LIVE: MACROECONOMICS AND MEGAETH | 0xRESEARCH

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Hey, good morning. Welcome, welcome to another Friday live stream research. I'm joined by my lovely, wonderful co-host Salvacio. How you doing today, Bach? >> Good. How are you doing? Can you hear me? I had a bit of technical difficulties earlier today. Yeah, I might be very warm. We were we were working through it, but we figured it out. >> Very good. Um I'm good. I'm good. Um I sent Jack an angry letter cuz he tried to steal our spot, but we're gonna we're going to move past it. I'm calming down, relaxing. No crashing out. It's going to be good. It's a good day. What about

you? How are you feeling? >> Uh feeling good. There's some news today that we can talk about. I think I think uh I don't know. Generally feeling pretty okay on crypto. I mean, maybe let's talk about it. Let's talk about the markets because I think this has been a topic that I've seen is you've got people crashing out about, you know, volatility in crypto. Meanwhile, like stocks and other things are just like continuing to go vertical.

I don't Do you have any thoughts on it? Are you doing anything differently these days or kind of business as usual? Because I'm seeing >> seeing some crypto crash outs and people going, "Hey, I'm going I'm going full equities now." What do you >> Yeah, I saw that. That was so funny. Um I um I mean, look, the crypto skill set is very very different to the equity skill set, right? As well as like the commodity skill set. Like I don't know how you could ever go from trading crypto to trading whatever metals. Um and I don't know how you can go from crypto to trading equities. Um I'm sure there are people who can do it and who can do it very very well. I think crypto is one of those markets that is quite

niche and there are certain things that I think only happen within crypto. Um so I'm not like part I know exactly what tweet you're referring to. I wish him the best of luck with his equities investments. I just I just think like if you've been born and bred within crypto, you really want to like like not fully transition away from it maybe immediately. Um I don't know how to say it without being like kind of a dick about it, but I don't know. I think it's a very different skill set. I wish him the best of luck. Um >> I don't know. What do you like? Think of it this way. When you're investing in a cryptocurrency,

you are I mean you do both I guess like you also invest in equities but would you say you have any edge in equities? Would you say you have any edge in crypto first of all and then let's do equities? >> Um probably a no on the equity side. I think I guess what I would say personally about them is that you can you can move you can move very differently in the equities world. I think there's a lot like a lot less need to kind of like constantly be scraping, you know, telegrams and deck screener, you know, type of actions. I think I think you can you can really like buy things and forget about them and just hang out uh in the equities world like buy, you know, classical advice like you

can just buy like good businesses that are growing and and sort of just forget about them and let them do their thing. Uh whereas like trading in crypto is is more of like okay if you're running the narratives then >> you know you can't you can't just buy like the hot new thing and then forget about it for a year. It doesn't really work like that. So >> uh but I do think if you're going to try to like bring that same strategy over then yeah I don't know maybe yeah you do get burned a little bit because I I don't think you get rewarded for the same behavior models in uh in the sort of trad equities world as you do in in crypto per se.

>> No, I definitely don't think so. I think you would struggle quite a bit. Um, I do think that you can come from equities and then do well in crypto though. Um, but also not as well as somebody who I think has always been in crypto and understands the market a lot better than other people. Um, yeah, somebody traditionally >> there. And there's different there's different like kind of areas, right? I guess if you're going to go from trading illquid shitcoins and then like gamble on Beyond Meat or something um and like you know Reddit Wall Street Bet type plays uh maybe it's kind of the same thing. Um and maybe you'll like get rinsed pretty frequently and hit a you

know hit a 10 beggger every once in a while. But yeah, broadly I think it it it's it probably takes generally like pretty different approaches. Do you do you trade um pers? >> No. >> Like are you No. Do you do options? >> Yeah, I do. I do use options, >> but generally like longerdated. >> If Okay. If you got equity option, if you got equity pers, would you trade equity pers? >> No. >> Or do you just not want equities at all?

No. Do you don't want pers at all? Because this is very interesting because this is like a whole thing now is like perpification which is I think makes a lot of sense. Equity per to me like logically make a lot I mean I think pers are the superior product to options. Um and a lot of people have spoken about this and like famously Jeff went on DBPN last week and talked about it. Um, >> but I was just curious like from your point of view because like I trade per very rarely, but I don't think I've ever bought an option >> or traded options.

>> Yeah, I think um I think probably for the gambling itch, I would agree that per DGEN product and like turning on the 100x leverage slider is just like an easier thing. But I guess what I would say personally is I mean I'm never going to trade like that. Um and like to me typically like if I'm looking at an option I might be looking at like leaps or like one year out or six months out type contracts to where like I'm not cons I don't want to be worried about if the price goes up or down 10% in the next week. Uh, I only care about the longer term move and and like per I

think are not like the product to trade if that's your if that's the position you're trying to take because you could get liquidated, you know, next month even though you think it's going to go, you know, 5x over the next few years. But for people who want to gamble like on the one month, you know, time frame, then sure. Or like the one week or the one day, then yeah, I think it makes sense on the shorter term like kind of cryptogambly aspect for sure. And probably for people who, you know, in the tread world, like the zerod options crowd, I'm sure they I'm sure some of those people will love, you know, turning up the leverage slider and going crazy on spy longs or whatever.

>> For sure. I mean, the reason I'm bringing it up is because like we've seen some um I think a lot of traditional um players are moving into per um like Robin Hood launched per in Europe, right? Um and then we're seeing a lot of crypto move into equities through per as well. So there's like a lot of coalesing around this one product which is equity burps. Um and we've all now recognized that it's like the best way to speculate on it. It's not a great way to hedge.

Like if you're an actual business and you wanted to hedge um like how farmers hedge their stuff, then it like probably doesn't make any sense. Um like you should probably still use futures or options. I don't think I think like for I guess not your purposes but like my purposes where I like I think that an event is going to lead to significant movement towards up or down then pers are the way to go. I don't think I would ever want to deal with options. And I think the broad majority of the world would also like the zero day options crowd. I imagine they would also go towards pers.

It's so much easier. Do you like how do you even price them? Like for them them it's like a lot easier to just see the price go up or down versus like try and figure out how to price these things. Although I'm not sure if they are trying to worry about how to price things. >> Yeah. I mean, what I think is funny is that both both PES and options are actually like quite complex. Like it's not so it's not as simple as like I think it's going to go up. Therefore, I buy calls or I get long and then I make money. You know, it if you don't understand funding rate and you don't and you don't understand like implied volatility um in in options, it's like you can be right in your head that like, oh, I

thought this was going to go up, so I bought a call. But like if that's already if that move is already priced in and you're overpaying for the option then you you may make no money or you might lose money. Um and like in per if you don't understand funding rates then you know maybe you pay all the funding in the game in the game that you would have made. So, it's like um but I I think on the shorter term time frame, you're probably right in that I think like the simplicity of a per probably makes it more attractive for just the raw DGEN like long short aspect versus through the call or like the option baskets.

>> Yeah, to be fair, if you're paying that much in funding, you should just pay it any like you haven't looked at it at all. But I guess you can make the same argument about options like not knowing price >> like the opt the funding rate that you meant like you can never hedge a position using like one thing that a lot of people say is like oh like these VCs are hedging their bags through persons like that's a horrible way to do anything like you can't vest something over four years using you can't hedge your vesting that's like four years using per you would lose a lot of money due to funding um interally and also it's like it's not

a good way to like it's not an efficient way to hedge things. It's not um it's very capital inefficient, right? Like if you're trying to match whatever exposure you have in spot, let's say it's like a million dollars, then either you're taking on like massive risk by hedging it by like levering it up or you're putting on a short that's like that size. It's stupid. It doesn't make any sense. Um we have relatively big day today. I think Kristoff and Fijia, how do you I guess Felix we can say is name >> Fedra. Yeah, I don't Yeah, >> people say I don't know if people say fed out loud. Probably say

>> I always call >> um we're going to have them on in 10 minutes. Um before we get into that though, what are your market thoughts? What are you interested in this week? What have you been looking at? >> Um there's a I feel like there's a lot of there's a lot of ideas floating around. Something I'm generally excited on like broadly is kind of the ICM thing thesis theme. >> Like Metadau is interesting. Um I'm not exposed to Metadial but like you know they've had a pretty strong run but I think the idea there is more interesting in terms of you know having some kind of

um protect more protections for token holders and like getting rid of that dual equity token model. Um I think that addresses a lot of like issues that we have with a ton of tokens and teams in the space still. So I I think what I broadly like about the ICM kind of idea is just seeing that continued push towards okay you have something being built a product a platform whatever protocol um they associate it with a token you know you you get rid of the equity conflict you give token holders upside in the in the potential of that thing um so any any steps that further that kind of

design philosophy are good in my opinion So, I'm excited to see more of it there. >> Yeah. Anything else? Can I make a Can I like This is my thing of V2 is better than V1. I know we mock it a lot, but this is literally a case of it. Like we had dog [ __ ] ICM stuff, um, believe famously, which never launched any form of like flywheel uh, which they promised. Um, and then now we're seeing like more and more serious capital formation platforms take off. This is also the first instance I've seen Noah be from Feya Capital be positive about something in crypto. Um, typically he's very upset with everything, but this one

he [ __ ] loves, which makes sense given that it's gone up and they're exposed to it. >> Um, but yeah, like I I I think they've done a great job. I mean, we had we had them on a few weeks back. Um they're also launching an AMM product which I think might be the reason that this move is also happening a little bit. Um lots of attention towards them as well. Famously the DBA and uh who was the other guys? I can't remember the other guys but they made a bid for it. The OTC like 40% lower than what the price was. People got upset about it and then there was another sale. Um Sixman Ventures got exposure lot of updates for them over the past few weeks. Um, and they've been doing pretty well. Another one is Or or

Orlined. I'm Orlined officially. Um, they implemented some Gamba casino mechanic. It's done particularly well. Uh, Ian Unsworth shout out um, friend of the pod has consistently messaged about it and said, "Look at the revenue. Look at the revenue." And they've actually made quite a bit if you annualize the last like three hours. It's a lot. >> We love annualizing. >> Yeah. >> Discreet short. I don't I don't know how long it'll last, but it has done um relatively well. Another big one, this one's relevant to you. Um I don't know if you ever shield Padre on the pod, but you shield it definitely very privately.

Um and you were very directionally correct. Um Pump Fun acquired a terminal um called Padre. I don't know if the listeners are familiar with it, but it's a onchain. Danny, you can give a better intro than this, but I'm just going to say like it's an onchain trading terminal kind of like an Axium competitor. Um, I don't think it's particularly good, but I also think it's it's like an actual working product, right? >> Yeah. I think, um, I guess I talked about it internally, considered writing about Padre a few months back in the summer. Um, part of the idea was like looking for, you know, kind of lowriced trading apps with tokens. Um, maybe a pump acquisition, but also like maybe an

Axiom kind of beta play. Um, since Axium doesn't have a token, uh, decided against it because I wasn't super bullish about the transparency and shipping speed of the team. Um, the acquisition here is interesting, but the token is down from when I looked at it. So, I made the right call and was right in both senses. was right that u maybe an acquisition for Pump was in the tables or in the cards at some point, but also right that the token necessarily wasn't because I think here the here the problem is and this is maybe again like that kind of ties into the ICM thing, but pump acquires Padre.

I don't I think the token just dies for Padre the platform. Like >> there's no like legal claim or anything to um to like of value in this acquisition. So, I think it's kind of just like a a sad a sad burger for anybody who was gambling on that token. It did like it spiked on the announcement and then sold off. So, >> yeah, >> I think people are realizing like, okay, this falls under pump now as part of the pump token. So, um you don't you don't really get anything if you're a >> a Padre bull per se. No, >> but I think this is something we've been talking about, right? pump like I think pump should have been should have bought a trading bot or acquired somebody

months ago. I think this has been like long time coming and um honestly maybe a little disappointed in like the speed of their execution here. Like they bought KL Scan first um back when they like did their raise and it was kind of like okay >> yeah they they made a big deal out of it as well. They're like today we're buying K scans like >> uh cool >> it's like a vibe it looks kind of like a vibe coder project. Um it is interesting that they're building out this like kind of product suite. Another thing here is I mean Ryan Connor very concerned historically about this idea of uh pump losing its edge to the front end and because the front end has a moat and pump does not it's just a back end and what Axiom could technically do is launch their own token launching

mechanism because it owns the user um and people want to trade it through that. Um, we're kind of seeing this a little bit. I would say Axiom integrated BMBB stuff. Um, and on the other hand, Pump is also like going against it. Um, buying up Padre and stuff. So, we'll see how this goes. I don't want to hold I don't want to hold too much of our market thoughts. We have two people now waiting officially. Um, I need James to put on an avatar, but I'll add Felix in first. Hello, Felix.

Are you well? What's up, guys? >> How you doing? >> I'm good. Good. Good. Got over my jet lag from D after uh >> a fun week. Yeah. How are you guys? >> Doing great. Glad to have you on. I think um gonna want to get your thoughts on I saw you tweeting about Trump's response to some Canada like nothingness. >> Dude, abandoned Canada again because there's a there's an ad he didn't like or something. So, that's That's how things are going over here in the great white north.

>> It's funny, you guys. You have to deal with all these spats, but you can uh you can invest in all these crypto ICOs with no lock up. >> That's how I hedge the deterioration of my nation is by just buying scams and then you're delta neutral. >> Surely it's not that it's kind of I'm coming in I shouldn't be saying this on live on a podcast, but I will be there within the next year. Um not where you are, but further east. So, >> no, it's it's fine. Like, you know, there's a real estate Ponzi as most people know and I don't know, the government's throwing a lot of money to try and offset the lack of exports to the US. But, uh I think like under under the surface things are changing pretty

meaningfully, but it takes time. But, I mean, day in day out, you know, I still uh I still went to Tim Horns this morning. That still exists. So, you know, >> Timmy's, >> you know, still watching the Oilers win at hockey games. So, you know, the sun keeps shining. >> I feel like on the real estate thing, too, it's like you can look at most, you know, large countries these days and say, yeah, they've got a real estate pricing for, you know, people complain about Australia and New Zealand and the US even. Um, >> I saw and Canada I think are the worst.

M >> I saw this video in Australia and it's like maybe like 150 people waiting to view a open house. I was like, "God, I would puke if I had to do this." >> Yeah, it's terrible. >> We also have Let's Stop ignoring him cuz I made him wait in the in the waiting room for too long. Hey, James, are you well? >> I am doing well. How's it going guys? >> Great. Always glad to have the massive podcast guy on the show. >> Massive podcast guy. [ __ ] love. >> I think I think the real estate stuff is actually kind of interesting cuz it's been it's been one of those things where like people continually just like doom post real estate charts and say that everything is going to collapse. But

like if you think about it for more than 5 seconds, you realize like there's just unbelievable structural issues behind the scenes that it's entirely possible that like prices will just go up forever. Not saying it's a good thing, but people just keep imagining that there's going to be some like 2007 doom loop that property prices crash 50%. Um, and I'd be curious. I mean, I don't know if you guys want to go into it too much, but like it is an interesting thing. I'm sure Felix has some some pretty interesting macro takes on it, but I think it's just like a very structural ingrained issue in our society now. >> Yeah. I mean, what happened is that like most people's retirement plans are basically their house equity and like taking out equity loans based on it. So like yeah, here in Canada like you know

people that are moving towards retirement or on the verge of it they're yeah their retirement plan is their house and maybe maybe they'll sell that house and downsize or maybe they'll pass it on to their kids or something. But yeah, you can't just let that unwind like if if you have a 50% decrease in housing prices like you know buy golden ammo type thing. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I think another thing it's interesting too like I kind of was always pessimistic on this that I like the the work from home thing would go away pretty quickly for like mega corpse in the United States and I think I've been think most people have been kind of proven right on that with most like high-skilled white collar workers are coming back to the office like even in the tech space like four to five days a week. So like the

deflationary aspect of people moving to like the Midwest and that kind of stuff just kind of didn't really happen and now like you know your your Northeast and then West Coast cities just like continue to remain super well built. >> But don't also like all of funds and institutions and governments have massive exposure into like these development companies for commercial real estate that it like wouldn't make any sense for them to let that die out. I'm not a I don't know if you guys noticed, but I'm not a big >> It's protect. Yeah, it's protected on that side, but I'm not even talking about like I'm not even talking about like people like you know institutional people not letting things fail. I just mean like the pure demand side like

people still want to live in these places, right? Like the the the demise of like New York City as a place to live was was highly exaggerated, right? And people still want to come here and people still want to live here for the social aspects. Well, let's though because I know multiple people leaving New York now because of >> the upcoming election out of fear >> because of communism. >> Yeah, I think that's a little bit of a meme. Like it's like I I get it to a degree, but like it's one of those like >> show me don't tell me type of thing. Like for your your rich hedge fun in New York, like I don't know, whatever. Maybe you'll move to Greenwich. I don't know if that's really something that's going to happen. Um, and also like very like inside baseball stuff, like there's only

so much that the mayor of New York City can actually do, right? Like at the end of the day, he's a mayor and he's he's beholden to like state laws. Like he's he's not he doesn't have the ability to just like dramatically change the the taxation regime of the city overnight. >> Yeah. I mean, I'm going to agree with James here. Um, I mean, you you you might have different areas that are experiencing population growth booms now. you know, Texas and, you know, Colorado and some different places like that. Maybe maybe there's some people who are opting to go to like these newer maybe slightly less costly locations rather than moving to like LA or SF or NYC. But like by and by I think the demand like James said I think the

demand for those places remains high despite the fact that like I mean I live out in the boonies like anybody that's trying to like compete for space in NYC could come here and live comfortably um quite easily in the Midwest. It's just they don't want to you know they want to live in a big city uh somewhere that is coveted by a lot of people. I'd be curious, Felix, on your side, like what's the like on the on the flip side from like demand side of the United States, I think places like Canada and Australia specifically have like basically committed regulatory suku by allowing foreigners to just dump all of their dirty cash in the country in the form of real estate. Like, do you see that on the ground at all with Canadians? Like, is there a ground swell

of people ultimately getting fed up and pissed off about this kind of stuff? >> Oh, yeah. There's like, yeah, foreign holder taxes now. Um like Van I I live near Vancouver and that's kind of ground zero for that where yeah there's just been a ton of capital just flies into there and then they just park it basically like nobody even lives in the houses. It's just a way to basically get money out of, you know, more capital controlled nations. And but yeah, people are super fed up. Like it's it's pretty insane, right? Like you go you go through, you know, these cities and there's you either have these shoe box condos where there's a ton of people living in that are built terribly or you have all these detached homes that just sit empty that are just basically, you

know, capital sinks effectively. And yeah, it's it's really bad for society. I don't know. Maybe maybe blockchain can fix that. You know, maybe crypto solves this stuff. I know. >> What's their logic though for like what's their logic for allowing like allowing it and saying, "Okay, we're going to put a slight tax on it versus like just saying no, this is not allowed." And if you're a Chinese national taking like your dirty CCP money, like it doesn't matter what level of tax you're going to put on it. They're they're like trying to get their money out of the country. They're going to do it. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, I think they started with a hold like you can't I think they had like a pause for two years or something where there was none like foreigners couldn't buy but I think now it's just moving towards a tax or

something. I don't know. >> They also make >> they also make you do like a someone has to live in it that's in your family, right? Or else they tax you. But you can get around all of these relatively easily or like you have to rent it out or something. >> It's not part I like I think they should probably ban people. I don't know. It's that's also a difficult thing though. No, because if you're an Anglo country, you have this whole thing of like property rights. So, you can't just be like, "Oh, you can't buy this and I won't let you like and you can't take it out of people's hands." Versus like in other countries.

I assume in in Asia, they're not as >> as strict about all of this. >> Is this like a locality thing, Felix? like I could imagine that the tax revenues might be quite meaningful especially if maybe they're struggling to increase taxes in other in other ways. So, like >> that's actually a huge one for like smaller towns. I've heard too where now that housing prices aren't up only like these municipal governments aren't getting as much tax revenue from that from either the the selling of the houses. You know, they still get property taxes, but I've heard a lot of anecdotal stories where yeah, municipal governments are struggling pretty hard because, you know, they spent too much

in COVID and then you have this combination of just like a lack of tax revenue. There's a Yeah, there's a lot of uh a lot of pain right there. I didn't I didn't think we'd be talking about the intricacies of of municip municipal housing to property taxes >> at Zerx Research. I was actually just gonna um try and segue away because I don't know if we noticed, but Felix tried to do it by bringing up the blockchain thing, but we didn't let him. We said, "Let's talk more." >> I was in host mode. >> Yeah. Thank you, Felix. Um, what are you I guess like James and Phillips, we were just talking about Mega E. I don't know.

Are you guys interested? Are you guys gonna do that thing or no? Like the ICO? >> Yeah, I love Mega ETH. Um, yeah, I have one of the Fluffle NFT things, so I have exposure from that. Um, hoping to get more. I don't know. I mean, I'm I'm Canadian, so I don't have the one-year lockup that some people have. So, yeah. For me, it seems like a layup. It's just about how much you can get from it. But, I don't I mean, I think it's I I'm sure you guys can speak better to the tech, but uh see a lot of really interesting DAS that are going to be built or about to launch or or being built on Mega ETH right now. And that that seems pretty interesting to me. Like it's always interesting to see where the devs are are moving to build and where these

projects are launching. And it seems like there's a lot of stuff coming up for me. >> Yeah, I'm gonna do it, too. I think it's very smart. Just like piggybacking off of Plasma, obviously, it's just smart from community move. I think they know that they're going to leave money on the table, but just gets people more engaged. So, yeah, I definitely plan to allocate to the extent that I can. >> In a hypothetical world, I'm just going to ask a question. In a hypothetical world where there's there is a lock up, uh, do you still allocate or no? >> Not at this price. >> Yeah. If you're buying one bill and then yeah, you get like a 10% discount, which is kind of not really anything for >> I don't know. I I wouldn't lock up for a year for 10% discount, but maybe I'm

just fighting myself out of allocation because the red guy's listening or something. No, I um James, to your point like about the money thing, I think this is actually a good solution because they're clear like I don't they're not airdropping, right? Or at least I didn't see anything about airdrops and I think that makes sense. like you can reduce your airdrop amount like the amount of tokens that you're giving out um by like letting people buy in at uh prices that have typically been reserved for VCs and private investors. Um like one bill is I mean it's a bit hefty but it's also not like horribly priced if it's unlocked uh fully at launch. So I think that's like that's a

good >> I'm sure like five six bill or something like that on day one. >> Yeah. I mean on hype it's five bill right now I think I can check again but >> what do you guys think about the what came out this morning about the KPI based tokconomics I thought that was really interesting instead of just like time based >> yeah I think that makes a lot of sense just like you're never going to get the teams that should be doing it actually do it and you're going to get like really like teams that probably don't need to do it like the mega guys they're going to be the ones doing it like you're not never going to get Um I don't know what's like a scammy team mantra to do this thing. Um but like the good guys will probably end up doing it. It's the

same. Um but I think it's interesting. It depends on how they design the KPIs as well. Like they could make it ridiculously low obviously or they would they could not share the KPI like they could say oh we get >> 100 transactions a day. >> How detailed are they? >> Yeah. I don't know. I haven't seen. We're gonna have Namakon um from Mega E in like 45 minutes and I'll ask him then. We'll grill him about >> like my initial thought would be my initial thought would be like it's actually kind of cool. It's it's a neat new idea, but I hope that they're not too granular on like what the KPIs are because then obviously you're just going to have teams solve to like meet the KPIs at the detriment of like the

project actually working. >> There's no complete specifics out yet. They just they gave some potential growth angles to use like ecosystem growth, tech performance, decentralization. So I guess we'll see. Maybe you align some of that to like it could be TVL, it could be number of nodes, you know. >> I think I think it's a good I think it's a good step in the right direction of where token supply emissions should go in the future. Like I still think it's really insane to me when you compare these these tokconomics versus just like traditional equity where you know you might have some sort of agreement there where you you can issue up to say a billion shares but it's not like you're

going to decide okay I'm going to I'm going to linearly do this for the next four years and then at the end point that'll be it and then that's going to be the hard cap forever. like that just if we're going to move in the direction of of of tokens having more equity rights, it doesn't make sense to me to have this like super static linear supply function for tokens. Like it should be dynamic. Like if if there's interesting growth opportunities, they should be able to increase their token supply and if it makes more sense to do buybacks, they should do that. Like there should it should just be more dynamic. >> Yeah, this is something that um John Sharps and Hu, I think they posted about it for Hyperlid. They said burn the rest of the tokens like whatever it is 55%.

And just issue tokens when you need it instead of having this schedule of unlocks. Um this is like we adopted this from Bitcoin right like the max cap thing from Bitcoin. But Bitcoin is a very unique asset. Like it needs a max cap. >> Um whether it will have a max cap forever or not is like a discussion that a lot of people will have with each other and I don't know if it will. like Daniel Smith is very clearly in the camp that it can't sustain having a max cap forever and eventually they'll have to inflate to pay miners. I'm sure there's other people who very strongly disagree with that because that kind of ruins the purpose of it. Um but I agree with you like it doesn't make any sense, but in general like I think the entire

inflation thing, emissions thing is already very like obfiscated. We don't have a proper token unlock schedule like website. Like there's no filings for it. you can't really find and sometimes we deal with these data points with these like L1s because like a large part of Block Works is building out dashboards and you want to build out dashboards for missions when the large unlocks are etc. Um, and they'll post something on their medium or on their like blog and it won't be what you see like happens on chain like onchain you can clearly see like the unlock happened on the 28th and like in their docs it's like oh the unlock's going to happen on the 8th of the next month and just doesn't add up. So this is like a lot of these things I think need to come into

place and I think the way that it comes into place is forgive me metad um soner things like this that like make this a more streamlined process to launch these tokens um or like I guess like allocate this capital and form it and allow investors in. And I think like eventually through that we'll get more and more data. Um and then maybe we'll realize we don't actually have to put on like max caps. We can just like issue it through these platforms. I think that's the endgame. And I think all of these like metad on the decentralized side I think echo is such a great product. I think like that on the trady side like the more institutional side um that stuff has been like the best thing that

launched the past two years apart from like I don't know hyper liquid etc etc. I have to have it to my hyper but like Echo is I mean James you were very positive about a crypto product this morning and it was >> Echo the rare one it's it's huge it's >> it's rejuvenating. No, I think Echo is great. like it's just it's like the amount of deals that I've seen on it that are like actually genuinely good and is is super refreshing is one thing and then two like I hate the word community but there's a lot of VCs that are actually putting good deals on Echko for like you know it's not a tremendous amount of money but they're giving like whatever 4 million to their group and these are like obviously good deals that they would typically just eat up the

capacity for themselves. So I I actually from my own personal experience really disagree with the idea of like adverse selection on Echo. Like sure there's some crap that you see, but like you're going to see that with anything. Um I've been like really really surprised to the upside with how good the the deals have been there. I mean it's a better alternative like of just having no because like you know the whole issue of the past four years is that based on what Gary Gler was doing and everything like we had we had the full extreme on one side of of the ICO craze back in the day and then like the past four years has been the other extreme versus like the only people that see upside are uh you know just registered investors or VCs basically and they capture that whole interim until public launch and

there's been nothing in the middle and so I think it's like It's for sure a great thing to have Sonar Echo and just these different iterations on like the middle portion of the of the capital raising process that's been missing for so long. >> Yeah. You think of it, it's like it's also kind of like it's curated in a way, right? And you get you get the brand of Kobe behind it who's objectively probably like the best actor in the crypto space. Um like you're not going to Why is Picasha throwing his hands up because I didn't mention Jeff at Hyperlid? Okay, he's number he's number two behind Jeff.

>> Me, man. It's me. It's not you. >> Um, but like it's it's not slop that you're seeing, right? Like it's it's not like you're just going on I'm not going to name any any other competitors, but like any dog [ __ ] raise, it's going to be on there. Like for the most part, you're seeing at least defensible stuff. >> Is there is there a risk though that now that Coinbase is buying it, we're just going to get like slot tokens on base or something? >> Oh, they're going to destroy it. Yeah, it's gonna they're gonna they're going to [ __ ] ruin it, right? Like Coinbase sucks. They're going to They're going to ruin it. They're going to take the beautiful baby and kill it. Yeah, 100%.

It's over. >> I'm I'm hoping Kobe still stays relatively involved, which to me it seems like he will that he doesn't allow to happen. >> There's probably like an earnout agreement or something where he's involved for like two years and then >> just please keep [ __ ] Jesse Pollock as far away from that pro like that protocol as possible. Don't let his hands anywhere [ __ ] near it. I'm not that worried about Jesse, but my big thing is like they have so much KYC data now for people and it's like Coinbase has historically been a little shaky with KYC data.

>> Yeah. I still got called every day by Coinbase data leaks like Yeah. >> Yeah. So, like that's that would be my main worry. Um, but I think they're probably going to mess it up a little bit. One thing is I I saw this who's who's one of I need to be careful. You just got rugged by the cyber. >> They didn't they didn't want you to call that out. >> There was some divine intervention there, I think.

>> Repeat what you said, Boach. >> Did you not hear me? >> No, you need to repeat what you said. >> You're good now, though. Uh Rob Hadock from Dragonfly made a post about how there's adverse selection in Echo sales, right? Whose pod did he say that on? James, is that referring to >> Yeah, that that's >> Yeah. >> Yeah, that's one of ours. Um I think that's probably not a very useful comment because obviously in venture capital there is a lot of the deals will not go very well. So that's my >> yeah zombies like

>> by definition it's a tautology like the further away you go from like seed like you're best friends with everyone in this tightnit ecosystem like yes of course there's going to be adverse selection like the closer you are to the source the better fine I get that um but like if we're being logically consistent to the ethos of crypto like this is just opening things up like no one's putting a gun to your head and saying you need to allocate this stuff on Echo like I'd rather have the option and not do it. >> I mean, we live in an industry where you can of like building blocks, right? Like somebody can just come in with a different version of Echo. I don't see why they can do that. Like, >> and we'll have a good test piece here now that Yeah. like Coinbase owns it.

Will will that change? And if if the market wants competition or a different iteration of it, that'll emerge. I mean, I'm sure there's people working on that. I think there's like Legion, which is sort of similar in some ways, but um >> yeah. >> Yeah. Competition will emerge if if if it's seen as being adverse in selection. Um, if we're just seeing only base tokens being launched on it, like the market will shift. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> If if your business is as a VC and uh you're not invested in Echko and this product takes off, then, you know, maybe it's eating into some of the deals at better disc, you know, better pricing that you could have had if it didn't exist. So, I mean, doesn't it's not surprising that VC is upset about a platform that gives people access to VC

like deals. >> Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I mean, another thing here is um it's all based on what groups you're in. Um like the echo deals that you get um except for the sonar ones which is like public. And I don't know like also the first like few opportunities that you get into private markets is always [ __ ] anyway. Like I don't think if you first get access to a deal it's it's always going to be bad. No, because you don't have any way to judge how things will work. Like I don't know what would the first seed that you guys did or the first like series A or whatever investment that you did surely lost money on it or is that just me? Like I can't I can't hear one person to say like a good thing about

the first investment that they did. >> Trying to think of what I did first. No, I got a good track record. That's just you man. >> Oh, I don't know. I guess like when you because in my mind it's like this, right? like you get access to the seed deal and it's not particularly good, but it's the first time that you've gotten access and you're like, "Holy [ __ ] I got to do this." >> Yeah. And you get excited and you don't really Yeah. I think that that's going to be like an interesting learn. Like we're what, a year into Echo now? Year and a half or something. And obviously this style investing is very different for a lot of people from just open market liquid buying. Like it it it looks nice to see, okay, I'm buying at 100 mil val and it's going to launch at

one bill. You're like, sweet, I made a bunch of money. But you're locked up for four years. you like it's it's a whole different ballgame. Um it'll be interesting to see how like do you see drop off where people just get burned too many times where it's like oh sick like my fourth you know gaming NFT project that I funded that is the zero is like still locked up and already at a zero. Um I'm over this. I'm going back to liquid tokens. Like be interesting to see if that how that evolves. Yeah, I think there's a cyclicality effect here, Boach, where um you know, obviously Ekko's making waves right now, so maybe a ton of new people will sign up and do like the next big deal that appears. And to Felix's point, like let's see what happens. You know,

maybe that project is up massively day one, um but they don't unlock for the next year and you know, four years after that, they they might be down net by the time that fully comes to fruition. So I think at a point in time it can look really attractive and then you look back a you know as the years go by and say wow that was actually an awful investment. >> It's kind of happened to me. >> I feel like the sweet spot for just you know average investors that can be accredited or something like or like just barely become credit and could do this is the stuff that's like one year lock up or maybe six month lock up and at a higher valuation. I think that's a great place to play at for a lot of people I think. like yeah, don't get

caught up in just chasing preede seed stuff and like you know there's a reason VCs do what they do which is a shotgun approach because 95% of those go to zero and that's expected and normal and you know they're not losing sleep on it but I think playing a bit more higher up in that in that process is probably a good thing for most people. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. If you don't have the network, then it probably makes sense to just, you know, if you think something's a great deal and there's there's no lock up, then that you're probably going to have better success than spraying and praying and all the, you know, stuff that's getting handed down to you. >> Yeah. Also, if somebody's reaching out to you to do a seed round, it's probably not a good seed round. That's a very key.

>> Wait, we're having trouble filling this seed round. Do you want it? >> You need to be begging people for it. that sign. Um, Felix, can I get your official I solved macro take on um why Bitcoin is not doing particularly well or I guess crypto is not doing particularly well. >> Well, the issue is that it's not I don't know. It's not a I'm okay. 2026 I am super super super bullish on from a macro macro perspective. Like you have we had a CPI print coming today. Came out cool. That's really good. kind of keeps us on the same runway. You know, we're in this government shutdown right now, so we have almost like no data points coming out. So, this is I don't think we're going to get next month's

CPI print. Um, we didn't get last month's jobs report. So, we have very little things to go off. So, this is like one of the only things we have going on. Came on soft. Um, so that pretty much sets us up nicely for rate cuts for the next few meetings pretty pretty clearly. Um, at least at like 25 bips. So you have that runway for the next few months and then you move pretty quickly into the next uh Fed chair to replace Powell and you know no matter what happens it's going to be a dove like you know it's going to be somebody with an easing tilt. I think it's still up for debate on whether they can wrangle dominance of the composition of the Fed Fed board of governors because um you know it's not just PAL deciding

okay I'm going to I'm going to cut rates today it's a it's a committee so they need to get basically a majority of the of the governors and then I think the playbook was for them to then be able to pressure when all the presidents get nominated or renominated next year they could get in a bunch of doves and then basically through that suddenly you just have this majority composition of the FOMC that's super super doubbish and then just you know cut rates to two or 1% or something like that and so we'll see if that happens. Um I think a lot of it is dependent on whether they can fire uh Cook or not um and that whole thing.

So whether that happens or not is probably going to decide whether they can get majority but regardless you're going to have a super doubbish Fed chair. Um that's a given. A lot of the fiscal side of things, like the big beautiful bill, yes, that got passed a few months ago, but a lot of the actual tangible stimulative sides of things start in 2026. So, you've actually had this weird few months where you've had the tariff revenue, which is just like sucking money out of the economy. So, that's kind of growth negative, but you haven't had the offsetting positive impulses from the big beautiful bill. That's starting in 2026. So when I look at 2026, it's like, okay, super stimulative monetary, super stimulative fiscal. Um, and then you compare that with just

market structure right now. So obviously gold's been sending and everybody's just been kind of losing their minds because because Bitcoin isn't keeping up with it, and it's perplexing to me. Um, there's been a lot of weird kind of liquidity things in Trafi recently. Um, don't need to get too deep into it, but just to say that liquidity has been a little strange and I think there's been some hiccups because of that. Some weird derivative stuff that maybe James can get into in terms of OPEX recently. But overall, it's been very hiccupy recently. And then you have like the cryptospecific stuff of like the October 10th crash. Um, everybody getting out there like washing out 40% of open interest. And then now you have ancient whales still selling Bitcoin. you have a

lot of people selling because they believe in the four-year cycle peak happening like right now. Um, so it creates this kind of choppy mental illness market I think for obviously the past month and I think it'll probably continue for the next two months. But to me that's just like a time to really accumulate because none of that really matters in 2026 and even further like if you move into 2026, you could have a situation specific to crypto where you have okay retail just got decimated on per trading like they're just zeroed. um you have a ton of people that have sold because of four year cycle peak type stuff and then at the same time you have the ETF marginal buyers just keep chugging away and

they've been slow recently for sure but you know they're not they're not thinking about happenings like I don't think most of I don't think the average person buying like an IBIT ETF knows what the difficulty adjustment is so I just don't think that stuff is really relevant to them deciding to buy or not as it has been for the past few years so I think that sets up like a lot of chasing in 2026 where a lot of like crypton natives are going to be super sidelined and we just see this like grind higher. That's that's my read. So it's just trying to get to that point. Um so I think it's just like slow accumulation not not getting too chopped up here in the in these choppy markets.

But it's it's been hard that's for sure. Like I got super bullish right before the the liquidation in October 10th but managed to get stopped out pretty quick. So kind of cut some losses but like very very minor but obviously you know you have to get you have to survive to get from point A to point B to actually see the gains. So that was like a good lesson of like even through that process I was like nothing's really changed for my fundamental views. It's just trying to risk manage to get to the other side of the trade. >> I will say um >> go ahead.

>> Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, Felix, like, do you think do you think I'm mid-curving it by thinking and spending too much time thinking about um strategy and other debts and their like just complete inability to raise and bid over the last couple of weeks and months? Like, do you think that's going to change based on anything that you mentioned in 2026 and they'll come back to the market with like a more sustained bid? >> No. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I guess that's a good uh contra argument is that perhaps we we've been elevated by those DATs and those DATs just like can hardly buy anymore. Um >> Yeah, they're just locked out, right?

Totally locked out. >> Yeah. So I I mean I think you're on the same page as me that I don't think there's like major risk in them becoming forced sellers of the tokens they own already, but it's just they're not going to be marginal buyers. So yeah, maybe you just need to wait for whoever that new marginal buyer is. Uh but in the meantime, yeah, I think that is a that is a good point. Like I don't see any sort of upside coming from DATs at any time anytime soon. >> And I mean, we've been getting really bad DATs recently as well. Like >> we're getting into >> I was crashing out about the bear chain debt because I got I have severe as a Canadian, I have severe PTSD about the wheat stock bubble in like 2017. Like that's all everybody was talking about

here. And like ground zero of that bubble was this guy like Bruce Linton at Canopy Growth. He was like the the CEO of it and then he brought it public and then like right at the pico top he just basically quit and was like sweet good job everybody left at like 25 bill I think it's at like 500 million now so now he's the chairman of the board of that bear chain DAT and I'm just like dude >> and I also think to to Felix's point of like talking about the macro lineup for 2026 like and if we like segue this back to debts I do kind of feel like you need to delineate the difference between Bitcoin in everything else, right? Like and and that was I think that was really well evidenced by the performance of basically everything before like DATs

really went crazy this summer, right? Like ETH was was completely a dead asset. And you know, I guess I guess we can debate this, but I I hold strongly to my belief that the only reason it got an all-time high was because of Tom Lee. And it's pretty obvious that it's it's struggling without him currently being in the markets now. So, I'm just really weary of assets like that and like what the value proposition is to buy something like ETH for the next like six months to a year. Like is it going to if you're if you're playing like a macro framework like just express it through Bitcoin, why would you express it through ETH?

>> Because there's really nothing else going on with the asset right now. >> Yeah, Liquid I pretty much just only on Bitcoin right now. >> But the ETH argument isn't um macro stuff, right? Like the ETH argument is tokenization. Like that's been >> right. But I'm saying like that argument is not like not like a real one, right? And I mean that seriously like that like the the argument when ETH went from whatever 1400 to alltime highs was all like the tokenization everyone's, you know, adopting the stuff. And my argument was like no, BMNR is just slamming by for like several weeks. And I I think that proved to be the correct take right?

>> Like selling it to Tom Lee was the right move. >> Yeah. Do you see there being a tokenization um I guess like narrative popup eventually cuz like on our like on our side if you are scrolling through Twitter or if you're like getting any inbound all you see is >> tokenization stuff and this is like historically private credit um money market funds and now more and more so stocks um a lot of the Robin Hood stock a lot of stocks have been tokenized by Robin Hood recently on arbitum. The volume and the liquidity is horrible at this point. But I imagine it only gets better, right? So like you're seeing an

active shift on chain for tokenization. You don't think it's >> No, no. I So like I I mean what I think in that I think actually doesn't matter. So like let's just assume from from the perspective that your argument is correct and things are going to be massively tokenized. um there's nothing beyond a narrative argument as to why that should benefit Ethereum, right? It's this whole concept of like, oh, if everyone builds their corpor chains on on L2s and you know, all that good stuff, like Ethereum should go up in price and it's like, well, like not really, right? Like narrative based, sure, but there's no mechan there's no like mechanistic way to make it go up in the same sense when people pitch you on Salana and they're like, yes, people are

gambling and there's increased REV, token goes up, like got it. like there's a mechanical flow there. Um like that's just not there for Ethereum, right? >> Yeah. The value just doesn't exist for ETH. >> But I guess like for Bitcoin, it doesn't have any value acrruel, but it has that deflation, not deflationary, but it has that like digital gold narrative which can make it go up. >> But I think it's just like a >> No, like Bitcoin's like a magic unicorn, right? Like I think like like candidly like it's just it's just a different asset. And I think that debate is like over at this point which is why I think ETH has been so like middling because it's like trying to to play both sides of that like oh we're going to be money because it's Lindy and then at the same time have like a very technical argument

as to why it's going to acrue value. Um so it's kind of like a tweener in between both of those. It's kind of not doing great at either of them which I think is is reflected in the fact that the token really hasn't done much in quite some time. Yeah, to be fair, Solana is also not doing great. Like against that argument, I guess is Solana gambling has subsided and a lot of people claimed that it was going to be cyclical and it we've seen that it's at least semi-yclical, right? Like in that it has gone down now quite a bit. Um versus like the Ethereum bullcase is that >> I mean if like there's no revenue ever so we're just going to keep going up.

Why is no per why has no perplex gotten any traction on Salana? Is it like a technical thing? Like I'm I'm dumb in that world, but I'm just curious. >> Um it was a technical thing for a very long time because market makers um well initially they had some issues with like uptime and you can't onboard a lot of institutional capital or I guess like a lot of capital in general if you're going to have uptime issues um especially if like prices are crashing and the chain isn't working. And then I think they had some issues with um prioritizing cancels um which meant that market makers couldn't participate in the way that they wanted to. Um and then now I think it's mainly just that they don't really have a good product. Like >> my argument

>> apparently building one. >> Yeah. I think that one was a vibe coded project that I'm totally forgot. That's that was his argument which to me yeah >> seemed like if you're create if you're the founder of Solana and you're creating something that everyone's talking about >> you want to private it right like you don't want it in a public repo um >> but like the existing competitors are just horrible on like drift is have you used drift felix >> I I used drift in like when it first launched in like what was that 2021 or something um I don't even know but yeah I actually remember that the time when Salana like you you had to hit Phantom like 80 times to get a transaction through and yeah, it's just like you

can't trade you can't trade a perfax like that. Um >> no, you can't. >> Yeah, they um we talk about this quite a bit. I talked about this with Ryan Connor quite a bit because he's been historically like a soul bull and a sole purp bull specifically because he thinks if an asset exists on a base chain and you can also trade per on that base chain that is good because you can run more complex strategies. I think that kind of makes sense. Um, but on the other hand, um, it just hasn't happened. And I think we've like people want performance and they want like a familiar UX and they want a lot of listings and there's like two two competitors I think at like two products at this point that offer it. Um, one

lighter, one Hyperlid. Um, we'll see if the if the Solana Boys ever catch up. I wouldn't be surprised if they try. I mean, they have so much money there >> that to me it seems almost like lazy to not not do like a proper bid for it. >> Yeah. >> James, so what are you bullish on apart from hating on Ethereum? >> Uh, I don't know. I'm bullish on kind of just hanging out and not going crazy over the next couple of months. Um, like personally, all I'm doing right now is I have spot Bitcoin. Um, and then I sold all my plasma near the TGE and I kept most of the proceeds in the ecosystem.

Um, there's still just a lot of pretty interesting yield farming stuff to do there. Shout out to our goat river. Um, so yeah, that's where I'm spending most of my time just farming stuff on farming stuff on plasma right now and just hanging out and trying to find like interesting deals and stuff to do on the side. >> That's a crazy call you just made. >> Yeah, I sold all my plasma and I'm farming the rewards. Thanks, River. >> Shut up. >> I don't know. No, no, no, no, no. That that was not the that was not the the connection I was drawing. I mean, I did the shout out was more so just he developed a lot of um like obviously awesome connections in the ecosystem and stuff stuff went live. No, you're good.

I'm bagging. >> You didn't sell your plasma. You rotated into USDTO so that you could take advantage of activity in the plasma ecosystem. >> Yeah, you need to learn how to speak in this industry. >> Got to get media trained, James. >> Yes, exactly. I I will say that's probably my favorite way to do anything, James, in that like there's like a few opportunities a year guy. I hate quoting this guy. What's it MGNR? MNGR. Do you know who I'm talking about? And he has that like five. >> It's like actually true. Like there's five times a year where you have to get exposure. it's like an ICO or it's like there's like a very short deposit window but like or like it's a new very cool asset that is being sold um at way too

low prices um and then that's why >> I spend a ton of time in crypto but like I don't really like I can't really don't really even like do that much in terms of like transacting and making like big trades like most of the time I'm just in different groups listening to things and trying to find interesting ideas like I definitely don't think you need to constantly taking trades and chopping yourself up, there's just no benefit. >> No, definitely not. And if you meet a few good interesting people, they'll tell you when there's something that's good that's going to pop up. Like everyone was talking about I don't know when Hyperlid launched. I don't want to give anything too recent or like when XPL pred was went live, right? like everyone was talking about that's a great opportunity

and like apart from that you really don't have to play the one thing about this is that >> Twitter has become increasingly negative for getting any value out of um versus like I feel like private chats or like just building connections through regular means is a lot lot better to actually make money. >> Yeah. Nobody nobody actually talks about what they're doing on CT anymore. It's just like LinkedIn slop basically. And >> but I mean you kind of have to like what's the upside for for doing that?

Like >> you can you can become some sort of you know coal poster. Um but then you get one thing wrong and then you know everybody hates you and it's like well I'm not even like making money off this. So it's like why not just actually hang out with my friends that are keen to have like a nuance discussion and then I'm just going to [ __ ] post on Twitter and just have fun anyway. So >> yeah, the only good thing about Twitter is that you get free money given to you three times a year from fraud. >> Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm okay with coal posting for another year after my monad eligibility looked pretty good.

>> Very good. >> Yeah, I feel like the on the Twitter side, the only accounts that you'll see maybe actual actionable advice from are probably locked and they've probably been locked for a long time. So, if you're not following them today, you're you're probably not seeing what they're talking about. >> Yeah. Guys, make sure to follow James Kristoff's alt. It's called Riley_GMI and it has a lot of alpha. It's locked behind the payw wall. So, that's a good one. >> Make sure to follow James before he locks his account.

>> Yeah, that's a very good one. Yeah, like I've spent the last couple of days um on Twitter telling Chain Yoda that he adopted me and he needs to give me some cheeseburgers. So yeah, that's that's what I've been spending my time on. >> That's very good with Chain Yoda. Um one thing I will say is that there is like Okay, we were talking about Echo. What one thing I wanted to add there is like there's this new article. Do you guys know DeFi Monk? I don't know if you're familiar with him. Anyway, he used to work on MSari Networks at Synchry Capital, a very smart guy. I had him on a pod once.

>> Um, he posted this article about crypto optimism and I feel like we spent a good amount of the past year and a half complaining. I mean, James has complained since he was born, I presume, but like we've just for a year and a half it was all about financial nihilism. You have to trade. You have to post coal. You have to be very upset constantly. Um but Echo fundamentally a good product. Prediction markets fundamentally a good product. Um a lot of like new chains are actually relatively interesting. So it's like life is actually kind of good if you can just crypto is actually kind of good if you can just take a take a step back and not not doom post on Twitter about how

everything. >> I read that article. It was good. Um, I feel like it's just like this we're in this weird moment. I've seen some people compare it to basically like tech post.com crash in 2000 where you're sort of going through the ashes trying to figure out what's real real or not. And you know, you look at like for sure we can say that the crypto industry like 70% of it is just like recursive looping and not really much real there. But I think that 30% is very very powerful. Um, and then, you know, maybe some people are just trying to come to terms with it. It's like, okay, well, what are the best useful things that we've created? Is it just stable coin payments, um, lending and borrowing and sending stuff from one country to the

other really quickly with a very little amount of fees? Is that it? And it's sort of this moment of trying to figure it out like or do we keep going down the route of, you know, is there ways that you use crypto in in gaming or like NFTTS or or any sort of these these more cultural touch points that we've seen bubbles come and go in? And I feel like it's just this coming to terms between the two like is it just making financial services more efficient from one form or another or is there all this other stuff? And I feel like that's sort of one of the the big things people are trying to figure out right now.

>> Yeah, I agree with that. I also think like something that can help people feel better is like just because you emotionally feel like something is silly or like the industry is not progressing in the way that you think it is or think it should like that does not preclude you from taking advantage of that situation and making money, right? Like there's many things that I think are stupid and silly in the industry, but like if there's a way to trade them and invest in them in a way that makes money, like that's what your job is as an investor, not to kind of just blowby and complain about things being being stupid.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. I I think you see it on the in tread markets as well right now. There's probably plenty of people who are upset about, you know, Trump picking stocks, but it's like if you really want to like, you know, you there's a way to make money doing that. You can believe in the Intel, you know, thesis there and just get long and hope he's going to pump it for you. Um, yeah, I think you see a lot of people get like upset because it's not like it doesn't conform to their way of thinking about maybe >> Zero Hedge complaining about like quote unquote the Fed pumping stocks since 2009 while remaining net short stocks since 2009. It's like, well, dude, if you believe your own [ __ ] conspiracy theory, then just buy the stocks.

I mean, maybe crypto was just early to the idea of like the stupidification of finance and because now it's happening a lot more in Trapfi. Like there's this kind of thing where people that are still just trading alts are just going insane. But in in Trafi, you know, you have like fake vegan slot companies going absolutely crazy right now. Um, >> beyond me, >> beyond me. Like you you're seeing increased stupidification in Trafi now. Um, and I think a lot of people thought it was just like a Zera phenomenon like 2021, you know, Wall Street Bets type stuff, but I I do think it's just like a there's a more secular shift that's happened. And I think there's a lot of people trying to come to terms with it.

And maybe just in crypto, it's it it happened quicker and it's it's more explicit in the way that you can see it. >> Holy [ __ ] Beyond went crazy. I didn't know this was a thing. Um, I I I definitely agree with that. >> I wonder if the Sorry. >> Go ahead. >> B, you want to say something? Go ahead. >> I want to say something. I wonder if it's just because retail is getting more and more involved within crypto though, within general finance though. Like I feel like I don't know when it happened but at some point you know what >> like

>> you just think about it like your average person is very stupid and now there's way more people trading markets so there's more stupid people in there so like you know less quote smart things are occurring like it just makes sense if you have every single person in the world participating in a market um you know your your median transaction is going to reflect the flavor of the median person participating in the markets. I want to ask you if you um >> if you I I agree with that like by nature the average person has to be kind of dumb um compared to the smart ones and like a lot of people criticize accredited investor rules um for being like okay why should it just be based on like how much money you have or

something like that to be able to access you know private rounds and things like that and now we're going into this world tying it back to Echo again where you have more and more people being able to be involved with that. And yes, like within Echo, you still need to be able to show that you're an accredited investor, but more and more is this ability for people that might be getting into things where they are not fully aware of all the risk and considerations. Like do you think it's good to have regulation like in credit investor rules? >> Yeah. Yeah. So, so where I've always where I've always like fell on this is I don't think you should have accredited investor rules like to gatekeep people out of it. But where I think you should have things is I actually think you should have a far more strict and

forceful um securities regulatory body that like actually enforces things and sends people to jail for long periods of time um for running a foul of those. Right. So, like I think if you strip away all of the regulation and disclosures, you probably get very very bad actors quickly that flood the marketplace. Um, and I think like as long as you do a good job of actually sending those people to prison and investigating them quickly, I think it's fine. But like you can't strip away all of the regulation without um having some enforcement because like at the end of the day, you're just going to have like, you know, Picacio's grandmother investing in like an XIV fund and it just goes to zero one day. And like we just know time and time again that's what's going to happen which like I'm not I'm not grandma stupid

>> but like I'm not I'm not a >> grandma shorting the VIX inside. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean the maybe the an interesting part here is like there's so many opportunities now to invest in something that maybe is worthless or you know a spec that goes live at 20 billion val and you know unknowing retail puts their life savings in it and it goes to zero. Um, you know, having a creditor investor law so they can't invest in like the private markets doesn't prevent them from gambling it elsewhere within the market per se, you know, and listening to a K shill some stock or shill like, >> you know, options that are super out of the money that they maybe they'll just

lose all their money on because the stock doesn't move. I I feel like DAT's a good example of that because the accredit investor in the pipe and then they're they're getting good deal terms and then retail is the exit liquidity because all they have access to is the publicly traded >> equity and they get that at the pico top while all the pipe investors could just sell to retail and they're just getting fleeced. >> Yeah, I think it's a perfect example. So if you think of like son therapeutics like just real quick sp the the hyperlquid debt like that was literally case in point where the dat went live traded up to 20 and literally there's just so much retail fervor that like no one obviously read the docs and understood the delusion from the warrants that was coming. Um and like that's just they're just too complex of

instruments for people to understand and and I think it's actually fair to not expect people to understand them. I mean every few every cycle I guess we get one of these though. No, like last time around it was spaxs and I guess we still have spaxs now. But you get like very complex and unnecessary instruments that people just want to buy for some reason and they end up losing a lot of money. I actually think one of the like I think what would kind of make sense for something like the credit investor laws would be you have the still the money thing and but you also like let people do I don't know 30 like an actually long course such that if somebody is actually like going to take the time to go over it and figure it out they can invest in whatever they want. So you like kind of

I guess I don't want to say the word democratize access because I feel like we overuse that a bit but you do kind of democratize access in that sense because or else I think there should be some like I'm generally against I wouldn't want this but I can see how like logically someone would want to say you want to protect people's finances from the from the big bad chimas of the world. Um, I think that's probably the best way to >> I guess I guess my question people that are like that take a libertarian view of like, oh, less a fair let everything like operate like I do think finance and and your own money is like a very sacred thing and and we're we as a society are very okay with regulation on things around medicine and law and having

qualifications and all this kind of stuff. I don't know why people have this like visceral reaction to thinking um that it's somehow bad or like overmoralistic to protect people in markets where they're they're going to get scammed, right? Like this is this is literally what gave us the 2021 cycle. >> No, I guess I'm not overmoralistic. It's just like I feel like the government it'll be very inefficient. >> Like if you get too involved then it'll take like five months to do something. Like if you deal with the government with forms with education or with like certificates that the government offers and it's like part of just you have to serve so many people that it just ends up becoming inefficient which is why I would want >> Yeah. But the alter the alternative can't be like oh it's too slow so let's

just allow like illegal things to occur and people will lose their life savings and kill themselves. Like I'm not okay with that. >> I don't want that trade. >> Well you're making it sound like I'm very okay with it which I'm also not. Just want to >> No, I'm not I'm not saying you are. saying a lot of people in crypto are is what I would say. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's tough. You always have to kind of make sure that everybody is protected, but the way to do that is by being really annoying. Um, and people who don't get scammed um are like, "Oh, why do we need these?" And then once he gets scammed, it's like the Zach messages, right?

If Zach shows out that there's a scam, um, Zack XPTt, if I don't know why I'm calling him by his first name, like he's my army buddy. But Zack XPD says, if Zack XPTt says like, "Oh, like this coin's a scam." And you're in the scam, you get upset, but then like if you get scammed, you're like DMing him and saying, "Hey man, I really need help." It's the same thing. >> The funny the funny example of this was last cycle when Mark Cuban was all excited about DeFi and then he got rugged on what was it like Iron Finance. >> Iron Bank, I think. Iron bag and then he was like, "Oh my god, we need to regulate DeFi. We need to we need to understand these things better."

>> Well, it just goes to show you no one in this space has any principles. Everything is like always relative to the position that they're in. >> Yeah. >> Well, I don't think it's the space though. It's like nowhere anywhere has any principles. It's just like relevant because like even in politics, if you there's that like flowchart meme where it's like if you get robbed, you become like a conservative and then your taxes go up, you become a libertarian and stuff. So, it's just that it's just everywhere. But in crypto, everything is I think very very transparent because I think a very large portion of the market is retail that like it's very obvious when something happens that it's very exaggerated, right? Does that make sense?

>> For sure. It makes sense. >> It makes sense to me. >> Yeah, I think that's a fair take. Maybe to add is like I think um in crypto you have just because the community is still so like relatively grassroots at least like the CT retail side of things you see pretty frequent like loud call outs of like yeah the this team is scammers XYZ you know whatever whereas maybe in the more traditional world you don't get as much of that and it's just continuous like grandstanding on you know go on NBC and shill your stock that makes no money that we're going to say, "Wow, that's great. We hope you guys success." Um,

you don't really have like a live CT audience that's calling people out maybe for misleading investors. >> Okay. Uh, Felix James, I'm going to let you guys go, but we're gonna get the Mega E guys on. Is that okay? Some Thanks for coming on, guys. >> Enjoy that. >> Peace. I don't know if James knows I have to leave. I think I gotta remove him. >> Just pull him off. U before we bring you these guys in, I give a quick shout out to while Buffs to our sponsor for today's stream, Aptos. Uh Bitcoin DeFi is heating up on Aptos with nearly 400

million in BTC assets on chain. Aptos users can now earn yield on their Bitcoin via Echo ABTC and OKX's XBTC without the typical bridge risks and high fees. Thanks again, Aptodos, for sponsoring today's stream. Back to it. >> I gotta ping I got to ping Namuk to come on. Give me a sec. >> Thanks again to uh James and Felix for hopping on. That was a good conversation. I like I like how open uh the topics are with those guys. I mean, from James, you know, he follows all the all the project leads on Twitter and just badgers them constantly. So,

>> he's actually kind of cooled down on that a bit. >> Sorry. No, he's actually kind of cooled down on that a bit. >> I think he'll find something else. Don't worry. >> Yeah, for sure. For sure. I think he got bored with Tia. >> Yeah, almost certainly. >> I mean, it's like what are you gonna do when the thing just goes sideways forever? It's like not that interesting to bully the guy that >> it's a$150 again today. No, >> I guess um >> Yeah, go ahead. >> We we never really talked about this. Um what happened?

I guess like have you noticed a fundamental shift in the market since October 10 in your personal opinion? In your personal professional opinion? >> In in terms of what? What do you mean? >> I don't know. Like it's just not going up anymore. It was going up before >> now every coin that is like is being sold in I think we had the X42 thing like for literally 13 hours. The meta the new meta was 13 hours long and that's very short. Like I don't know if I would agree that like the market was going up. There were things that were going up. Um, but like >> yeah,

>> Bitcoin was not going up. ETH has not been going up since, you know, midsummer that activity got fully priced in. Soul went up on their debt activity and hasn't been going up since. So, I don't know. I think we've just we've seen different pockets and um, you know, we just had a different pocket kind of fill up and then deflate a little bit. >> Yeah. And we're >> I'm gonna bring it. >> There we go. Hey, how you doing? You're muted.

Is he muted? >> Is your mic on? >> Very good. >> Live tech support. This happens to me like three times a month. So, >> yeah. >> Maybe just intro we brought >> you guys. Can you guys hear me? >> Yes. Yes. >> Yes. Can hear you now. >> Yes. >> Hello. How you doing? >> How are you? >> Long time no see. We um I think I had Mega Eve people on since then. Um I did a panel with Lei. Um and then I had Brad on a few weeks back, right, Daniel? Was it a few weeks back or was it a few months back? Few weeks back. Um >> uh with the panel we did have Brad

recently. >> We had him on a live stream. It's good. He comes He's very media trained. He's very good. One of my all of you guys are very media trained. I'm very very impressed with Do you have somebody in the background doing all of the speech writing and all of the practicing? >> I have someone behind the camera with a whiteboard telling you exactly what to say. >> Very good. Um big big week for you guys. Um or I guess like big announcement week for you guys. Do you um do you wanna I guess how do you want to do this? Do you want to share a bit about what you guys are going to do? And then we'll ask some specific questions.

Um yeah, nice to meet you guys once again. I don't think I've ever been on a Twitter stream. Feels very fancy. Um yeah, it's a pretty cool week on our end. We um for people who have been following and people who haven't been. Um we announced that we're doing a public sale of sonar on uh basically sometime last week and you know earlier this week on Wednesday we gave the details. Uh since then we've shared a bit more about our uh thinking for the mega token both in terms of its utility, how the token operates within the mega blockchain and the mega system as well as uh just our general thinking on distribution, how to create healthy

networks. So we can discuss whatever you'd like. Um on the sales side, we did something that was somewhat unique. Um we're doing an English auction starting at a 1 mil FTV capped at a 999 mil FTV. Uh we chose that number solely because, you know, I just don't think it's right for us to try and sell to retail at super egregious valuations. Um I think that like I don't believe in airdrops. So how do you create an equitable system? This was it. Um on the utility side, the mega token has two major utilities. Firstly, it powers our sequencer rotation. Uh we do this to minimize antenny for users during key economic hours. Um, we want to have, you

know, the Megie blockchain, the sequencer has 10 millcond block times. Uh, that sounds cool in theory, but in practice, you don't live next to the sequencer. So, the idea is effectively, hey, how do we get this sequencer next to you when it matters, and that's more or less economic hours. This is very similar to how the FX markets worked back in the day. >> So, that's that. Uh another cool thing about the mega eve token utility is around our proximity markets where we effectively enable the value of collocation to go back to the end user.

Um and that's in my opinion a very equitable model which effectively as all stakeholders uh benefit from obviously better pricing and better execution but more important the value that um you know an application or market maker might have being in close proximity to the sequencer. And finally, we introduced KPI vesting uh earlier today. Actually, I don't know if you guys saw that. And that was basically our attempt to try and solve a very difficult problem in crypto, which is unlocks aren't necessarily sustainable, right?

And we've seen this time after time. Again, when we use unlocks and team unlocks as a function of time, it doesn't make sense particularly, right? like why should a team be any wealthier next year or the year after that if they're effectively doing nothing that warrants uh more success and that's in general why I think there's been such a agitation the market between market caps fully diluted valuations our attempt is effectively to directly connect um these additional you know supply unlocks with u in a sustainable manner where the ecosystem is actually healthier and stronger each time an unlock happens and and we redistribute that into the hands of people who stake the mega token

effectively allowing anyone who believes in the mission to illustrate that value and uh you know if there if it's good if it turns out well good for them if it turns out poorly not as good this is interesting I we were talking about this a bit before I um I think it's KPI staking is very very interesting or like I guess KPI based unlocks I one thing I said was that I feel like you guys shouldn't have to be the ones doing this because you're like kind of a legit team versus I feel like other teams should probably have to do this, but I'm very very excited to see somebody take the um take the helm and run with it. The other thing is the airdrops. You don't like air drops?

>> No, >> no, >> no. That makes sense. >> Air drops. I mean, I like getting air drops, but people like selling them very quickly. >> Yeah, I I get the gist of it. Um, but I mean I think you guys are doing the next best thing, right? Like allowing people to buy in at what is this? The third time you're letting people buy in. >> Yeah. So the first time we did a sale was Echo. So we did an Echo sale at the same valuation as Vitalic and Joe and Kobe and you know I know that you guys block works team loves Salana allegedly. So we got some Salana guys too like Mer and Austin. I'm just teasing obviously.

Um so we had like a wide range of stakeholders. Um, you know, then that was like a multi-year vest, right? It's like a one-year cliff multi-year vest. It illustrates one kind of uh user persona and one user interest. Um, which was pretty awesome, right? We had, I believe, over 80% of all Echo users try to participate in the sale. We sold that in the first three minutes. Um, which was really amazing. I think it's the largest sale in Echo history. That was great. But I think that there were some issues of the architecture mostly that um you know in an attempt to follow AML laws it was unbelievably restrictive right a lot of KYC uh to a in invasive manner and I think a

lot of people don't like KYC so what we did is we did the fluff sale the fluff sale also followed AML laws but the solution here was to satisfy a different section of the market that not want to you know dox their entire lives to you know get a fluffle and that's effectively what we there. The terms are very different where um we effectively allowed, you know, 50% to unlock day one for the Fluffle holder alongside a six-month vest, $500 million valuation. We thought that that was very fair. Also sold out more or less instantly. We had to create a um a waiting room using Cloudflare so that we didn't create a a gas war. Um but that was, you know, another solution. And then finally, what we're doing here is uh we're effectively trying to find a way to distribute more

of network and we said, "Hey, let the user choose the valuation they think is fair." We capted just south of a billion dollars just because, you know, I I don't think that's necessary, but yeah, I mean that's kind of the thesis. >> Do you expect there to be a I guess there won't be any gas for this one, but do you expect how do you guys have projections on your side as in how many people you expect to participate? I mean, I think it's all a question of who's interested and, you know, taking the opportunity to act if they want to act. Um, you know, whatever happens, I think we're prepared. In the case of Anova subscription, we've, uh, effectively built out a protocol. We have our algorithms ready on our site to be able to fairly distribute. Um, in the

case of an over subscription, and that's something that we've shared publicly, so everyone's fully aware of how we're planning on doing that. >> And then, okay, let's talk about Mega Eve, the chain. What's going to be live day one? Are we expecting all the Mega Mafia guys to be live day one? >> We have a couple we have a couple really really cool applications I'm excited for. Uh from the day one camp, you know, obviously we have a bunch of DeFi stuff like lending dexes per really cool. Don't want to discredit them whatsoever. What I'm really excited for are some of the cooler gamification experiences which will be live on Mega Day one. Um I think namely you've probably already spoken about these guys on the pod Euphoria. Euphoria is indicative day one which is like super exciting. I actually

have um access to the the product on my phone. Uh I can show you guys. I the the game is actually live. Um well if it loads who knows there we go. Um so you're able to actually play within right price feeds. real money will be it's you know on test net so it's not ready but the product exists and I'm excited for it to be live day one of mainet >> how are you thinking about um like early you know getting early users and capital onto the chain you know day one we've seen some other big chains do you know liquidity incentives continue to be sort of a strategy what are you guys thinking there >> sure so I think the thesis for us is you

know what is a win condition for me uh what's like a short-term win condition and how is that represented in that hour long-term win condition or I guess flip those around. Uh short term what we want is we want people to understand that like there is a new design space here. I think that we as an industry are exhausted. We are disillusioned. We don't think that anything new will come out that there's I mean there's that famous totally quote right? There's only five you there's only five contracts smart contracts in crypto that matter. Nothing else matters. Um, and my entire thesis has always been, hey, if that's it, I think we failed as an industry. Why do we not have all of these things we've dreamed about? We've pitched. The reason

all I'm going to assume the reason the three of us came into crypto was not because of the power of a permissionless casino and memecoin launchpad. Um, so if we don't have it, I think the reason, one excuse is the block space is not performant enough. It's not abundant enough. with mega being like day one, I think that that excuse is no longer available, right? Maybe we still don't have anything that's important and I would be quite sad as an industry. But yeah, I think short term what matters to me a lot is making sure these apps exist and making sure users are going to be using these apps. So to that effect uh we're actually going to be having a kind of rewards campaign during the first uh you know life first period of the mainet where we'll basically allow people to

come and use the chain use these cool applications experience these cool applications and doing so will give you a bonus on your um existing meth investments. So anyone who has even part has participated in the public sale, anyone who's participated in the fluff or the echo round, anyone who's even tried to participate in any of these rounds. So anyone who's ever illustrated even a modicum of interest in mega will be able to participate in a campaign effectively on mainet where these they come and they use the train they get rewards for using the train and those rewards are obviously denominated.

>> That makes sense. um rewards program. One thing I've been kind of nervous about is you guys have a very very performance chain, right? And it's it's very it's a very unique take on like building this thing that's you guys call real time. Are you how's testing going, I guess, is a good question. Like how has are we all stable? Are we going to be very very good day one? I don't want to jinx anything, but like this has crossed my mind quite a bit in that I met Lei and he seems very trustworthy and so do you and so does Bing and so does Brett. But is this something that you guys have been like everything is very very stable?

>> Yeah, I think it's a great point. By no means are is anyone trying to have the chain get hacked? Uh, knock on wood, nothing bad happens. I would say the biggest pain point of building a blockchain that's as performant as mega is RPC, right? RPC pain points. It's been an attack vector for Mega historically. Uh glad that we've been able to push some really really good updates also on test net now live. Uh but really in preparation for mainet we'll have an announcement coming out you know in the short future about a great RPC provider that we're working with right that's been able to build like the most performant RPC out of all the RPC providers in the market today.

So we've been really uh you know crossing our um however the American term says crossing our tees or crossing our eyes on that one. Uh but yeah you know we gota we got to believe sometimes you know. >> Yeah that's true. You did something with the oracles as well. Right. Right. Like oracle design was difficult. >> Yeah. So you know what's the point of building this real time blockchain if all of DeFi is reliant on price speeds. are as slow as Ethereum or you know as slow as one you know you know fast fast chain not a real time chain um and the thinking there was effectively well that's not very good so we've worked we basically worked very closely with the team over at chain link to bring effectively industry grade uh security

um into the Oracle guarantee and effectively build a real-time oracle of the chain link team we've also worked with the Redstone team as well in the past so we have a lot of oracle options for users but yeah we we announced the chain link uh integration very recently and I think everyone's really excited to be able to bring um you know real time price feeds into DeFi. >> Last up and then Danny can ask more. Um USDM uh is that going to be day one stable coin or you bringing in USDT, USDC, etc. as well. >> Yeah. So I mean USDM will be live day one. Uh I think it's a really cool initiative of ours way to provide more value to you know the basically the stakeholders in the ecosystem. Uh but yeah, I mean we also absolutely love the

team over at USCT, right? Big fans of Tether, uh big fans of USCT0 in particular. Um the team over there is fantastic, very very close partners and I think that the two are actually super complimentary and I expect some of the biggest pools in all of Maggie to be USC0 pairs. >> Makes sense. H on uh on the stable coin I think is really interesting. You you mentioned driving value to to stakeholders, token holders. Um I guess are you guys thinking about other products through this same lens?

Anything on your mind or is that probably more of a longer term thing? Yeah, I think that like um our vision is very much one of providing as much value to our users, right? Um yeah, stable coin I think you know we always saw it you know a non-yield bearing tu stable coin is a public good and this is a kind of public good that we can redirect to our stakeholders and our users. I think this is a take that has actually started to proliferate rapidly across multiple applications as well as multiple ecosystems. I remember seeing something from the Salana Foundation representatives speaking of a similar thesis. Um so yeah that's

definitely something we're proud of. Uh we have more coming but I think that you know those announcements will be made in the future. I think what we're really obsessed over is this thesis which is Megiv is not a you know real time blockchain it's not even a blockchain it's not a blockchain company the the purpose of Megade is to connect people with one another without an intermediary right we want to facilitate peer-to-peer networks we're here to facilitate a non-custodial future right so anything we can do to enable that to be the case we will build And uh I think we are opinionated of our design principles. Uh you know mega mafia is opinionated. Meif is opinionated. Uh USDM is opinionated

right. We're going to K KPI investing is opinionated. Uh we're going to continue to do things which we think are best for the company as well as for our users because that's ultimately the only stakeholder that matters. Um, we're going to continue to build the layer for Ethereum that we believe makes and realizes Ethereum roadmap and brings ETH and basically crypto to the world. >> I think that makes sense. Um, I guess like one thing with that is that you're opinionated. Mega Mafia is opinionated and you might build up more opinionated products that you might announce later.

Are you ever worried about stepping on other products toes like if somebody wants I don't know like let's say you want to launch a native lending protocol to and return value to um users that way but you you'll have lending I assume live well I know you'll have an order book based one from what I remember and I imagine you'll try and get on one of the big boys as well. Um is that something that you guys are considering pretty intensely? Yeah, I mean I think that like there's the way I look at it is like hey what are net positive like what are public goods and what are not.

um lending markets is like that's a private market in my eyes, right? Like you need to enable a a rich private market to exist or the country/chain it dies, right? So, uh we have no interest in going into DeFi. Um we think that DeFi is very important and we will put substantial resources behind DeFi uh like you know building this oracle of chain link but ultimately we want to find really talented founders to come and build uh the billion dollar businesses on me and we want to support them in doing so.

>> That makes sense. Will Mega Mafia continue afterwards that we're going to have like cohort three, cohort four, cohort five? >> Yeah, we need to figure out a good name for the word cohort. >> Uh but yeah, that's the thesis, right? Like I think the beauty of mega is because we're a chain and not a traditional VC. I think there's two ways to look at it. Like you know I think most people who might run like an incubator program, they're just trying to say like okay here's a check mark of all the ideas. This is this is what I need. I need a lending market. So you know someone needs to build me an aby fork right now. Um while you know I don't think that's a winning strategy per se. And I think the VC is the polar opposite which like hey you know like

this could be a good idea but the chance of working is so low and this is okay in traditional VC right like traditional VC uh VCs aren't seeing liquidity events in a year in six months so they need to bet on generational founders building crazy things right like that can really change the world because if it doesn't change the world it'll become a zero in eight years time uh we're the opposite right I mean so crypto is the opposite crypto doesn't incentivize that the beauty of mega is we're able to have a bit more of that value set which is hey the way Mega wins isn't by just being a really fast chain. No one cares it's commoditized.

It's not actually but in the eyes of everyone it's commoditized. What we need is we need applications which will enable and leverage this block space and show people that they can dream again, right? That they can have amazing experiences on chain that has not existed um in web two. And we're willing to take the risk of that being a zero, >> right? Like and we see this in the mafia, right? Like we have a bunch of these wacky ideas that the mafia founders are building, many of which, you know, haven't even been announced. They're very cool. Um, and it's very difficult to get these guys their first round of funding, their second round of funding very easy, right? Their f much easier. But that first person to say, "Hey, I'm making a bet on this idea. I'm

making a bet on you." I think that's where there's a market in efficiency. And that's where Mega has historically, you know, shown a little bit of I can't say success because nothing's live and it's a bit premature, but I think we definitely um pride ourselves on being able to do that. Also, it's so funny. This mic is off. So, you say it's like now it just turned on. >> What's going on? Insane. >> Um, would you say that you haven't Are we >> Can you guys hear me?

>> Yes. >> Yes. >> Okay. Very well. >> Bit late, but yeah, >> it's very No, it was working well before. Oh, I guess it was for the laptop, but it was working well as well. >> Would you say you have a Nemesis chain? I think Mega Eve to me seems like it would have me nemesis chains. Would it be Solana >> or like is that your >> funny so I obviously like what you guys are implying and listening listeners are like ah obviously Monad. Um so >> you know funnily enough like I actually really respect the Monad team. I think it's really amazing work they've done.

Um I remember a conversation I had with like Elong and Lei in the past right and those are like the technical minds behind me and they were basically thinking if I was building an L1 EVM I want it look very similar to Monet right so we only have a lot of respect for the team I think in general mega does have nemesis and the nemesis is every single old one in the world right and it's like it's not because I personally hate like salana or monad I actually respect these teams unbelievably like I respect the product views and the product culture of Salana a lot more than I respect a lot of other stakeholders right like to be completely frank the me culture is a lot more similar to that of the Salana culture I for better or for worse we've

got an accusation so you know it is what it is um but yeah like I just don't think any alt L1 should exist I think fundamentally speaking what what makes sense to me you build the most decentralized possible ethere L1 that is a environment in which nation states that are in a cold war with one another could interact. um no one can censor it like the the world can live on EH and then you have this execution layer that can effectively handle a level of computation level of scale that no other no consensus based blockchain could right and that is of mega but I respect

these other chains a lot um I just don't think they I don't believe in all ones >> at least not right now >> do you think um I was gonna ask on while we're on the topic is like timing of your launch here with with Mega ETH mainet like you guys concerned at all about I mean you're ending up maybe coincidentally on a similar timeline to Monad here was that is there a concern there at all or just sort of you guys are moving at your pace? >> Yeah, I think it's like not I think it's it's like I I want you know everyone to have their time in the spotlight, right? So like that was a bit frustrating. It's it's but it is what it is, right? Like these teams have been working for a long time. uh like we've basically had these dates pencileled in

for a while because of we we we definitely pushing the boundary on you know distribution as well as utility but we're trying we're doing all this very above board so it requires a lot of legal approval a lot of regulation to do what we're doing so you know when we have to pick a date and you know start talking to like European government governmental bodies like we can't change that date um but yeah like you know I I think it's a funny coincidence. I'm really excited for both teams to launch. I'm excited for my Mon airdrop and I um yeah, I mean like I I I don't know when Mon is launching. Maybe it doesn't end up being in the same time. Maybe

they launch before us. Uh best of luck. Honestly, that makes sense. For what it's worth, when I mentioned the nemesis, I was thinking of Solana because to me, Mega E is like a very intense corner of Ethereum that like wants to be very competitive um against and when I think of Alan, I always think of Soul. Um >> yeah. >> Is there anything that you would have done differently these past few months coming into launch? Like I assume you guys spent a lot of time this week talking about like how the process was and or I guess like thinking about it. Um was is there anything you would have done differently? Yeah, I mean I think like you know um when I you know I think the past

I think the past month's been pretty good. I don't know how much I changed in the past month. Uh but I have some definitely I have some learnings from like the past year and a half, two years. Um and you know they like I think life is all about trade-offs. Uh there was a really good um Palmer Lucky tweet after his crash about like 15 year old 16 year olds getting married and having kids or saying uh and his point was like you know a lot of my colleagues in in Silicon Valley right they they don't want to get married um they don't want to get married when they're young because they don't want to commit they want to have optionality they want to commit to a path uh but that doesn't work because if you always have optionality you can never do something right because you can ever go all in to

do something right? So, is there things I could have done better with the Mega Mafia? Definitely. Um, but would I have done like would it be would it look different now? Probably. I don't know if it would be better or worse. Um, maybe King make more, maybe King Make less. I don't have the answer. Um, on the tech side, I would probably just like and like another point is, you know, we we I think that what was very good about the plasma team's launch is they announced the company. They announced the blockchain and they launched like four months later, which is so bullish. Mega announced like two years ago and it's two years later and now I'm on the podcast telling you guys like hopefully mainet soon. Uh, which is just like Jesus Christ. So, um, yeah, I think maybe I would have like not announced

Mega as early going back in history, but the counterfactual to that is I don't know if I'd have been able to get a bunch of brilliant founders, Mega Mafia, to come and build stuff, right? That would be live day one. So, trade-offs left and right. Um, I'd probably if I could do anything, I'd be a nicer communicator and maybe be a bit less uh intense. Uh, but it is what it is. I don't think I can change that. >> Intensity is a good thing. I think all of your team is quite intense and I think it it's it's something that I think was missing from Ethereum for some time and recently we've been getting like a lot more um I guess like competitiveness which is which is a good thing.

>> Um >> yeah, I'll add I think I agree I agree with Boach there like even to your point about Palmer Ly's quote like I I think people like somebody who's confident decisive and not a person that's hedging everything they say. >> Yeah. Um, >> for sure. >> Yeah. Um, last question I have is you can't recommend people participate in the ICO. I'm cognizant of that, but do you have anything that you recommend people check out in the first few weeks? Um, or like what they should do on Mega E, I guess, like the first month or so.

>> I mean, dude, the only thing that matters is the apps. Okay. Like, um, the why Mega E matters. It's like, okay, you know, it's like really fast. and I'll debate that we're not going to see a faster chain anytime soon. Um but I mean maybe we can get real on maybe he has some opinions. Um but yeah, so you know I don't think we'll have any faster chain anytime soon. But like does that matter or not? And the only way we can figure out if that matters is um if if there's a new design space that's unlocked. If not like you know pardon my French like [ __ ] it. So if the applications are even they don't have to be great, you know, pe people are it's like everyone's going to be like on

their alphas, but if it's has a spark of inspiration and makes you think that there's something that like there's more to this industry, like I would say I like my mission has been complete and not complete like I did decent pre-launch. >> Yeah, >> I think that makes sense. Um Danny, anything else? >> No, I think that was great. Um otherwise what should people >> Yeah, just for like just for the sale maybe just to reiterate the details like timeline there.

>> Yeah, so sale opens 27th. Um we have a lot of uh demand fortunately. So please if you're interested in the sale, I'd recommend signing up now with your KYC details. Uh sale begins on the 27th. If you want to understand what is the asset that you're trying to purchase, I'd highly recommend going onto Megie Twitter and learning about our tokconomics um token utility like we are not building a ecosystem the way that most L2s have um and governance is really not the selling point um for a mega. So I would recommend looking into what you may be interested in purchasing.

>> Very good. Um Namuk, thank you so much for coming on. This was fantastic. >> Yeah. I mean, it's always a pleasure to talk to you guys. Um, Turks in crypto is nice. I'm in a stumble right now, actually. So, >> yeah, I heard I um I heard, but you can really hear when someone's in a stumble because it's like noise all the time, but it's very good. I miss >> you seen a cat though, huh? >> No. No. Yeah. All right. >> Perfect. >> See you guys around. Um, exciting couple months ahead. Bye. Heck yeah. Thanks so much for coming on. Good luck.

>> Okay. >> Did you freeze? Oh, you did not freeze. All right. >> I did not freeze. I can never figure out the end. I like I like the entire Mega E team, but it's so funny. Every time they come on, they're like, "Oh, you guys hate us." I'm like, "We don't hate you. We've had you on eight times. We We In fact, I would say we like Mega E quite a bit." um something that I need to instill into them that we like the Mega Eve team. >> Yeah, they've given um they've given the community a lot of reason to like them by >> Yeah. >> doing multiple sales, Fluffles, what you know, what have you. So, >> it makes sense.

>> They're also they're also quite good at like I wasn't joking when I said like their PR is very good compared to I would say like they're very clear in what they want to talk about. Um they're very passionate in what they're building. Um I think overall like they're they have like a nice it's not like the bog standard like oh like we're doing this to like because L2s are great we're getting benefits from Ethereum. Like I feel like the historical L2 pitches were that. Um, versus these guys are very much like look like I'm sick and tired of seeing the same like six apps being built and I think we're gonna build a really fast chain and we're going to onboard a

million of these like goofy apps as well as like basic primitives and we're going to have some fun. Um, and also you get to buy us three times below one build. So, you know, good luck. And I I I like that approach a lot. I think it speaks um it's it's different. It's fun. I like it. Yeah, I mean definitely like it's a fresh take from the vanilla copy paste, you know, yeah, millionth chain. So I think any project that goes a differentiated route >> is something to be >> excited about. Um maybe before we totally zone out here, just going to do one last quick shout out for Aptos. With nearly 400 million BTC assets on chain

supported by a secure, fast, and affordable MBM environment, Aptos has become the BTC 5 growth chain. Apptos users can now earn yield on their Bitcoin via Echo's ABTC and OKX's XBTC without the typical bridge risks and high fees. With support from Echko, OKX and STAX's SBTC, Aptos is the place to go for best-in-class yield on Bitcoin. Appreciate the support. Thanks for sponsoring Aptos. All right, I need to do one thing before we end it off because Ryan Connor got upset with us. Guys, make sure to remember that Zerx Research is affiliated with Block Works Research, okay? We are both Blockworks Research analysts and if you're a listener and you enjoy us, please go and check out

Blockworks Research on Twitter. Look at our reports, look at our charts. We do fantastic work. Um, yeah, that's my Blockworks research chill of the day. We're not hiring anymore, but we still have a newsletter if you want to check it out. And if you enjoyed the pod, bottom right. Um, and if you enjoyed the pod and you want to hear and you want to see some guests, you can join our Telegram group and ask me to bring on some guests and I'm actually sourcing for ideas now. Um, but yeah, that's it. Danny, those are my shills for the week. Anything you want to say? You already did the apps thing.

>> Yeah, I don't have any other shills. Um excited about new chains though. I think having Meg Ethon, we talked about it. Megith Monad, we've been waiting for some of these for I mean he said it two years two years ago they uh officially announced. So I think these have been pretty anticipated for a long time. So >> relatively excited to see some launches basically. >> Very good. I'm excited. It's anytime you can trade stuff. It's very exciting. Like I feel like they're We had a few recently launched that didn't do particularly well. I'm excited for like interesting coins to trade again. It'll be fun. We'll have a good time.

>> Yeah. And I mean, even if I mean, who knows what the native tokens will do, but if it's um you know, he mentioned the Mega Mafia app kind of set of set of builders um it'll be a meaningfully different kind of like onchain experience compared to what exists today. I I assume. Uh so should be interesting either way, at least on the app front or the new assets front. Cool. Well, Macho, since you seem distracted, I think we can close it out there. Uh want to say thanks to the listeners for tuning in today. Uh we will catch you all next week on Monday. Uh, I don't

have any sneak peeks on guests to give away, but we will see then. Until then, until then, until next time. >> We'll have Smack on. We have a sneak peek guest. We'll have Smack on. Well, he promised me, so I'm hoping we'll have Smack on. But if you want to listen to Escound venture capitalist, you know, he's going to be on Monday. He owes me and he also promised that he'll come on. So, that's a good sneak peek. >> Love that. So, Smack's gonna come on and mo Bach. So, definitely tune in on Monday. We will see you guys then. Otherwise, uh I appreciate you all.

Check out Blockworks Research, check out the newsletter, check out the Telegram, join us in there. We uh are always gambling in the slot machine. We'll see you all next time. >> Peace. >> Peace. [Music] Hey,