LIVE: BASE TOKEN, PUMPFUN AND MORE | 0xResearch

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[Music] Are we good? >> Are we live? >> Are we live? Ryan, why did you go? There we go. Um, >> all right. What's up, guys? Welcome back to another live stream for Zerx Research. Today I am joined by my gracious co-host uh Daniel as well as

Teddy Sterban. I assume that's how you say it. Um Ian and Ryan Connor from Blockworks Research. Um everyone here is in research including Teddy and Ian who are at Chyros Research. I see that Teddy, you claim to be associate VP at Kyros. Is this true, Ian, or how does this You know what? Can we actually do this? How do you guys work together? What is the general setup?

>> Are you looking for the org structure? >> I'm looking for the org structure. >> We can pull up an org chart. Teddy, >> I thought he was asking like, "How do we work together in the office?" We have one cubicle that we both sit at the same desk. >> Yeah, one chair. We lap up to save costs, but maybe >> maybe pump three X's and get two chairs. >> Horizontal or structure, I would say. >> Very good. Um, Danny, do we have to do something before we get started? Am I supposed to talk about somebody? >> Uh, just a quick shout out to Katana.

You'll hear more about them later today. Otherwise, uh, we probably should talk about our own business, D. It's coming up next month. Uh, Picachio is going to be there. I don't know if Ryan is going to be there. Uh, I know Mark Arjun, Ryan, you will be there. Thumbs up. We love that. Mark Arjun will be there. Uh, those are the only ones that I know for sure. For sure from the research team. Um, but you can I guess we got a couple things going on. You can get a free ticket to D next month if you can refer 15 people to our Blockworks newsletters. Um, so you can find link in the show notes or just go check out the newsletters, check out DAS websites. Um, or if you want to buy a ticket, uh, you can get 100 pounds off. 0x100 is the

code. >> Very good. Um, yeah, I think Ian and Teddy are also going to be there, but Ian is not booked in yet because he's trying to do the referral thing right now. So, we're gonna see >> how how many email referrals for a plane ticket. >> Ryan, >> I think I saw at the bottom of the bottom of the newsletter, >> Ryan, is that something we're doing or no? I'm not associated with the event side of the business. >> It might be. I'll I'll connect you to the relevant.

>> I am taking no responsibility. >> I have I have to purchase a ticket like >> Okay, very good. Um uh maybe I'll do a newsletter as well since we're still waiting for people to trickle in and people are generally excited about advertisements. So, if they see it, they'll they'll be like, "Wow, I need to come on." Um, we are writing the Xerx Research newsletter as the analyst Blockworks Research analyst team again. This morning I wrote it. If anybody cares, you can read it on Blockworks Research Slash Newsletter. Um, there's also a QR code at the bottom right. Make sure to subscribe. We write every day. We write about what we care about in the market, what we're looking into. Um, and

oftentimes those newsletters become flashes that are sent to our subscribers. So, a lot of it is alpha uh or at least like remotely interesting for you to read about. So, would highly recommend checking it out. Um Brian, do you have any anything you'd like to share? >> It's free and it shouldn't be. So, get it all taught. >> Very good. Um okay. Uh it feels weird that Ian Teddy, do you guys also want to share something or should we just get started properly?

Yeah, I don't have anything to share. Um, >> excited for D. Yeah, it should be good. Lineup looks great. >> Yeah, Nigel Farage is going to be there. >> Confirmed. >> Big. Big if true. >> Faric Farage. >> Ryan, are you familiar? >> Fan or not a fan? >> Indifferent. >> Fair enough. >> Ryan doesn't do politics. Yeah. >> He said he doesn't vote. It's for silly people. >> You don't vote? >> No, I don't vote.

>> That's fair. >> I can't vote legally. >> Just thought it was relevant. Okay, >> very good. Um, enough chitchat. Let's um big news this week is pumped off fun. It is up 3x. I'm pumplined. I don't have enough. I have very little. Um it's one of the few times that Daniel Smith can at me and say, "Are you sidelined, you bozo?" So, it doesn't feel great at all.

Um maybe um I'll pull up Teddy's tweet. Danny, do you wanna do you want to talk a bit about your pump story? You want me to talk about my pump story? >> Yeah. Not like that. Like in general, if >> about pump a bit, but since you're our >> some background on pump. Yeah, happy to. >> Um I guess the big thing was at the ICO. I don't know. I think a lot of people maybe crashed out wanting to get allocated to Pump at the ICO. Um it is one of the most profitable apps in crypto.

Um but at the time like Bonkf fun was kind of making waves. Um there were you know maybe some maybe folks had some difficulties with the sale on centralized exchanges versus onchain. Um you had people who got in at the 4 billion ICO and basically got a free plus 50% in a few days. Um so post sale it kind of it it struggled. It didn't have the narrative in its favor. The metrics were down because the bonk fund kind of like taking some dominance for that month. Um, and then kind of as it consolidated at the lows, I get I think some of the big takeaways are that Alon and Co like they changed up and uh the buybacks from 25% of revenue to 100%. So they started shipping all of the, you

know, ongoing revenue into the token. Um, and then they took back, you know, Bonk sort of lost its share of Launchpad uh tokens and trading volume. So they took back all of their the prior market share that they had had um prior to Bon taking it away um which obviously improved kind of that you know if you're looking at it from a fee or valuation perspective as well as the buybacks back into the pump token um and then now like within the past few weeks the creator creator capital markets is like the the narrative the tagline they're running with so the live streaming has been pretty popular from like a virality standpoint. So, I think the big thing that the big takeaway that they're running with is like new creators spin up a token, they get paid creator fees

based on the volume from that token. So, um if they get a viral clip or whatever, someone a bunch of people see it, they can trade the token and then the creator actually gets a ton of money more so than they otherwise would if they were on like a a Twitch or YouTube variant um where you have to rely on ad revenue or subrevenue. So, you can get a big payout really quickly when that's been running. Yeah, just to give some maybe like numerical context here, mid, no, end of July to mid early August, Bonk was like 60% of Launchpad revenue across all launchpads that we track, which includes both Salana and um base ones. Um with P and Pump was at like 10%, now we are back to pump Holy being like 90 to 95%.

Um, now one like common criticism here is about like Launchpad revenues are down overall. I don't think that's the case. Um, I mean they're not as high as they were in January, December, January last year when we saw Mr. We saw the president of the United States posting meme coins, etc. But um they are despite what I might want, they're not as low as most people expect them to be before they get snarky and say, "Oh, but like all launch revenue is done." It's not. Um I guess like one thing is the buybacks.

People are a bit worried that the consistency right now, the cadence, the amount might stop going forward. Um, Ryan Teddy, do you guys have any opinions on this on like Well, first of all, Ryan, I'd love to hear your thoughts on because historically we've said, "Oh, hyperlquids buy well, you've said hyperlids buybacks aren't great because they are price indiscriminate and almost all of their re well almost all of their fees are being used to buy back." Um, do you share the same opinion with pump or is it mostly related to if you have allocation and exposure to a token or not?

>> Uh, you know, I I agree. I think um and if you uh listen to Noah's um interview on Unchained, he basically said as much. Uh I think however what's going on right now is that there's clear like the market's rewarding that behavior. So it makes sense to do it. uh P uh hype at a 98% buyback and pump at 100% buyback and Athena's joining the game this morning and um it's clear that the market's rewarding that behavior and I think it's important to keep the context in mind.

Uh 2024 and 2025 um were was a time when token holders kind of like rose up and identified this problem between equity entities and token entities and how the equity entity was usually siphoning the value from the relationship and in almost like a gesture of goodwill to the market. I think projects are doing their best to show uh alignment between the token and equity structures and and so so they're doing that buyback. Um, so I think that that context is important because perhaps without that like pump and hype don't do as well. And there was like if you

remember like in the wake of the ICO there was like you know when people were dancing on pump's grave it was like universal outcry that like this is a scam token the equity entity does not care about the token and now you can't make that argument right they've acquired $200 million worth of pump on the open market and um they own a big bag. So there's there's clearly alignment and that's what they that's what they were trying to signal. Uh is it ideal? No, it's definitely not ideal and you know again Noah um acknowledged that on uh on their most recent pod. >> You think um they have to do it because historically there's been this massive divergence between Yeah. Okay.

>> Yeah, definitely. It shows it's a gesture of goodwill to the market. You know, they originally rumored 25%. I think probably if bonk didn't happen um and really scare the market, you'd probably see that 25% and price would probably be where it is or higher. Um but you're in this weird historical moment where there was just like a lot of strife with the token and a lot of uncertainty and I think this 100% buyback like really it signals to the market that you know there's no conflict of interest. They're aligned with the token and um and that like you know they're in it to win it. Do you think um like are some of these teams like hype pump getting almost screwed by path dependency here

or do you think there's a point in the future where it will be viewed as okay to reduce the buyback ratio from their earnings? >> I don't know how crypto markets are going to react. Um it's a it's a market base that like I don't fully understand. Um, I don't I don't think anyone fullies understand because it's it's pretty um erratic um and hype driven. I can look to Tradfi where it's like I remember when there was rumors about a Google dividend and the stock fell because people were like growth at Google is over. Um there are like sophisticated fund managers that believe that crypto projects massively overarn. So it makes

sense to return capital to token holders and that's what they want. Um you know there are also people in crypto who believe that 100% of revenue should go back to buying the token and that the equity uh token like is like separation makes sense. So like it's a pretty mixed bag I think. Um, but you know, if you are going to pair back that buyback, which like I think obviously I I think it it's highly likely that that will happen, you want to do it as revenues accelerating, right? You don't want it to happen as revenues going down. Um, but like pump's in a really good position now. I think you probably see this momentum continue and like who knows what what it looks like in six months.

>> Yeah, I guess you can stop buying back as much if you're making whatever like 3 mil a day and then you start making four mil a day. you could probably reduce it to 75% or something and still be fine. >> Yeah. And to go back to the point of like are they a victim of path dependence like totally. Um you know I still think that this ICO had all the characteristics of like a massive a post ICO pump where it was just an ultra low valuation and everyone had an allocation. So um you know there's no reason to sell at the onset. It's only the people who don't have access that are there to buy. Um, I think that the thing that the thing that obviously threw a wrench into that was this massive loss in market share. Like pump

revenues basically went to zero for a few week period and there were no comps from the team. Um, and if you listen to the Unchained COD, they talk about how like it was the one week that they've gone on vacation like 12 or 18 months. Uh, and then and Bonk, you know, did this just masterful um, you know, attack on Pump. So yeah, like they're definitely a victim of path dependency. Our original view is that the token was going to rerate meaningfully higher in the months following the ICO and I think you're starting to see that happen in the market today where revenues are at their highest point since the Libra scandal.

um that there's more innovation going on in the trenches and like you know kind of like the um like the vibes are back as far as like participating in the trenches and um and you have a token that's still cheap. So I think I think you're set up for that thesis to unfold. >> When is it expensive >> like 30 times sales? >> What is it now? Do you know? Uh depending on your look back period, not sure.

>> I can figure it out. >> Teddy, anything you want to add? >> Yeah, I mean I tend to agree with most of that. I think that if they did reduce buybacks, it would probably have to be slightly better communication than it has been in the past. Like I think increasing buybacks without communication is probably a fine signal to the market. But um decreasing them and not really saying what that additional capital is going to be used for, I think would make people ask some questions. Um and not that I don't think that they could kind of use it for growth, but they do have this kind of $2 billion cash pile that nobody knows like are they using that for growth or is that like did they sell those tokens?

That's their money now. I I think people have a lot of questions on that still. And that was why like the main argument I saw for why people were not willing to buy it at 0.002 um when it was like trading below its cash value. It's like everyone's like, well, it's not our cash anyway. So, I think that was kind of why it was worth a shot at being like, okay, well, everyone's base assumption is that this money is theirs now, not ours at all. Um, and so I think it kind of made it attractive to be like, what if that's not the case? Um, but then again in crypto, like I haven't seen anyone maybe do a great job of going out there and kind of doing M&A and using capital for growth. Like you see unis swap building

the unis swap wallet and like I don't think that increased their distribution at all. Like I don't know who's like, oh thank god now that unis swap has an app. I'm gonna use that so I can trade coins there. Um, so I don't know if like I think the Pumpthon app has been more successful than the Uniswap app, but um I just would like to kind of hear their plans on how they actually use capital for growth rather than >> Yeah. >> Yeah, that'd be that'd be really interesting because I mean the only thing we can really verify is like the buybacks and just because it's like onchain for the most part. I guess like the revenue and stuff as well, but we really have no idea what like their costs are. Um their buybacks have been fascinating though just because uh all

the execution is actually happening on chain and like it's not horrible. Um and a lot of it I think is thanks to like you you' think it'd be like pretty bad honestly because just they're just doing massive buybacks. Like I don't think this would work as well for any token on Ethereum. Um and I think like one of the big things that's helping that as well is it looks like a lot of the prop AMMs are parts of these transactions. Uh I can like share this link in the the chat and you can kind of see um you know kind of all the other prop AMMs being part of these orders. Goonfi, Humidify, Teresa of Five or whatever. And like some of these are to my understanding um it's

like a mixture of just kind of scrappy devs and actual like legit market makers like um Wintermute and like DRW. Um I would be surprised if Jump didn't have one. Um and yeah, like the execution isn't bad. Um just I think thanks to the fact that there's actually a lot of demand for a lot of trading for like soul USDC on chain. So that's definitely help helping absorb some of that. Um, but yeah, I would love to know the actual pump team's costs and like what they're actually kind of doing on on that side with all that cash because I think that was everyone's like fear during that raise. Like everyone was like holding their breath because they

raised like you know like like a billion dollars of cash and then just like went silent for a week and like everyone was like I think I know how the story plays out but >> it was goodation. They also >> increased allocation to VCs a lot and >> right yeah the term >> raising more than they said they would raise and more percent from VCs than they said they were I mean it worked out like >> it's 2x the ICO now. So if you entered and added back in you probably 4x at this point.

>> Yeah. And they bought back like 6.6% of the entire supply already. What was the float at launch? It was like 30. It was it was really high compared to a lot of tokens >> like 25% like wasn't it like a billion um >> like that's a pretty large float. Um I think that was also like part of the thing for their launch. It was like everyone was scared and like there's a ton of the actual supply out there. So uh I mean it it was a great opportunity for tokens to trade hands, you know. >> Yeah, I think so. Where does um talking about pump where does Wait, Ryan, you want to say something again and then I can do my segway.

>> Yeah, it was it was just a it was a silly moment in markets when um you know pump was trading by my estimation um at 1.2 times cash on July 28th. At the same time, BMNR was trading at uh 2.2 times its balance sheet. Right? So like you had this entity that was basically trading in line with cash that actually had a business that was like highly cash flowing and then you have another entity that at best is going to generate like a 7% yield and it's trading at two times its assets and crypto was like this is the obvious bet. Um it was it was it was a silly moment. Um >> which is why which is which is why crypto markets are so great. They give

you those moments. I mean to be fair, EFT did go up 3x during that time. I don't know what BMR did, but >> like it was a fair thing to take. >> The the market priced one ETH at uh sorry, the market was paying, you know, buying one ETH for the price of two and it, you know, was selling, you know, pump close to a discount at Treasury. Like it was a very stupid moment. >> Well, that's just because it's ultrasound money. That's the ultrasound premium.

>> Pump. Pump. I I get Yeah, that's technically true. Pump is not ultrasound. So, you have to incorporate that ultrasound premium. >> I guess the bigger question here, Ryan, would be whether your statement holds true like in a month or two months, right? Because I think we there's a lot of like examples of this where you could pick out, you know, the like timeline excitement at a point in time and then look back on it in a month. But um for for this to still be positive like in a month from now is pump higher or you know at the same valuation it is today like what what's the expectation there?

>> Yeah. I don't know what happens in a month but I I think that >> yeah I think that you know a a framework that I used to really think about a lot with investing in crypto things is like is there a path to a 100 billion dollar valuation here? Like can I envision that path for a lot of crypto things? I think it's really hard. Um I think for Pump that a I can conceive of a path to hundred billion dollar valuation with with its current business model like streaming doesn't have to be a big thing.

>> Can I ask two questions about this? First of all, my first thing is going to be a statement actually not a question. one this kind of proves that Lord forgive me but you were kind of right Ryan in that there is a front end mo and pump had it over uh bonk uh let's bonkf fun sorry um and the second thing is do you think there is a chance that since pump clearly has this front end mode they could build up the backside on their own and L2 L2 no but like their own L1 or like a network extension.

>> So pump does not have a um a front-end mode. It does not own the user today. Still 60% of its volume comes from third party apps. Um its front end like except um DAUs on the front end is is growing and you see that the team tweeted out that chart from um early June to uh today. you know, DAUs went from 10K to 36K. So, like, you know, it's still a small number. A lot of the flow still comes from thirdparty apps. The the lack of front-end ownership is the biggest risk to pump. Um, and within that context today, doing your own own L1 is impossible, right? Like you saw what happened, what Bon did to it. How is it

going to have its own chain? Um, these are ephemeral pools. They're not um they're not um, you know, they're not permanent pools. So they're constantly being issued and then they go to zero and you move on to the next thing and kind of doesn't matter where they come from, right? Um but I think um you know obviously if pump can succeed in having a large installed base of mobile app users then obviously like doing your own chain is they're going to want to do that. >> I think I feel like what Pump proved is that they're operating from a position of strength, right? because their response to Bonk was quite strong, right? Like they increased the amount of rewards going to creators. They rolled

out this new fee tier based system like trading volume and how that plays into the fears and how much they give back to creators of coins. Um, which it feels like a direct kind of response back to what Bunk was one promoting, but probably also like if they were paying on the back end that maybe we're not aware of if it was not public um to steal so many token creators. Um, it seems like they had a pretty clear response. How much do we think Bonk paid? >> Well, so like if you just go by the public numbers, um what Bon proved is that there is massive consumer surplus in the memecoin market or that demand for memecoin trading is highly inelastic. So I think like at the time

that bump kind of tried this attack, pumps like all-in fees on the bonding curve were like 1%. Uh Bon came in with actually higher fees. it came in at 1.5%. And what it did was it just funneled 1% of that um of that fee stream to token creators. So what Bona actually proved is that pump has massive pricing power much more than it is realizing today. And if you think of like all the levers that it has um building out the front end um more creative reward structures um you know it's I think it's I think it's really bullish pump what Bonk revealed.

Teddy, you unmuted for a second and then we're got >> Well, on that point too, I think like Coinbase has proven that over the past several years that people are willing to pay like three to 4% on a swap. Like that swap function that they used to have that you can go from one asset to another without having to like settle in USDC or USD and buy another one. People are willing to pay 3 or 4%. And like these are much more volatile assets than Coinbase has listed. Um, so like the fee tier is relatively low. Now, I'm not saying that they should increase fees, but on the how much did Bonk pay too, like I think that was kind of a gut feeling that I had too is that nobody was really using let's Bonkf fun that I

knew of. Like I never heard anyone say that they were using it, but like I would have conversations with people in real life when they were actually like talking about Pump Fun or using Pump Fund, like people that were not crypto native people. Um, but I feel like that's kind of been the whole feeling with Bunk the whole time is that it's like kind of a inner crypto thing like it never really got out to people like normal people are like this is or were not like this is funny. I want to buy Bonk similar to how people were Doge. It felt like a very forced inner crypto thing. were to come up with that.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. That's that's kind of how this category works though. But Teddy is like we have some stats on that buck actually on the launchpads pages. But I know that like for pump if if like 60% or 70% of volume is coming from third party trading apps for Bunk Fun at their peak like it was 70 80 90%. Um, so but it's exactly as you'd expect, right? Like the nothing really changed to people trading like you're still using Axiom or, you know, Photon or Phantom or what have you. Just the the contract address ended in Bonk instead of Pump.

>> Also, >> you are seeing the you are still seeing the early beginnings of Pump entering the frontend space in a meaningful way from that day daily active user number. It's increased almost 4x over just a few months. Um, so that, you know, that's really promising for, you know, pump to actually earn more of the memecoin supply chain total fee. Um, I'm looking for this chart. Um, I'm digging in Slack for, but we have, uh, if you were to just sum like all the players that are taking money from the meme or that are generating revenue in the memeoint supply chain, you have like, you know, pump Axiom GMGM uh Phantom etc.

um meme like total memeoint associated revenues have actually increased 3x year-over-year whereas pump revenues are up like I call it 2x year year-over-year. So there's a lot of pricing power there that like pump's not realizing and as it moves in more into the front end you're actually going to see like just natural tailwinds of you know pump seeing growth and then you're also going to see them you know taking increased market share of that supply chain if they can pull it off. This is the last thing I think is kind of relevant and then I want to segue to base token. But also interesting that it's like what 10 15 20x more tokens that launch on pump hit 1 million market

cap versus those that launch anywhere else. Like there's clearly more I don't know if the token launches are better, they're bundling it better or if there's just more money flowing through Pump Fun, but like tokens are actually going up over there. Not tremendously. Like I was also thinking about this after what you said. Um my producer distracted me. After what you said, Ryan, like they're ephemeral now, right? So they just go to zero. But before it wasn't that bad. Like before, well before it wasn't crazy to say, okay, like there are goats at 2 bill. I got to buy something else that's like at 30

mil. And you're like, oh, this might like hit a 10x. Now I feel like I'm not like ever like, oh, this might go to 300 mil. It's more like, oh, I bought this at 70K. it might hit 1 mil and that's like I mean I guess what I'm hoping for is the same outcome on my end but these tokens are just not going up to as high valuations which is obviously a function of like a how many tokens are happening b changing dynamics like a lot more vamping is happening um anything else like >> I mean >> go ahead go for it >> I was gonna say it was pretty if you look at like the atom tech Dune for board or Dune dashboard. Um there was like thousands of coins graduating kind

of during the summer of last year. Like there would be several days where like 1,100,200. Now it's like on the good days still it's in the hundreds 200. So I mean it's a meaningful difference of like they aren't getting as much volume but it's across a wider set of tokens which I don't think is a good thing. I I it feels like it's an okay thing, but it doesn't feel like a great thing in terms of attracting more users because I think again having a handful of like huge runners gets more mind share of people who aren't using it than getting a bunch of them that go to a million or two million. Um, but I I could be wrong on that too.

>> But is this comparable to the like Solana versus ETH thing where it's like, okay, we're going to have like a gorillion transactions, but it's going to cost very very little. Like, isn't the point that you can launch a billion tokens and it doesn't matter like how much trading volume there is in total? Well, that's what matters. It's not like per token, but what matters is if you're doing $10 per trading volume per token, it's just as good if as if you were doing for like the opposite way. Does that make sense? Do you get what I'm trying to say? I explained it horribly, but >> No, I get what you're trying to say. I just wonder if it's as sustainable or as good for actual growth if you don't have as many like large runners as you said.

Like when you see something at 30 million, you're like, "Okay, let's not go to 300 million." >> Yeah. I was thinking about it though, but like the emotions that I get are probably the same. Like if I'm buying at 20K and I'm holding it until 300K versus if I'm buying at 30K and I'm if I'm buying at 30 million if I'm holding it until 1.5 or something like that. Like I'm Does that make sense? Like I'm getting the same emotion as I did before. Like I'm hitting the same amount of X's, but I have to enter a lot lower which is not a bad thing necessarily >> because like now everybody's used to it.

Like, right, like Ryan's sending in tokens at 40K, I'm sending in tokens at 40K versus before there was like unironically what like Alon wanted to do kind of worked out in that it's not like I couldn't send a token to Danny. Well, maybe to Danny was fine, but like I couldn't send a token to Ryan that was like free mil market cap a year and a half ago, right? Like it would be weird. But now I can send him something that's like 50k and it's like yeah, this might go up and it's like we both understand that it will likely go to zero. And it was the same with the free mil coin. Um, but now like the dynamics have changed quite a bit that >> I think that's true, but I think that the smaller ones are more likely that you have like snipers and winning on

those rather than like actual >> people um like running it out from 30 million to 300 million. >> Um, and I also don't think it gets like as viral in terms of like getting people actually talking about it when it gets to 30 million. like you're not seeing a 30 million coin being talked about on Bloomberg or MSNBC or any of the it's not like they're not talking about that, but they were talking about whiff at one point and I do think that brought like a new user base in that people are like, "Oh wow, you just see whiff go to a couple billion or four billion." Um I feel like I should buy some of these if something goes to 30 million straight to zero. I don't think that brings people like I wish I would have bought that.

>> Think about how solvable this is. Um I I think that the framing of graduation rate is very incomplete. Um first like graduation rate you're looking at every single token that's created and then the ones that graduate like to the AMM or whatever. Um but like think of like what pump front end is. It's like it should be a feed of some sort. It should be a filtering mechanism and you know a normal user shouldn't see or have the opportunity to invest in every coin that is generated on the blockchain every day. So you almost want to adjust that for what pump can then filter and show to users. Um because it's a permissionless system, right? Like you know you we can pump out a trillion

coins tomorrow if we want and it would send the graduation rate to to nothing. Um, what matters is like what the user experience is and like it's pretty clear that Pump's working on that. So like from a user's perspective, it's just what they see and what that probability is on like that mobile app like front end, not like what's going on on chain between bots. Though that does like help pump profitability trading back and forth and these bots like trying to hurt one another. Um the the actual thing that will matter for like for the long run for Pump is um what that user experience is and what they see scrolling through their Pump Fund mobile app. Like right now you have no filtration mechanism at all. It's not

going to stay that way. >> Just raw microwaving of the >> just literally every coin that gets printed flows into your Axiom and pump feed and that it will it will not be that way in the coming months. But then we can't use pump fun for news. >> Well, no. You'd have a you'd have a smart filter, right, that that knows how to how to filter out, you know, funny, useful, or, you know, potential runners versus, you know, things that come from, you know, addresses that, you know, don't end up getting attention.

>> I'd love like an algo >> or duplicates, right? Like just filtering out duplicate coins is huge. Like if you go on Pump Fun on like the weekend and you see, you know, tens of dozens of coins with the same names that are all being pumped out at the same time, um simply filtering for like first come first serve on a theme would dramatically like change that um that graduation rate calculation. >> I do think the other big factor like especially when you're thinking about last year like in context to number of coins and what market caps etc. um how much things goes up. I I do think like there's a path to dependency part of this where I mean I feel like Teddy you kind of described it but you know we we

the market was going through the dynamic like actively of you know maybe there's 10 new coins a week to now maybe there's 10,000 new coins a week and I think you you still had the holdouts like late in November of last year that were like yeah whiff is going to go back to five or 10 billion like I have 50% of my port in this thing I'm sure that it's going to go all the way back up. Um, and you know, you saw a bunch of big, like some of those bigger meme coins got, you know, instant centralized exchange listings like after the election, um, when when Pump was confirmed as president. Um, we saw Whiff and a couple other coins like get big listings on Coinbase, Robin Hood, etc. Um, so there was still I think there was still like some belief of like the market kind of

being that same format as it was, you know, end of 2023, early 2024. But um I do think like the we were going through that shift that gradual shift of like there's 10 coins a day, there's 100 coins a day, there's a,000, there's 10,000. Um and like the trenches were kind of reacting to that in real time as like you know naturally your expectation of you know peak market cap should should trend down. >> Yeah, this is Melania's fault by the way. >> The general trend completely her fault. Yeah, it's the same idea though I think with um >> but like I guess what I'm trying to get is like imagine a world where Pump is like a consumer app that hundreds of thousands of people are using per day.

So just like a 10x from here and that's where the users are and you know 100% of pump flow comes from a pump fun app like the curation cur curating totally changes that game to where you can be creating thousands of coins per day but all that matters is what happens on the pump app. >> Yeah, I think that's fine. And it's just more so commenting on like we do have this raw path dependency of going from a prior state of how trading meme coins used to be to how it is today and as well like current liquidity versus a prior period. Like I don't know. I think if you look at the Trump token launch and the amount of trading volume that was happening at that time

and the amount of liquidity that was like in the market to you know ape meme coins and you compare it to today, it's like it'd be very hard to make the case that like one coin is going to go that high. Um but I agree with what you're saying. Sure, like grow the app 1000x um and the outcomes can be very positive. >> Okay, Danny, shall we? >> Yes. Yeah, >> we should give a quick shout out to our sponsors for today's stream before we get into anything else. Uh, this episode is sponsored by Katana. Katana is an L2 built for DeFi and is pioneering the ecosystem category of productive TVL, believing that change should be graded on how efficiently assets are put to

work in DeFi rather than just total value locked. From now until the end of November, users at Bridge to Katana could turn and earn boosted yield from CAT incentive campaigns, added vault bridge yield, and other chain revenue. Follow the link in today's show notes to get started as well as IGEN Cloud. Is your treasury losing value to inflation? Learn how to make digital assets like Ethan Soul productive with uncorrelated protocol-driven staking rewards for CFOs, DATs, and corporate treasures. The path to integrating liquid staking and reststaking should be riskmanaged in align with long-term strategic goals. The productive treasury report from liquid collective and ICloud outlines practical adoption and a forward-looking vision for the role of the modern treasury as a strategic enabler of new technology. read the productive treasury report today by following the link in

today's show notes. Let's get back to it. >> Very good. Okay. Um shall we talk about the base token a little bit? Does anybody have any strong thoughts before I give my thoughts? >> What is that? So there's this L2 called base related to Coinbase and they decided today to announce that they are exploring a base token. Now what this means in the context of Coinbase is that >> they wait they announced that they're thinking about an announcement.

>> Yeah. So this means that they'll probably launch a token over the next six to 18 months. >> Cool. Um, but it could be pretty exciting because I've done transactions on base which means that I could get an airdrop. Um, but I guess like in the context of ETH, is this bad is the number one question. Number two question is, is this bad for optimism and arbitrum tokens, AR tokens? Um, and I guess the number three question is how does this work with uh the coin equity itself?

If anybody knows anything about this, I would love to hear. >> I think it's interesting. I mean, you you know the it's a great way for Coinbase to monetize. I imagine that they're a more conservative organization. So, right. So right like you know Binance you know was obviously beneficial for launching BNB token and owning a lot of it and watching the valuation go up. It really helps your balance sheet. Um they Binance gave a lot of fee revenue at one time. I think it was 50% to burn BNB token. Um I you know I think in the ideal state Coinbase um does something like a BNB or like an FTT with the base token. I think that that would be great. Um but I wonder if

you know I just wonder how um riskaverse the entity is to getting experimental with this token. I also think like I have my doubts, right? like the base in Coinbase team really promoted the Zoro token which was you know a memecoin like what is like they're clearly okay with that structure like I think you know worst case scenario is that it's memecoin um you know assign a non-zero probability to that >> you assign a non-zero probability that they launch base as a memecoin or as a non-governance token I guess like nonutility >> yeah Yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying I think they will, but I think that there's like

a non-zero chance there just given their historic support of, you know, base related meme coins, though. I think, you know, probably a pretty good chance that you get like an FTT like structure. I think that'd be great. >> FTT like structure being that they burn it. >> Yeah. That they they you know, that they siphon a portion of the of the revenues to either buy back um the token and then they add bells and whistles like market makers stake a bunch and then they get lower fees. Yeah, I think FYI, let's continue. >> Yeah, I think the interesting thing with uh specifically like the Coinbase and Kraken tokens is like they're going to be the two exchanges that are actually like public equities and also have tokens. Uh every other exchange has a token already and they literally just

kind of like, you know, make it their their in-house uh easy to pump coin. Like obviously like a lot of them also give it to employees as pseudo equity because like there's not there's not really like you know active liquidity for equity of like OKX or um or like Binance Pay any of these things for the most part. So they just kind of shove it into the in the token for the most part. Um and I mean we saw that a couple weeks ago with like uh like OKB or whatever they just woke up one morning decided to burn a bunch of it. Token price goes up. Uh to your earlier question, Boach, though, like whether it's bad for uh Ethereum or like other L2s. Um I guess you could maybe make the argument it could be bad for

Ethereum if they actually choose to use it as like a native gas token. Um because I mean it's really kind of hard to paint the picture now like how L2s are like uh how do those acrew any sort of value to like eat the asset itself. Uh it seems like all of them are moving further and further away from that. Um, I don't know how much it would like affect like Arbitum and stuff like that. Like I think it's just kind of like too early to tell and like whether or not like someone would stop using arbitum and start using base just because they have a token. Who knows? Like unless like there's active like incentive campaigns.

Um, but I mean this was like inevitable. I just wish that Jesse would like stop teasing it. I think the base team is like they love teasing. Um, they love they love like saying like you know like it's just for fun. Like we're just experimenting. we're, you know, we're just trying stuff. It's like just like I don't know if you showed like a bit more um concise effort in a project and like this is our aim, like this is our vision, I think people would probably be able to rally around it a little bit more. But uh maybe the looseness of that strategy also attracts like some more kind of curious builders where it's like yeah, I'm curious too, like this seems the right environment for me and maybe they're trying to tap into more like the kind of traditional like Silicon Valley audience there. But, um, I mean, it's

just glad I'm glad they at least announced it, but I think it could be kind of weird for, uh, like a company that like has like a pretty large, um, you know, public equity already. >> Yeah. >> Because like if they do take like revenue and like buy it or buy it and burn it, like I mean, if I was a shareholder of coin, I'd be like, you know, I I wanted that money. Why is it going to the unless like the token itself slaps some sort of premium on the equity, too? And like, there's no saying that like it's impossible. Um, we'll see. But I think that's like just kind of a it will be a weird one for them to figure out how that works. But like I don't think I don't know how Kraken is thinking about this. Like obviously they announced INC a while ago, but I I don't

know if any of you guys know about Ink or have used Ink. Um, >> yeah. >> I've checked it out. It makes a very It's on the super chain as well. It It's like a very little portion, very small portion of um anything that goes through a super chain. And like based on the I think CoinDesk wrote about it and at the time optimism gave um Kraken uh 25 million OP grant worth around like $42 million and then when I checked Inc. was four they had made 14K in fees over the past month or something. So it's like clearly like a very um different arena about that like equities thing. Does

base sequence of revenue does it show up in uh coin financial statements? >> Yeah, you know, I mean, I I just got to jump in. Ian, you make you make a great point of how hard it's going to be actually for Coinbase to do this. Um, you know, you can't airdrop the base token to all Coinbase stockholders, right? You're actually probably setting like operationally. I I don't how you get around that. like how do you how do you ensure that you're not screwing your stockholders by funneling revenue to this new thing? Um there's probably a reason that they're taking it really slow.

>> I will say the one thing I latched on was the like being a native gas token. I think that's pretty like much a mute moot point for Bass at this point. Like we already know that they've been experimenting with paying in USDC um having like free sponsored transactions. So I I think for a long time now this statement of like base being like super positive for ETH because they're going to use ETH the asset and XYZ other reason has been pretty much like cope arguments from the ETH camp like B and Coinbase they're building this to be a very successful like venture and chain and ecosystem like for them. Um I mean and sure maybe for their community too

right drop them some base coins but um they want the win. They don't want Ethereum to have the win. >> Yeah. And I think like you asked the question like is this moment in time, let's say they they do a they do a base token and everyone's happy about it and there's no conflict of interest with the equity. Even if it were perfect, I don't think that like it matters much for like its relative um market share of um you know in the L2 ecosystem like BAS is kind of running away with it. It has it's the only thing that has a distribution advantage. ETH is fading to the background, becoming less and less relevant and um you know, arbitrum and optimism are falling behind.

>> I mean, yeah, it's tough like to compare any L2 to base. I will say arbitum is doing better than optimism, but it's like they're racing for the second spot. Um I don't really understand the E vision because my concern is here is that if E is very much L2s and most of revenue REV whatever is activity everything is on base then and if they use base for gas fees or if they add any form of meaningful thing to it then it's instantly like I'd rather buy Bass than ETH right because it has the same thing.

Um like if Ethereum goes up, people are going to start using bass more. So bass will go up, but bass to me >> I could also >> please >> feels like very sorry about that. Uh I I think you could see bass actually having their own chain. I think that's a lot more likely that say than like pump which we were speaking about earlier. Um >> L1. >> Uh yeah. >> Why? like they why why stay in L2? >> Like especially well the SEC came out today and said um single sequencers are exchanges but like they also are an exchange so like maybe that fits in nicely with them. Maybe they wanted this and like they want to kind of you know

make everyone else jump through those hoops. Uh whereas like they're like already kind of well positioned here. Um, but like them being their own L1, I don't know. It just like kind of gives like some sort of like additional supply sync for the tokens, some sort of like new utility there. Uh, they could even make the argument that it's like more decentralized now if they let like third parties run validators as well. Um, I mean, it's obviously a harder lift than just like staying in L2, but like I'm just floating that idea is like if that I'm I'm sure it's one of the considerations they they're thinking of through the process at least. I mean, if you think there's some infinite premium to being an L1, um, there is >> then >> like that's gone, right?

>> It would make sense for that reason alone, right? Like if you get an instant multiple >> in this token, I think you own a bunch of it. >> But the L1 premium is gone. No, >> like it's >> I think Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right, Bo. Like I think like the L1 premium was like largely like a you know like a product of uh private valuations that were too high and so like you naturally launched at this like higher premium because I think everyone was like comping to like you know uh first you comp to Bitcoin then you comp to Ethereum then you comp to Salana. It's like like looks like it's a massive market. My uh competition is like you know like $200 billion asset like two two or three kind sounds kind of modest at that point. Um whereas like I think

like yeah the L1 quote unquote premium has to exist from uh private valuations. I don't think it's like a natural thing of people would be like this this asset is worth more because I can pay gas in the native token and I can stake it for an inflationary yield. Uh you know it's like it's a I I think it's largely a facade. >> Yeah, it's all fake number one. And number two, I feel like tokens like pump will increasingly lower the whatever L1 premium is left because I guess like largely the reason that we did value L1's higher is because they always had some form of native utility um apart from governance like you said

burning staking which is what we viewed as utility but now if you're an app and you can just buy back your token infinitely and everybody else can also do there's no need for another one premium. This is also partially why like it kind of sucks being unis swap, right? Like you fight the SEC for six years. Um you have the most dominant uh decks and like you're constantly at the forefront of like AMM research and then you just you were too early. Like I mean they cashed out I bet and that like they should be very very happy but it's also like you know it's it's a bit unfortunate like they could have been a very very great company as opposed to a

great company if they had launched I don't know when they launched 2019 2018 whatever if they launched like three years later >> I feel like that's a big that's a big part of it though right like historically up until recently like crypto apps made no money. Um, so all of the tokens were memes. Um, so that it's like another reason, another compounding reason why, you know, people just piled all their money into the L1 coins because it was like at least, you know, at least there's flows and there's staking and there's burning and there's things of this nature that um, you could maybe point to some utility around the token and if everything is built on top of it, then there's something there.

But, you know, in the past year, two years like now we have apps that make money and then the money goes to the token. So, um, you can't really make that argument anymore. Whereas a lot of chains now look like the kind of meme product token where they actually don't make any money. >> Yeah. Well, it's also harder to launch an app than it is a it's harder to launch an app now and make money than it is to launch a chain back then and make money. Like as a founder, it's very easy. I assume it's very easy to go to a large VC and say, "Look, Ethereum not that good. I can make it much better.

simple white paper, raise millions, and then be done. Um, versus like with an app, I assume the comps are still quite low. Like I don't think you can go to a VC and say, "Look, like hype is at whatever billion, I can I want to raise at 600 mil versus with like L1's, we saw that quite a bit, right?" Like you could raise at very very high valuations and make a lot of money without ever even launching a product. >> Yeah, I think that's completely true. I think that unis swap got nerd sniped in the sense that they're going after like we're going to have real assets trade here and fees are going to be super low because this is a place for professional traders and then the real assets never really came and so then I was like okay yeah sure there is a decent amount of

trading volume but then like when the memes came along people were like oh we could actually charge 2% on these rather than unis swap who's charging zero and just paying LPS >> yeah I don't think the I don't think the pump guys overintellectualized the MM it's like it's like the perfect kind of mechanism if it's like three guys who want to trade one piece of between each other where it's like if you're trying to like you know coordinate trading across like a much larger asset you just need like a different like or like order book structure. Uh like I think they kind of yeah they got one-shotted by that. I think I agree on that front.

>> Yeah, V3 was enough. You don't have to do like oh this is actually like >> this one's super generalizable like you can >> but it begs the question it begs the question block is V4 better than V3 and is V3 better than V2? >> Yes >> V1 is the worst >> obviously >> I I do think the whole industry kind of was got one shot by like the tech back in the day. That was the big thing because there was nothing else right you couldn't look at the revenues because they didn't exist so you had to look at the tech. Um, but I think when the revenue started popping up, you kind of start asking like, okay, does all the nerd sniping, how much does that really matter?

>> But like you still see things cling on the tech, right? Like there's still a crowd that purely clings on the tech. >> Yeah. And there's I mean tech there are cases where it matters, right? Like you know if you can build a Salana or Hyperlqu liquid like a lot of that there is a lot of technical pieces to it but um like fundamentally then it comes down to you know then they get a lot of usage and then they generate a lot of activity and then that leads to a lot of fees etc. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Find something with product market fit before you like worry too much about making it the perfect product I think is a lesson that crypto is just like hasn't really learned until the past several months.

Ryan, you've unmuted. Is there anything urgent? >> No, I just I just don't I don't see it in the market anymore like big tech getting um exciting technology getting high valuations in crypto in and of itself. I think that that's over. I think like that it like it's like a polka the polka dot trade, right? Um >> yeah. Well, Cardono still is like massively overvalued, >> right? I mean like Yeah, like new things, right? We had a bunch of tokens run on the like 10 million TPS idea a couple months ago. Like >> I will say also like solstaking as a whole was >> was like a very tech thing. Well, I guess that's also like kind of an

Ethereum thing. One thing I will say is like now I have nothing against one ad, but that one to me also feels kind of like a tech thing, right? >> Yes. But >> I think it's also kind of like real at the same time like like their whole like they put a ton of emphasis on actually like geographical distribution and the fact that they're doing like 400 millisecond block times across every single continent is like actually pretty impressive. >> Yeah. >> Um and like but like the valuation itself like you know we'll see what the market thinks about that when they open it.

>> Yeah. But it's a tech impressive like both of the things you mentioned are nerd snipes. It's like oh Well, you can't really >> 400 millisecond block. Now, I'm not saying that like Monad is not good. I'm not saying it won't be good. I'm just saying like it's the last thing that I can remember that has been very much like, oh, this should be this should go up because of tech is is Mon. >> Yeah, I I think you're making the point that it's like it's a means to an end, not end itself, which I would like totally agree with for like Mona. It's like yeah, it's like the tech is good, but like so what? Like you need something else. like unless like there's unless you're doing like really good tech with an enshrined product like Hyperlquid or something like that I don't think it really matters uh you

know that the chain is fast like who cares um >> I think these teams recognize it too right like if you look at Monad Mega ETH um there's probably other examples like sure they're focused on the product but they're also very like well I we still have to wait and see if this works because they're not live yet but this focus on like you know having a set of early ecosystem applications and maybe even some differentiated ones. But it it's just one of those things where I feel like we've been um debating this point for a while now, but we're still just kind of waiting for them to come to market and see whether it whether it plays out or not.

>> I think they're very I don't want to talk about this. I I shouldn't say this out. Ian, please save me. Say something. >> Um are we going to talk about Salana? >> Yeah. Before we do that, let's do our last shout out. to our sponsors for today's stream. As you know, Katana, shout out to Katana. Katana is an L2 built for DeFi and is pioneering the ecosystem category of productive TVL. In just two months, Katana has surpassed 500 million in TVL with over 90% of that TVL being productive in ecosystem apps like Sushi and Morpho. From now until the end of November, users at Bridge to Katana can earn boosted yield from CAT incentive campaigns, added vault bridge yield, and other chain revenue. Follow the link in today's show notes to get started.

and iigen cloud corporate and protocol treasuries face a major challenge today. Cash and traditional instruments are losing ground to inflation. A new industry report from liquid collective and INECloud lays out the next evolution of the digital asset treasury moving beyond just passively holding Bitcoin to actively making digital assets like ETH and soul productive through liquid staking and restaking. For CFOs, DATs, and corporate treasures, the path to integrating liquid staking and restaking should be riskmanaged and aligned with long-term strategic goals. The productive treasury report outlines practical adoption and a forward-looking vision for the role of the modern treasury as a strategic enabler of new technology. Read the productive treasury report today by following the link in today's show notes. Super convenient.

Thank you Cloud actually for leading us into this next topic which is the solds as Ian mentioned. Um I wonder if they are reststaking with their treasury holdings. >> Well I think they're doing stuff. And then they're going to do Camino DAS the Camino DAP product. >> I don't know if there's any official confirmation on that, but I think it's very very likely that the things like this would happen. >> Some of their they had made some explicit statements. >> Yeah, they did. They had made some statements in some of their um >> this is an MMPI. Don't try to get >> No, shoot from the hip.

They're doing the same strategy. It's like wanting to utilize the capital in DeFi, generate additional yield on top of >> just like our sponsor Katana L2 DeFi. >> You tried it. >> I did my one. I did my adway. >> That was good. I got I think something happened in my head. I got stimulated there. >> Well, >> it's all about productive TVL. So, >> Bitcoin DeFi. No, that's not this. All right. Let's stop. What was Solana? That's I think Soul topped Ryan Connor.

>> Some context I guess the uh multicoins um forward industries that supposedly has already shipped in their 1.6 billion into Soul over the past few days. Average buy price 232 is what was kind of reported. Um, I think it opens up this question mark of like we talked about this maybe a week, two weeks ago of there's pretty there's a pretty clear soul trade going into like a sole DAT and maybe ETF season. Um, maybe you have to ask yourself like how much how much continuation do you get from here? Um, if they've already shipped in 1.6 bills though and so if there's a couple other billion that's still to go in TBD, >> how can

from Panta? >> Yeah. 500 mil from Panta through Helas, not the RPC provider, the company. How can you ship in 1.6 bill at 232 >> price has been I thought they started when it was like 160. So they didn't buy any on the runup and then they just over the past two weeks. Like how does that make >> maybe they shipped the majority of it in here at the local top and so their average looks quite bad?

>> Well, I think also like the like announcement that they were raising at least like I don't know if they could actually start purchasing before it closed. Um so that means that they made this entire purchase in this past week. Uh but to also put it into perspective like you know I I'll fud my own bags here a bit. um like you know this is 25% of Salana's yearly inflation that they've just bought. Um like that like 1 1.5 billion is yeah 24.3% of Salana's annual inflation. That's we're going to see just this year. Um it's it's not as bundled as ETH for lack of a better term. Like I think ETH is

far more liquid than people realize. Um, I think the fact that like Salana's inflation is still quite high actually does kind of make this difficult. And I think this was really well forecasted uh in terms of like people like at least anticipating it. I think a lot of people like were market buying going into it. Um, >> I think a lot of people >> super forecasted this one if >> I think a lot a lot of s lot lot of super forecasters in the order books on this one. Um, and then like I guess the other side of that is like you do have like the Panta coming in with like another like 500 mil, but I think like kind of the main thing to watch in my opinion is like the spot ETFs which I think there's like eight or so spot ETFs uh that are like pending approval uh

starting around like kind of mid to late October. Um, and it's not just for Salon, it's like a bunch of other like kind of call them altcoin ETFs as well. Um, but we'll see what kind of the actual demand looks like there. I thought the interesting like it kind of made me wonder it's like for these uh you know debts that were buying uh for like you know Ethan Bitcoin were people like just hammering the ETFs trying to frontr run slash like also trade the momentum and that like added some fuel to the fire there and did like the lack of um like ETFs for soul dampen it at all or like I just kind of wonder what you guys think about that.

Will soul ETFs do well is a good question here. Like the base case is assuming that yes, but I mean if ETFs are doing okay, but it took them a while to start doing okay, right? >> Uh yeah, a long time. Like there was essentially is like you know nothing and then everything at once. And that everything at once was when Tom Lee >> um you know just he he drew the he drew the chart a couple question marks and was like >> 54x let's see and that was enough. >> Um >> Victor who was part of Blockworks research >> blockworks. I wonder I wonder if like um >> do you think there's any sort of like uh

trading that people do for these DATs and like ETFs and like try to like I don't know if there's any sort of arbitrage there. I don't even know if that makes sense like buy that short the ETF or vice versa. >> I don't know if that is also a thing for that like that. >> Yeah, people will do that. Um because there's not much of a >> there's like thinking from like an efficient market perspective, there's not much of a premium that you can assign to these >> treasury things. So when they get absurd, call it like 10% or higher. I think that's when you'll you'll have people bet on that premium converging

and then you can do the arbitrage. >> Got it. >> It'll be easier with ETFs. Yeah, I guess Victor has a really great point here though, like on the ATM issuance side of things where um ideally if you're going to be selling into increased trading volume on the news, uh Ford has been doing you know 20 to 50 million in trading volume that was last week. Um the top Ethereum dots like BMR ESP like BMR's peak trading volume day was like $10 billion.

Um so the amount of money that they were able to like you know pull out of ATMs um by selling into the market was pretty meaningful if if like forward or some of these others new solds don't get a ton of you know excitement trading volume um and a high premium that they can kind of sell into then following these you know initial raises they're not going to have a lot of additional capital to shove into soul which would be kind of concerning for the continuation of this trade.

>> Yeah, I mean they're definitely late to the game in a lot of senses, but I I do have some faith in Kyle Sumani in a way too um to get more attention on it than there has been so far if that makes sense. >> Do we know who the chairman for the Helas one will be? >> Not question. Definitely not. M >> Ryan Connor, >> I I didn't read the press release. >> No, I >> Yeah, I haven't either. Um I I think it'd be really I know like Kyle called out Tom Lee and was like, you know, like that's debate and I think like that would actually be really

interesting because uh I mean Tom Lee has said some stuff about like ETH that just doesn't make any actual sense. clearly like >> for everybody though. >> But can I say something like >> it's like you can't really debate against certain um personas. Like it just doesn't work. Like if you put somebody against Trump, you can't debate against Trump. Do you know what? Like sometimes he says some stuff it just it's not true. Like we know it. >> But like you can't you can't be like Mr. President that doesn't make any sense because he will call you like >> his little British friend and then you're cooked, right? like Ian, that's what he would do to you, you know, and then you can't >> he'd do me way worse than that. He's got, you know, he's it's too easy, bro.

Firing range >> to be fair in some of the new soul dats. Like there's there's some clips going around of like the kind of the language that they're using and it's like Salana can do 65k TPS, like Salana can settle all existing equities markets transactions in the world like right now. I mean, regardless of whether or not they're true, I think it's just part of the game. Like Tom Lee did it, says whatever he wants. Like maybe it goes 54x. I don't know. That's what happened last time. Like maybe it could happen again. >> I think you just they're speaking the talk.

>> The way Yeah. Like they're both selling something at the end of the day. You're totally right about that. But it's like I think there's definitely some more legitimacy around like a true like tech growth story on the Salana side versus like on the Ethereum side. I think >> also a sorry finish and then I'll get upset with you. >> You can get upset with me with me now. It's okay. >> But E was also a growth tech story, right? And you it can be spun up as a growth tech story like no >> comparatively it's it's less of an attractive story versus Salana. You're totally right in its own sense of like they've accomplished something incredible like you know having like a bunch of like um small nodes around the world that anyone can run the hardware

on for the most part uh assuming they can get like 32 ETH um like that it's really cool like you know like it it's definitely the most uh decentralized network outside like Bitcoin probably more so than Bitcoin even now like the all the miners are so like you know aggregated across just a few public companies uh but like it's not exciting in the sense of like This is not like the future of the financial system in terms of like it doesn't have the throughput, doesn't have the speed, like there's not experimentation happening on Ethereum anymore. There's not any native new novel mechanisms that we've seen on Ethereum. Um because like it's just too slow. Uh and like people don't want to innovate on like 12 second block times.

Like that's not if I was an innovator, I'm not going to go to the place that's like moving the slowest. uh I'm gonna go to like Salana and like you have seen all the innovation happen on Salana like and it continues to be the space for all the consumer apps too. So I think it's like it's a much easier cell. Uh but like like I said before at the beginning of it all like this is 20 like that one DAT was 25% of annual inflation. Like they need to they need to figure that out in some way. Like you can't just like throw it under the rug. Like I think like 228 something similar to that should totally come back uh and have like another conversation around inflation.

uh because like it's a real thing. Uh and like you know it's clearly like you know we talked about like L1 premiums like I think the only way you can have like an L1 premium is is if you have product market fit and then shove it all back into the token somehow and like look at Hyperlquid like it looks it's great you know like they got everything right. They've gotten everything right so far. So, you know, let's keep that. >> I guess what I would say though is like if we look at I know Dan Smith gave me a quick rough number on uh Ford today that they're trading around 2x uh price to MNAV. I I think the the problem here is that like we're still trying to sell $1 for two um when it doesn't really make

sense to do so. I think the upside that you have here for soul though, however, compared to ETH is that when these ETH stats were all going crazy, the ETH ETFs were already available to purchase from in size. So like hypothetically, let's say you're the retail guy. Yeah. I mean, don't get dunked on, you know, buying the DAT company at the top and then it goes down. Um, buy the asset they're shipping into. And you can do that in size like from any kind of major um brokerage, exchange, whatever. um for soul since you can't really I mean I guess you can get into this the smaller Osprey vehicle but um it's quite small.

It's not like you know it's not your uh Black Rockck or your Fidelity. Um so maybe there's upside here in the fact that you know they shipped a bunch into Soul pre ETFs and maybe with more DATs and more ETFs coming in the future um you're you're potentially early to that move. But I still think this idea of buying one for two is just like I mean you're just going to lose if you're the one buying that um stock. >> I think it's largely demystified as well. I think when these things first popped up everyone's like how are you doing that? How do you keep buying? What's that? like it's like it was like magic and know I think a lot of people just kind of understand the game and like understand uh what they're buying and yeah I think there a lot of people

are coming to the realization like you know shouldn't be able to do what you're doing for the most part but um we'll we'll see what they do on the DeFi side. think that's actually kind of interesting because to my understanding I don't know of any ETH debts that are doing anything outside of just liquid staking and uh the structure over there on Ethereum staking is just you know completely different like >> uh last week it was like the execute was like 43 days because during that like security incident yeah killed them decided to you know properly like rotate all their keys like they're taking like a lot of consideration for their customers there uh but like it's you know just absolutely screwing everyone else on the network who's trying uh withdraw like 43 days in crypto time like that's like how many how many years

is that? >> Yeah, I mean some of these like LSTs might dep right because of it. Um, yeah. I want like there's It depends who like which one you're talking about, I guess. Like the only one that's kind of like notable is and >> yeah, like I'm I'm not sure like Steakhouse is a great dashboard with like Ste on there and stuff, but um >> yeah, I wonder because like there's already kind of those stress tests with uh it was like Justin's son drawing a bunch from uh I can't remember what he's doing with it, but yeah.

>> How is he always involved? Do you know what? Like anything that happens somehow involved with a lot of capital. Like he's in the top five to 10 of the capital and he's always involved in any situation that happens. >> Uh it's because it's like his world and we're just living in it. Like he he's a large percentage of the overall like actual DeFi TVL. Um yeah, he's he's a massive player. Okay, Danny, shall we guys, unless anybody else has anything very urgent to say, shall we start wrapping it up?

>> Let's do it. You want to give um one >> I'll give one last shout out. Um guys, thank you so much for tuning in. This episode was brought to you by the ZeroX Research newsletter. Make sure to sign up and subscribe to the newsletter. We drop very relevant information once a day, what we're looking at, what we think of the market, what is top of mind for us. Um, I think you'll find great value in it since it's free and it's very useful. Um, Teddy, Ian, thanks for coming on. Um, and to our live stream listeners, thank you for listening to us for an hour and 20 minutes. We really appreciate it.

Anything else anybody wants to say before we before we shut things off? Okay. Congrats to Ian and Teddy. The pump trade, you guys can get that second office chair now. I'm really >> I don't think Ian was I don't think Ian was exposed. I think Teddy made a bunch of money and I don't think he's gonna let I was >> No, we're looking like the >> Facebook Marketplace chair. >> I'm sure. >> We're not going like a full steel case one. So, >> I'm excited for you. It was like that meme where it's like um like oh my gosh he can't pump and that was me in that sense with an holding an unnamed coin >> and uh Ted Yeah, you you know where I'm

going with it. >> Can you put that on? >> I don't I'm a visual learner. >> He's still researching pump. He's trying to figure out if it's >> still researching. Let's Let's see. I'm doing some math of what what happens if you just buy back to >> Petty says you got to get at least 18 pages into the the research report before you'll make a buy. So >> yeah, that and hard labor. >> Doing diligence. >> Totally fair. Awesome. >> All right, thanks for having us, guys. Thanks for coming on, guys. See you. What the heat?