's represented in a coin. Yeah. Then uh I think those can be powerful. Um we've seen something like house coin where people can't buy house, they just buy house coin. It's a bit of like a income inequality. You know, the young

people don't have like that stuff like if it can spread. Yes. Maybe maybe it can it can do well because it's representing a strong sentiment people have and and you kind of need that because you need them not to be like trying to dump right away but more trying to like have like an emotional connection. So uh yeah in so far as like philosophy can can come in. Yeah. Um that's one aspect and the other aspect is like you know pseudo memecoin where there's some kind of utility now there's every everything from like what Trump is doing with the dinner and like trying to give people some access in order to buy his memecoin um all the way to like you know um coins that start getting utility

in an ecosystem. Yeah. uh and we're seeing quite a lot of attempts to start, you know, doing doing that and and I think those are interesting. Yeah. So, barring any, you know, I mean, it's just so hard to to think what could happen this year because of the volatility that we've already had from a geopolitical and sociopolitical perspective, but kind of barring any any of like, you know, unforeseen black swans, what is your what is your edge this year for crypto? what is the what is the Seleni strategy or what is your personal kind of outlook on how to maximize returns for the investors who are watching? Um I mean for Seleni you know a lot of what we do

is just market neutral algorithmic stuff. We just trade a ton of volume everywhere and try to keep prices in line and you know make a little bit of dips here and there. But uh we do have you know a more like long-term investment and kind of more tactical book. Yeah. Look, I think um you know, I used to be a macro portfolio manager and my macro thesis right now is quite strong that um the summer is not going to be amazing. Uh I think we can't keep going because rates are still a huge problem. We're seeing bonds just Yeah.

Today 30-year new highs. New highs. I mean, Japan's like gone exponential like Yeah. vertical. Um, you know, I used to trade fixed income before macro. So, like that's the area that I focus on the most. And I can see that there are massive cracks. Yeah. Um, I think what we're seeing is like the slow dollar devaluation. But because the Fed cannot ease, they're unable to ease while, you know, these things are happening. Yeah. We're not going to get a ton of money printed. It's just it's it's going to require something breaking like either some kind of very bad uh job data, some kind of slowdown in the economy. It's like very very felt. And so my thesis is

things have to get worse before they get really good where they you know the Fed starts easing again and you know it's it's back to like 2020. um if things don't get worse, the central banks are not going to be able to, you know, loosen up because they're looking at these bonds doesn't look good. So, um yeah, it might not be um all fun and games for for the next months. So, you you've been spending more time on the macro side. From one of the posts that I read of yours, you just been like paying more attention there.

you guys have kind of slowed down on steady lads because you you're kind of uh I mean whether it's your your interests spreading out to different fields or just wanting to spend more time analyzing. Um and and so basically what where where we're at is even if we get a small 25 bips cut in June or July um we're just not going to get the the liquidity flow everyone those tiny cuts don't matter. It's completely irrelevant. It's like the one basis points or two down from here. It it really um it's not going to change anything. Yeah, we're in a weird place with rates because of how big the debt is that like actually like rates going up or down doesn't matter as much as it used to be. The debt is is this weird

new parameter that didn't used to exist where the debt is so big that if you try to slow down the economy by raising rates, you're actually printing more money because you have to service the debt and you have to pay all these dollars out. Yeah. So like 5% rates at, you know, $ 35 trillion. Yeah, it's a lot of money being printed. So, you're not slowing anything down. It's it's like this we're in a very late stage close to like a reset. Um, you know, people call it the fourth turning. Like we're we're in this like uh place now with the debt. Um, and like the long-term debt cycle that ultimately uh doesn't leave wiggle room. It's very likely leads like things like financial repression, yield curve control.

Basically what that means is like the government has to incentivize people to buy bonds because no one's buying the bonds. Yeah. And so you have to kind of like force the rotation into bonds. Yeah. Um you know you pair that with like you know income inequality keeps going up. And unfortunately like you know the administration currently it's a lot of good and bad things. You know we like the the easing of the uh SEC regulations going after everybody. Like that's that's good but like it's not doing wonders for income inequality. there's a lot of like people around, you know, the right places are making ton of money and it's not filtering through, that's for sure. Yeah. So, um we're in a we're in a kind of very volatile stage and if things start going wrong, um they can go they can go quite

wrong. So, um, bottom line, I wouldn't, you know, treat the summer as a time to stay max, uh, max long risk, especially like once you get out of Bitcoin. I think that, you know, general equity markets and sort of altcoins are more like they're more like equities. Yeah. Right. Um, pair that with summer is always kind of being quiet because everyone is like not really, you know, everyone's taking taking holiday. Um, we think it's gonna be it's gonna be like, you know, a little bit mooded. Yeah. Yeah. you know, because I' i've been seeing people like say that we're you know, things are going to go really well into the next couple of months, but it's uh you know,

you could you could see it in the market today, but I'm just Yeah, it's just every time like even today every time that there's a nice move, it's like something's happening uh you know, in in the tangential space that is like oh it's today it's the bond yields, tomorrow it's you know this country and that country. You know, yesterday was like Iran and Pakistan or something, right? So it's we're in an accelerated time of volatility. Yes. Very accelerated. Everything's getting accelerated. Yeah. And my you know I'm 25. My generation has no clue like how to kind of you know operate through this. Yeah. Right. Like a lot of us have just came into the workforce uh last like three years. Um and we kind of feel that Miad pain that he describes where

it's like housing and your family used to afford a house and a car and a wife and kids but now you can't do any of it. So there's also that like income inequality thing that that you're speaking of which is it's just a weird dynamic. So so you think you know a bit more pain before uh we get that actual you know letting off of the uh restrictive financial policy from the from the central bank. Yeah. I mean look I'm I'm no dollar bull. I think generally like fiat is uh efted. Yeah. So um in so far as like that's an inevitable trend. Yeah. I don't want to be just in dollars and just holding these things. Yeah. Um so I'm always like looking for an excuse to go into

assets uh especially things that you know are potentially going to be stores of value. Yeah. Um but bottom line it does seem to me that you know we have to like revisit tough times before the real easing comes in. Yep. Well Jordy uh hope hope you have a great week here in the city. Appreciate you coming out, man. Of course. Good to see you again.