Larry Fink Just Ignited BTC's Institutional Adoption Narrative | Roundup

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[Music] foreign Ty no prep today jumping right in how you doing man it's raw I mean the market is just uh doing his thing people are blazing this Market is raw the nft community is going through its first true cycle they're blaming oh my God capitulation full effect huh you know yeah everyone's uh the timeline is hysterical because you know last week it's like we're gonna catapult from 2K to 3K you're not even going to notice it everyone's sideline now everyone's freaking out because we're going to have two more rate hikes and uh it's just a reminder to slow down a bit you know how you doing time panic's a good time but it really is it is anyone

who can stay I think the ability to stay calm during Panic is going to be one of the is one of the most profound skills that you can have or traits that you can have in crypto alongside the ability to think for yourself and think independently watching that play out right I was gonna say that people say like obviously if you can hold two simultaneously contradictory if you can hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously it's a sign of high intelligence the other one is that that's like raw intelligence but also the emotional side is you know I used to joke with uh in my former boss at this at this Venture fund that I was at and they're like long-timers they were like early Associates of KKR like super successful

careers they've done like some of the biggest most successful deals in private equity and they they were like so dismissive of crypto I think they still are and I'm like guys like do you realize that what I've lived through I've seen like now four or five Market Cycles maybe more I mean we see them like every year now it seems like the education that you can get as an investor dealing with in crypto is Bar None I mean just the level of things to keep up on a number of dimensions on a different strategies Venture hedge funds liquid venture uh is uh it's wild yeah it is yeah I was thinking about um did you ever I watched the Yuval Harare your rude sapiens so you've already gave this talk at the

world economic forum and he said that eventually and in the relatively near future humans aren't gonna have to think for themselves because there's going to be so many algorithms and so many chips embedded in you and you won't have to think for yourselves and I was just thinking like man the the critical thinking the ability to think for yourself is going to become exponentially more important in the future I think so speaking of that let's talk about uh today here's what I'm thinking about so BlackRock obviously Larry Fink just went on Fox yep um blur I'd love to get your thoughts on blur as you were mentioning blur's kind of getting ripped for uh being the cause of the nft bear Market I would tend to disagree I know you'd probably disagree as well but would love to get your

thoughts talk about coinbase is ripping some of the OG D5 tokens are ripping um uh what else happened this week lydo moved their treasury from Ethan to steith I thought that was pretty interesting but actually I'd love to start with threads a non-crypto thing um so Facebook announced threads which is their uh their Twitter competitor have you if you set up your threads account no I'm too busy doing other stuff like will you will you set up a threads account or no I don't know I mean the incentive to claim it is like you want to have a good username right yeah but otherwise I have no interest for now yeah have you uh I have not I have not but I I probably will

um not because I plan on posting on threads but just uh yeah to claim the username but also I mean as I say this probably someone's out there claiming Jason and claiming yeah already but that's okay but no I think it's just fun to try new products it's also um the it's on track to become the to hit 100 million downloads in the first like 24 or 48 hours which makes it the fastest growing social media app in history um and I just think that's impressive right they already have 50 60 million maybe 70 million users already um and I think it's pretty interesting I it's uh if you look at the data so if you zoom out and look at just the the Behemoth that Facebook has built let's look at the top like 10 apps uh top 10 social media apps I'll read them read

them to you in order Facebook YouTube WhatsApp Instagram WeChat Tick Tock Facebook Messenger uh something called Dewey in I don't even know what that is uh Telegram uh telegram just passed Snapchat actually so Telegram and then Snapchat so of the top what did I just say 10 names what's up Instagram Facebook WhatsApp Instagram and Facebook Messenger four of the top ten are owned by Facebook so yeah and if anyone can do this yeah exactly they have like three billion users on Facebook that you could basically just then that's a huge distribution base they have so many users that they've

started that they have to create new internet right they have to create uh they have to give more people in the world more access to the internet to get to to grow The Tam so I think it's very at some point but at some point they're going to get into the AI game right because they have all this data on users and you know the Stock's gonna rip another 2X and everyone's gonna be like why didn't we think of that you know it's all these companies I mean they think of all the data that they have just gonna leave it there folks I'm not long meta but he who controls the data can train them I think we're living at a at a historic time right you have the best no matter what you think of threads you have the best entrepreneur in the world building

atoms right the best atoms focused entrepreneur in the world with Elon versus the best bits entrepreneur in the world with Zuckerberg and they're going head to head I think it's really cool I think it's pretty historic though you say suckerberg is the best bits entrepreneur who else would you have well I was more Curious to understand the definition of best and how you define best but yeah I agree like as a matter of touching the world yeah for sure I agree yeah used by the most people but yeah impact whether you think it's good or

bad or relevant or not to you but impact wise yeah I mean I think he's yeah like everyone in the world used Facebook yeah uh so to tie this into crypto a little bit I've been thinking a lot about your social graph right I think this has showed the value of owning your social graph um I think there's some things that are interesting with with threads versus Twitter right there's supposedly kind of a different value prop from Twitter like Twitter is clearly for news politics more maybe like long-form content threat you know threads inside of Twitter have really taken off I think what they're trying to do with threads is like share your personality share your thoughts or like a more casual more social Instagram I don't really like that value I don't I don't think that's really a value prop I think what they're missing there is like

I actually treat Instagram as like a personal thing Twitter for me is work Twitter yeah is my work Outlet so but okay so tying it back to the social graph the most interesting thing I think for me to watch is whether or not uh threads cares about the uh giving you the ability to share to share your social graph and so this guy Adam moseri who runs Instagram let me read this post that he said he said uh we're committed to building support for activity Pub uh which which is the protocol behind Mastodon uh into into threads said we weren't able to finish it for launch given a number of complications that came along with building a decentralized network but it's coming if you're wondering why this matters here's a reason you may One Day end up leaving

threads or hopefully not end up de-platformed if that ever happens you should be able to take your audience with you to another server being open can enable that and I think that is going to be the key thing to actually watch here they're going to be able to get users they'll get hundreds of millions users they'll end up getting a billion users for Threads probably I bet it'll be really successful um but the but the the social graph and whether or not they follow through on that promise is for me the most interesting thing where does that leave uh lands forecaster and some of the other uh crypto first applications um I think it crushes them I would love to have someone from farcaster or you know we've

had Stony on a bunch so maybe not so much yeah we gotta have Dan Romero or Stony maybe we could have both them on to do to do an episode there but for sure I think it's not good for them and all this activation I mean the thing the the unfair advantage of Facebook and Twitter and all these platforms have is the distribution that they've acquired over the years because it's always a chicken in the egg problem it's like well they have they start from zero but they they at this point in time they have massive distribution and for instance like they display Snapchat like Instagram rolled out stories and then people most a lot of people except teens stop using SnapChat it was like gone like that uh and the activation energy a lot of the commentary I've seen recently is so

what are you supposed to like dual post and then go from there a lot of the conversations and thinking I've done around lens was you know full disclosure of an investor it was like struggling to understand and activating it in my flow of like when I think of like tweeting it's I think it's a verb I think of tweeting I don't think of lensing here here's why I'm lightly bearish on those apps is because your social graph is something that you and I are talking about here 99 of people don't even know what a social graph is for most people 99 what is a social group no I mean you're most people social graph are 50 people follow them on social you've

got co-workers family and friends right I think people only care about the ability to kind of transfer your social graph after you are famous or a celebrity or for some reason or another have built you know 50 000 followers or a hundred thousand followers then you care about your social graph but that's in reality probably 0.1 percent of these platforms maybe even less so for most people it's just I don't know start on a new app and get your 50 friends family and co-workers to follow you but like practically speaking so like say I have a hundred thousand followers I could Flex on them something I say hypothetically speaking hypothetically if I have 101 000 foreign

followers this week I was like what happened I think people listen to this and where they like you more so they've unfollowed me thank you folks I appreciate it free beers on me and permissionless um anyways the what does it actually mean like okay so I I want to leave a platform what is it to take your social graph because your audience is still going to be in that other platform anyways what does it mean like you're going to Target them you're going to get their email you're gonna be able to interact with them by inviting them to come to whatever other platform then if that's the case then the incentive is for everyone to then just start spin up their own server and like have their own website and landing page and have people go in there and chat but that's not the case

I I don't I don't think that's the case maybe we're doing it all wrong but you want to know the dirtiest little growth hack of threads so far that hasn't come into play yet but will come into play when when it comes to churn of a of the platform to you can delete individual posts to delete your threads profile and the data you have to delete your Instagram account yeah I mean the hook is there but what is it going back to the initial question like people talk about this a lot but I have never heard a concise answer on what is the social graph when you talk about porting it what does it actually mean if you're like someone that as you say has a huge following uh I think it's pretty simple it's um

like a mad here here's a here's the so today the world is built of social apps right and you follow someone on an app and you like if I follow you on Facebook I don't follow you on Instagram you could Envision this being very different right you can Envision this being there's a social protocol and there are just apps built on top of the protocol and following and unfollowing gets built into into the actual protocol so let's say I followed you on like the lens protocol any app that gets built on the lens protocol I would we would automatically follow each other I think that's I think that's the social graph or you know in applied to Twitter and threads to make this more applicable um the ability to like Port over all of my followers so I now have a hundred

thousand followers on threads and I follow I follow I don't know probably 3 000 people instead of re-falling all those people I just automatically follow them that assumes that these other followers of yours have this profile set up in this other platform they're going to correct so the reality is yeah or or when they create a threads account it auto follows me because they followed me on the on the social graph some something like that I don't know to be honest we've never seen it we've never seen it it strikes me as this problem of Airline points that you have certain constructions but what's the incentive for Twitter to allow there's no incentive there's no incentive and so when we talk about this portability it's kind of like a to me a point for me I

don't understand it until I see it but you're probably right I'm fairly bearish on on anyone that talks about social graph maybe um a lizard brain here but I I don't see the I see the value of it in in theory in practicality I really struggle to understand how it works yeah at the end of the day on social people care about a few things Fame money dopamine they don't care much about their social graph so let's talk about Fame and money uh and other news uh uh Larry Fink who's the CEO of BlackRock you like that pivot appeared on uh on Fox um and I thought it was pretty I mean it

was pretty profound interview you said that BlackRock wants to obviously comply with Regulators but more importantly uh he added that his beaut his views that Bitcoin is basically digital gold that crypto is this really unique monetary um or investment because it's completely International um I thought it was a very and and in his Minds he he called for like the democratization of crypto very it was very Pro Bitcoin very Pro even not just Bitcoin but Pro crypto interview um I'd be curious to get your thoughts on it yeah I mean I think you nailed it he's done a 180 pivot on his stance on crypto um some have not like Jamie dimon has not but it's impressive because they're the largest asset manager in the world

and their their approval rating for ETFs is is incredible like basically only one or two have been denied and you know did Larry wake up one day and come to this Epiphany no I think there's a lot of institutional demand whether it's now or in the future I think he sees it and I think if you you know the history of BlackRock very well there's a great podcast that talks about it um of how they become just that and they've been fairly Innovative and I see I think they see an opportunity because they are constantly in touch with their largest clients and they see the the window here yeah why don't I share some

of that history because I think people don't realize people are just realizing how big BlackRock is people think of Larry Fink as just the CEO I would argue that Larry Fink has is now more powerful than Jamie dimon or at least as powerful is the most powerful Capital markets person in the entire world and I think people underestimate that so if you actually look at the background um he's been he's been on Wall Street for for 50 years uh he basically Larry Finn kind of pioneered this idea of debt securitization right packaging up a bunch of different loans as bonds he ran the trading desk for mortgage-backed Securities um that back in the day and like you know 80s 90s early 2000s uh got clobbered took out took a wrong bet on

interest rates realized that client trust is important risk management is important so decide to start a new firm focus on those two principles uh so he went to to his buddies at blacks at Blackstone not BlackRock at Blackstone Group got a five million dollar line of credit and that was when basically Blackstone financial management was born 20 years later so that was early 2000 I think 20 years later a bunch of M A this ends up becoming BlackRock now today BlackRock is the largest asset manager in the world they have nine trillion dollars maybe I think actually recently hit 10 trillion dollars of AUM largest asset manager in the world but what's more important than any of that is just the power that he wields uh so let me just pull up a couple of these uh stories uh in 2016 he was touted as uh

treasury sex uh almost became treasury secretary if I I think if if Hillary had won the election uh in 2016 he would have become treasure uh he would have become treasury secretary uh very deeply politically connected very like vocal Democrat is often being heard as saying like as I as I told Washington that's kind of his line like as I told Washington um uh let's see what else happened in there's some other big stuff in I'm trying to remember when this was ah okay this is what it was in 2020 do you remember when uh when the FED obviously started printing in 2020 kind of kicked off the bull market when Jay pal and the FED needed to start buying corporate

bonds to backstop the economy who did they turn to do it BlackRock and Larry Fink right when the FDIC came to wind down the portfolios of portfolios of signature and svb who did they have to do that BlackRock right so very very very connected um largest asset manager in the world and I think it's a I don't know it's it's as it's the equivalent of Jamie dimon or more I mean BlackRock sneezes the rest of the world catches the cold I mean they own they have positions in pretty much every major company they're if not the largest among the top 10 largest holders right ritual of their size also a huge investor I think they they start like

this the writing was on the wall right they made a huge investment into circle circle raised 400 million in 2022 I think it was April 2022 to the biggest investors BlackRock and Fidelity um yeah Circle that's their usdc reserves into a BlackRock fund a lot of people don't realize that yeah so that's interesting because the real world assets and you talked earlier about like the Resurgence of defying real or that we'll get to that later I'll follow this ties in but I think uh one is the the weight that they're now putting up in terms of validating the asset class is probably the most important event in a couple years the approval of ETF obviously has a ton

of bearing and weight but also just it being BlackRock that I think is a kind of energy and Catalyst that you you need to to change the tide and the narrative uh and Wall Street in DC and it's BlackRock that can do it more easily than others I go back to comment uh of Dana I think Fitzpatrick the CIO of Soros family office and she said a couple weeks ago that said look uh it's going to be the incumbent Legacy firms that really come up and pick up the pieces and dominate crypto um it's certainly starting to look like that that uh thesis is is uh is relevant I'd say yeah there's been also a lot of response after

BlackRock filed the ETF I mean Arc refiled and then they're in contention then they're first and then second based on a number of things so there's now a fight and then everyone else I mean I think it was Wisdom Tree and a bunch of others like filed an ETF um so you know of course you got to wonder what they have filed for an ETF given their approval rating knowing that they wouldn't pass and I don't think that's the case and I think they have a lot of interest um from clients I mean that's the only reason why they would do it I don't think Larry took it upon himself to read the white paper and then come to a massive realization and then started sending Bitcoin to friends and said wow my God this is phenomenal no I mean he's I think a very practical man and

understands uh how we can expand his franchise and this is an emerging asset class you're going to want to capture it and you're going to want to capture it with an ETF a couple other two points I want to mention one the discount on the on the grayscale products has been moving a lot it uh one point retail uh a 59 discount right and then it it tightened to 30 ish range um I think under the expectation that all of this is going to have an impact on the on the way the court rules on the grayscale um and also how that can somehow unlock the Trap liquidity if you will um what's the discount at now like 25 no I don't I don't remember I think it's wide in a bit now but it's been

I don't think it's as tight as 20. sure but um there you go yeah yeah yeah the second Point uh you talk a little bit of a transition in the coinbase of course that it's rallied a lot I think two catalysts attributed to that one I think the bowel post group this is Seth clarman who's probably one of the smartest amongst like Ray dalio and Renaissance like Jim Simmons fund like bowel post like margin of safety that book itself is like uh Seth clarman is probably one of the most like low-key guys but like private guys but like Bell post as an institution is widely respected uh amongst um and amongst wall you know in

Wall Street and and so they announced obviously they had exposure to the converts of coinbase and they said look there's not an endorsement of the company but we just think it was you know they have like five billion dollars of cash and it's a mispriced instrument right and then the stock like that they went up shot up like while all this while like the ETF stuff was going down and so I think those two factors really um like coinbase went from 50-ish to like 70 bucks or so like it's really a bunch uh the reason the ETF is important 130 this year yeah yeah it's crazy um and in full disclosure I don't think 75 coinbase looks like a steal in the bull market good listen guys I mean I've been public about this for a while I

have exposure coinbase so I have I'm biased we had the folks on talking about bass I think it's a company doesn't is not understood by Wall Street and I look at that as an opportunity to want an indication that we're early and two I've always asked this question when I'm making an early stage investment one is going to outperform eth or the underlying Bitcoin and second am I better offline Bitcoin based stock because one might like actually track or or be a rally first uh but I want to go back to one thing I know I'm kind of like all over the place but the the ETF is relevant because I my understanding is that BlackRock disclose that they would use coinbase um and of course that was a huge

validation all of this while the government is the SEC is suing coinbase um and so um yeah I mean I think investors are obviously worried about you know the the lawsuit and what the implications that can have on the company but it's a huge endorsement when the largest has to imagine in the world says yeah we're gonna pick one one player and it's coinbase and so I think and if you remember the announcement from that's a great points on to the but the announcement from last year too when uh BlackRock selected coinbase to be uh what's what's blackrock's professional trading platform Aladdin is there professional uh is there like wealth management platform they announced that they're

going to give clients access to trading and custody via coinbase Prime right so yeah so likelihood of a coinbase acquisition by BlackRock what are you putting it at it was one of my predictions um last year that there was going to be M A in the coinbase sitting at that coinbase would be a prime acquisition Target for a Fidelity of the world a BlackRock of the world if you JP Morgan I mean they could certainly swallow it easily the question is do you want it or do you keep it sort of at some sort of arm like distance and you just work with them yeah I mean they yeah I don't know it's it's a It's actually an interesting question do you think they get acquired by BlackRock

nah feels like it's yeah no no I don't problem with M A from big companies like traditional companies into crypto is in a bear Market that's when you would do it right because the valuations are are the most depressed however if you're like a public company or your large traditional company it's very tough to convince your board that buying a crypto company in a bear Market makes sense in a bull market when everyone's pro-crypto and you can easily convince your board that you need a crypto strategy crypto valuations are far too high so everyone always thinks that there's gonna be a lot of M A but I think that's why you haven't seen the traditional to crypto M A and then you haven't seen crypto to crypto M A because uh a lot of people raised in a boom need and then need to get acquired in a bear

but their valuation expectations are far too high yeah so yeah we'll see yeah we'll see um last interesting stat then we can move on from that is uh average open interest for Bitcoin Futures on CMA CME is at 2.9 billion that is the highest it's been since December 2021 which was one month after picotop yeah so I think this pulls some other folks into in into the arena right like I I interned at Capital group American funds which was a huge mutual fund back in the day if you look at the top uh mutual fund groups you have like BlackRock then Fidelity Charles Schwab JP Morgan Barclay hedge Fidelity State Street Capital group bny Mellon Pimco Northern

Trust Invesco about half of those have crypto strategies like from the top CEO driven crypto strategies BlackRock Fidelity with Abby Johnson Franklin Templeton family run CEO driven crypto strategy half of those don't have crypto strategies and I think what this is going to do is they're going to be forced those those big mutual fund groups are going to be forced into the market by their customers yeah so they they all will respond not because they believe in the space but because they want to capture an opportunity that their clients if not offered will go elsewhere for eign nft capitulation you mentioned it what's going on with blurf why are people uh what what is what is the argument that blur is uh

blur has caused the crash of the market can you explain this price goes down and people look to for a scapegoat I mean I'll add more Nuance to that I think the financial the incentives of season one two three of blur I think have uh people are claiming that that is uh has artificially or I don't say I mean it's been influencing if you will the floor price and the activity of the nft marketplace is and is the argument that if you look at what blur did they incentivized a bunch of trading and specifically actually they kind of incentivize some

leverage so what that did is it caused people who maybe had 10K to buy nfts they maybe put 50k into nfts using blur and that on the margin I think it was also the idea that with this collection like an incentivized trading so of specific collections because you remember initially blur would only support like for the seasons like it was it was I think believe like certain collections for um the launch of uh was a blend right their Marketplace I tend to think it's like you know what blur is effectively and we recorded two podcasts with uh Pac-Man t-shirt so you should go listen to those and form your own opinion but my my view is that

blur whether whether you want to blame bloem or not you're gonna the people that blame blur will blame blur or whoever else this their views that financialization is bad my point is the market what blur has done is introduce more efficiency to what is uh to the market especially when you think of nfts I mean they're fairly more inefficient and so on it's sort of um do you allow for more ease of transactions you bring more liquidity that creates more price transparency of these collections and you've got to wonder was the price

actually in the first place it was probably inefficient it was probably you know why don't we go out and blame all the hype of these collections that talk about utility and have not delivered why don't we talk about the the celebrity endorsements and the certain wallet providers that were like sending and gifting nfts without publicly disclosing this to artists and celebrities that's real like that that's something that we that should be talked about more but no no let's blame this instrument that allows for more price Discovery I would say let's get to it faster if we can create more efficient markets than all the better because you're going to have a better price Discovery I just hate fundamentally inefficient markets

because then this is what happens right um can you let me ask you a question Jason how easy is it for someone to manipulate uh the stock of a public company that is worth like a couple billion dollars like a large cap like in the S P 500 how difficult is it difficult yeah quite difficult like you can have people chatting you can have like Muddy Waters or whatever put a report certainly has an impact right but in in crypto that's it's so sensitive right because there's low liquidity and there's it's not yeah get a little nice uh Twitter thread going in yeah exactly got yourself a problem yeah so that's where I stand and I'm in that camp like we could talk about are the incentives structures correct or not but

look there's always incentives no matter how you slice whether it's earning blur tokens or you know there's another nft Marketplace that does this you know so that's my view I mean of course we can talk about royalties and Creator royalties and all this stuff but you know I would just encourage people to go listen to blur episode yeah board Apes about to go sub 30 eth I mean is there a price where you buy them candidly no I just don't like them I sold them I wouldn't I'm a I'm a I'm not a buyer at any price I mean maybe a couple maybe a couple of these maybe like they're like five or something this begs the question I think crypto funk's under

40. I I've done a lot of thinking since our our last conversation I think stub 40 sub 40 punks or a nice spot let me ask you a question like what does this tell you about the nft marketplace the fact that people are like one I mean I think it's going through a capitulation but uh We've uh different moments of time talked about what is the composition of the nft community and does this do you like what percentage would you say are purely buying these things to speculate on them just to speculate um like I want to flip this in six

months because I think the price I mean previously probably 99 but I think the folks who are left remaining are people who have I mean look at the I mean this is just like semi-data driven look at the collections that are doing well it's like punks squiggles Auto glyphs fidenza ringers um it's people who are are as close to art collectors as you can get in nft land I mean there's still a lot of bag holders right yeah yeah but that's but that's who that's what's doing well right any of the like metaverse land building a game like those are doing awful that being said something I I still do I'm I I like that this this is how all markets go right you've yeah agreed excess money comes in

deep bear Market people start blaming other people for for failures and then Market comes back and it's interesting to see this happening a lot it does feel like nfts are one year lagging behind D5 basically yeah right like it feels like we just got into the absolute depths of the bear market for nfts full capitulation this is where this is where D5 was a year ago a year ago I mean it kind of felt like default I was like oh yeah yeah but I mean look at look at look at the price of some of these OG defy tokens right now look at some of the Innovation that's happening in defy we're about to have ECC and I'm sure you know a bunch of the stuff coming out of ECC too but like man the the defy Innovation is nuts right now yeah I've gone on liquid speaking Yeah it's a

tough comparison right because one is meant to be have utility though on arguably not but um I think I would have I think this is a clear reflection that most a large subset of the nft community is just speculators which is fine that just want to speculate and look the trade went sideways and hasn't worked out for them and so maybe you should just you know when price goes up you're a collector you're an art connoisseur and you're in it for the culture when price goes down it's like oh this blame this Finance this platform that allowed for people to dump on me well folks I think this is maybe just reflect on why are you buying these things I've said a time time again

I don't consider and people should go perhaps even listen to the episode that we did with punk6529 right where he's where we asked him like how do you think about because he has a he talks about items in a public collection that he never intends to sell and he talks about certain pieces that are part of his fund that at some point he will dispose of and and capitalize on and I think it's I'm actually fascinating to see how that thesis and that strategy plays out because I've always found it incredibly hard to let go of things that I collect and perhaps the most important distinction that I try to make when I

make an investment is not to fall in love with it but just think of like rationally where do I exit yeah you constantly kind of revisit your thesis right if you don't want to treat an investment like a collection like a collector's item you don't sell you hold on to that you pass it down an investment I mean look is there a I think there's always a price by which you really could start contemplating you know say you buy a car for 10K and then someone comes in and offers you a million bucks well you know how much you love the car I mean I think you probably let go of it because there's other other things that you might you might want to buy a house whatever it's all these kind of relative opportunity costs but what I'm trying to say is it's not the

motivating driver for you to go out and buy things that you like as a as a collector I think but you know teach his own look I'm not I'm just that this is my perspective it has helped me in some capacity I know that some punks that I bought are deeply underwater I still love them when I see him you know it's like uh you know I didn't I didn't I didn't go in there thinking oh God like this Punk is like I don't the price doesn't compute as much like it's not even yeah I certainly know what I paid by the way something like on your questions speculators it is a funny thing that speculators are looked down upon actually I think and a lot of my

like non folks outside of crypto often like to say I was in crypto just for speculating and I think if you like read history and you study history like speculators provide the necessary liquidity and risk taking that enables new Industries and if you look at the oil industry right oil industry was fueled by wildcatters right these like crazy speculators who purchase land and drilled in hopes of striking it rich and like that speculate that was speculation but the speculation led to these discoveries of like oil reserves which led to the growth of the oil industry and then all the ancillary sectors that came from that like technology right technology in part grew because of the adventure capitalists were willing to take these huge huge bats even the rise of like agricultural industry right you

have uh like early farmers taking the risk of investing time and resources into the land and hope of a future yield which is speculating is part of the fundamental human desire to improve your condition I think so there's a Nuance between are you speculating or are you gambling but I I don't have any problem with speculation and in fact I think it's a as you said it is the primary driver for innovation and and we should not think of it as a negative energy it fuels everything I mean it feels Innovation feels curiosity everything right there's nothing wrong with making money some people somehow this world culture is like oh no don't ever talk about money like what's wrong with that like

you know money is I totally dense energy total move things and you know fuel interests and and new movements like without money good luck yeah um last thing for you and then we can make this a Short Round Up is uh so I saw this week Lido just executed proposal 161 uh staking all of the eth 20 000 eth in the treasury into steath uh so they now hold so this is their treasury now 21 in steath about 63 million and uh 75 76 in Lido uh 200 which is 231 million um what is so that so I just thought that's an interesting treasury management strategy put you know put your money where your mouth is question

for you what uh and I don't know if you're comfortable sharing this or not but what percentage of your eth is is some some form of steak teeth um like between us third and 40 percent and why that number is that a like do you is that on purpose that number that's a thoughtful number would just kind of happened that way I've over time just kind of staked it more and I've restaked it for some other things but I just like sometimes like the whole like the question is what will I ever take 100 of

it no because I like to keep eth pure sometimes to just do other stuff um for risk management purposes too like I know it's liquid and whatnot but you know I want to see more Lindy I know I know I'm for going a yield that's fine um but you made me think maybe it should be should it be 60s 70 80 I don't know what do you think um I'm gonna make a decision on that I I don't have most of my eth is not staked eth and I'm leaving money on the table and I know that um I so so bell curve another block Works podcast just launched season five and it's an entire episode it's an entire season on liquid staking basically so

uh I plan on basically it's on staking liquids uh liquid staking tokens um restaking eigenlayer uh liquid staking across different ecosystems like looking at Cosmos and what that looks like kind of history of liquid staking the risks of liquid staking so that's a whole season led by uh led by Mike is and then also this guy miles O'Neal from reverie uh going to be a really interesting season so basically I plan on listening to that season and then making an assessment but I think I'm underexposed to liquid sticking yeah well I'll listen to it too I I don't think it's one of the it you kind of caught me there off guard a bit because it's one of those things where I haven't been I haven't paid I haven't dedicated enough time to think about how much I

want to at stake actually same but this this new Season's made me made me start to think about it so yeah yeah um that's kind of all I got man yeah a couple quick things ECC coming up so a lot of announcements well are you going no no the only conference I'm going to this year is uh permissionless let's go why I don't know I just like conferences or meh why permissionless though because uh I'm actually excited to for real go because last year I didn't go um so yeah I think it's once a year one conference

once a year I think uh I think it's sort of where I've landed um I prefer to just I'm more productive when I'm out of conferences and I if I want to see someone specifically I I'll make a point to to do that and I think it's more targeted sometimes I found myself going to conferences and a lot of people are there but the like the debt like the the depth of conversation is unfortunately not really there because your attention span is so low like you have you're running around and all this stuff but I enjoy it like uh you know virtual conferences I've done a lot yeah yeah Austin's yeah well I'm excited to go do we have you what are you speaking about no idea no I don't know

it's a good lineup we've got like Voorhees Anatoly Raj uh Hester Pierce Jesse from coinbase come in yeah I think the composition of your like ECC is a great event I've been there a number of times uh eat Denver like some of these like puree conferences are really good uh I found that I found myself one year uh in Paris like in my hotel room or a cafe streaming these videos in 2x of speed while the conference was going on and so I was like okay well maybe I should just stay at home but um but uh my understanding in talking to you permissionless as a crowd a more

diverse crowd and and I'm actually quite curious to understand more like the sentiment of Someone Like You know you don't get history peers at ECC you know and so you you have a mix of crowd and it might be one of the more diverse conferences out there it's not like BDC Miami is pure BTC folks and then there's like side events so I think it's more uh for that reason I find it quite valuable I mean I the other one I have been going to is Tokyo 2049 in London and Singapore I don't want to go to Singapore it's like too far this year so you know now I'm prioritizing going to permissionless yeah yeah I agree yeah if you've got like you know togul or togro like that

you know the head researcher at scroll you know sitting next to Jim Bianco the snacker guy next to Ben Foreman next to you know Ben Jones from optimism so by the way if you want to learn more we uh it's just blockworks.com uh permissionless yeah easy soft plug I guess you know um the other quick thing I wanted to mention is I I saw I mean just as an anecdote we talk about secondary opportunities a lot it sounds like tiger pause their say I mean they were like doing fire sale on their secondary portfolio it sounds like they pause it because they got so low stink bits they're like you know might as well hold the bag it's too tough to Value individual companies I think at that point like they were selling out I think it was like open season on 400 of their

portfolio companies right it was like anyone can buy anything yeah um so far so yeah yeah did you see the tie the tie exchange um I'm forgetting the name of them but the the leading crypto Exchange in in Thailand uh raised in a billion dollar valuation a year or two ago they just raised it 184 million so down you know solid 85 yeah I mean goals survive hopefully I mean yeah at this point a lot of Founders are looking in the mirror and saying maybe that other valuation wipe it out and recap and survive you know yeah yeah I saw a company on Solana just shut down this week a lot of folks shutting down you I I really I really respect when when companies shut down two of my profiling companies last week returning

capital and both of them I said guys the two things I say is I respect that too maybe you've read maybe not we've we've talked about in this podcast is this book quit knowing when to quit yeah super important and I really respect that I'm about to back a Founder that close shop a year and a half ago relaunching another project and and so I'm excited about that nice all right man great chat uh short week July Fourth week but yeah I hope everyone had a good uh July 4th um I finished the three body problem good very good I would highly recommend it um I'm on to the sequel now um excellent I'm watching Silo the new

Apple TV sci-fi movie okay for show it's very good I watched the bear the bear was incredible the bear the bear is incredible the Bear's very good it's like about a bear go watch it it's about a restaurant guy okay it's a restaurant I'll plug it great I started uh I finished one book called jellyfish age backwards oh you finished it good yeah it's really good I love it you do look young today thank you [Laughter] um I'm sure someone in YouTube comment will say nfw I think folks are just regretting that they didn't turn this episode off already exactly I know for anyone still listening this battery fantastic book I started reading it um

it is called ah wait a second oh oh like you're an awe the new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life by Decker Keltner and I was reluctant about it I was reluctant to buy it at first because it was like oh one of these self-help books I'm like I'm not really into that stuff but I got I was a behavioral scientist it's a Blog that I follow a lot and they had it in their list and I bought it honestly wow like I'm in awe about awe let's put it that way all right folks good pause everyone

this is what happens when it's a light news Newsweek all right man let's just get a shut it down enjoy reading that book and uh we gotta get one of those Amazon links you know where every time someone buys a book we're like support the Pod by the book we get like 15 cents that's how you know it's a bear I was gonna say folks true this is the bottom signal all right I'm getting kicked out of the podcast room folks see you later thank you guys thanks for listening [Music]