Live From DAS: Do VCs Still Matter? | Haseeb Qureshi & Mike Dudas

Transcript

So that's that's one thing is that the these and you you just mentioned you're an angel investor in Legion. Legion is VC backed. So like VC backed and incubated. Yeah. Exactly. And Coinist VC backed almost all these platforms are also themselves VC backed. So the idea that like oh there's the there's all these things that are circumventing VCs entirely is kind of a [ __ ] narrative. Nothing said on Xerox research is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is forformational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Pokio Ryan and our guests may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed. Mike Hib, great to be here with you both. Thank you so much

for taking the time to chat with me. Thank you. Yeah, let's do it. Um, today we're going to be talking about crypto and VCs, specifically if VCs still matter. Before we get started, do you guys want to give a short introduction of yourselves? Uh, short introduction. I'm a VC. Very good. Yeah, I'm an extremely consequential VC. Very good. I still matter. That's my That's my intro. Um, to get us started. Why do you still matter? I guess this I feel attacked. I will say I feel attacked. Um, so maybe we should start with like why VCs don't matter. Um because obviously I think this question

would have seemed very strange even just a couple years ago. Uh the we've seen the rise over the last couple years of a few trends that are kind of these anti-VC trends that that have emerged. One of them of course being the rise of these crowdsale platforms like Echko and of coinless pre-existed for a long time but echo is kind of defining the current meta. Uh the second trend is the rise of memecoins and you know launching startups not through VCs but through something like pump.f fun uh beyond just memecoins. And then the third has been the rise of these uh purely quote unquote fair launched projects like you know the two most prominent examples have been Jupiter and Hyperlquid which were entirely self- financed air dropped to the community no VC allocation

whatsoever. Um so these three trends I think are defining something different about this meta that feels not like previous cycles where VCs were just assumed to be part of the the baking process of how startups get created. And there's a fourth one I believe uh which is the way that VC coins meaning VC backed projects have launched uh looks to many people and based on price action to be extractive but what we'll argue in this panel I will is that that's not solely or even may you know perhaps primarily due to VCs but to structural things about exchanges etc. I mean, I think that vibe shift has already swung back just because like meme coins are

down so much from the high and VC coins have outperformed over over basically the last three months. So, I feel like I'm not feeling as much of that of like, oh, VC coins high FTV, low flow, blah blah blah. That was that kind of hit a crescendo like mid last year. Um, but it feels like that's really come in since the beginning of this year just because all the memecoin financial nihilist people are just kind of down so bad they don't they don't speak up much anymore. Okay, fair. So, we've checked one off already. Good. We solved that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I think those are the reasons why people say, "Oh, hey, do VCs still matter." Um, so I can summarize my counter arguments and curious curious what what your take is. So, uh, on so the first prong is Echo and you know

these kind of crowd sale platforms. The reality is that you look at Echo so actually the the recent Echo sales that have happened in the last like month or so, most of them have actually been pretty shitty. So they've kind of underwhelmed. They didn't sell out. Um, so that's been disappointing. But if you look at the really big ones, they were all VC backed, right? So like the probably the most famous one is Mega E, which we actually led Mega E's uh uh most recent round before their their Echo sale. And so, you know, if you notice like on Echko or you look on Legion or whatever, almost every single one of the projects that are listed there are VC backed. Literally, I'm an angel investor in Legion and they ask me before they offer a token uh or equity to, you know, folks on the

platform, hey, is this a legitimate project? So, VCs are basically, I would say, the single best signal of what should be listed on these sort of open community launch platforms. Exactly. So, like VCs, I mean, obviously VCs have multiple different functions in the market. The reality is that one of the functions of VCs is kind of as underwriter and it's obviously, you know, hope there are no regulars in the room, but like that's that's that's kind of the way that the market looks at it is like, oh well, this is a Dragonfly quality project. This is a HackVC quality project. And okay, what does that mean? Those are the same, right? Yeah. Exactly. That's that's what I'm implying. Um, and so that uh that signal, the market takes that signal very seriously, right? You go look at something on Legion or Echo, first thing you look at is who are the VCs? You

don't look at oh well let me read the white paper and like look in the background of the founders and like go trace their LinkedIn and read every tweet they've ever written. We do that. Retail investors do not do that right because they don't have time. There's no it's like this is specialization. This is what the foundation of every [ __ ] market ever is that some people specialize and do certain work so that other people don't have to. So So that's that's one thing is that the these and you you just mentioned you're an angel investor in Legion. Legion is VCbacked. So like VCbacked and incubated. Yeah, exactly. And Coin list VC backed almost all these platforms are also themselves VC backed. So the idea that like oh there's the there's all these things that are circumventing VCs entirely is kind of a [ __ ] narrative. By the

time the thing gets to the point where it's a community fair launch project like Hyperlid thing's been in development for multiple years. Uh in the case of Hyperlid fortunately you know there was a wealthy set of founders who could self-fund the thing to the point where it could get to a public launch. Uh, in most cases that's not possible. And you need folks who will underwrite with a time horizon of more than three weeks because let's be honest, like the things today that people are excited about is not the same things that they're going to be excited about one month from now. Uh, you look at anything that's quote unquote hot right now. This could be a social project, a game five project. um this could even be I mean we're getting to the point where like stable coin

projects uh have if somebody invests in it the uh they literally are people are expecting returns uh they're expecting growth. They don't want founders to be heads down for even 6 n 12 months. They want a product that is growing, that they can talk about, that people can see tangible results uh within literally days, weeks, months from the moment that they put money into it. And they're expecting many investors today, you know, this goes back to the ICO days, uh liquidity. They're expecting that within months. And that's simply not the way that long-term durational businesses are built. If you look at the best ICO

projects, many of them a would be an example of this, right? I think what was the ICO like 2018. A is hitting its absolute best stride today, you know, six plus years later. Um, and frankly, because it's had support from, wait a moment, VCs in the liquid markets, uh, in foundation sales. Uh, I guess I'm getting ahead of the point. We were talking about sort of early private VC, but what's happening now is we're seeing many projects that I would argue got sort of caught up in this fair launch meta. You look at pretty much any AI agent project that launched a token. Uh the token went up to X, the token's down 95 to 98% from X and the company was not

able to sell. There was no buyer. um they didn't even get any portion of supply and they're sitting on like hey we've got a couple hundred thousand dollars and we have a team and like what are we doing like I I don't know how we're going to do this um hey you know Mike or you know hey are you guys willing to invest uh at a preede valuation and you know let's get out there and let's jumpst start this business uh here's our pitch deck and we're like uh what do you mean like you you literally already put your value out into the world. You have a community. You have a product out there. Um, people speculated on it. They perceive the token as the

product. And there's probably a really great platform here that you want to build that you can build. Um, but you you sort of shot it out there. There's nothing there's there's there's not a second chance. All right. I made like 10 points there that weren't coherent. I see. Bring me back to coherence. Yeah. Look, I I I think you made an excellent set of points and starting No, no. Starting with a with a Hyperlquid thing. Like Hyperlid was funded to the tune of like 10 million plus dollars before launching their token. The number of founders who can do that is basically zero, right? Like almost nobody is basically Hyperlquid and Jupiter both self- financed huge amounts of money that basically the founders were independently wealthy. All

almost no founders are in that position. So that makes it very very difficult for people to really follow their footsteps. Now, you look at most of the other fair launches, like I I don't know why people still think that this is a good idea. You go back to the last cycle, the the classic fair launch was yearn, right? That they literally invented the [ __ ] term. And Andre Cron to this day complains about what a horrible idea it was to fair launch, right? He's now like five projects later being like, "Man, I should never fair launch anything. You people are animals. Like, you guys treat founders like [ __ ] I should have just raised from VCs." Right? And he's the guy who made the whole thing. He still can't help himself though. Yeah. No, totally. Totally. So, like I I think uh if if you look at I mean I see the same

thing that you see which is that a lot of these projects that were like hey fair launches are cool. We should do fair launch. They do a fair launch. They have a token out there. Retail speculates on the token. Token is worth 100 million. They come to us and they say hey I own like nothing of this token because I I don't know. I just it just happened. We got excited. We did a thing and like I think I might have a business. Can we can we raise VC money? And I'm like, for what? You don't own anything. You there's a memecoin that's out there that's like trading. And they're, well, well, but we'll we'll like change the to we'll like make them give us some more token. Like, dude, do you see what happened with Jupiter? When Jupiter was like, hey, uh, our team

doesn't own enough of this token. We would like to ask the community to give some tokens to our team. And the community is like, [ __ ] you. Your token's already down. What are you doing to us? Right? Like it's okay. Well, yes. This is what happens when you basically put corporate governance in charge of random people who got free money, right? Yeah. They're they don't know what to do. They're just like, "That sounds like a lot of money and my token's down. So, you're a dick. [ __ ] you." Okay. This is why companies are not run by shareholders cuz like, yeah, people are emotional. People get mad. People are like, "Yeah, I'm down and I'm mad and I want you to pay for it." And this is this is not how VCs operate, right?

Anytime you see one of these class action lawsuits against a token founder, it's almost always it's a retail investor. It's always a retail investor who spent $7. $7 who spent $7. Yeah. Yeah. A retail investor who spent $7. That's often also the case. So like the reality is that when you're building something, it takes a long time to build something. And crypto is volatile as hell. It's crazy to try to build a crypto startup. So you're going through these ups and downs. Sometimes you're a hero. Sometimes everyone hates you. Sometimes things are going well. Sometimes they're going terribly. And the value of VC is that we get it. We're patient. We understand what you're building and we can actually help. We're not just in your Discord every day asking when token. Yeah. And the only reason or one of the reasons that it's

that VCs are not viewed that way. We should delineate like Dragonfly is a great VC. I think Sixman Ventures is a great VC. There are a lot of really atrocious VCs, right? There are prop shops. There are, you know, scammers. There are tremendous number of people out there giving money to projects, market makers, active market makers who are supremely success market makers. Do we have any active market makers? Oh, okay. All right. Can you please leave? Um, it's fine. We don't need We don't need them. Do market makers matter? That should be the um, you know, depends on if the coin has any value. If not, they do. Um, so sorry. Um but the point is there are a lot of folks who

are called VCs who aren't. I think what we're just to be clear talking about are folks who have built businesses before who have built protocols uh and are going to be with you for 3 5 7 10 years whatever the journey is. And sure, hey, may sell tokens at some point or equity along the way, but in conversation with the founding team, explaining the reasons for it, continuing to hold generally unless the founders unless situations change and and bad things happen or whatever the case may be. Um, but the point is long-term partners in your growth journey. Uh, and so that's not the default still. There's probably

I would argue there's probably only 15 to 20 firms that operate like that in crypto. So, I think good VCs matter. Bad ones don't. Okay. Um, only asked one question so far, right? Yes. Okay. Sorry. I thought he was going more chill than me, but I'm here for it. I'm here for all of the questions I had written down as well. So, I'm going to have to take the opposite side and say, what is a valid criticism of good VCs right now? Uh, what's a valid criticism of good VCs? Um, I think one thing is that a lot of VCs, uh, and a lot of what what I would call even good VCs, um, they [ __ ] a lot. Um, and this is one thing that I think we, um, I I I can I can see it. This is one of the reasons

why we've grown in popularity as a firm is that we say what we actually think. If you look at a lot of firms in crypto, um, even like some of the most stalwart firms that you think of as like, okay, these guys are these guys are great good actors in the space. They've been good stewards of the of the industry. They've been helping us on the regulatory side, a lot of really great stuff, but they don't own the mistakes of the industry. And the reality is that we have [ __ ] up so many times. Like if you just look back of like NFTTS or play to earn or Terra or FTX or like all this stuff and like there's a reason why a lot of people look at what VCs do and are like you guys are you guys are not that different from us. You're also investing

in scams. You're also doing a lot of stupid [ __ ] and enabling bad behavior. Um and and it it's true for a lot of VCs and um being able to talk lucidly about it is something that most VCs just do not do and I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of VCs have lost trust with many of people in the community is because the community sees it. It's like yeah obvious. We were hearing you guys talk about play to earn constantly and then it just totally collapsed and no one like admitted it that like yeah you guys were helping enable this thing. Um and I think that is at at that's large part of the heart of why people find VCs to be so distasteful. Absolutely. Like an another example would be hey we need to sufficiently decentralize and like the entire thing here is we're doing

that over time and then like let's be honest like you saw the unis swap proposal like like we've seen a bunch of others that are controlled by a very very concentrated group of folks who are basically putting out research papers thought pieces tweets this that and the other thing who are funding you know the 70th L1 of this year who are like literally if we look at like the biggest L1 that's like going like story protocol for example while we're saying like that's like why does that exist I don't know it doesn't exist organically in any way shape or form while putting out a bunch of really high fallutin moralistic pieces about everything else in the ecosystem it's [ __ ] be [ __ ] honest about the industry and I'm

getting tired of it sounds like a is too we're very honest about the things we support we're investors in pump fun I believe that pumpf fun in the long run will be a very positive protocol, a very positive product for the industry and I'll stand behind it and I'm not going to [ __ ] you and tell you I don't stand behind it the same time we invest in stable coin products but I'm not going to put out a bunch of pieces not talk about things publicly that seem somewhat you know like or say this thing's unsaavory while in the background I'm voting for extractive things for the protocols I've invested in and then investing in a bunch of L1s that are useless and propping the price So would you say that we have too much infrastructure right now? Of course. I

disagree. Go for it. Um, so the whole the whole idea he's invested a few more L1s than I have. This guy's a pumped out fun guy. So yeah, we'll get into Monad versus right. That's right. Um, so look, actually an angel monad. So I think it's a very simple I think it's a very simple equation which is that are we done? Are we done building blockchains? Right. Is this the final form? Like right now, Salana, all we had to do is get Trump to launch a memecoin and Salana [ __ ] collapsed in on itself. Like, you know, Phantom fell over. Nothing was working.

The RPCs are all dying. And you're really going to tell me that, yeah, we're done. That's cuz Phantom misconfigured a bunch of [ __ ] Like, look, the the reality is that if we want more than 10 million people to be using public blockchains, we're not done. We're nowhere near done. There's no [ __ ] technology. The answer. What's that? Is mega youth the answer? I think it's it's a shot on goal to try to come up with an answer and there's going to be many people trying to answer it, but like it's it's like saying, well, who could possibly want more than like, you know, uh a gigabyte of RAM? And the answer is like, yeah, [ __ ] the entire world needs way more RAM, way more scaling, way more everything. So, no technology stands still and says, you know what, we we have too much

infrastructure. We're done now. We're not going to make more computers. We're not going to make more GPUs. We're not going to make more RAM. We're not gonna, you know, no. The answer is obviously no. And by the way, the reason I can take your answer seriously is that you guys do invest in some of the biggest applications in crypto as well. I'm not gonna kiss your ass too much, but like Athena and a bunch of consumer stuff, DeFi. So, you know, DPIN, right, Don, which we invested in. So, I think you earnestly believe that. I do think there are some other large cynical investors who would default about 80% to infrastructure investment. And I think that's a problem. and I I I take the other side of that too. Like so let's say there's a VC out there who doesn't invest in applications. They only invest

in infrastructure. Um I I think there's nothing wrong with that VC. I mean at the end of the day if they're investing in bad infrastructure, okay, that's malinvestment. That's bad. But like they internalize the cost or the problem is there's no bad infrastructure investments right now because of the artificial that is not true. I I read I read your Salana piece and then I saw you saying look you don't hear about the ones we invested in that didn't work out. But the issue is that the structure of the market is such that it only takes a couple infrastructure investments that get hot that capture the imagination of global retail not that much liquidity in the grand scheme of things to actually look at the portfolio of like a random Chinese fund that's backing random infrastructure projects and but it gets back to your earlier point on because

Dragonfly blessed this thing people will invest in it and I believe because Dragonfly invests in this thing right like we invest in this thing because it's and retail investors see that as a signal, but it's not causal, right? If we didn't invest, some other great VC, maybe you guys would invest and people would look at that. That might be true. Actually, you've done a good job. You actually may be the best, but the L2s like they're are straight down. Like look at Scroll. Look at a bunch of these other ones. Um, and these are ones that retail invested in at a very high valuation uh because of that check mark.

And honestly, that's the trend. Like the aggregate value of all these things since launch is massively down. Absolutely. But that but that's true of everything, right? That's true of everything. What is what what is the exception to that rule? Bitcoin in the same time period. Salana Salana in the same alts are doing badly. So like okay, yeah, L2s are down. But like Salana, okay, but like look at applications. Like what about gaming tokens? What about you know any of these other things that you could have said, I don't want to own L2s. I'll own this instead. Go own some IoT tokens. Go own some [ __ ] What's interesting is like tokens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, own a GPU marketplace. So, it's a question about tokens. Now, we're getting a little far field of the VC, but I will go with I think we're right on top.

There's a question of whe Yeah. The question is whether there's sustainable token value, right? Like we we invest in Steen and you know, play to earn. Yeah. Um, we invest in something I I believe I'll actually address this one head on. Like the pitch was move and earn and you know, we're going to have syncs. And by the way, they didn't create the sinks. Like they created something that wasn't what we invested in. Um, is that the VC's fault? I don't know. Uh, there are, by the way, a bunch of mechanisms trying to come to market to try to correct for that. The reason gaming hasn't worked, I would argue, over the last 2, three years. I think it is a segment or a sector that will work is because crypto is inherently speculative. These are things that trade 24/7, 365. That's the

point. It is the product for these games. We've been investing much simpler things, right? So things that people like you've seen, we're investors of Magic Eden. It does well because there's just constant flow through it. Um again, Steen did incredibly well because they had their own AMM. They took fees. There was just constant flow. Pump up. Fun. Non-stop flow. Um we're doing one called football. Fun, which is effectively so rare, but the actual players are liquid tokens. I think that's a good like people want to actually have fun, speculate, and use these things. non-stop. Um, but to your point, we've as an industry had a horrible track record of creating longterm sustainable, durable value for tokens. Yeah. Outside

of infrastructure. [ __ ] kills me to say that. Well, I I'll take I work through that in real time. You're welcome. Like, I just actually work. Um, but I will look I will say this is that like I don't fault people who invested into play to earn at the time that it was hot, right? I think like there's fog of war. Nobody really knew how it was going to play out. But once it's over and everybody sees very clearly, okay, play to earn doesn't [ __ ] work. Play to earn is a disaster. Like giving people free tokens to play your game is [ __ ] stupid, right? It's like the opposite direction of how the flow of capital is supposed to work is that gamers are supposed to pay money to play your game, not get paid. did buy NFTs but then the value of

those NFTs right exactly so like this whole like yes okay there were there were multiple steps in this process u but like that concept is just it was it was backwards land you know it was just like [ __ ] ass backwards stuff that we all collectively just sort of wound ourselves up into like oh this this kind of makes up metaverse this kind owner ownership economy sir yeah what what's that ownership economy ownership economy yes absolutely and so look the collective delusion we all had it right and I and I found myself even when I criticizing play to earn and I was like this unsustainable [ __ ] and it obviously doesn't make sense. I was like, "Fuck, maybe I'm wrong." You know, like these guys are making all this money. Stein's going up and Axi infinity is going up. Like, maybe I'm wrong. And

of you, you cannot be human and not have that voice in the back of your head that maybe I'm wrong and financial alchemy has totally worked and like the laws of physics have been reversed, right? You just never know. You just never know. So, turns out it didn't happen. But like, what's the learning? What's the learning? Did we learn? Like, okay, if we learned, tell tell them what did we learn? You know like I I think the answer is that of course the economics of any system need to make sense from the beginning. Correct. Yeah. So you have to have an actual buy in like a real buyin. Um the the earn component can't be juiced so much that it becomes economically like irrational and there have to be real

syncs. Um and the syncs could be I have to stake or pay to earn more value in XYZ. Um, that being said, it's yet to be de I can't think of a protocol that's actually demonstrated this in gaming yet. Yeah. I'm I'm generally pretty skeptical of gaming, but I will say that I think you're absolutely right. The core the like the the beating heart of crypto is always about money. Yep. And the the best game you can play with money is gambling. Correct. And so I I think in that sense pumpf fun is the the best game in crypto. Yes. And I think if you if you think about it as a game, suddenly it's like really obvious why it works so well is that it you you're sort of roleplaying being a crypto trader,

but the crypto trader tickers are all stupid pictures of memes and the volatility is like jacked up to 11. Liquidity is basically zero. Everything turns over in like 24 hours. And they're going to get and they're going to move I mean you saw they launched AMM today. They're going to move into reward like they reward creators. The whole design is reward creators who create these pools. It's effectively going to be Tik Tok with money. We'll see if that works. But like the amount of time people spend on these creator platforms, there's a plausible like there's a plausible scenario in which just time equates with money. Time to fun is another one by the way. Sure. Like I I don't know why it needs a token per se. Um I don't know like maybe I can make more money than

$40 per tweet or sorry per DM. Um, but I do think this like sort of time for money and attention does have, you know, some element of Okay, now we're slightly off topic. What What are we supposed to be talking about? We have one. I think we can do one more question, which should be on meme coins, I think. Where do you guys think that is going? We've had the past year and a half dominated by memecoins. Will that last? I know we touched on it a bit, but I feel like this will make you guys So, like Austin Campbell at the back of the room, I think memecoins the most important innovation in crypto, you know, since Bitcoin. the most important innovation.

Okay. Okay. All right. I was ready to jump. He hates them. You start. Okay. Um yeah, I think memecoins are basically um I think they're basically fine. I think the the the philosophy that generated around memecoins was extremely destructive. Like this idea that well nothing we built here matters. All this financial nihilism [ __ ] I think that was really really bad for the industry. I think it's clearly already peaked and it's on the decline. And I think, you know, I'm telling you things you already know, which is that memecoins are down bad. Everybody suddenly feels stupid. Uh like, you know, all the all the generational wealth that people thought they had, like they they lost it all back, which is always what happens in every single one of these cycles. People think they're now unfathomably wealthy.

And like there's five people who actually cash out and everybody else is just greedy and just keeps playing the game until they lose it all back. Um and so I I think the the story one is that Pumped Up Fun made an amazing game. That game was very popular. Um, I don't think the long-term equilibrium is going to be, well, memecoins go away. Obviously, the big we're not talking about the big meme coins like Doge or or things like this. These are these are very different from the memecoin game. The memecoin game is played with these low cap [ __ ] that are coming out every single day. That's the memecoin game, and that's what we're talking about. Uh, Doge is Doge. It will always exist. It'll never go away. Um, I think for this game, the Memecoin game, uh, I think it's going to pancake over time.

Uh, probably not yet. probably there's another uh there's gonna be another uh run-of-the-mill when we have you know some macro reversal and risk assets go up and it's like oh suddenly everything's okay again and we have like a second hump I think that's probably going to happen with the coins but like people have already lifted the rock and they see all the little bugs of like oh Kelsio Ventures and Melania and like oh all these like all these snipers and grifters that are taking a piece of the action and suddenly it like doesn't feel quite as pure and quite as rebellious anymore now it kind of feels like oh I'm like I see the supply chain of the casino casino and I see all the little fees that the and I see all like the the the the firms that are optimizing the casino uh slot machines to extract the

exact right amount of money for me every time. Uh oh, I I read a book about it and now I know it's there and I can't unsee it. I think a more and more people feel that way about memecoins and that kind of means that the movement can't quite, you know, get all the way to where it was previously. Uh, but my claim is that when this stuff pancakes and meme memes don't automatically make money anymore, there will be some cohort of people who will just keep playing this game forever even when it stops making money. It stops being cool. It stops being the thing that everyone's doing. In the same way, there's still people buying NFT mints. You know, there's there like there's not a ton, but there's still people buying those NFT mints and like they're just going to do that forever. Um, I saw a documentary

recently, like a short video documentary about um, Cookie Clicker. How many people know? Do anyone know what Cookie Clicker is? Only a few people. Okay, you know Cookie Clicker. So, Cookie Clicker is this like really terrible idol game. It's basically like a browser game where you click on a picture of a cookie and you click enough times that you can like make things that automatically will click the cookie for you. It's the stupidest game ever invented, but it's like I there was a moment in like 2015 where this was like a viral game that everyone played for like 10 minutes. Um there's people who still play Cookie Clicker and they they interviewed one of these guys and one of these guys are like, "I will play Cookie Clicker until I'm an old man and I want my kids to play Cookie Clicker." And like for any

game, no matter how stupid it is, there's somebody who's just like they're just never going to let go of that game. And for memecoins, I think there's probably like 50,000 people for whom they will never let go of memecoins, no matter what. Like, there will be a new hot thing in crypto. There'll be a new trend. Everyone's going to be making money and getting unfathomably rich on the new thing, and everyone else is going to feel stupid and and, you know, way too old. But the memecoin guys will be like, but I I just love trading pictures of the coolest memes. I think they're going to evolve a bit. Talked about the Tik Tok thing. Creators are going to put their everybody's gonna have their own coin in the same way. Like, dude, if you told people 20 years ago that people were like, "My kids like

want me to buy like Roblox, you know, Robux and, you know, Fortnite skins and this that and the other thing." It's worth like you would we would have said 15 years ago, this is completely worthless. Um, I believe that meme coins are sort of the evolution of attention. By the way, even getting more specific, like it's not a perfect analogy, but like 90% of the S&P 500 is in intangible value, right? there's just like there's just not that many hard assets in the world anymore. Um there's brand value, there's like attention value, there's IP value, like whatever. Bottom line is we're moving to a world of like very few in my estimation and like the actual data hard assets and just a lot of value

around attention, things that are cool, things that are hip, things that people talk about and things that people are paying attention to. I think the number will be more than the 50,000 people. I think it's that memecoins tied to or tokens again value tradable value tied to attention tied to personalities tied to the things we cared about tied to communities will actually be an increasing a significantly increasing um portion of where people are allocating their you know hard hard-earned um McDonald's salary to it's just going to happen because there's the potential as we talked about it's a speculative economy for 100x effects and that's increasingly what people are looking

for. Whether it's sad or not, it's the reality. All right, I just want to before we wrap, I want to take a quick spot check of the room. So, given our two views on memecoins, how many people raise your hand agree with Mike's view of memecoins? Okay. How many people agree with you guys are getting my view of memecoins? Relatively split. It seems pretty even. Yeah. Yeah, this is what makes markets. Okay. Okay, that's good. That's good. All right. I guess we'll see uh we'll see in a year or so who's gonna turn out to be correct.

What about digital? Didn't that go away? Digital land. Yeah, sandbox. He's the guy buying sandbox still. There's there are thousand of those. Somebody's still buying everything that existed in the last. My friend Drew Austin is still buying sandbox land. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. A wonderful note to end on. I'm sad we have to end it, but Mas, thank you guys so much for coming on. Thanks for having us for having us. [Music]