LayerZero Chain Launch, BTC Treasury Co Updates, RockawayX Founder Calls In, Then Messari Research
11 Feb 2026 · 1:48:21
This news and interview episode opens with a rumored LayerZero chain whose list of institutional partners is partly unconfirmed, then turns to Bitcoin treasury companies, vaults and DeFi banks. Sam Callahan says treasury companies must earn their premiums, argues that derivatives amplify price swings without changing Bitcoin's 21 million supply, and presents his company as Latin America's largest Bitcoin treasury company, built with low leverage. A RockawayX vault lead explains how a real-world-asset (RWA) lending vault on Solana selects collateral, sets borrowing caps and reallocates funds automatically within a whitelisted scope. Messari's Sam Ruskin asks how DeFi banks accrue value when card offerings are nearly commoditized, and says tokenized private credit needs more flexible infrastructure.
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[music] [music] I'm about the [music] >> [music] >> above [music] the [music] >> [music]
>> How about [music] [music] JP Morgan, Black Rock, DTCC, Fidelity, the entire thing was just institutions. It's just it's next level. This industry is going to the next level. And guys, I I don't know what else to say. Bush. [music] >> You said it. You finally said it. So bullish is bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish.
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>> [music] [music] >> above the [music] back. [music] I'm [music] >> [music] >> The rollup is headed to the [music] top.
If we're not already at the top, we're going to the top. We're on fourth floor today. We're going to be on floor one and then we're headed straight to the moon boys. >> Go back. >> Bouncy ball season. >> What do you mean bouncy ball season? I mean, Hyperliquid bounces up to 35. It bounces back down to 30. You've got ETH, it bounces up to 2,200, it bounces back down under 2K. You got Bitcoin. >> Who cares? I don't even Wait, people are still watching the crypto market. >> Tell us how uranium's doing.
>> Yeah, it looks great. It moves way slower than crypto. It only is open for like eight hours a day. I really don't have to pay attention to it on the weekends. It's great. I mean, I really could not care less about what bouncy balls are happening over there. Big day today, though. Sounds great for their mental health. What about medals? How are metals doing? >> They're all right. Um I don't know. I mean, >> no, they're they're saying that uh >> I don't know if they're going to break new highs. >> Kevin Worsh is kind of like the the villain in the debasement trade. >> Really? Because he's going to keep inflation low.
>> He's going to keep inflation low. >> Yeah, that's what Pomp was saying. I don't I don't buy it, though. >> He's going to run the economy hot. Uh, but I think there's a confluence of factors that still says like he might slow we're actually quantitative tightening right now. He might slow down the rate of quantitative tightening. He's probably going to cut rates uh because he understands that we have a productivity boom from greater capex. And all of this is a recipe for asset prices go up but maybe not because of the debasement trade. >> Think about Worsh do you think he's going to be bullish?
Like do do you think Trump's going to bully him? >> No. I I think Trump already like interrogated him and interviewed him for the job beforehand and that's why he was chosen. Now I think the Senate is going to have to appoint him and and confirm it. But there's no reason they wouldn't do that. I I He's like like Trump said, he's central casting. He was a Fed governor since the age of 35. uh he's been like pretty tight with Stan Drunken Miller. I think him and Scott Bessant have a really good rapport. So I think even though he's seen as a more hawkish uh Fed chairman, I think he's actually do a great job. I think he's still going
to cut rates even though he is seen as hawkish. Um I think he's going to do that because he realizes that uh we need to get the interest payments on the national debt under control and he's going to cut rates. He may continue quantitative tightening, but like we reduced quant the the balance sheet at the Fed from nine trillion down to6.5 trillion. We've already tightened $2.5 trillion. Um is he going to continue to to you know move in that direction? Probably. But it might be slower than the rate of tightening that we have right now. So all that >> I mean I saw I saw Pomp say that like you know he thinks that um this regime with robotics AI and tariffs is very
deflationary and that inflation is not a problem. I don't really buy it. I think it's a good narrative but I put a quote tweet out. It's coming out and I'm like I don't really I don't really buy that. But guys without further ado I could care less about >> technology is always deflationary. >> Worshing Trump and I just dude layer zero is launching a good chain in New York City today. Wh why are you not there? Like where are you? You're sitting in South Florida in a black t-shirt hanging out. >> Guys, Layer Zero is launching a chain. We have crazy sources on this one. Last 24 hours has been insane. Rumor mill is hot. Let's get rumor mill up. Uh and guys, we're going to rock through what is happening with layer zero. Layer zero chain zero release and partner set.
Guys, a new era is coming. This is a text that we got. Layer Zero will be announcing their chain zero and they've built all their tech custom in-house which should make it faster and more scalable. I would like to see anyone ever market a chain as if it was slower and less scalable. Rob, can can you can you help me out here? >> The partner listed today, it' be cooked. >> The partner list is stacked. ICE, NASDAQ CBOE Jump Citadel Arc Sequoia. These are not all confirmed, but I'm pretty positive that um at least half of these names will be announced with layer zero. They also just received a investment directly from Paulo from Tether himself, meaning that uh Tether
is getting deeper into what Layer Zero is doing with their chain. Um I think this is for sure happening. The the chain was actually leaked in a YouTube video that was recently deleted. uh it explained kind of what the chain uh build was going to be a and I put a tweet out about it and it basically said uh it's a a decentralized multi-core blockchain design. We all need more chains, don't we? Has been the >> pretty much the big thing that I've heard in Twitter. Uh it's designed to operate as internet scale market infrastructure by using zero knowledge proof to decouple execution from verification modular thesis winning allowing execution to scale horizontally while keeping validation lightweight and
permissionless. Basically you remove the consensus bottleneck. You replace the need to create all this replicated consensus with single zk proofs with math with cryptographic primitives through proto protocol owned parallel execution environments called atomicity zones. Zero delivers high throughput lowcost settlement without fragmenting security governance or state making verifiable gold markets possible on chain. >> All that nerd stuff is great Andy but let's look at the partner list.
Intercontinental Exchange NASDAQ CBOE Jump Citadel ARC, and Sequoia. >> Insane. >> So, obviously, this is a list of both market high frequency traders and market makers, uh, being Jump and Citadel. Yeah. >> But then also, you have the exchanges themselves. And so, I think what is happening here is that we're going to get plenty of of activity actually happening on this chain if they end up sourcing liquidity and they get some applications here. uh that I'd imagine that they will because they they have the partner list. But I think also what's relevant here is that there's going to be lots of flows and data that is going to flow out from this chain.
>> Meaning, >> you know, layer zero historically an oracle service has a lot of data. >> It's more of a bridge. It's more of like a interrupt protocol. >> Interop protocol, >> but yes, directly competitive with chain link and wormhole is like the big three. There's like a three-headed dragon there, >> right? And so I think what we're going to see is actually uh layer zero move more into what we could consider an oracle meaning like less interop more oracle as they start to uh provide data to some of these larger exchanges like ICE, NASDAQ and CBOE. They have Bitcoin products. They have Ether and and other tokenized digital asset products. Uh I think layer zero is going to be a hub through which a lot of this happens.
meaning that because they have connectivity to these other exchanges and market makers, they're going to end up with like this conglomeration of data and you can do a lot with that if you have, you know, either the fastest data set with the lowest latency. Y we see market makers, you know, historically do this a lot, but also if you have the widest breadth of data, there's like richness and robustness and expressiveness that you can build. >> Okay. Okay. Okay. Rob, all that all that nerd [ __ ] where is zero going from here? Where is ZRO going from here? It's dumping a bit after this news came out% today.
>> Just so you guys know, we were the first to drop this rumor mill never misses. Uh it comes out. If you guys like this, throw throw a subscribe. All right. >> Well, why don't we tell the people where they can send their rumors >> straight to my DMs, please. More of them, please. Guys, I think Zero is going to do well off this. I think the recent move already happened because of it. um because this was coming out. Uh I'm not really a huge owner of it, but uh I'm pretty sure the partner list is gonna absolutely shock the entire system. So, without further ado, guys, we're going to move on to our news before our first set of guests. We got Sam Callahan, Sam, uh Victor Fischer, and Sam Ruskin today. Let's go ahead and
move back to the latest news today. So, what do we have here? no KYC and minimal KYC crypto cards. Uh this is going to complete the payments loop. And so we believe that because more stable coins are stemming from the money printer itself and making their way through uh the payments economy ultimately uh retail is going to be spending stable coins via cards at merchants. Uh no KYC and low KYC cards are all over my feed again. Uh, so why don't we >> Yeah, low KYC cards and no KYC cards is crazy, too. I think for EtherFi, all we had to do was put our like address and
our name. >> Yeah. So, >> maybe we do some verification, but like it wasn't like passport or driver's license, I don't think. >> No. And so, this is making it easier to spend crypto. You don't actually need to offramp yourself. There's more vendors that are allowing you to offramp through their payment rails. Um, you know, this is, yeah, we see gift cards here have been a way in which we've done this in the past in the old fiat system. Um, typically, you know, there's been a a rather small set of merchants that have taken cryptocurrency directly, which has meant that you had to offramp. Um, we're seeing a convergence. We're seeing at
the same time more merchants start to accept crypto when you can spend directly. No KYC necessary. Uh and then at the same time, you know, you have more of these cards uh and more vendors providing payment rails to off-ramp crypto and allow merchants to accept these payments. And so, yeah, uh I think at the same time, we're basically going to move into a world where uh you're pretty much free to spend crypto. You don't need to do KYC. You can just spend merchant to merchant, peer-to-peer. Uh and they won't really care because money is money.
>> Yeah. I mean, I think um I I I think this is kind of where some of the legal arbitrage is coming in for uh the the crypto neo banks. Like they're kind of basically getting around having to do real KYC that all these fintexs have to do and all these, you know, intricate policies because uh well, they can like classify themselves as non-custodial, right? And they can be like, we're non-custodial. We don't have to. We don't take users funds and so we're basically not going to have to follow the same rules that something like a Venmo or has to or like a Wise has to. And so kind of interesting, right? Like kind of
interesting to to think about like what is the you know regulatory arbitrage that's happening here. So yeah, like here we have like email um verifications, right? We have like email KYC and um load once spend done. Um so yeah, I think this is part of the Neo Finance kind of >> there's so many of these now. I I'm just curious how these companies start to differentiate. >> I'm hearing from VCs that there's so many NEO bank pitches that they're getting.
>> Like so many. >> So all right, let's move on from uh the cryptocards. I am a big EtherFi stand by the way guys. So, if you guys are using Etherfi, uh that is what I >> that's a great segue. Uh coming up next here, we've got Ether. >> Oh, wow. >> Monetization. So, >> revenue per user 256 higher than Wise and Revolute on par with Chime and SoFi. >> So, only 21K funded accounts with guys. If you haven't watched the episode on the rollup of with Avachchaw from Electric Capital and Mike from Etherfi, you should because there's a really really bullish thesis on crypto there that Ether is basically trying to push forward, which is if you can capture the wealthy crypto users or the wealthy kind
of new users of finance, then you need way less users total by quantity than Wise and Revolute. And so in this exact example, they're doing that with 21,000 funded accounts, smaller user base, institution level, average average revenue per user, a very different model. So So if you scroll down a bit, you can see kind of into the charts what this looks like. And yeah, I mean, they're just absolutely crushing. Like if you look at uh price to sales, customer ser or customer balances, uh number of funded accounts, it's crazy, right? because like the number of funded accounts in the bottom left is absolutely the the least of any of these competitors, SoFi, uh, Phantom, etc. Um,
but the revenue per user in the bottom right is literally second to SoFi. >> So, I mean, they're clearly playing the right game. DCF Godd is really bullish on them as a seed investor. So are we. Um, we haven't sold any of our E3FI. uh for us hopefully it's a multi-year play half a decade play and you know I know DCF and Jez are also bullish on Sky and Athena and a think we're a bit more opinionated on Sky versus Athena here but it's good to see some confluence with some of the heavy hitters in the space >> I think Ether is the American Express of Ethereum um they're going after a similar customer target uh these high net worth or excuse me these high
earning not yet rich uh these Henry's uh and also the high net worth individuals uh that are looking at getting, you know, uh a proper uh merchant payment system in order to offer up their crypto. I yeah, we're going to see a lot more of this. I think these are going to start to get pretty niche because that's the only way that these are going to get differentiated. Um Ether 5 has got an early lead and they've been one of the few restaking protocols. Remember when Ether 5 was restaking? uh and uh and now they've been able [laughter] to successfully pivot into >> pre-staking man >> into crypto cards. So what a journey what a journey from >> I don't know if that was always I mean look when when we invested in etheri
that's what they were they were >> they were a reststaking protocol um but you know this might have been the part of the plan uh the whole time where you know getting enough TVL uh and getting like [clears throat] a liquidity sync uh then allows them to become uh a major provider of this payment rail. Yeah, congrats to Mike doing great work over there. Uh let's continue. >> Yeah, I think we have our our our our first guest ready. But right before then, just quick things. Insights from Consensus HK uh focused on RWA's tokenization and new strategies. Sounds like NEO finance to me. I think we're pretty much all aligned on this trend.
I've seen tweets from uh different people uh talking about how VCs are now focusing on revenue generating businesses. We also called the revenue meta now nine months ago. We're nine months into the revenue meta. Uh completely shifted the way that people are investing. Our Neo finance uh playbook is outperforming the market. Uh it's outperforming Bitcoin by a lot. We're going to launch that. I think I'm going to vibe code a website this weekend. >> Nice. >> Uh to host the June dashboard on. And yeah, I mean I'm kind of bummed that we're missing consensus, but I'm gonna go get some I'm gonna go hit the slopes today. up.
>> Oh, yeah. Well, uh, look, I think consensus is doing good over there in Hong Kong. I'm sure I'm sure the rumor mill is flying based on what we heard. >> I honestly don't think it's that I bet it's not that crazy over there, man. I bet it's more just bearish stuff. I just mean with all of the IBIT overleveraged Hong Kong fund blow up rumors, >> I believe there's probably some things floating around out there. >> So guys, um, up next we are going to go to our first guest. So we're going to get him ready in the back room now. Um, and we're going to pull him up. Uh, it is going to be Sam Callahan. Uh, and
we're going to pull him up in just a moment on the show. Uh, Sam, >> uh, Mike Sailor Sailor today comes out says he's going to buy Bitcoin every quarter >> for the remaining future. I don't know if he means in perpetuity or for the next, you know, year or till they run out of till they run out of Bitcoin. But curious to to see what Sam has to say. I'm actually curious what Sam thinks happened on February 5th. I think that's a good place to start with IBIT with the liquidations with Bitcoin bottoming at 59. I'm sure he was uh slightly sketched. So, well, why don't we bring Sam up and talk Bitcoin treasuries, Bitcoin Treasury Co latam, and more.
Well, let's get him up um and get live here. Sam, >> hey, how's it going >> on the pin, man? >> Yeah, thanks, man. I'm I'm in New York for Bitcoin investor week, >> right? >> Yeah. Thanks for having me on. >> Absolutely. Thanks for being here, man. Well, tell us a little bit about New York. We're going to be there very soon, uh, this spring, but give us a sense of, uh, the energy on the ground there. >> Well, I would say it's freezing here. That's the first thing. But, uh, the energy on the ground's good. I mean, um, a lot of the people have been in Bitcoin for a long time. They're experienced.
They're they're building. And so, this volatility doesn't really phase them. They've seen this before. Um, and so I would say the sentiment here is very different than what you'd read on mainstream media or even on social media. Uh, things are still bullish here. Um, the fundamentals continue to improve and and the builders just keep building. >> Incredible. So, there's been uh lots of uh conversation around the treasury companies. Um, we saw Pomp uh Pomp Leano launch, you know, his treasury company.
Um, that's been a big subject up there in New York. As far as, you know, that we've seen, we've seen some Ethereum treasury companies go a different direction. Some of them are buying Mr. Beasts, you know, uh, uh, company equity. Uh, others are investing in airplanes, Bitcoin. You know, people are kind of starting to explore different areas. Where would you say we are? We had that mania a couple of months ago. Is it Are we sort of in this trough of disillusionment? Where do you think we are? What is what is the sentiment like there on the ground?
>> Well, I think you had it right. I I think there was a bit of a speculative fervor around these treasury companies in the early summer and what you're seeing now is that uh companies are starting to differentiate themselves as well as you're starting to see a separation, you know, from the cream from the crop. Uh a lot of the premiums that were given to these companies in early summer, I think it was a result of of the sentiment, of the excitement. Um, but you have to earn that premium. You have to build operational lines of businesses uh ideally around Bitcoin and and you have to accumulate more Bitcoin in a creative way for your shareholders.
And I think these market conditions are actually a really good test for these management teams to see if they can continue to accumulate Bitcoin despite Bitcoin's price action doing what it's doing. uh in terms of a resilient business model, you want a business model that can perform both when Bitcoin's going up and when Bitcoin's going down. And I think one of the things that strategies done recently, you know, there's a lot of uh concerns around the share price and things like that. But MSTR has amplified Bitcoin. It's leveraged Bitcoin. So, Bitcoin's going down, you should expect MSTR to be going down more. And when Bitcoin's going up, you could you should expect MSTR to go up more. And I think what MS strategy has been doing lately is they're not selling Bitcoin despite the
Bitcoin price action like many thought, even despite the Bitcoin dropping below their average cost basis, which is a complete nothing burger. And not only that, but they're accumulating Bitcoin during this price action. So, they're actually proving that it is a resilient business model because, you know, despite the fact that Bitcoin's down 40 50% from its all-time high, Strategy continues to buy billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. uh almost on a weekly basis. And so um I think this is actually a a time when these treasury companies can really prove out their business model and the good management teams will continue to execute and uh you know build trust and a track record that their share shareholders can feel confident about.
>> Yeah. Um Sam, I got one more question here around some of the recent happenings. Uh we this has sort of bubbled to the surface a bit. Um and and as more treasuries come out, you know, the idea that there's a lot more derivatives products out there, uh and there's still only, you know, the underlying 21 million Bitcoin out there, you know, these are becoming more and more disconnected, it seems. And so as there's there's more derivative products, there's more ETFs, more options volume, you know, the idea that there's kind of like more than 21 million Bitcoin out there, that's why we have a lot of the speculative mania and fervor, you know, do you give credence to that claim? Do you think that is, you
know, ultimately why we're seeing a lot of kind of froth and leverage build up in the system or h how can we overcome the fact that, you know, we ultimately do get products that are onetoone linked, you know, if I can buy, you know, an ETF product, there's there's enough Bitcoin sitting there in reserves. Um, and we ultimately have a have an ecosystem here where um, you know, the money that is is people buying to get exposure to Bitcoin ultimately finds its way into, you know, the underlying Bitcoin itself.
>> Yeah, I think I I mean, we've seen the derivatives layer be built out over time and become more robust. I mean, you have futures, options, perpetual swaps, ETFs, structured products. You know, there's a lot of ways to get economic exposure to a single Bitcoin that can be replicated across all these financial instruments and like that creates leverage. And what leverage does is it can unwind, it can amplify price movements in both directions, but it doesn't change Bitcoin's monetary policy. You know, there's still only 21 million Bitcoin.
Yep. >> You know, then that's verifiable to anybody running a node. >> Yep. Um, and so it'll kind of cause these shakeouts and these more amplified price movements and there'll be flush outs. Speculators will get wiped out for sellers will exit and uh the ownership of the actual Bitcoin will shift towards investors with longer time horizons. And so I think I think these uh derivatives aren't like bad in itself. I think they could actually provide uh you know sophisticated ways to hedge uh but they can be abused and they can be misused and people have poor risk management and they could get on other sides. So I think you know >> uh the IBIT volumes that happened in
this February 5th crash show that there was a lot of leverage being taken out on I bet I bet and um I think a lot of it was potentially like cross asset margin and leverage. So like you saw this like crazy volatility in precious metals. I mean silver was trading like like a like a small cap crypto um or gold was was losing tradins. Huh. >> Yeah. [laughter] Like [ __ ] coins. Um and and so when that happens with you have a fund that's like allocating across different assets and then they're leveraged to IBID as well. You know they'll be forced sellers and I think that's what happened. I mean, when you have a price action like what happened over the last week, there's no doubt that leverage was involved. That's how
you get these like significant moves like this. >> Yeah. >> And so, I think it's a good thing that you see this flush out now. And I think uh you kind of have this situation now where is this the bottom? You know, nobody, you know, picking bottoms is a stinky business. Somebody told me once. >> Yeah. >> So, like, you know, we don't really know. I think it it kind of a factor of macro, but when you look at some of these indicators like the Mayor multiple, which looks at price towards the 200 day moving average, it's near historic lows, which is a sign that Bitcoin's undervalued historically to the trend. You have uh you know, things like um um the the the amount of shorting that's
happening across futures, across options is also near historic highs. And so it's typically that's another sign of a bottom. Um you have different indicators that are indicating that we're kind of closer towards a bottom like lowest RSI readings in history as well. Potential sign of sellers. >> Oh god. We're doing some TA on the show today, aren't we? >> Yeah. No, it's just like all these things together. I I one indicator. I look at kind of a a whole spectrum. >> Look, I agree, Sam. I I don't mean to interrupt so bluntly, but I I just think that after an event like what happened on Feb Feb 5th, it's kind of similar to 1010 where like 1010 led to I'm sure there's going to be more bodies that come out. I think I mean people have aggressively bought crypto assets at at or near the highs. And I
mean when you buy assets at or near the highs, you feel pain and it's usually people, you know, have done something stupid and that comes out. I don't think like FTX level, but my general take is that it's going to take a little while for this for for for things to come out uh with regards to who who got blown out on that last move. And so whether the technical indicators suggest a bounce or not, I'm kind of more in the camp of okay, let's just see what happened. And uh I mean, Sam, if we can get Bitcoin buys between 50 and 70K this year, even just if we get 50 again or you know, 58, I think you're going to be really happy camper long term. So I I guess just one more thing on that note, Sam. What do you think about uh this this entire
idea? And I think Rob's question was not necessarily directly about like is there more than 21 coins in circulation, but do you think that the ever presence of DAC companies of things like Micro Strategy of uh crypto IPOs of the likes of Circle, Bitcoin, etc. Uh even Robin Hood? Do you think that these publicly traded companies stole the thunder from the altcoin complex this past year or two? Or like perhaps even looking forward, how do you assess where equity and capital is going to flow to speculate on crypto? Is it is there enough I think what Rob was trying to get to is like is there too many vehicles to speculate on the price of
Bitcoin? Thus, the actual buying power on Bitcoin itself is diminishing because well, you can just go buy Robin Hood as a proxy or Coinbase as a proxy. How do you think about like the actual capital flows happening with regards to crypto assets specifically and then more like public e equities and how that dynamic is is going to shape up like over the next year or two? >> Well, I think there's a lot of different ways to gain exposure to Bitcoin and there's different ways to play it. Like you said, there's different infrastructure plays. There's public Bitcoin mining companies. There's different ETFs. There's index funds now.
There's there's all different ways to gain exposure to Bitcoin. And and I just have to say that there's nothing that could replicate Bitcoin's riskadjusted return and profile of having self-custody, having no counterparty risk, um protection against the basement, all those things that make Bitcoin special if you hold it in self-custody. But there are different ways to play it nowadays. Now I I would say that some of them actually drive um demand for the underlying. So like for instance like the the Bitcoin treasury companies if you buy MSTR you're basically betting that MSTR is going to outperform Bitcoin because it's amplified Bitcoin. Now, when you buy MSTR, it helps drive demand for MSTR,
which helps sustain the premium above MNAV, which allows Strategy to raise capital in a way that's accreative to buy more Bitcoin. And so that flywheel of buying MSTR, which actually leads to Strategy's increased ability to buy more Bitcoin, will actually lead to more demand for the underlying. Same thing with the ETF. the ETF, it directly um you know creates demand for the underlying Bitcoin. The Coinbase, it's a little bit more indirect, right? You're saying, "Okay, I'm going to bet Coinbase. They they dabble in not just Bitcoin, but other cryptocurrencies.
It's more of like a picks and shovels play." Um the question is, you know, does will it outperform Bitcoin? Because that's really what you were trying to do. if you're if you're going to go to any of these other proxies or ways to get economic exposure to Bitcoin, you should have a goal of outperforming Bitcoin because if it's not, then what's the point? Why didn't you just buy Bitcoin? And so, I think a lot of these altcoins I think I think these DATs and equities did take um did take a little bit of the demand away from altcoins. I think part of it is altcoins poor track record agree >> of outperforming Bitcoin. They haven't across cycles. I I did a study like two years ago that looked at every single cryptocurrency on Coinbase across
multiple cycles and I think only one I think it was BNB at the time. Maybe BNB and one other one >> uh made an all-time high against Bitcoin in in subsequent cycles. >> Yeah, man. >> Most of them die. Most of them get crushed by Bitcoin over long periods of time. >> And you're way way out on the risk curve with altcoins, right? It's more experimental technology. It should be considered different asset classes completely. That's, you know, >> you sound like our lovely friend Benjamin Cohen of uh cry into the cryptoverse here. Uh >> yeah, I mean it's just it's [laughter] just the facts, right? Like I run the numbers, run the data, you know, the altcoins just haven't outperformed Bitcoin and that should be your goal. If you're going out in the risk curve, then
what's the point? you're buying illquid, more illquid, >> riskier assets that may or may not survive a four-year cycle. >> And Bitcoin is the only one that's proven to to stay number one across multiple cycles and actually has a long-term value acral >> uh track record to to the coin itself. you know, these platforms like Ethereum and other ones can get a lot of traction going, but I still have a lot of question marks of how the value acrruel happens at the token level, right, for a lot of these things. And so, you know, anyway, >> I think we're trying to figure that out as an industry, you know.
>> Yeah, they have. And there there've been a lot of narratives and, you know, I think people would call me a Bitcoin maxi. The only reason I focus on Bitcoin is just because I prioritize decentralization and security and I think Bitcoin solves a problem of uh debasement and the inability to save and so it's found product market fit and there's a lot going on in Bitcoin and I just don't have enough time to think about all these other cryptocurrencies because I think Bitcoin's really exciting. >> Well, I'll have to ask you about gold. Um yeah, sure. >> But uh before then uh people are calling and I'm going to I'm going to mess this up. Orange BTC. Orange BTC.
>> Orange BTC. >> Orange BTC. >> You're not the first. [laughter] >> I thought it was going to be like some like because it's like Latan focused. I was going to play like the Portuguese accent or something. Oran BTC. >> Good. >> The Micro Strategy of Brazil. Apparently, that's not the right way to think about it. You guys are just working with Interactive Brokers uh for or OPTC3 to get better liquidity. Uh a deeper set of investor mixed a mixed bag there, more credibility. talk to us about the state of of your company here. Uh this this work that you guys are doing with IDKR uh and why you guys are not the Micro Strategy of Brazil.
>> Well, Interactive Brokers um partnered with B3, which is the stock exchange that OBTC3 is listed on. So, it's like the NASDAQ in Brazil. So, Interactive Brokers partner with them to bring Brazilian equities to the platform, which we support. we're super excited about um because it allows Americans, Canadians, and and European investors to get exposure to Brazilian equities including Orangebe BTC's. Um and so that's great for us. That's great for accessibility um liquidity and just opening us uh up to uh you know international investors making it easier and so that's great. Um we Orange PTC listed on October 7th and then October 10th happened and so we can't really control market conditions. Um but the
beauty of it is we've been built uh we constructed our balance sheet um and our capital structure to be resilient to take into account Bitcoin's volatility. So um unlike some of our peers and other treasury companies that might be sweating a little bit due to this price action because they have too much leverage, we actually had very low leverage going into uh this correction. And so we were built to last for many many years. Um, I think our goal is to drive Bitcoin adoption in Latin America, a region that needs it most, uh, because of the currency instability they've had there, capital controls they've had there in the past, uh, and just general financial instability and inability to
save. And right now, what what we did was we reverse mergered with an education company. And so we have an infrastructure um that does educational courses for university there. and we're digitizing that infrastructure and then over time we're transforming it with more Bitcoin curriculum and to be a leader in bit Bitcoin education in that region because we think it's probably like two to three years behind the United States in terms of just general Bitcoin and understanding and then uh in Brazil in terms of like Bitcoin accessibility like large institutional investors like pension funds and insurance companies are restricted from buying spot bitcoin they can't um and so what we offer is a an equity that gains
exposure to Bitcoin similar to what Micro Strategy was in in 2020 2021 before the ETFs were approved. A lot of people didn't have ways to gain exposure to Bitcoin in uh in accounts like uh you know their RAAS or 401ks or these large institutional investors. Uh same thing they just didn't feel comfortable um with the operational overhead of of getting your own keys of doing the Bitcoin. it didn't fit within their compliance um mandates and so they need to get a proxy an equity proxy.
Same thing exists in Brazil, except there's really no ways to get exposure to Bitcoin um in the public public equity markets or in a compliant way for these large institutional investors besides there's there's one ETF that's a little bit more expensive than the ones we have there. And then there's one other smaller Bitcoin treasury company and then there's us. And in the US, like you said before, there's miners, there's Coinbase, there's Circle, there's 11 ETFs, there's mining companies. there's a ton of ways for people to get exposure, not in Latin America and not in Brazil. And so we see that as an opportunity uh to to improve access to Bitcoin and then our educational efforts would better the understanding of Bitcoin there. And so we're talking with
local financial institutions, institutional investors, and trying to drive Bitcoin adoption because not only is is there not a lot of ways to get exposure, but there's not as robust market infrastructure there. not Bitcoin services, Bitcoin products that exist in the United States don't exist there. Orange BTC sees as an opportunity to be a leader and to build different Bitcoin services and products as well as our access use our access to capital markets to accumulate Bitcoin on our balance sheet and increase Bitcoin per share similar to what strategy does for its shareholders. And so we're about four weeks, four months old um in terms of our public journey and uh you know we have uh probably some exciting
announcements to come in the coming quarters. Um but we're we're in this for the long term. So we're the largest Bitcoin treasury company in Latin America, 3,722 Bitcoin right now and and we plan on using that that Bitcoin to help drive Bitcoin adoption and then accumulate more Bitcoin uh for for our shareholders in a creative way. So that's orange BTC. >> I'm bullish, man. I'm bullish. Let's get this thing back above 100K and get these Brazilians spending the uh at the beach in in Faraha. Baby, take me back. Take me back to >> I love I love Brazil. I love Brazilians.
You know, Brazilians are extremely resilient, innovative people. Um, people don't know this, but that the the the hyperinflation that Brazil went through uh about 40 years ago was as bad as Zimbabwe. Like everyone talks about Zimbabwe and the trillion dollar. Brazil was just as bad. It was is terrible. >> And the fact that they were able to pull themselves out of that as a society in only 30 or 40 years and have some kind of stability at least relative to that. And then not only not only that, but they are literally uh their financial system, their services, their financial services uh are some of the most advanced in the entire world. Like the
United States could learn something about Brazilian financial markets. >> Yeah. What's the app that they use again? Um >> they have something called Pix. >> Yeah. Pix. >> Um and then they, you know, they have I think they have three or four of the top 10 neo banks in the entire world. >> Yeah, they do. New bank is huge. >> New Bank's huge. Yeah. So like they are and and crypto adoption there in >> tether adoption is massive. >> Yeah. So it's very stable coin heavy but chain analysis puts out their uh global crypto adoption index every year which is probably the best study of the geo geographical adoption rates um by jurisdiction. Brazil was the only country that was in the top five of every single category in that study. And
so we see it as a ripe opportunity to to work with the Brazilian people who are already innovative, already embracing this technology, but just helping to be a leader and a voice and a resource for them to better understand why Bitcoin's important and why it belongs in their portfolio. >> Yeah. One thing that we heard a lot about a few months ago that kind of has fizzled away, I'm curious if it's still relevant, is bricks. And the B and bricks was for Brazil, right? Is bricks still relevant? like what what's what's really happening there?
>> I mean it it still exists. I think I think there I think what's going on here is a much much bigger uh paradigm shift in the global monetary order and Brooks is a part of it but it's really about the weaponization of the dollar over the last two decades let's say um around sanctions I mean obviously that hit a boiling point when uh the Russian FEX reserves were seized uh when they invaded Ukraine and that that action led to a really really large reaction from basically every country around the world who realized they need to diversify away from US treasuries and to hedge that risk as well as the dollar. Um and so
obviously these countries the the China, Russia um they they want to reduce their dependence on the United States um when it comes to their financial infrastructure. So they're trying to come up with different ways to do that. there's been all these like CBDC like structures that they've piloting. Uh I I'm against those for a number of reasons. Uh goldback uh CBDC's as well and tokens that's been but really it's this move towards gold in general that's what's happening and the gold um is a neutral apolitical reserve asset. um you see this in the amount of central bank buying from all of these uh these countries that they're moving towards
that because that's the most familiar right now for them. You know, they understand that. Um I think Bitcoin, if they were smart, they would really look into Bitcoin and move on it and be a leader in Bitcoin because the opportunity is there for the taking for whatever country decides to really really lean into Bitcoin. uh because obviously I think it uh solves a lot of gold's problems which caused it to fail numerous times throughout history. >> And so the bricks could go down this route and go down the gold route.
Eventually the physicality of gold leads to the same outcome which is paper gold built on top of it. More centralization of the gold trust that they have the gold right like the Fort Knox paradox so to speak. U I mean Sam this just feels very full circle to one of the original questions in in this chat was uh you know like the synthetic layer of paper Bitcoin on top of the underlying Bitcoin. Do you think just I I know it's going to be a similar question, but when it comes to you know some of the problemat the things that we've run into with gold and and the synthetic you know derivatives on top of it Fort Knox and like do do you how do we avoid those mistakes when it comes to the Bitcoin
paper contracts on top? I'm not it's not they're not really the same paper contracts is what I'm talking like so like the gold derivatives markets exist and there's always like hey they're suppressing the price there's always these like theories about that when I say like uh the paper gold I'm talking about how the physicality of gold and the how expensive it is to move and it leads to centralization which leads to basically fiat currencies backed by gold. Okay. >> Now, Bitcoin's digital. Bitcoin, you know, is a digital bearer asset that's native to the underlying protocol >> and it's fast. It's it's it's fully auditable
and there's no need to build paper fiat on top of it because it already has the efficiency, the settlement efficiency that gold doesn't have. >> And so that's why the digital nature of Bitcoin is a huge differentiator from gold. I mean, it sounds obvious to say, but it it leads to um there's really no reason to build fiat currencies that are backed by Bitcoin. That doesn't really make sense. Gold eventually has to go there because we live in a world that is digital that um our communication systems are like I could talk to you through a camera right now, you know, where I don't even know where you guys are. And so you need a
financial system or a monetary system that is as efficient as our communication systems and that will keep up with the the the rate of change in our in our world. And Bitcoin's gold's old technology. That's basically what we're betting on. Bitcoin's old technology or gold's old technology and Bitcoin's superior because of its digital nature. >> Yep. And then the last thing is that Bitcoin has a fixed supply. Um, and and that gets overlooked, but those are the two major differentiators between Bitcoin and gold. Its digital nature and that Bitcoin has a fixed supply. Gold inflates at 1.7% a year roughly, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that means
you lose half your purchasing power in 35 years. And if you're looking for a long-term asset, that matters. And then the last thing is that when gold's price rips to 5,000, there's a response from miners and the market to produce more gold, to invest more into mining, to dig more gold faster out of the ground. So that 1.7% inflation rate will get up to two then. And now it's now the supply is being diluted even faster because of the market response to the increased prices.
That doesn't exist in Bitcoin. There's difficulty adjustment. to fix supply. And so those two things make Bitcoin better monetary technology than gold. But it's going to take the world a while to wrap their heads around that. So Bitcoin will probably still trade like a risk asset. Gold is the familiar hedge. Gold will get the demand from central banks and countries. Um but over time, those two advantages of Bitcoin will get appreciated more and more by the market. And I think that's why there's an asymmetric opportunity in Bitcoin because the world still hasn't really wrapped its head around those two things yet.
>> Yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah. We also heard about asteroid mining uh as being an existential risk to gold. >> Sure. >> I'm not sure how far out that is, but kind of sounds similar to Elon saying that they're going to put AI data centers in space. Sounds about as far-fetched, but also sounds somewhat reasonable. I'm not sure. >> They should put Bitcoin miners in space, too. >> Well, that's it's the same hardware, isn't it? Yeah, [laughter] >> Sam, thanks for your time, man. It's been an absolute pleasure. I hope the uh Bitcoin Investor Week goes goes swell over there in New York. Uh we're actually opening up a pretty sick uh office in the most iconic building in in that city. I didn't know that. If you use your noggin, you figure that one out. It's still under wraps, >> but uh we'll have to get you up there
sometime. >> Yeah, I would love to. And thanks for having me on. Uh I'm happy to come back on anytime you guys want me to. >> Epic, man. Absolutely. See you at 100K again. >> Yep. Cheers. >> All right, buddy. Bye. Alrighty. Up next, we've got our lovely friend Nim from Rocka Away. Um, he specializes in chain vaults. He's a chain vaults partner at Rockaway X. Um, and yeah, Rob, I mean, that was the bullish thesis on Bitcoin and glad that they didn't take e extra leverage on uh at at the top. I'm telling you, somebody has, somebody did, and we're going to hear about it. I'm telling you, we're going to hear about it and it's going to
happen. >> Uh some people are saying that now miday is when these uh 13F filings come out. I also heard February [clears throat] 13th or 14th >> is when they come out. So >> yeah, we should know in about if everything was on chain, we would already know, >> right? >> Yeah. Yeah. No, but of course it's not. Um you know, I thought uh you know he it's interesting that they're the biggest like the best way to get Bitcoin exposure for Brazilians. That's pretty bullish. >> Yeah, look, I >> I mean, they have a small RAI capital market, but yeah, I >> I've been harping on this idea that there's a synthetic like paper contract layer on top of Bitcoin and and >> it's causing a problem for the Bitcoin price.
>> I think it is causing a problem because I think if you had all look, you know, Sam makes a point uh you you invest money into Orange Bitcoin or Micro Strategy ultimately Sailor or Sam [snorts] indirectly, right? it it they will buy Bitcoin, but it goes through some hoops and jumps first, right? >> If all that money just poured into Bitcoin itself, >> I I I agree. Same with ETH. Same with Yeah, I mean there's just all this public and then even with the Circle and Bitco exposure to crypto previously. I don't think it's going to have that bad of a long-term effect, but I think in this cycle it caused a lot of it basically caused the altcoin complex to disappear in any sort of capacity because I think
uh it was I mean why why buy why buy that you know why buy alt when you can buy public e equities of vicaro or circle etc. >> I think yeah those equities are even more of an indirect bet on the ecosystem or on particular assets. Yeah, >> I I it's weird to think about, but I really do think it's like at least from a pure pricing mechanism model. Yeah, >> there is more than 21 million Bitcoin out there. >> You have the 21 million Bitcoin and then you have the synthetic >> layer of assets that are on top of it and there's money that it's pouring into but there's there is there is mathematically an amount. What you're trying to say is that the surface area
for investment is far is far wider and greater than 21 million Bitcoin. That's that's like the point. That's an issue. >> But again, like >> that's the issue that I'm talking about. >> If you keep buying MSTR and Sailor keeps aping, then what's the difference? >> There is a big difference because there it's not just one MSTR. You have orange Bitcoin, you have Pomp Bitcoin, you have options products, you have IBIT, you have Black Rockck ETFs. There is substantially more surface area than just the 21 million, >> but they always still go by the Bitcoin. That's the thing. Anyway, we got Nim Alexander here. He's running vaults at Rockaway. We're going to bring them up.
We're we're going to talk about their work uh that they just launched with Camino. Um and yeah, we're we're excited to talk with Nim. Um >> get started here. >> Hello. Hello. Hello, guys. >> Hello. Hello. Hello. Nim, is that a Rockaway X custom shirt? >> Yeah. >> Wow. >> That's based. You guys both got the gamer chairs. Big gamers this year. Huh. >> Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, where I am, like I had to go with this one. It's the most comfortable chairs.
>> I think it looks great. >> Uh, first time on the show, man. Welcome to the uh to the rollup. It would be great toh hear about uh your background, what you do at Rockway X, what you guys are specializing in. Uh you know, kick us off here, man. >> Yeah, for sure. So, I mean Rockway X is a $2 billion uh M company on different verticals. So, so the they started as investment firm and then start to deploy other verticals. So on the on the infra side with the validator nodes on Solana mainly and uh and then on the risk and asset management side with the the credit fund that started uh more than three years ago and now the idea is to expand all
the the experience that has been acquired since 2018 in the risk creation. So I will be responsible of that part uh at Rockaway. So to the goal is to develop this vertical and and basically uh come with all the experience we have all the risk management we have and address more institutional uh uh demand I would say more real world asset demand also that we we're currently seeing. >> Yeah I I think we share this thesis here. Um you know we've been talking a lot about Neo finance. A lot of this is a result of stable coins. And [clears throat] then once we have the base cash uh portion of digital assets,
we start to build an entire financial ecosystem around this base digital asset. And so I'd be I'd be curious just to hear, you know, you mentioned RWAs, tokenization, digital assets all play a very important role in this new financial system. I'm just curious how you start to piece together NEO finance. You know, when you're working on vaults and you're see, you know, speaking to asset managers, what are some of the things that get them most excited about? And how do you think about NEO finance in, you know, the the near to midterm?
>> Yeah, I think we're already in it. Like uh if you take a look at the recent market uh appetite uh basically people are really after this real world asset either to speculate on them uh on different uh protocols or either to try to find other source of yield with real world uh asset product. So all these products are I would say more people are more comfortable when I say people institutions are more comfortable with those uh but we're just seeing more and more I would say sophisticated actors that are sometimes even cryptonative that wants to have a diversified source of yield and not something that is only following u the crypto dynamics. So
that's uh yeah that that's how I see the the current nail finance happening. So for me it's not something that we're going to see. It's already it's already there uh diff different tes different ways but people are already doing it without even probably uh seeing themselves doing it. >> Incredible. Yeah, I think that's right. Um I think also you know what you guys are doing with Camino and these vaults are you know particularly relevant because as asset managers come on chain they're looking at these things they origin they already have funds you know they have indexes of products and they're looking at bundling all these things together when they can automate
and program a lot of the fund management rules into that um it it becomes a lot more familiar for them. So yeah, please tell us a little bit about what you guys are doing with Camino and the type of institutional appetite that you've seen around vaults. >> Yeah, and I mean just to build on that wrap real quick, I think vaults have become like the thing like it was tokenization. I called it like memecoins for tradi. It was like wow we're going to tokenize everything. Now vaults is like wow you can put stable coins in this morpho vault curated by gauntlet. You're getting six, seven, eight% that's not offered anywhere in the world on any sort of treasury money market. It's like these these these allocators are like foaming at the mouth for like this extra
yield that they're getting in DeFi. They don't really understand it. They don't really understand the risk quite yet, but they're kind of getting there. Like yeah, talk to us about the state of that and and then you know let's get into the uh Camino things. Yeah, I I mean to start with Vault uh in general, it's it's I think probably the biggest uh UX improvement or even let's say innovation we had in D5 for a while. I mean all around the table we're quite familiar with GI all these protocols and and it's has been our brand and better since we're cryptonative to explore do our due diligence with our own skills but for a lot of people they decided to never touch defy mainly because they were not
friendly with uh c having being their own custodian all these uh non-custodian wallets all these D5 protocol that are basically changing every day you have governance you have so many things that make makes it every super complex and vault came with a kind of a one-stop shop where people can just in two clicks have exposure to a set of risk uh by a certain risk manager. So, Volta basically enable people or risk managers to kind of tokenize their intelligence if you can say it like this uh and the retail or the sophisticated player or even in institutions to get exposure to this intelligence from onchain. So that's that's exactly the beauty of
these vaults. Then in the landscape of vaults, you have a lot of different ones. Uh the one that we're uh focusing on now is is the kind of money market one with Camino. I mean Camino is pretty well integrated is is the the flagship product on on on Solana. So any power user on Solana have been already used uh already used Camino and at the same time it's something that is battle tested. So we just decided to to work with them on this one. Uh they're just providing the best technology on to to launch that type of product for us and also the RWA landscape on on on Camino is there. So for all these reasons we decided to to move forward with with Camino launching
this RWA vault. So that's uh that's what led the the decision mainly and kind of also offer a risk exposure to a dedicated dedicated asset class. So far we already had in the past some RWA tokenized uh on on Salana or whatever the network but most of the time they were mixed with crypto assets and for many reasons we know that's definitely not the same risk appetite not the same risk exposure not the same liquidity so we wanted to have something a novel uh V that is really really answering to this demand and not having to choose between okay I'm I'm down with this risk But 20% of the the allocation is on RW I'm not
fine or the inverse 20% of this RW vote is allocating to a yield bearing tokenized asset. I'm not really comfortable. So I'm not deploying my capital. >> Yeah. You know you guys have now crossed over $2 billion, right? So you you've got significant product market fit in these vaults. Um and and you've taken a much more institutional role. I'm just curious like more specifically on Rockaway, you know, h how have you guys been able to source uh this these assets? Does it come from you know institutional players? Is it primarily sourced from retail? Like do they come from the DeFi world or more the legacy financial world? And where do you think the next $2 billion of of you know funds are going to come from in these vaults?
>> That that's what is really interesting for Roax. Uh these $2 billion are mainly coming from institutions as we speak for us. Uh and we just want to showcase that what has been offered to these institutions and make them confident to deploy across different verticals. So either the fund or uh investment fund or the our infrastructure is this $2 billion the retail or more sophisticated player that are on chain could have access to the same level of risk management. So that's the main the main motivation for us and that's definitely the target. So you fully line like we want to to get this next $2 billion uh from people who are looking
certain yield uh on chain that is as I said not fully correlated even though we are uh evolving in the crypto market to this crypto market. Uh so our goal is to showcase that there is a world where you can stay in DeFi and move to the this yield that is mainly correlated with speculation token incentive and so on to more real world source of yield that is sustainable uh that we we've seen running for years and years without leaving DeFi and with all the risk management that we can uh of course bring on top.
>> Yeah. And you know tell us a little bit about yourself. I know it's your first time on the show. We didn't get too much about your background. Do you have a a track record in legacy finance? Is that how you were able to you know build these relationships with institutions or or generally how did you get them over the education barrier to ultimately deploy capital? Yeah, I mean myself uh I have yeah I'm coming from Treadfi like was working in uh in big four back in the days almost I mean time flies almost 10 years ago we were we were do doing the first uh blockchain proof of concept for many in insurance uh did that during four years and then in 2020 decided to to start advising some some projects it was D5
was booming at the same time where they could allocate all these funds um then join join another uh asset manager and risk creator uh where I was also working on on all this before joining uh Rockway X. So, but at the Rockway X level, everyone has mainly a Treadfi experience or past Treadfi experience. So, that that's where we're coming from and where all the institutions relations are have been built. Uh that being said, we also have like super deep ties in in uh with crypto defy and crypto I would say entrepreneurs and pioneers. Uh so so we we are in the like Rockway exists since
2018. Uh 20 yes 2018. So we are we are uh just working on all these for a for a while and uh Roige is just growing and and adding more and more vertical to just uncertain more and more demand of all these institutions. >> Yeah man, epic. Yeah, I mean I think this, like we said, this vault's uh product requires a level of DeFi expertise as well as a level of legacy finance and traditional in infrastructure to be able to speak their language as well as be able to uh operate within their risk parameters.
When it comes to that risk um parameter set for these vaults, right, like it sounds too good to be true, right? vaults sound like you go put your money in a magic black box. Mark smart contracts exist. You've got some PhD risk manager like Tyrone at Gauntlet. He's going to make sure you don't lose your money. And then you got a guy like Rockaway and a company like Rockway who's going to, you know, make sure that you're in all the best strategies. You're going to make way more money than a money market with a little bit more risk and, you know, you're going to walk away like a genius. But that I know it's not that easy. How do you manage risk in such a composite and complex tokenized product offering?
>> Well, I mean definitely not easy and that's why we are we are there. That's the our added value here. I mean there is multiple layers. I would say the first one is we have to select the assets like which assets are we enabling as collateral or uh and to select them. We look at of course the issuer track record for example. I mean the legal structure for example that's something that we're not used to so far in the crypto industry when you were doing your due diligence most of the time it was let's say 80% on the tech side or the economical side and then 20% on the people behind uh but no one was spending too much time uh assessing what's the legal structure where what's the reduction of these guys where the
company has been uh has been incorporated and so on and this is just the the surface there is way more than this so we spend a a lot of time on the on the legal uh risk. So then you have the of course the quality of the and the diversification of the underlyings uh if there is loans what's the cash flow how the NAV is calculated or the oracle work actually how the redemption is working how defaults would be un handled so there is so many things we could cover here but that's the high bar and it needs to pass all these uh all these check boxes to just be selected uh on let's say we we've been through all this and We're just confident about the the
assets on the product itself. Then we have to set all the capsu per uh at the vault level. So how much people can borrow against this asset? Uh what are we comfortable with? Who's been able to liquidulate this asset in case of black swan? Uh sometimes we have to stress test this asset ourselves. So this is this the the second step and the last one is the continuous risk monitoring and adjustment that you have to do because the I would say the result of the risk assessment that you did yesterday is probably not the one that you will have tomorrow uh for many reason the risk is not static it's some it's something we we struggle also at in
our uh industry like let's say the audits for example on the tech How many times smart contract has been audited one time and then we say yeah it's audited but yeah two years ago. So people are are still on on kind of a static risk in term of mindset which is completely the inverse here. So we have to monitor all the performance metrics default rates uh change in regulation if there is any uh if there is any counterparty events also uh all the all the token is trading onchain uh if the risk return profile also start to deteriorate. So that that's how we do it. So as you can see for one person behind his computer probably first of
all don't have access to all the informations uh and the the second point starts to becoming is really hard or you have probably to be a credit risk analyst or with a huge background >> and so Nim when you have to adjust a strategy like when it's like okay you know let's say you're on USDT on a part of the strategy and then you got a little bit on morpho and then you've got some looping going on on on fluid and it's like a very basic stable coin strategy. Let's say Justin Sun comes in, puts his puts his schlong on the table, says, "Yo, you know what? What? We're going to do 50 million in USDT on a right now just because I can. I'm going to do half a bill on Morpho just because
I can." All of a sudden, your yields just get smoked. Do you then have to go like request permission [clears throat] to move assets or do you have to like like how is the process of adjusting the strategy per the market dynamics that are changing due to whale activity due to compressed yields or increased yields? Like is there an automated like AIdriven process? Is there a systemic process internally? Do you need to like talk to the LPs of the vault to get their permission if you want to do something outside of the strategy? Can talk to us a bit about some some of the changing of the dynamics as the market dynamics shift real time 24/7 onchain.
>> Yeah, I mean for for sure here uh first of all we cannot do whatever we want. So uh for this RWA uh Volton Camino um every time you want to add a new market uh it's deployed and controlled by by Camino. So we cannot deploy whatever market we want. Uh and the the next step is when you want to add it to the vault there is a time lock. So people who have an exposure can are aware of okay there is a new vault added uh a new market added. So basically a new collateral you cannot do it's not like in one click we say okay we received 500 million let's just deploy more capital to more more assets. uh there is definitely a pass where as a LP you can see what's going
on and and be aware of any new markets that are are added at the same time regarding the allocation so let's say you deploy to to this RWA vault with a first set of collateral uh that we will have let's say hry solstice figure and humor that being said what we'll do is according to the borrowing demand so on the borrowing side is if we see there is a lot of borrowing demand up to a certain cap of course according to the risk parameters it would be automated re we have an automated reo reallocation bot here so it's not AI we can call it AI but it's not it's purely a risk reallocation algorithm that has homemade on our side uh that is moving
funds to from a market A to a market B of course in this uh whit listed scope so there is a part is is there that is automated but only in in a in a defined scope. Uh but nothing can be added like this. Uh so that's how things work. Uh and like you said, if there is a huge inflow from Justin Sun or anything like this, what will happen is that the borrow rate will just get super low. So people are incentivized to borrow at this at this uh at this rate to make the LP uh LP yield which is the lending y becoming more interesting. But during the first probably hours to not say days depending of the side size definitely the the yield will get smashed.
>> I mean I mean I think uh what what what the institutional allocators will want is you to be pragmatic on being you [clears throat] know proactive and also reactive when the time comes but like not stepping out of the the risk parameters. And I assume in these vaults when you when you launch the the the the smart contract that m like so the smart contract manages the capital which then is deposited into other smart contracts from what I kind of gather and and the that smart contract that you set for the vault is effectively like you know it's immutable in the sense that like it requires some significant like vote or multi-IG or admin key to change the parameters. So when the allocators
allocate to it, they know that like you know even if Nim goes on a crazy bender one day, has like eight cups of coffee and tries to slam it onto hyperlquid 10x pers that's not possible because of the of this like kind of like hard luck. But then it and like that's probably what they want. But like do some of them want you to have more flexibility and to be more kind of like subjective or is it all like okay we want objective clarity we want you know this hard-coded and e even if you find the next 100x like not going to happen like how is the what's the spectrum of like of risk parameters and kind of immutability when it comes to these things. So like you said, I mean the the institutions what they
value the most is not the is not the return uh even though that's what we can think they're probably they're not chasing the highest return possible. They're chasing something they can control and master. So they want something that is predictable. Uh so when you pitch them a strategy or a solution, they wants to be sure that their money will only be allocated to this traditional solution. Even though the returns will get lower like they they will not be pissed [clears throat] at you if you're doing two 3% under performing compared to what has been sold. But if you start doing something that has not been pinched, it's another story. Uh so so that's the main topic.
So in our in our RWA vault on Camino of course it's a lending vault. So the mandate is B b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b basically to allocate capital to a set of collateral that has been whitelisted with all the criteria were already mentioned earlier. But then in a more actively managed vault you have [cough and clears throat] also a mandate. You have a defined scope. Uh usually you have a third party actor that is reviewing all the assets and protocol that are whitelisted. Uh that's how it works. And thanks to how the the I would say the whole industry is moving uh forward moving on all these vault narrative and trend we're getting more
and more transparency tools more and more control on all this. So no I mean whatever is happening the seam cannot go 100x short or long on any asset. Uh for example at at um a rockax there is no risk or asset management decision that are taken unliterately wherever you are in the company. So even to add a new market everything is going through a multisig uh or to post a new strategy then you have it needs to be confirmed by at least two people. So even yeah myself and hundreds of coffee. I cannot [laughter] >> I cannot reach that level. So, whatever is happening, it's >> with that understanding. Isn't it crazy
[clears throat] how Bit Thumb was able to send 620,000 Bitcoin, >> dude? And then they're like, "We recovered 99.7%." Like, what happened to the.3%. >> Well, the people sold it. They withdrew it from the exchange, right? >> That's crazy. >> Super fast as soon as they got it. [laughter] I mean the risk parameters on chain are just superseding that in legacy finance and centralized exchanges. Um Nim, the last thing that I have for you here is just you know you you guys have some great partnerships. You have over $2 billion in volume uh uh like you know the next year to year and a half. What do you think institutions are going to want? Like where do you think they're going to be headed and what is your main focus here over the
next couple years? I think I think for them is so far they are they were they are all holding these RW assets and the ongoing conversation we have with these institutions are more they're pretty aware of what's happening in DeFi uh what they want to master more is what's exactly the risk they're taking uh and how to enable composibility what's exactly how scalable is it uh who's who can have access to what? So that's that's the current institution topics that we are discussing with them and when I say institutions I'm even talking about really large banks here.
So they're pretty aware of everything that happening. They're aware of of the biggest and largest protocols that we all know. uh they're just assessing for the next 12 to 18 months like you said how to tokenize more than just T bills and some private credit credit here and there but products that people are if you're not coming from trade file you probably never heard of uh but there the with markets that are in sometimes hundreds of billion of dollar uh so that that's where I think the the main uh topic is and Rockaway uh is positioning uh itself and and ourself here. Uh so for yes the 12 to 18 months I think the
RWA trend is only not even starting like people are just kind of touching uh a bit what are RWA and how it's working. I I know by what we value the most is liquidity. So the fact that you can get in and get out in sometimes fraction of seconds but in term of yield there is no free lunch. So people are uh probably got used to the market paying them double high double digit uh returns with thanks to token incentive but we all know this is not sustainable and to to enjoy sustainable yield and be able to loop it and still get this high double digit. these goals with RWA for with for something sustainable and and risk
managers that will allow you to do it with the with the assets that are worth uh uh doing it with that that's the main uh thing that we want we want to do in for the next 12 to 18 months. >> Love it. Nim, I hope you guys get an IPO one day. I think it's coming, man. It's coming. Stay stay true to the program. More crypto IPOs in 2026 and 2027. won't ask you for a comment on that one, but thanks for being here today. Appreciate your time and uh looking forward to seeing the vault development come through. >> Thank you very much Andy and Robbie for uh having hosting me today and uh have a good one.
>> Great work. Thanks for coming. [clears throat] >> Cheers. >> Thanks. >> See you next time. >> All righty, boys and girls. We've got Sam Ruskin, the research analyst at Msari. But before we get into that, Rob, I'm telling you, Vaults are the hottest thing on on the block right now. We're gonna go to New York City, see Frank Shaparo. He's gonna be talking my ear off about vaults. He's gonna be like, "You remember that Vault podcast I hooked you up with on Rockway X?" Like, "Yeah, I have another vaults. Vaults. Vaults. Vaults. Everyone wants vaults. Plume wants vaults. Camino wants vaults. Midas vaults. Vaults. Vaults. Vaults.
You're just going to see more and more about vaults. It's going to be like you're going to be tired of hearing the word vaults in like three months. >> I'm tired of hearing the word vaults right now. You said it. You just said it about 25 times. Um, >> how's the markets looking there, Rob? >> I don't know. I haven't checked the market. How's uranium doing? >> Yes, sir. Down one and a half% on the day. Cruising >> already. Um, so Vaults, Vaults, Vaults, like >> Yeah. I mean, their structured products are huge in legacy finance.
>> Yep. And they're getting way better >> dramatically. >> Well, yeah. I mean, there it it >> because they have smart contract risk, DeFi risk. Of course, >> there's so much generality baked into vaults. Like you can put any asset you want >> into a vault. Like you can put any financial product into a structured product because it's just a wrapper supererset around a group of financial products. >> Yeah. So I I think this is generally a good transition as we go from legacy financial structured products that have counterparty risk. They have custody risk. You're trusting, you know, numerous intermediaries.
>> Oh yeah. >> The cool thing that I think about vaults is yes, you can programmatically enforce all of those rules that you have in the legacy financial world. Once a lot of these assets are tokenized, you can then put all of those same assets into these vaults. All that's great, but it is just replicating the same system that we've had. >> Yeah. >> What I think is cool about vaults in particular is that you can democratize the curation of these vaults. And so you can end up with some 14-year-old programmer that has a Claudebot in a Mac Mini that actually comes up with a better asset management strategy or a vault management strategy >> than some JPM quant. some JPM quant right who you know got lazy over the weekend and didn't
>> you're my quant Rob >> I [snorts] >> my honor man >> my my it'd be my honor Andy I'd love to get back into the I got the math diploma up here on the wall and I'm over here podcasting >> um >> all right we got Sam in the back he's ready to come up let's talk Neo finance guy's got a a pretty big bull case on crypto neo bankanks I think Mousari is calling them DeFi banks uh we're going to get Sam up here and let's get this show on the road Last guest of the day, Layer Zero Chain, we broke the news. Sorry to the team. Whoever Whoever posted that uh YouTube video is getting fired for sure. Sorry about that. It's not funny, but ouch. Um let's get Sam up here.
>> Sammy boy, what's going on, man? >> Hey, how's it going? Can you hear me? >> Yes, sir. >> Sweet. Good to see you guys. >> You look like you're building out some vaults right behind you. >> What's going on, though? Can you explain the whiteboard? What's happening? uh secret alpha. >> This one's old. This is from Deaf AI era. So, it was us essentially mapping out uh like how how they generate alpha in like the efficient frontier of like riskreward with them. I don't know. We didn't really come to anything that interesting. Clearly, nothing happened with deaf AI. So, >> well, deaf AI kind of fizzled out, but now I mean AI agents are on the rise again. We were just talking about AI agent managed vaults.
Yeah, I think kind of related, but like I think aentic finance presents some like interesting opportunities. I've seen like a lot of discourse on um like like even today we saw uh Dan Romero or yesterday go on um TVPN and he was saying like oh like you wouldn't want to give your credit card to an agent and I kind of don't get that because I'm like we have like decent like encryption technology in ZK today and and not to say that like it doesn't still make a lot of sense to like give them stable coins in a wallet and that that would solve a lot of issues but like I I just don't really understand why like agent should it be theoretically easier to give a credit line to because like their risk profile
and like their actions are enshrined, right? They act off code, not instinct. So to me, I'm like I don't really see why credit cards are that big of an issue for agentic finance. >> I could maybe fill in some of the the gap there I think is that some of the prompts that we're giving these agents are so broad that there is room for interpretation, right? Like when you say and the example that I heard the other day was if you tell an LLM to write a children's story, it can actually do a really good job and it can say like okay this is a children's story that it's writing like it could do a really great job of putting together a story line.
But obviously you know if it's writing a story there's a billion different ways in which it can write that story. And so if we're giving it some sort of code and we're asking it to to, you know, go and make some transactions, then it it could end up interpreting that by spending a bunch of money. It could be just that, you know, stable coins, private keys, and wallets are much easier to enforce programmatic rules versus a credit card, you have one limit, but beyond that limit, there's not really rule many rules for it to stay within. I I think I kind of relate this to like um electric vehicles like we are going to like put ourselves at risk in a lot of scenarios anyways.
And I think that like we sometimes equate that like our control over our finances is actually better when in reality like maybe like prompting will get better and we'll get to like a postprompt era where agents hack more autonomously and at that point I'm just like I don't really see why it's that big of a deal to like give a credit line to an agent. But I'm also I haven't talked to many banks about this. So maybe there's something I'm missing. >> I I think uh like a lot of these guys these agents like now the thing is you give it its own body. you give it a Mac Mini, you end up, you know, letting it create its own accounts. There could be a day where you end up giving it its own credit card, you know, rather than or create a credit card specifically for
that. Uh, but we didn't we didn't bring you on today to talk too much about the agentic financial world. >> No, but they are going to be a part of the neo finance world. Rob, don't sleep. Don't sleep. >> Oh, they absolutely are. I think you might have just missed the entire conversation Sam and I had. [laughter] Um, and so Sam, you know, you guys are are talking about neo banks internally at Misari. You know, we've really pioneered this idea of NEO finance. Obviously, started with stable coins. Now, we're building out a ton of financial infrastructure around stable coins mechanisms vaults custody solutions, all these things. Um, and there's a next generation of DeFi that's happening here as well. And so, you know, we've kind of been thinking about this with Neo Finance. It's evolution of crypto infrastructure. It didn't have
product market fit before. Now, we're forced to innovate towards something that does. also legacy finances being forced to innovate. We're seeing this at the regulatory environment. They're being forced to put, you know, yield on stable coins. Most likely banks are fighting that tooth and nail. What do you think is the right mental model for neo finance, neo banks, or just generally what you think is the next generation of the financial system? Yeah, I think that we have like maybe like a bit of a terminology problem because we've called it like a million different names, right? Like DeFi, Web 3, Neo finance, crypto, like but ultimately like we're essentially just packaging DeFi better, right? That's
kind of the goal I think of DeFi banks is to like create a a more like valuable accessible offering. And so like as I've been looking at like a lot of the DeFi banks to me like the the catalyst for this is definitely stable coin adoption. So people are going to need a place to like hold their stable coins on chain. The idea is that like you'd want to package it like somewhat like similar to like a skumorphic bank. But at the same time like I think we're starting to see that like maybe users don't even want that, right? Like maybe the true next bank is just like a wallet. I >> I think that we've seen people like really take to like the Robin Hood model where like you have your brokerage and your bank kind of tied together and you can do all the fine into one app and
like we have a million DeFi super apps today. We have too many. It's incredibly oversaturated. But I do think that there's massive upside in the opportunity for like somebody that gets it right. It might take like a Palmer Lucky type or like some sort of like you know socialite like that that actually gets it in front of people. But I do think that there's still significant upside. And so like for me, I've been spending a lot of time trying to understand like what are the parts of a DeFi bank? What does the value acrruel look like? Because like it's structurally very different from a bank, right? Like they aren't custodying your deposits. They don't make money on like a classic net interest margin where they take your money and lend it out to others uh like financial institutions or whoever. Uh, and so I think that like
it's kind of like a question of what do they look like? Uh, who's going to use it? What's the catalyst? And also how do they acrew value? So trying to answer all those questions. >> I mean, dude, we've seen so many um pitches in like like pitch decks for Neoanks the last I don't know six months like like like the VCs that we've spoken to. There's like there's thousands of these things coming up and it's like all kind of similar. It's like earn, spend, save, transfer, pay. Uh, all in one app, no seed phrase, password, forgot password button, easy UX. All the brandings look very similar. I I just like it's I'm not sure there's going to be like there's going to be some winning like like you've got like the Robin
Hoods and like these ones that have a lot of distribution on the kind of more fintech side and then you've got like the Ether FIS and some of these more like very very cryptonative neo banks and like they're just both converging at a point where Robin Hood has this massive customer base you know of which there's like some whales and like a lot of shrimp and then something like Ether has we just looked at their average revenue per user And I think it was like about it was either 22 bucks or 200 bucks. >> It was 256 bucks, which is five times as much as Revolute's average revenue, >> right? And so you got like these like but they only have 21,000 users. And you think about how many users Robin Hood has. They probably have 21,000 concurrent users in a given hour, right?
And so like there's these there's different niches that you can go after. There's different customer bases. There's different geographical regions. From for from our perspective, it seems like on the NeoAG topic specifically, if there's not like a very direct edge on a customer segment, a region, a use case, then it's really not that investable anymore compared to like I don't know a year and a half to two and a half years ago. >> Yeah, I largely agree. I think that like for me I I just saw that um Ether data. I think it was from Artemis. Uh yeah, and I also take that with a grain of salt because they were comparing against like or I think they they were also like kind of measuring card data, but then they were also looking at like Ether
staking and liquid. I don't know exactly how they calculate the ARPU, but um what it tells me is that like the average DeFi user is just more valuable, which I think that we already kind of knew, right? Like and it's interesting because if you look at um like if you look at Etherfy Cash, their card product, majority of the users are based in Brazil, right? And and they do most of like the transaction volume, but majority of the revenue comes from like users in the US or uh the UAE. And so there's like a bit of a mismatch here where I think it's like valuable to pursue emerging markets like Brazil.
they've clearly kind of warmed up to like neo bankanks, traditional ones like new bank or um even like like the ether fi of the world that are more cryptonative. Um but as far as like like we DeFi users are so close, right? Like they're already using Phantom, they're already using Rabby, they're already using MetaMask, like they're they clearly want credit crypto credit cards, right? like a 100% compound annual growth rate in cards way more than like P2P stable coin transfers or like B TOC or any of that. Um so demand for crypto credit credit cards is like very evident. I think that that's kind of what like the DeFi bank needs to be centered around but like like you said Andy like it's it's almost completely
commoditized at this point. Um so post Trump like bank friendliness to crypto companies was like a clear shift. um like whether it was like lead bank or whoever like people people willing were willing to partner with crypto companies in custody uh user funds and so now we have bridge and rain who are like you can open a US virtual account in 150 plus countries and we have like 30 or 50 or 100 or whatever companies that just like do that and they're completely undifferentiated. >> Yeah. And so for me it's like okay like what's the what's the value prop of like any bank like how are you differentiated of any like crypto DeFi bank or whatever it is. Um for Etherfy I think it's interesting. Uh they were kind of like a
first movie here so there's an advantage uh to that especially like as far as acquiring like the DeFi user base. Um but they also have like their other products right so like the staking which kind of provides like a float for the business and is uncorrelated to like the DeFi bank um more correlated to just like general Ethereum cyclicality. There's the liquid vaults which could like enable like new private credit opportunities. Um, and then they like just recently announced they're exploring like using WEF um, their like wrapped uh, like liquid staking token uh, for collateralist mortgages with own and a like noises safe which is super cool. So, we're going to start seeing like more unique yield opportunities on
etherfine within the DeFi bank and I think that that could be like a pretty unique advantage for them. Yeah, part of our thesis on the NEO finance side as well is is kind of what you're getting at here with the mortgages, uh Rob calls it exogenous yield versus endogenous yields. Basically, we we had the whole like 2020 DeFi era where it was like we're going to do all these spin up these pool twos on these different tokens and run these crazy incentive programs. And then obviously we got into like the FTXs and the um and the not even the FTX, more like the Celsius and the Black and >> CDI even Teraluna and Ankor.
>> It was kind of like these indogenous like >> like part of the DeFi uh uh flywheel was token emissions and unsustainable yield. And so, you know, part of the neo finance thesis isn't just repackaging DeFi. It's like going out into a different industry like it could be the legacy financial industry because they have a lot of structured products there, private credit there. Could also be like USDA going into the AI space and lending credit there, bringing that yield back to token holders. Um, there's a company called Daylight that is going into the solar energy product, right? Building a real business, bringing the revenue back, paying it on to the stable coins.
And so all of like the areas outside of rehypothecation within DeFi are all exogenous and provide new sources of yield that are much much more sustainable to this neoinancial world rather than kind of like the old guard DeFi world. >> Yeah. But then again also Sam we also you know we just talked to the guys from Rockaway and they're building a lot of vaults and a lot of these vaults are just dependent on onchain yields. They put they use the yield in Morpho or they use looping on Pendle using some other other uh you know some something on Maple a lending market etc.
>> But Andy look at look at th the ones that you just mentioned they're not rehypothecating anything. There's no token emissions that there's a reason why those survived and the other ones died in 2022. >> Yeah. Some of these things are getting special deals I think. um like I think consensus uh and lineia and etherfy and iigen layer did something special for sharpl link where the sharp link deposited a ton of ETH into that and they got some special yields from Etherfy and Lineia tokens. Um but yeah, I mean that's generally like the trend that we're looking at. Sam, I don't know if you've paid that much attention to vaults, but it seems like vaults is the next big kind of general trend with in this neo finance neo bank kind of conversation. Uh I think a lot of institutional allocators are looking at
the yields comparatively to money markets especially in a rate cutting environment are getting excited about them. Um I think it's the first time that institutions are really getting excited about onchain yields uh post that ced defi world >> that like those two conversations are also very aligned like um whether you call it like exogenous yields or like tokenized private credit in vaults like um similar conversation to be had. I do think that like there should probably be a separation between like the USDAs and like the daylights with their like day five product versus like um like a maple finance where like they're just lending out to like market makers or like cryptonative institutions. But at the same time, both of those are creating like new yield opportunities that are
uncorrelated or or less correlated to like interest rates. Um and so for me, I'm like that's a super interesting value prop. I think that like we're giving access to new credit opportunities like the the private credit markets like 1.5 trillion or like to to three trillion something in that ballpark size market globally. Um so it's massive and in crypto I think it's two billion and most of it's Maple. Um and I think Maple has done like a fantastic job, right? Like they're definitely one of the breakout uh DeFi protocols of the last cycle. um something like 700% growth over the last year. Uh but I do think that there's like structural
limitations to Maple's model. Um because like I think an an interesting like analogy is like when we had just a we only had like the single pole model, right? Like there was um there wasn't a lot of like interesting like risk structuring or like underwriting going on. you couldn't really spin up new vaults like you could with Morpho, right? But then we got Morpho and then like there was all this new opportunity to like get new risk profiles to like avoid contagion risk, work with people like Coinbase to like integrate um like like the CB Bitcoin bolt, things like that. And so I think that we need something like that for private credit where like we have like the underlying rails and the legal structure to like spin up an SPV for like different um like uh curators
uh to underwrite different risk profiles. Um we are like starting to see protocols come out with that. Like I I've been looking at like PTO credit. Um, I know that they spun something up with like Rocka Away and like um their vault with Falcon X is like the most looped now of like Morphos's RWA vaults. Um, so like a ton of demand there, but yeah, I think we just need more like flexible infrastructure for tokenized private credit, but we're like on the way there and I think that's going to unlock a lot of latent demand. This is one of the reasons why we're so excited about tokenized equities because if we're looking at the end behavior of what is possible in this TAM it's limited by the collateral universe that is currently
available to DeFi and and Neoinance like it right now you know there's the list of assets on a you've got you know you know some other assets that are available on other lending protocols but once we start to open up the availability to collateralize all of the assets that like tokenized equities, gold tok, you know, tokenized precious metals. There's so much liquidity out there that is currently not able to be borrowed against and create credit against that, you know, we we believe that um there there's, you know, a big pool of capital there that can be unleashed once we're able to add these forms of programmable collateral. Um Sam, I wanted to just come on kind of double click on the difference between
some of the products that are emerging because we like private credit is definitely something that's huge here. You know, when you're looking at the the exogenous yield sources, you've got daylight, you've got USDA, you know, they're lending to they're providing credit to some of those industries, the energy and AI. And then you've got Maple, you know, is still providing exogenous credit to it is providing credit to crypto companies. Is that the only difference? It's crypto versus like an AI or uh an energy or are there more subtle differences happening here?
>> Um, every protocol is different. So like for example, Daylight's Day product won't even be like tied to like a stable coin. like it'll essentially just be like an index token of um like the revenues generated from um yeah like the decentralized network grid that they're building. >> Yeah. [snorts] >> Uh so I think that we'll probably see like a ton of different models explored, but um I don't know. I'm like just particularly interested in anything to do with like tokenized private credit right now or like onchain RWAS. I I think that like the demand for RWAs onchain has just never been this high.
Um, like even looking at like Hyperlid's tr uh silver demand like they did multiple $3 billion volume days which is like absolutely insane. Uh, and Morpho and A's RWA markets are at alltime highs. Um, a take with a grain of salt because it's mostly just stable coins, but Morphos is like legit private credit stuff. Yeah. >> Um, which is super cool. So yeah, I feel like this just creates like new opportunity. um like no one really wants to invest in tokens right now. They clearly have a lot of structural issues.
They're hard to invest in. Um a lot of unsophisticated capital involved, but like >> RWA just lets us use the DeFi protocols for uh assets that people actually want to hold. And so I'm yeah, super bullish on that. >> Yeah, man. I mean, we've been tracking Sky a lot. We we've had the framework guys on a ton the last couple months and they're super bold up on Sky. They own a decent percentage of the supply. Um that thing looks great. I think Sky is taking over the reigns on Athena in terms of that third place for the biggest stable coin. USDS I think is significantly larger than uh USD now. I think that kind of continues. You go down the curve, you got Syrup, you've got um you know that token is actually holding up quite well comparatively. What you're
now finally seeing is you're actually seeing dispersion in this in this category in terms of token performance. even that we're in a deep bare you know there are select assets in this neo finance in this neo bank category that should outperform like theoretically if the market becomes more you know sophisticated and mature things like etherfy should get a bid things like sky things like hype things like even pump um things like uh syrup sky >> and are you saying they're going to get a bid from the revenues that are generated by the business and via buybacks or there's a detail >> for I think there should be like the narrative should be revenues is kind of where we're at. But like the market still hasn't like I I think once we go back up in sort of like a basing
pattern. I think we'll finally start to see the asset dispersion happening in terms of performance based on the actual uh fundamentals as we kind of bottom out this bear. Like I think like the first assets to really start to move up in terms of like the altcoin complex will be these ones that are actually doing numbers. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we just go straight back to memes. But I don't think so. I uh I go back and forth on this because like I would love to see more capital allocated to like apps. Like apps are generating something like between 70 and 90% of fees now and yet they make up like 10 to 20% of total crypto market cap. That's just ridiculous, right? Like I think we've been through like twoish cycles now of like having good smart contract platforms. Um and yet like like what
like they're not they're not generating a lot of revenue. people aren't using them really outside like a couple. Um maybe those could carry a premium, but ultimately like they're glorified SDKs. So like I'm pretty bearish on just like the L1 trade in general. Uh I would love to see us like return to apps, but I also don't think there will be a material change unless more sophisticated capital comes into crypto because token holders today just like are not any different than token holders were four years ago really. And so to me, like I think that that needs to change and I'm not completely sure what unlocks it. Like it might be on a product level like what draws people in and just like we keep getting good new
products like Poly Market or Athena or um Morpho or Hyperlquid or whatever and like it just keeps attracting people or it's regulation or something else. I'm not completely sure. But like until we get that unlock in like new sophisticated capital, I'm just not confident that we aren't going to go back to bidding like the same token. As much as I would love to be different >> or just L1's. Yeah, I feel you on the L1. Yeah, >> the credit creation that we talked about I think is going to be the the driver like once you end up with and whether it's tokenized equities or other forms of collateral that end up unlocking a lot of a lot of that capital like I I think you know we're going to see more private credit get tokenized. They're going to tokenize all of the assets, all of the all of the equities that
ultimately creates credit on chain. And I think it was Arthur Hayes that kind of made the point. This is when he was doing hyperlquid moon math >> and then sold it two weeks later >> and then bought it back, you know, like this month. But the point I think remains that once like capital that is formed and created onchain is more likely to stay onchain and flow into onchain assets, onchain native assets. like credit that's created via a bank has a longer path to ultim ultimately get into our bags. If it's created onchain, I think it's more likely to go into the bitcoins, the ETHs, and and you know, the altcoin complex as we call it.
>> Yeah. I think that there's like a lot of different ways to frame like what tokenized private credit will look like because you could have like crypto users lending to like uh crypto institutions or crypto users lending to like non-crypto institutions or institutions lending to like non-crypto institutions just using like tokenization rails. Like there's so much opportunity that's like relatively unexplored that essentially just allows for like better global movement of capital. Um, and I'm hoping that this is kind of just like the start and we're gonna see just like a ton ton of cool new opportunities. So, like I just Yeah, I mean like Pareto Credit was like one example. Like I found that a couple weeks ago. I just thought it was
super interesting. But um I think that yeah, like USDA Day like whether it's the actual like private credit opportunity itself or something like a picks and shovels play that enables it. Um I think it's just like a worthwhile space to watch right now. >> Yeah, man. We'll have to do some uh uh private credit moon math on that whiteboard there behind you in New York. >> We're coming to New York next month. I'm moving back. I assume that's where you are. That's where the Msari office is. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah, man. Sick. Do you play basketball by chance? >> Um I'm [ __ ] But [laughter] >> what do you [snorts] do for fun, man?
>> Uh >> besides drinking dates, >> that uh I don't know. I like to I like to read. I like play tennis. I ski. I'm going >> tennis. Okay. Sick. >> Yeah. I'm excited to go to Denver. I'm going to take a break and go ski up in the mountains. >> Man, I'm about to go out ski right now. It's dumping on us three inches right now. I'm >> Where are you right now? >> I mean, you cool. >> Hell yeah. >> All right, Sam. Well, hey, man. Pleasure. Uh really enjoy your research and your work. Uh we'll uh we'll we'll get you up to the studio for some time in person. We'll have some happy hours and whatnot in the city come March. So, stoked to meet you.
>> Oh, yeah, man. Yeah. Good to meet you guys. >> All right, man. Cheers. >> We'll see you next time. >> The ball. >> I was about to I was about to I was about to see if I was going to cross him up real quick. [laughter] >> So, I cross you up there, boy. >> I don't remember that. That's not That's not the way I remember it. >> How's the market looking there? [cough and clears throat] >> Hyperlit's clanging on to 30, I believe. >> It's all good. We're not >> insane, man. Sky has insane strength right now. Wow, guys. the N7 index. We're gonna I'm gonna vibe code that site this weekend, I'm pretty sure.
>> Okay. >> Um but we have that dashboard. We we're going to start to push it out for you guys. Sky and and Hype are backpacking our N7 index right now. >> Um absolutely backpacking. So is Morpho actually. Let me pull that up. See what >> I mean. The rest of uh you know, the majors have not dumped since their you know their recovery rally. And so you've got ETH at 2K and you've got Bitcoin around 70. Well, Morpho just hasn't gone down since that dump from um like it set its low basically on December 14th and now we're two weeks past. It had a little bit of a low on that last dump on the 5th, but really is right back to where it was. That's also holding up because a lot of other stuff is just down um from that like like Morpho is
back at the same price it was before Bitcoin went down 20%. Sky above. >> Skye's ripping. Uh, Sky I think it's the best looking chart. >> Sky is up 15% this week. >> Skyy's one of the best looking charts in all of crypto. Hype is looks great as well. >> The fundamentals, let's not get too absorbed in the technical analysis of two. >> Yeah. >> What? $2 million a week >> of buybacks. I mean, even EtherFi, unfortunately, is like not getting the love it deserves. I think they they're going to get their revenue up. Um, keep growing. Uh, but I think, yeah, it's still kind of bleeding out that one.
But, uh, I think that one's going to have a face report soon, too. I mean, obviously we're angel investors, so that's our bias, but but yeah. So, >> man, good show. >> All righty, guys. We'll see you tomorrow. Uh, happy Tuesday and, uh, sayanara. >> [music] [music] [music]