🚨LIVE From Rare Evo Conference In Las Vegas Day! Binance, Frax, Wintermute, Bitwise, Lighter & More

Transcript

[music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] >> 17 floor.

[music] [music] We'll see you around the timeline. [music] Feels good to be back. I think the rollup is one of the most premier [music] media brands in crypto and Andy and Robbie are great experts at everything they talk about and it's my favorite podcast. >> Adding to my [music] library every >> potentially multi-chain deployments. >> We are at the connect day [music] one here. You guys see the face? [music] [music] [music]

>> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> JP Morgan, Black Rock, DTCC, Fidelity,

the entire thing was just institutions. It's just it's next level. This industry is going to the next level. And guys, I I don't know what else to say. >> I'm bullish. >> He said it. He finally said it. >> So bullish. It is bullish. I'm bullish. We're bullish. [music] [music] >> [music]

>> Heat. Heat. [music] [music] Heat. [music] Heat. [music] Hey hey hey. [music] Roll up is headed to the top. If we're

not already at the top, we're going to the top. >> Roll up is my favorite. >> People from all walks of life, all over the world, all over this industry [music] come together for the rollup. [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music]

>> zoom out institutions aren't coming. They're simply here. Taste the golden age of crypto, guys. Get right. Let's go. [music] >> Welcome to the nest. See you on the show. >> We are live. Let's go. Welcome to Vegas. Welcome to the city that never sleeps. We are at the Arya Hotel. And it is an absolute pleasure to see you guys here today. Fantastic on-site conference. We're going to have a lot of fun for you guys today. Give me some air horns.

Let's hear it. We are rocking with you guys. I think we've got about five, six hours that we're going to hit live. No breaks, back to back. They just got started with a fantastic panel. Friend of the show, Cody Carbone and Eleanor Tourett got us going here today and it's a fantastic lineup that we've got here for you. They've got the speakers up on the stage. We're going to be talking with all the speakers here. They're coming right off the stage to sit down with us at the rollup. Like I said, fantastic show. It's my first time in Vegas. I already played a little blackjack. We're having a lot of fun and uh we've got a ton of fun speakers coming at you guys today. We're going to start off with Juan from Bitwise in a few minutes. First, shout out to Plume.

They've got their Nest product. They're building institutional liquidity. This is the institutional yield farming days. We're hoping the Clarity Act goes through and gives us a catalyst for us to uh to to bottom this market. But otherwise, Plume is continuing to build. They are the sponsor of the tokenization tower. Big big shout out to Plume as always. Um, and we're going to keep it rolling for you guys. Like I said, fantastic conference here. Uh, it's the Rare EVO conference. The first time that we're doing this conference and, uh, we're planning on having a lot of fun here today. We're going to be live all day. Uh, topics today. We don't have all of our speakers on here, but as usual, we're going to tell you about the market and weather. We're going to tell you about streaming from this conference and we're going to get into founders, CEOs,

and the entire show. I mean, it's a it's a pretty eclectic group out here. Like I said, we're going to start off with Juan from Bitwise. We're going to get Dennis from the XRPPL Foundation. So, for all you ripple bulls out there, we're going to we're going to get a little bit of an update from the ecosystem, Ask ROI, we're going to get Todd Alt, and then uh the big big news of the day is going to be uh not Jerome Pal, it's going to be Kevin Worsh speaking on behalf of the FOMC board and we're going to get into that. We're going to show you guys everything that is happening at the Fed meeting today. Let's keep it rolling, get into our markets and weather. Before we do, big shout out to Frack. We are going to get the guy, the man, Sam Casmian on the show later today. I

already said what's up to him. Uh Fra is uh we're going to put FRA on the moon and uh Fra is going to I I've been hearing that they've been spending quite a time in Vegas and I think uh I think we're going to be talking more about that. So I'm excited for Sam to come on the show. Frack obviously powers our stabled up show and so we're going to be getting into our stable coin segment in a little bit. It is 100° in Las Vegas. Uh you guys know that I hail from Florida where it is also close to 100 degrees, but the humidity is just uh zero here. It's very very dry and that makes it a lot more tolerable. Uh so I'm actually enjoying it here uh in Vegas.

It's actually a little bit more comfortable despite being 100°. Uh and of course our weather segment is powered by Relay. From Vegas to Florida, from Florida to New York. Uh Relay will take you anywhere you need to go. obviously powering a lot of the Robin Hood flows, everything that's happening in a crosschain ecosystem. Relay will take you wherever you need to go. So, let's keep it moving. Uh, also shout out to dinari. These guys are absolutely crushing it. I'm hearing things I'm hearing things about dinari. They've got big big news on the horizon. Uh, obviously we're here and uh the big talk of the town is tokenized equities.

There's a drone flying behind our producer table. So, our producers are looking at me, but if they turn around, they'll see a drone directly behind their heads. Uh there's amazing things happening here in Las Vegas at the Arya Hotel. Uh and big shout out to uh to the Rare Evo guys uh for having us out here today. Uh put us up in in the beautiful Sky Suites in the Arya Hotel. So, couldn't ask for much better on that front. Uh let's keep it moving. Our markets today powered by Zama. I'm interested in hearing our thesis uh from Juan who we're going to have up in just about five minutes. Bitcoin is flat today and the thesis that we've been thinking through over the last few days

on the show is that the the stock market is obviously teetering and a lot of the altcoin complex is sort of tracking very closely to the altcoin complex and and the stock market. And so Bitcoin has started to decouple. It started to decorrelate from the rest of this market. However, stocks, NASDAQ, the tech indices, the the Korean market continues to limit down. All of these things are very very correlated with the rest of the altcoin complex, but it seems as if Bitcoin is starting to decouple, and so we're going to be getting into more of that markets obviously powered by Zama. These guys are absolutely crushing. We don't have Zama on the lineup for the prices, but Zama is flying part of the privacy narrative uh that we're seeing play out

as well. Zcash also uh is part of this category. So we anticipate this is going to continue to rise as a result of everything that we're happening in the AI the robotic space just playing into privacy um as well. Let's keep it rolling guys. Our exclusive AI partner is Near. Uh these guys are also firmly in the privacy category. They had a big release of ironclaw 1.0 along with uh along with their near AI product stack. So they're continuing to verticalize and just ship great products. These guys are really an AI company, but obviously you can get exposure to privacy AI through MR. So, they're doing incredible things.

Big things on the horizon for Near as well. First tweet, we've only got a few tweets before we bring up our first guest, Hayden Adams. They turned on the UNI fee switch. Now, you would think if you're a UNI holder, this is fantastic, right? You're going to start to get some flows, but this was highly contentious across the entire ecosystem. Of course, there's this heated battle between the aerodrome guys and the unis swap guys. And so, tons of FUD and misunderstanding according to Hayden around the fee switch. LPS are getting reduced. False. Protocol fees are additive, not subtractive. LPS earning 30 basis points per swap still earn 30 basis point per swap. Obviously, the retort to this is that as more fees are added, if you have a 30 basis fee and then all of a sudden you add an additional UNI fee, right,

there could be less demand. you could be less competitive on the rates that you're providing. Flows could allocate elsewhere. The protocol is taking 25% of LP profits. Made up math. 25% of LP profits on a 30 basis point pool. The protocol fee is five basis points. That's 5 out of 35. About 14% of total swap fees and 0% of what LPS were already earning. Sort of contradicts the previous statement because now he's saying that there is five basis points and that does sort of cut into the 35 basis point. But he makes a point that's only 14%. 14 25 feels like we're splitting hairs. Um the cut is too high.

Sexist charge 100 to 200 basis points per swap. Five basis point on a 30 basis point tier is 20 to 40x cheaper for the deepest distribution in DeFi. This is where I seem to agree guys. If we can get deep liquidity and competitive fees on decentralized exchanges, the decentralized ecosystem, the onchain economy is what wins and we start to take market share from the centralized exchanges. The sexes are always going to appeal to retail that are are prioritizing convenience. But the idea is that we're going to see the decentralized exchange ratio to centralized exchanges continue to cut in to uh centralized exchange volumes and order flows and users. More of that is going to come onchain as

functionality, fees, and liquidity all become much much more competitive. I see everyone rocking out in the chat. Greg, let's go. Christian, greetings from Sunny Beach in Bulgaria. Very very cool. One-armed Bandit, appreciate you rocking with us. It is FOMC day. Not sure if we get a surprise cut, but the rate uh the probabilities are saying we might get a rate hike. Don't think we get a rate hike. I think the market actually rebounds on no change. Uh Birds 1811 also rocking with us uh as well. Big big shout out. Um let's keep rolling. Uh we've only got one or two more tweets here, so we're going to speed roll through these. Uh trade XYZ SK highix mark price dropped down from 1127 to

917. This print was based on an executed trade which was relayed by multiple independent data providers. So there was this big drop. The Korean stock market has been limiting down. The Korean market is in shambles and we're going to get into that in a little bit. But um what is happening here is that there was a big liquidation cascade that happened on Hyperlid on SKH Highix. Um you know there was some debate was this you know an oracle slip up? Did the price uh order feed uh fail? Trade XYZ is arguing no, it didn't fail. This thing is just extremely volatile and there was multiple parties that did print this uh this price by multiple data providers.

So don't have a lot here. I think like you know we've seen how these PES exchanges operate in times of high volatility in the past and so I think they're continuing to do quite well. uh we anticipate that these venues are going to be the home of price discovery in the US and abroad across several asset classes. The fact that they're dealing with some uh volatility on SKH Highix is also just a result of the markets being closed elsewhere and being open on venues like Hyperlid that is causing some dislocation in the price and you see these big drops and big gaps when there's high volatilities in terms of these market closures. Uh let's keep moving along. That's SK Highix.

We've just got maybe one more tweet here before we kick it over to our next one. Yeah, here. Uh, total raise 7.5 billion. Total 24-hour revenue, $1,300, $15,000 to return investments. The funny thing about each of these projects is that they're still alive. We've seen so many companies that have raised a ton of money and just failed, flopped, died. they just don't continue to build. The thing about all of the companies on this list is that my understanding is that these are continuing to build. They've raised a ton of money. It hasn't translated into revenue. They're not participating in the revenue meta, but they are still alive. And so, it is a typical startup path where you just

continue to raise money, burn a ton of cash. Don't worry about revenue because as soon as you start to generate revenue, it's never going to be enough. So, you continue to raise money, deploy that money, burn cash. one day maybe these start to generate revenue. It does feel like now is the time to generate revenue if you are one of these companies. But if you've raised enough money and you have a reasonable, thoughtful, considerable, you know, capital reserve strategy, in theory, you could have enough money and enough runway to make it through this bare market, make it into the bull, and then generate some revenue when there's a ton more market participants in the space.

That's my take on this. For some of these companies, it's do or die. for other ones that have a decent capital strategy, I think they're going to be fine. They've got enough money to make it through and one day I do think that they will generate revenue, but can't say that for all the companies on this list. Um, okay guys, Daily Equity is the last segment before we bring up our first guest of the show today from the Arya Hotel in Las Vegas. Let's roll Daily Equity and get into it. >> [music] >> The Korean stock market is getting

shellacked. These guys limit down in the last like four or five trading sessions. Memory stocks look like Christmas trees. It is an absolute fiasco in Korea. And so what happens every single day, I've been watching it. I check when when I wake up. I check when I go to sleep. As soon as the Korean market is about to open and people are a little bit hopeful, the market actually improves and then the Korean stock market limits down and everything gets whacked. Now, interestingly, Bitcoin has held steady and I think that is something of note and that's what we're going to get into with our first guest today. Even though the Korean market is getting absolutely rinsed and Koreans, I mean, I've heard uh the Korean government has implemented

a suicide hotline. Um there's uh just broad systemic fractures in the Korean market. Um these this thing was on an absolute tear. Liquidations are just across the board. South Korea's Cosby fell more than 10%. This was over the last like 24 hours. I saw a chart that said the the the largest liquidation cascades in the Korean market. Thinking back uh the 2008 global financial crisis where the market fell about 50% over like a 350day period. 350 days. The the second one was uh when the Cosby fell about 45% over a 700 day period. We have reached similar levels of decline in the

Korean market. I think it's down 43% from highs and it's only taken a month in previous declines. the t this type of decline has taken multiple years to play out and we've seen this type of depreciation in the Korean market in a matter of weeks which is just an absolutely astonishing pace for the rapid decline of the Korean market and so obviously this is you know a massive depreciation in market value across the board so this is something that we are we are seeing play out in real time I mean memory stocks in Korea are down 70% 50% % AOI is down 60%. Um, yeah, it is it is tough times out there.

The AI trade is moving from pure momentum to valuation discipline. Uh, we saw Micron, we've seen Sandis, these things were up astonishing amounts and now they're really coming back to reality. Investors are starting to punish crowded names where competition, capex risk, and weak fundamentals challenge the growth story. We know that Google and the hyperscalers aren't going to be negative cash flow forever. And so these memory stocks just simply can't keep up. Guys, that's daily equity for today. We're paying attention to the Korean markets. The altcoin complex is correlated to the Korean markets, correlated to the alt uh the stock market in the US, the NASDAQ. Bitcoin is seemingly decoupling. We're going to be getting into that with our first guest from Rare Evo live in Vegas from the

Arya Hotel. Um let's flip the headline. Let's get ready for our first guest, Juan from Bitwise. Let's go ahead and bring him up. Don't need a standby. We're gonna keep it rolling all day. Juan Leon is senior investment strategist at Bitwise Asset Management where he helps lead research uh product and strategy development, fund and index management, and client relationships. Juan, man, it's your first time on the show. We've had uh we were messing around with some of your co-workers. First off, it's great to great to see you, man. It's great to have you on the show. We've had Ryan, uh we've had Hunter, we've had Teddy, we've had uh I think there's even more. We've

had Matt, we've had several guys from your team on and so it's an absolute pleasure. You guys always do a rockstar job and I think be, you know, it was a trifecta, then it was a quadfecta. We're up to five, six, seven now. So, absolute uh pleasure to have you on the show today. How you feeling, man? >> Yeah, we've had you've had the whole Bitwise gang. I'm glad to join it as well. Uh it's great to be here. Energy is great at the conference. Uh and uh excited to be here with you today. >> Incredible, man. Well, we spoke a little bit before uh you know, you ultimately came on and you know, you wanted to we we we're going to cover Bitcoin and kind of the levels that we're watching there.

Obviously, Bitcoin seems it's like sort of in its own world right now. You know, kind of separated from the rest of the altcoin complex. Before you came on, I was just sort of making the point because I've been working out this thesis on the show from some of the people that we've talking to, which is that Bitcoin seems to be decoupling from equities while the altcoin complex seems to be pretty correlated to the NASDAQ to the Korean markets. Altcoins are tracking tech stocks. But Bitcoin seems to have been decoupled and now it's feeling more like an inflation hedge. We're in a midterm year. I've been hearing more and more about the national debt inflation and Bitcoin seems to be taking that alternative role, whereas the entire altcoin complex feels like it's just tracking tech stocks. So,

Bitcoin seems to be decoupling, becoming less correlated, but the altcoin complex seems to be correlated to equities. That's sort of the thesis that I've been working out. I'm curious what your take is on that, but also just your your general take as you see these things play out in the market. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting take and I think it's a it's something that we've seen uh that's developing in the market that I think to your point uh I think shows signs of maturity in the market. If we look at the past two cycles, everything moved with Bitcoin. Yeah. Um but now we are in a phase where we have more regulation in place. We have more institutional investors as opposed to only retail investors. we have more products in the space and you're starting to see the use cases of different cryptos start solidifying or

maturing. So Bitcoin's case as a geopolitical store value hedge asset I think is solidifying in the public consciousness and I think that's why uh I agree with you that what is driving it more and more are these issues of fiat debasement of uh geopolitical fracturing um and especially in an election year and in the turmoil we've seen with Iran uh and and that geopolitical situation it makes sense that Bitcoin is trading more uh based on on that um while the rest of the altcoin complex is much more linked in a way uh to tech stocks because they are assets that produce uh that that can generate fee revenue that have use cases in technology uh that are broader outside of the macro case of

Bitcoin. So as those assets find their product market fit uh I think they will be treated more uh akin to tech stocks. So that divergence uh makes sense uh and I think it's it shows signs of maturity in the space and I think uh what we've heard from investors is they are uh they look favorably on this because for them it's now they have an ecosystem where they can trade different assets in different market environments to generate performance where whereas before it was do or die with Bitcoin uh and everything else went along with it now they can find differentiation and as you were mentioning this year we've seen a decoupling where Bitcoin is down 26% but crypto equities are up uh something like 9 or 10%. Uh many of them are the Bitcoin miners participating in the AI

trade because of their repurposing of the data center space. So I think it's great there's differentiation in the market. Uh there's product market fit for different areas and I think that shows maturity in the space. >> Yeah. And and you're absolutely right. In previous cycles we've seen everything move in unison. Everything's been extremely correlated. But now it does feel like there's uh you know there's a little bit more. It's kind of like you can pick your spots and it feels like the market is more legitimate. it's matured quite a bit and so now we're starting to get a more sophisticated market where you can pick some winners and losers. Uh if there are a thesis and fundamentals that end up playing out. Uh another thing that people have been just hammering home has been this this divide. I see half of the people that I

I I talk to and I follow, they say we've bottomed, you know, we're in apathy. It's just a matter of time, but it's not a matter of price. This is the price level and we're not going to go much lower. We don't know how much longer we're going to stay here, but we're not going to go much lower. And then the other half says one leg lower. One leg lower, final wash out, exit capitulation, and then it's off to the races. What are the levels you're watching on Bitcoin specifically? And then maybe we'll talk about how, you know, relevant that is to the rest of the altcoin complex. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, I think it's important to take stock of where we are right now and then we can assess the short-term and longer term factors driving the outlook. In terms of Bitcoin price, uh it's just shy of 64,000 right

now. And if we look at key levels, the 200week moving average, which a lot of traders uh pay attention to on a technical basis, is at about 63,000 currently. So if we test that 63,000 and breach it and move below and then are unable to reclaim it and stay above, then I think we can expect going uh lower to test the current interim low which was around 59 58,000. Okay. And if that is breached and again can't be reclaimed meaning stays meaningfully below then I think we can expect a leg lower. Um but uh we're still sitting above just just above the 200E moving average and then so that's the current resistance level >> and how how much lower let's say you

know bare case is that you know we test 63 63 doesn't hold we test 59. What is the is there a floor that you're watching even if at what point do you think people come in and they say hey we're buyers for the long term you know this thing isn't going to zero like where do you think that support ultimately holds even despite maybe maybe two-part question where is that price level and what is the probability that we do get there >> yeah you can look at things like uh where bitcoin has traded in regards to some of these indicators in past bare markets you can look at the realized cap of the Bitcoin market and those levels like in in prior bare markets, Bitcoin has traded below the 200 week. It's

traded as much as uh 15% below. Um and then some of those realized price levels. I think all of those point to if we were to go a leg lower, I think we could be looking at the 50 to 55 range um as as as a bottoming area. Um but again, we're still above the 200 week right now, holding above. Let's see what happens. That's the current resistance and then we can there's as I mentioned there's 58 59 as other resistance before uh below that. Now let's look at the at at the uh at prices above. If we look at where the market could go on the upside um we talked about the 200 week the 200 day moving average that's sitting at about 63,000 uh sorry 72,000.

>> Okay. >> So we're 64 200 day moving average is at about 72,000. I think if we start moving up and we get to that level that'll be the uh resistance up there >> the 72 >> yeah 72 okay >> 72,000 where if we breach that and then go above and stay meaningfully above then I think we can look at higher price levels but that is I think the key resistance level the 200 week at 63 is the key support level I think that's that's where uh investors need to look at where the price action takes us >> okay Um, first question is just if you had it and predictions are tough, I realize, but and and we want to stay optimistic. I get it. But which way are you leaning?

You think the 64 is going to hold? You think we're going to go meaningfully lower? Where do you think we're or you think we're upwards of 72? Where, you know, if you had to put a probability on it, >> coin flip 50/50 or which way you leaning? >> Yeah, we're closer to the support right now. uh the clarity act which we we'll get into uh is facing hurdles um meaningful hurdles especially this this this week is an important week and and we can get into that uh so I think given the macro environment given where we're trading given sentiment in this space if you look at sentiment gauges >> it looks like as you mentioned at the beginning uh investors are pretty apathetic and there might we might need a last wash out before it's complete agony people think Bitcoin has died its million death uh and then we resume uh

we we bottom out and start moving upwards. >> Now I if if what you're saying is true and what I'm saying is true and I think they can both be true, I would I would imagine that if we do get that wash out, alts would get rinsed. They would get absolutely whacked. However, if we do get above 72 and we stay meaningfully above 72, I don't know if alts would follow. What do you What do you think? How do you think the altcoin complex would react to Bitcoin going one way or the other? I think if we if we go below um probably everything gets most everything gets dragged down. There's things that are performing currently hyperlquid and other things that have outperformed. So maybe maybe some exceptions but by and large I think >> things just it's a big flush out right.

Uh but if we move above um I think again because Bitcoin is being driven by geopolitics and altcoins are more being driven by regulation a lot of it hanging on the clarity act um I think that is an independent uh driver that we need to see progress there before those coins can really take off. >> Yeah. >> Um >> I think I think you're absolutely right. I think they're they're hinging on on regulations. One thing I would add is that, you know, we've seen this revenue meta play out over recent months where a lot of teams have started to prioritize that and the teams that have caught a bid, the tokens that have caught a bid are the ones that are generating some revenue. Hyperlid is obviously, you know, the the the go-to example there and you know those that calls for a valuation that's tied a little bit more

to an equity. And so, you know, given given that dynamic, it feels like they're hinging on regulatory and they're hinging on, you know, this this revenue aspect, but both of those things, if the market is apathetic and we don't get clarity, are going to be tough to, you know, call see a catalyst to the upside for the altcoin complex. >> Yeah, I think it's an interesting moment because prices are way down, but uh in our view, fundamentals are actually have bottomed and are running ahead of the price. And what do I mean by that? Well, if you look at things like uh tokenized real world assets, those are up 45% year to date. Uh the top applications in crypto, the top 10 applications have brought in uh 5.9 almost 6 billion in revenue over the last 12 months. Uh you

look at prediction market volume, it's at all-time highs. So, a lot of uh elements in the crypto ecosystem, the fundamentals are running are have bottom are moving up. Um, and I think that shows great momentum for when we do turn this leaf and move into the next mark bull market. I think it's setting up the foundation. Uh, because there is all of this momentum independent of price and I agree with you that drives a narrative to more revenue driven assets. Hyperl as we mentioned has done well because of that. Um, but I think we can expect that moving forward. Um, if we look at what these drivers are over the longer term, tokenization is a 600 trillion addressable market and we're sitting at 33 billion in tokenized assets right

now. And we know that all the big established players uh from Coinbase to Robin Hood to uh the NYC um are building tokenization platforms. uh we know the big established asset managers Fidelity, Black Rockck, Apollo are all building are all bringing uh building the rails to bring their products and their assets on chain. Um so the the financial plumbing is getting rebuilt and that is a huge wave of momentum driving the asset class forward. Then on top of that we have things like uh agentic commerce which is just at the very early innings.

Uh protocols like near are building the rails for that uh to converge with AI. Uh, so I think there's a lot that is being built in this bare market that sets up a really strong foundation for when we come out of it and move into the next leg of the bull market. >> Yeah, big shout out to Near, good friends of the show, doing incredible things in the AI world as well as, you know, as that breaks into the crypto world. Um, another big portion of this tokenization super cycle, the fundamentals, the the convergence between, you know, Tradfi and and uh onchain finance here is going to be the macro environment. This is a a huge driver. Um, and so obviously regulation is sort of part of the macro environment and we're seeing progress on the Clarity Act. We'll we'll maybe get a little bit

deeper into that. It's a big week this week and next week. >> We've got an FOMC meeting today though and so I'm curious what you expect from Kevin Worsh. Do you think he's going to raise rates and and how do you think the markets are going to react to this? and generally what what do you think about you know him the lack of forward guidance and and the macro environment in general these days and how you think crypto is going to react to this >> yeah I don't think he's going to raise rates today uh market seems to think likewise uh implied probabilities are 66% that uh they don't raise uh so there is a 33% chance could happen but I I don't think it it'll be there because of what we just saw with the latest print

in inflation coming coming down uh a bit so I think that gives them the leeway way to stay put. Um I think what will be more important is to see any changes in the policy uh in the policy statement from the Fed or the voting pattern from the FOMC members. I think that'll give more guidance to the market about what the policy outlook is for the Fed, especially now that they're giving less outward guidance as you were mentioning. I think this is a new era of the Fed. Kevin W has said he's going to be less vocal uh so less, you know, handholding to the market which I think may bring more volatility. uh but I think it may allow the fundamental data to drive the narrative uh more the policy more. Um so I I I I I think we'll stay put today.

We'll see what happens later on. We're seeing volatility with oil prices now with the recent strikes again in in Iran. Um so we'll have to see where inflation goes. Um but I think the fundamental backdrop is that AI is a huge productivity driver. That is a deflationary trend. Um, and so I think outside of these uh geopolitical skirmishes which are driving oil and energy prices uh up and down, uh I think over the longer term we may have a deflationary trend uh coming. >> It it's an exciting new era for the Fed because it felt like we had gotten so backwards. It it felt like everyone knew what the FOMC decision was going to be and we ended up reacting negatively to good data because it would signal that

they were going to not cut rates. they would maybe raise rates and then bad data, right? The economy's in a worse position. The market would go up because we would be anticipating this reactionary, you know, action from the Fed and and and it just felt very backwards uh from the data that we were seeing. And so I I I like the point that you're making. We're going to be more uh influenced by the data rather than kind of playing this like guessing game of of of what the Fed is going to do. feels like the Fed meeting matters again whereas before we knew exactly what they were going to do and we were just reacting accordingly. Um I I've got sort of an off-the-wall question for you just as we're on this topic because Kevin War seems like you know he's a younger guy than than Jerome Powell. He seems like

he's doing things a little bit differently. He's got these councils out there that are sort of researching these things and he's also made you know some crypto investments in his day. Do you think there's a chance the Fed could put Bitcoin on its balance sheet? >> That is a very good question. Um, I think for the biggest central bank in the world, they have to be very cautious in how they move. Uh, I I think they are studying it and taking it seriously. Um, so I don't discount it. Um, whether that could happen this year or I think more likely in a in in a couple of years. I think they probably want to see Bitcoin continue to mature. Uh and what we've seen in the pattern of Bitcoin similar

to gold is that as it went from a nent speculative asset to an established store of value and from mainly retail driven trading to institutional adoption, you saw in both cases the volatility come down over time. And we've seen that with Bitcoin. So they might want to see Bitcoin's volatility come down even further than where it is today uh before they want to include something like that. But I wouldn't discount it. >> Okay. Awesome. Um well, I really appreciate you coming on, man. I I I'm I'm just, you know, we're we're, you know, steady steady as it goes, trucking through. Um any other catalyst that you see on the horizon for this market? You know, whether that's these per venues, whether that's, you know, these stable coin businesses in the equities world in

in the token world. What are some of the catalysts? You know, we talk a lot about uh macro. We talk a lot about regulation with clarity and and you know, then there's sort of the technical indicators that we're watching. Obviously, we've got these big tokenization, super cycles, RWAs, all of these things. How do you maintain a patient perspective and what catalysts are you looking forward to on the horizon? >> Yeah, I think uh touching on clarity since it's topical this week. Um we have John Thun, the Senate Senate leader, um put the put the Clarity Act on the on the back burner to be filed for a closure uh motion this week because uh to prioritize the the Russian uh Iran sanctions package. Uh so we'll have to

see if late this week or early next week um that motion to uh to go to Cloer um gets filed. Uh if that happens then we would see a vote on that to then put it to a formal vote in the Senate. Um all that needs to happen before the end of next week when they go out to recess. So if that doesn't happen within this week then it's out of the question until the uh the elections in in November uh the midterm elections. So uh I I think really of course it would be better if the the Karia app passed. Uh but more importantly markets hate uncertainty and so I think we need a decision one way or the other so that we can continue to move forward. Um I think we need closure on that and uh just today um at Chair Atkins from the SEC came out saying that

he's ready the SEC is ready to act and make rules. So independent of what happens with the Clarity Act in the very short term, there's rulemaking that's happening that's going to continue to move the industry forward. I think that's positive. I think that's that's going to be a slowmoving positive train. Uh I think something people may be underestimating is that the Genius Act uh which regulates stable coins is actually coming it got passed last year, but it's coming into effect at the beginning of this coming year 2027. So I think that's really going to catalyze much more adoption of stable coins, which will bring more capital into the space. So I think that may help revive trading volumes um and uh and use case and and adoption of crypto applications.

Um so I think that can be a driver uh coming into next year as that takes takes hold. Awesome Juan. Thank you so much, man. I I really appreciate these conversations with uh guys such as yourself that have a a unique vantage point in the market and we get a lot of guys on here. They like to talk their own book. They like, you know, they they have a project that they work on dayto-day and they like to they like to talk about it. No, no shame in that. But you guys have a very general uh highlevel perspective on the market as a whole. And I I I appreciate uh I appreciate all your takes and uh the stream the the uh they like your jacket. >> Oh, [laughter] nice vintage, you know, uh vintage shopping.

>> I love it. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on, man. Love to have you on. >> Guys, that uh that was our first guest live from the Arya Hotel, the Rare Evo Conference. We're going to do a quick standby and uh we'll bring up our next guest who is Dennis from XRPL. See you guys soon. Be right back. [music] [music] >> [music] >> Yo yo yo. What's going on, guys? This is

Itan with the rollup. We're going to be patrolling the streets of New York City getting answers to the questions that you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in? How much do people actually budget? We're going to have people from all over, all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded. There won't be a mayor or politician to stop us on the streets. We're going to go everywhere. All five burrows. We're taking over the 212. We get deep. [music] You know, we get deep.

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>> Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, from the Arya Hotel at the Rare Evo Conference in Las Vegas. We've got Dennis, the CTO of the XRP Ledger Foundation. They've got quite a presence around here at the conference. This is our next guest, uh, Dennis Le's engineering direction, protocol contribution, and standards development at the XRP Ledger Foundation. Previously spent years at XRPL labs building core infrastructure and tooling. um we don't frequently have uh XRP representatives uh on the show and so I'm excited to hear because you guys have been look been around a long long time um and typically these ecosystem sort of they go in a million different directions >> and so I'm excited to hear what XRP has been up to because

>> like I see a lot and I want to know more about what's happening underneath the surface uh because I think sometimes there is a a perception that people have from and I think it's inside it's I think it's outside and so hopefully we can clar clarify some misconceptions here today. Dennis, welcome to the show. First time on, welcome to Vegas and uh man, how are you feeling at the conference? >> I'm doing well. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. I've never been to the Rare Evo before. Uh this is my first time, but I I love what I'm seeing here >> and I'm excited. >> Very cool. So, um I'm I'm first curious because it's your first time on the show, tell us a little bit about how how you found the space. Um you know, what ended up speaking to you about uh Ripple

and about XRPL. um why you decided to join them and uh ultimately we'll you know we'll get into more of what you you guys got going on. >> So I started in Ethereum actually um I I I have a finance background but I got really immersed in Ethereum and I quit my job and sort of started developing smart contracts. >> And what time frame is this? uh 2016, right? So around 2016 and I was building a wallet on a mobile phone and I had Ethereum on there and a friend of mine came up to me and said, "Why don't you put uh XRP? Why don't you try it out?" And I had sort of my own bias at the time against it. But I I I put it on the phone. I was able to transfer some value um immediately and I saw the 3-second

finality was really really interesting at the time, right? coming from Ethereum where it took a long time to the XRP where it was really fast and you kind of had to give up smart contracts for these protocol level implementations and I really liked it and I thought for some of my business cases that I was looking into I could do it without uh without the smart contracts. So >> were you primarily looking at payments is that why you didn't need too much smart contract? >> 100%. And what were some of the the you mentioned you know you were in the Ethereum ecosystem you had some biases you know towards the protocol itself until you actually tried it. just curious what what were those biases that ultimately became uh you know that you overcome and and went into the >> I think the number one was was no smart

contracts right and so when I got into it what was really cool is like you know compiling that binary shipping onto a consensus mechanism where everything comes to the same conclusion at the same time and then you could write this smart contract and execute it and XRPL just didn't have that right and it wasn't until I really started looking into to it that it could do my use case which which was uh you know just something simple with payments um and so I didn't need the smart contracts but that 3se secondond finality was able to really I I felt like would put me ahead or put other other use cases ahead >> and and so this is almost a decade ago at this point and so a lot has changed both in the Ethereum ecosystem as well as uh in in I'm sure in the XRP uh

foundation ledger you know that ecosystem as well talk us through the evolution you know there was no smart contract contracts to begin with and and you know very very purpose-built for payments. What is what has the evolution been like on the technological front and then you know we'll talk about the adoption as well. >> So I uh 2020 we started adding NFTTS uh and then right after that I think AMM so some more payment protocol level stuff um and now one of the more most recent one is we have batch payments where we can batch uh eight transactions together. We also have lending which is a really cool new primitive uh which will allow you know you to facilitate a loan through through the ledger uh specifically um and so I think the philosophy is more like let's build what

we need or what clients we we have and build for them and not do smart contracts but we do have uh amendments out there proposals for smart contracts. So it's on like a test net version chain where you can execute smart contracts. And so we're looking at you know what does that look like on the ledger uh in the future >> and the way that these technological innovations work on the Ripple ledger. >> Is it that the are they're it sounds like they're baked directly into the protocol. And so when you say that there's lending and there's some AMMs are is there like one Ripple ledger AMM and when you go to make a transaction you use that AMM or you know facilitate a loan you use that lending market or

and and they're baked directly into the process. >> So the first part's right it's baked directly into the protocol. When we think of a smart contract that's that's code that gets compiled in and then uploaded to the ledger. I love to say that kind of the XRPL is one big smart contract, right? So that lending protocol was written into the ledger as code, C++ code, and then everyone's running the same binary, so everyone comes to the same conclusion. So it's sort of a smart feature. It's it's they call it something different, but that's basically how it goes. Um, but in terms of like one lending, no, basically what you do is anyone can create a lending pool.

>> So it is permissionless. It it is a levels of permission list. Yeah. So you anyone can create a lending pool. I can put money into that lending pool and then there's a lending broker who sort of facilitates whether or not they're going to take this lending or that or sorry this loan or that loan. Um so it is permissionless. It's not one lending pool. Um there's multiple. So >> and and and you know it's funny. I I got into the the industry around a similar time 2016. um you know first with Bitcoin then with Ethereum sort of you know went down the rabbit hole as well and it's it's fascinating the way that this industry has evolved just look in the recent let's say year to year and a half hyperlid has taken the world by storm hyperl you know you can call it a

few different things some people call it an L1 some people call it an arbitum L3 the reality is there's like a couple maybe like a half a dozen of validators it's like rather centralized in the grand scheme of and and people are okay with that because you know it provides a valuable service and people love it and does a good job. There's good UX and so you know it works and we've given up a lot of the decentralization theater that existed for a long time in the industry in favor of you know reasonably decentralized protocols that provide a better user experience and ultimately a better product. And it sounds like the market and and and it sounds like Ripple has been building with this in mind for a

long time and the market is maybe the pendulum of the market is swinging back towards the less decentralized, more verticalized, better user experience side of the world. Is that a fair assessment? >> I I 100% agree. I mean, we I was talking to somebody last night and it's like my parents cannot learn what a blockchain is. There's no reason for them to learn what a blockchain is. It's really hard. I feel like sometimes we kind of nerd it out a little too hard in crypto and it's like, oh, you have to do this and you have to do that and the that wallet app I built, like you have to manage the gas token and also the other the other assets and then your yield pools and it's just too hard to explain to somebody. Hyperlid made that really simple. Um, they made it easy to use and

I feel like as time progresses it's going to get easier. So I don't, you know, they have a a centralized club. Um and you know pe like you said people you know really nerdy into it may not like that but the average user who wants to get yield or wants to invest in futures they don't they don't really care. There there was a fantastic tweet um I think it was our friend Frank Shaparo or maybe it was CoinDesk that that uh put out this Morgan Stanley ETF and I think it was Solana and ETH if I'm not mistaken but the the the point remains regardless of the ecosystem that they're now passing back all of the staking rewards to the end user and the point of the tweet was that look these end users they're they're they're retail but sophisticated retail users they're on

Morgan Stanley and they care about yield and the fact that they can get yield they don't really nerd out on where it comes from. They're not looking at staking rewards and this and that and exit Q and all these things. They're just looking I got a 3% yield on this asset that I want exposure to anyway. And the fact that it's getting to me that's more of this asset that I wouldn't otherwise have and and they don't nerd out on all the details. So I think to your point, you know, there there's value created here and sometimes it doesn't really for some people it matters what how that happens underneath the surface. For others they just want that value.

>> Yeah. And so tell us a little bit more about the adoption here, the go to market strategy that Ripple has done with payments. I I heard Ripple was like doing very fascinating things in Japan. And so I think sometimes, you know, if you're in the Ripple community, you get to understand this, but on the outside looking in, they, you know, just haven't really broken through in terms of the the people that that are on the outside of the Ripple community just haven't looked deep enough to understand the type of progress and the adoption that's happening here. But we've got the guy, >> you know, you're you're the man. So I I I want to help our community understand what has been happening underneath the seat. What kind of adoption has been taking place on the XRP ledger?

>> Sure. And I think it's probably good to differentiate the two, right? Ripple is the biggest client on the XRP ledger. So we can talk about what their what their interests are. They are really heavily institutional interest, right? They bought that broker dealer. Um they're implementing some of some of that stuff. I think they're really heavy into lending. The new thing that we have is actually account delegation. So when you issue an asset, you have like a a hot wallet and a cold wallet. And if you need to authorize somebody to hold that asset, that issuing wallet has to be touched. And you don't really want to to open that up continuously signing transaction. So with account delegation, you can delegate that ability to authorize somebody else uh with another sort of hot account and and use it that

way. Um, I think there's some other things that Ripple's interested in looking towards. I would say probably revolves around the broker dealer stuff. It's not really something I can express here. Um, but one thing that that I can express that they're focusing on is less about adoption and more a little bit AI. Um, we saw recently we had some issues with some of our amendments. Um, and there was an AI company that came out and did an audit uh, a review of one of our amendments before going live and found an issue. And that sparked something really cool within Ripple and the XRPLF. Um, which was like a a big budget immediately for all developers to sort of hammer the hammer the source code with with Claude and and GPT and

find these issues. And we they created a red team and we had hundreds of issues that that we solved. Not hundreds of high just a few high critical. Um, but I really think it put us ahead of some of the other blockchains cuz we then see we come out and see that oh this smart contract was exploited with AI and it's like I'm so happy for us to be able to get ahead a little bit in that and have access and yeah so that's something I really think not doesn't really drive adoption but it drives the sustainability of the chain um and keeps us you know uh where we don't have that negative PR news.

>> Yeah. And I mean another, you know, blockchain that did something here got caught a little bit behind the eight-ball, but ultimately rectified it was Zcash. >> Yeah, exactly. >> You know, they they put Mythos on this thing and they found this bug, right? And they were public about it. They said, "Look, there was a bug. We don't think there was any infinite mint, you know, bug on Zcash. We don't think, but we're going to implement this solution to ultimately tell us whether or not, you know, this this happened." Um, and I think the new Ironwood Pool was just rolled out over the last couple days and, you know, moving in the right direction. So yeah, it was it was pretty, you know, disconcerning to see a lot of those smart contract exploits um presumably because a lot of these AI models were, you know, allowing them to

find those things, but now the teams have been adopting or using these AI models for good rather than, you know, the malicious sense. So that has been really really great to see. um you know from from everything that I'm hearing and I appreciate you know all of the insights on on the XRP ledger here and the separation between XRP the client there's another blockchain that I sort of want to draw a comparison to >> uh because it takes an institutional strategy as well and I'm just curious about your thoughts on it so Canton >> okay so maybe you've heard this before so Canton's obviously got this institutional partner program super validators issuing a lot of incentives but it sounds like >> Ripple and Canton are taking a similar approach trying to win the institutional market.

>> How do you feel about the Canton blockchain? Do you think they're doing things the right way? And are Canton and Ripple competing for the same customer? >> Okay. Um, so first I I like Canton. I looked into them early. I am sort of a a permissioned blockchain kind of guy. I think, you know, some of these use cases, they're probably going to lean towards permission and that that probably works for like broker dealers and maybe some other use cases out there. So I always kept Canton on my radar. I I went to their docs. I really like their docs. I like how they actually had some smart contracts laid out in YAML file, YAML form, which is like this really good, easy standard to like write these smart contracts in. I love that they're ran in a trusted

environment and you have attestations. Again, it's permission. You have to like that. Um I think if we talk permissionless, permission, I think Ripple sits in the middle with a UNL. So it's not like fully permissionless like like Ethereum or or Bitcoin. There is a UNL and so it sits right in between that with permission. >> What is UNL? >> Uh UNL is a unique node list. Um and it's basically uh a set of validators who are trusted for the network. Um and so we put out a UNL list and Ripple puts out a UNL list and and they can differ a little bit but they have to really kind of be the same. And that's basically your your trusted uh validator set. So

we don't we don't trust all of the validators. We just trust these 35 to continue to make forward progress. Um and so do I think Ripple and Canton are competing? I think in some categories they are in some spaces. Like I said, institution I feel like broker dealers really want uh for for like settlement or clearing house trade desk kind of thing. I feel like that's a permission area maybe. And so I think Canton attacks that well. Um I don't you know I don't think Ripple has a focus on a full permissioned like solution for that. You can take that that Ripple D source code and write a permission network but I'm not sure that's that's their overall direction. I think they're focusing um

like lending on institutional stuff and really trying to integrate that broker dealer into the chain. Like h what what do we do over here that we can now do over here is kind of their focus. makes sense. So not necessarily competing maybe on the institutional front but there are there's a spectrum of permissionedness and and they fall on different different sides of that spectrum. makes makes a lot of sense. Um on on the payments front as well this is both an institutional conversation and one that's you know been present in the blockchain space for a long long time. Had a friend of the show uh listen in on the Visa earnings call recently.

>> Okay. You probably saw uh this open US dollar from Tempo. It was like a big consortium stable coin. Robin Hood, Visa, I think Microsoft, ton of people signed up for supporting this this stable coin and and sort of putting it in in the you know echelon of of circles USDC and and and Tether's USDT. And so it seemed to just catapult itself to, you know, kind of that that sort of space. And so the Visa initially signed up to support this this stable coin, but on the earnings call, someone asked, "Hey, you know, how how much are you really going to prioritize this stable coin over others?" And someone at Visa, I don't know if it's a CEO, but someone

at on the Visa earnings call said that they were they not trying to pick winners here. They want to be a fair supporting layer and to all their customers. And I think they want to encourage stable coin settlement and stable coin access to to USDC, USDT, all the stable coins for all of their customers. And so was really like, you know, pulling the reins back on prioritizing open US dollar as sort of this stable coin. And so I'm curious how much you're looking at Visa, Mastercard, Discover as maybe, you know, maybe we're not competing with with Canton, maybe we're not competing with ETH on the blockchain format, but as we prioritize the payments use case, we're really targeting Visa, we're really targeting

Discover. >> Sure. >> How much do you look at what they're doing, what they're doing on the stable coin front as sort of uh insight into how Ripple might navigate the competitive landscape? >> Sure. Yeah. Um, I think they're looking at it, all of them. I think they're they will have integrations with all of them. Um, like you said, like Visa, Mastercard are not playing favorites right now. They kind of just want to grab up market share as fast as they can. And if if if the XRP ledger has some of that market share, then they'll absolutely tap into it. I think Gemini just came out with a card for for the XRP ledger where you can use it like that. Um, they're also targeting Stripe. Uh, another big one you asked, so for adoption, big push, uh, not just with AI sort of security,

but AI onchain, right? Uh, I think we have T54, which is a new company that came out from an expple employee to do a Gentic payments. Um, and so in order to facilitate all of that, we do have to integrate with Stripe. We have to integrate with Google. Um and so they're definitely looking at it and I would not be surprised if you saw you know added to that list uh for Mastercard, Visa, etc. Uh the XRP ledger. Um I think what's also interesting is it sort of comes from a wallet perspective as well. Uh I know the number one wallet in the XRPL ecosystem is the Zaman wallet and they've partnered with uh a company and built out a product to facilitate those payments. So it doesn't just have to be

from Visa or Mastercard, right? You can get that merchant below that bank merchant that can then issue a card. Yeah. Um so I think that's interesting. >> Okay. Fascinating. I mean, yeah, this is a use case that I know, you know, Ripple has prioritized over the years um since the beginning, right? And the lack of the lack of smart contracts. >> Really just one more question. It's sort of a two-parter. Uh we had the Quack brothers on the show. >> They threw out some >> astonishing numbers when it came to XRP uh price targets. Um, we're in the the middle of this revenue meta. It feels like that all everyone is focused on buybacks of the token, funneling revenue back to token holders >> currently. What is the revenue landscape

look like on XRP XRP ledger? How much value is being accured and how much value is flowing back to the token holders? >> And then taking those as inputs, what is your price target of the XRP token? Um, so I think we we've struggled the XRP ledger has struggled for a while to to get yield bearing products, right? We don't have smart contracts, so we can't just deploy those things. Um, the new lending protocol has within it what's called a single asset vault, which is basically a fund product. So you deposit in and you can withdraw out and then the lending is sort of built on top of that.

And there's more ideas to come later in the future to build on top of that single asset vault uh to to issue bonds and then make coupon payments kind of thing. Um and then there's a couple other ideas. So I think we're not quite there yet with with uh yield generation. A lot of it ends up going offchain somewhere else. So like staking and then moving it off. Um I but I think next couple years we're really going to have that with this single asset vault and the ability for people to pull money together and then create a product to to sort of earn interest on that and that goes back to the pool.

>> And the idea is that that product would generate fees, >> right? >> Yeah. And those fees would flow to the token and not the foundation. >> The Yeah, exactly. Well, they wouldn't flow back to the XRP token. They would flow back unless the XRP was the underlying asset, right? So, so when you deposit in, you can deposit in with USD or or XRP. I think a lot more people would deposit in with USD and then earn value on that. But I think, you know, when we think of in terms of like what raises the price of a of a token, um, you know, I think you the use case, the utility, the more people using it, um, I think that definitely helps. I also think that all, you know, what is that?

The tide raises all ships. And I think, you know, there's no way to to look at something and be like, "It's going to be up forever." Like, take a look at memory, right? Memory shot up and then it's coming back down again, right? So, you just have and and it'll go back up again, right? So, I think you just have to wait this one out. I think we're finally getting to the level where like actual institutions are integrating the software and not from like a cryptocurrency, but a blockchain level. like how does a consensus mechanism where everything has to come to consensus how can that work in our technology today and the more we use that and the more it's implemented whether or not it's even XRPL or it's a private blockchain the more that that's

used and becomes mainstream is I think what raises everything >> okay and can you and and a number >> a number a number uh right oh man I might get in trouble but I would say I would say over the next at least two or two years probably five to$6 >> five to$6 XRP target over the next couple of years >> couple years yeah >> all right that is much much more reasonable about 1/100th more reasonable of uh of the number that we got from the quack brothers um Dennis thanks didn't mean to put you on the spot there really appreciate you coming on and uh yeah giving us a little bit more of an update on what's going on the XRP ecosystem appreciate it

>> thank you thanks so much guys quick standby and then we're going to be right back with our next guest. It is Todd Al. It's been on the show before with uh our AI super cycle segment for the show. >> Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Yo yo yo. What's going on, guys? This is Itan with the rollup. We're going to be

patrolling the streets of New York City getting answers to the questions that you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in? How much do people actually budget? We're gonna have people from all over, all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded. There won't be a mayor or politician to stop us on the streets. We're going to go everywhere. All five burrows. We're taking over the 212. [music] We get deep. You know, we get deep.

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[music] We get deep. We get deep. You know we get deep. [music] >> Welcome back to AI Supercycle, our premier AI show airing every single week presented by Near. We cover the ins and outs of decentralized AI privacy and the future of this massive technology. Near is the blockchain for AI and the execution of AI native apps. You can check out Near's latest AI product at near.ai.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. We are back at the rare evo conference live in Vegas from the Arya Hotel. We've got our next guest here, Todd Alt III, seasoned American financeier, entrepreneur of the alt blockchain as well as many other companies and the 41st largest corporate holder of Bitcoin. The Fed just decided not to raise rates. So, uh Todd and I are sitting here with a smile on our face. We're both feeling good. He Todd's feeling a lot better than I am given that he's the 41st larger largest holder in the world. But we're we're both feeling good about the price of Bitcoin.

Uh Todd, man, it's uh not your first time. It's good to see you again and welcome back. >> Good to see you. Uh yeah, Bitcoin for us is Pristine Capital and we we own we're part of a conglomerate. We own a data center in Michigan that we're funding and we're using Bitcoin with really low cost of capital. You can get you can borrow on Morphio and other for as little as 5%. Right? So it the stabilization of Bitcoin long term is going to be great for the asset in terms of pristine collateral because you get that volatility to the upside, right? you get that ball and you get the ability to borrow against this pine asset. We continue to buy it every week.

Uh we reported,6 bitcoin last week which is the 41st largest owner. It's actually technically through a public company called hypers scale ironically GPUs but alt capital group is a subsidiary which is a hybrid private equity firm. We're restructuring the companies as they separate. That's more on that later but yeah >> GPU is a great ticker. Uh this is our AI segment. You guys are the AI blockchain here at the rare EVO conference and so GPUs obviously GPUs you guys are doing quite a bit with AI. Let's just talk about how you're using Bitcoin as pristine collateral. You mentioned on Morpho you got some some very reasonable borrowing rates. How does that work in with the agentic commerce idea of the alt blockchain

>> and and what are you seeing out there in the space? >> Yeah, they're really separate uh transactions. We, you know, we're a company with, you know, a global defense business, a lending business, a hotel group. We own all kinds of assets, you know, 618 employees in five countries. So, it's a little difficult when it was all a conglomerate at one point, but if you separate the company, you got this Michigan data center with 340 megawatts, currently 20 critical for a neocloud provider that we're building out. We just announced a $ 1.3 billion contract that grows to three billion over time if it's fully executed with options for 52 megawatts. Only 17 every only 17% of the data center for some 3 billion over 20 years. Really amazing what's happening

in AI. And then on the al blockchain side, which we call a protocol, our protocol, we're really a a highly developed network for my background, which is Tradfi. And I'm a believer to tokenize every asset you can and make a centralized place, which we call alt markets, which is a piece of software that allows you to trade all markets. The goal is for alt markets to allow you to trade everything whether it's on our blockchain where we're effectively going to be like a think of like a hyperlquid I think a little faster but we're not claiming that we're faster or not just equivalent to hyperlquid uh lighter uh the astr of the world that's an an offshore um deck that's been built on

and integrated into the alt blockchain that we sponsored we helped fund it like a VC firm our blockchain's a little different and that is we do not give out any coin. There was no ICO. We are all full emissions based based on mining nodes and verification 1 million miners globally. I think 13 uh validators and what we believe is what we're doing with robotics and others. We just sort of discovered that agentically these things have to pay for each other and that high-speed payment rail is going to be super important. We think it's going to be we think EVM's the winner. Uh, you know, obviously people have to continue to get comfortable with bridging and how that will work and sort of the dominant thought process of where stuff remains

on what chain, but I think there's going to be a lot of room for what is going to be a global tokenization over the next 20 years. I think there's a time where all assets trade that are meaningful >> on some form of DeFi, right? And I and and and I'm a you know we own a business called Universal DeFi which is public on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol UU and we continue to believe that DeFi and Tradfi are going to converge and ultimately you're the winners are going to make it ubiquitous where you almost don't know that you're using DeFi but you can centralize. So you're going to be two choices, right?

you're going to centralize your own assets with someone else like a Coinbase or you're going to custodian your own assets and get comfortable that you can do that as you know that's a very uncomfortable topic for most people they're nervous they're going to lose their crypto right >> uh but I think ultimately those tools work and one of the ways that works is identifying everything where >> once you get comfortable depositing with the agent and you can pay for things >> and and payments are accepted that way that the networks become really valuable.

>> So we share in this thesis here on the show. We talk about this quite a bit. This convergence between TRFI and DeFi, the onchain economy and the offchain economy. All of this is headed in a very very similar direction. You also mentioned how AI, you know, there there this is a work in progress and it's extremely early. >> It's really early. People people do not realize how way way early we are. we we see about these big numbers, you know, five, you know, 500 billion, 600 billion, this capex, we're so early, we have no idea.

>> And and if we think about the trust that we're starting to put into these models, >> yeah, >> it's already at incredible levels despite the the you know, beginning of this this mega trend, right? We're using models for all sorts of research. We're using them to take all sorts of actions online. We're putting health information, private information, all sorts of information. We're trusting them with extremely important decisions in our private life, you know, emotional decisions, physical decisions, health-wise, all over the place. Financial decisions as well is a very important and significant piece of that.

As we start to trust AI more and more, it's only a matter of time before we trust AI with our money as our financial adviserss. And I think you're in a position to benefit from this. And so as we start to approach this, you talked about tokenization, you talked about alt markets, ultimately all of this, >> you know, I can't help but go back to what you just said, right? There was a time where I was approached to invest $10 million in what we would would be today Door Dash. >> Okay. >> Uh and I wouldn't do it. And it was a foolish mistake. And I I'll explain to you why. And that is there was a time where people were afraid to give their credit cards online. Now, I know you're young, but that didn't exist. Like the whole thing with the internet was why

would I give them my credit card? I'm not going to put it in the system. I know that seems archaic today, but there literally was a time when my wife others would not put their credit card online. >> Yeah. >> I think the same thing's going to happen with Aentic AI, right? And there's an an adoption curve that it's going to be normal for you to have your own wallet. It's going to be normal for you to fund and get a loan that way. I mean, we're doing crazy stuff right now with DeFi where we're able to borrow millions of dollars for in a in a vault for very low rates. So, it's so exciting the convergence of Trafi and DeFi. I can't even express to you how big of a deal I think this is going to be. The tokenization of stocks, the token of

commodities, the token of collectibles, the tokenizations of loans. We are presently working on tokenizing all the loans that our lender puts out >> into the ecosystem. So this is just an amazing time. People have to look through this, look further, look four or five years ahead and just plug your nose. It's going to be crazy. >> Yeah. And and this tokenization, it's a super cycle. We're seeing it play out there. There's this philosophical principle that knowledge wants to be free. I think the same applies to capital. Capital wants to be free and it wants to be programmable and productive.

And on a blockchain, when it's tokenized, it has that much more opportunity to do so. I think in a world where you see media and you don't know what to question with AI, the most trustable thing is going to be code and and and programmability. One of the reasons why we've had so many audits of the alt blockchain was we really want to be diligent on making sure all the holes are patched. I mean, we've almost beat ourselves to death with these audits. Like I I we audit the we audit the audit out of we audit the auditors like >> with AI that's what you >> but you kind of have to do that right and AI is helping that, right? So you have your sort of main audit, you pay for your sub audit, you pay for maybe another audit, and then you pay AI

agents to audit that. Yeah. >> So it's really powerful, but we do need to uh be in a position of trust. Like blockchain is trust, but verify. It's a Ronald Reagan concept, right? Which is, hey, we're going to trust the Russians, but we're going to verify. Blockchain makes that all possible. You can't hide, which is just wonderful. >> Yeah. And I think people are looking for that verifiability in the age of AI when a lot of these things are so unpredictable. Sure. I >> I want to hone in on one piece of the business here, which is the the data center in Michigan. Um, was this always a data center or was this originally a Bitcoin mining operation now turned data center?

>> It was a copper plant for about 70 or 80 years that we bought six, seven years ago, converted into Bitcoin mining, still mines Bitcoin today. >> Oh, it still does. Okay. >> And that we over time, you know, it's funny. I thought we were really ahead of the curve. We really we really kind of messed it up. We were ahead. Uh we had an opportunity to do a big deal there. We didn't do it. But now we've signed a deal with a a Neocloud provider and we're converting and and we're ultimately going to move our Bitcoin mining operations to where something's really competitive. Okay.

>> But Bitcoin mining is not going to be our focus. Bitcoin Treasury >> is a focus around the asset base of alt capital group which is a um I would say tradi defy operating business that lends invests and does hybrid private equity and then you have this pure play which is our data center business which will ultimately be alliance cloud services which provides AI you know data center for we have our own neo cloud we have our uh we also then allow and we also rent to others too like this Neo cloud that basically off took about 20 megawatt of critical that can go to 52 but yeah it was a Bitcoin miner and it still is and it's migrating out of that.

>> Okay. And so you know we've seen a lot of this this has been a a sort of a trend across the board as AI compute continues to be the bottleneck in in significantly high demand from all of these frontier model companies. Compute is the limiting factor. And so we've seen mining companies pivot into being data centers so that they can provide that compute. >> But at the same time, Bitcoin has fallen a little bit in recent times. I mean, you know, Fed Fed not hiking rates is doing doing good things for us right now. But given that it's fallen, I'm obviously you're familiar with the mechanism here. It becomes less profitable to mine. Miners leave the network. The difficulty adjustment adjusts lower and it becomes easier to mine Bitcoin. And so what I'm hearing you say as someone who's on the ground

operating this business despite the difficulty adjustment despite it being easier to mine Bitcoin, it is still more profitable to turn that data center into an AI data center and not >> there's not even a question right this minute. >> Not even it's the the numbers are not even debatable. Now we're spending about 130 million of capex uh this year and next year on our data center. that number will ramp up as it goes to 340 megawatts, but then you're talking about billions of dollars in leases, right? Only only only 17% of the data center represents 20 billion over 20 years.

>> So when you look at that number, you can't compete with Bitcoin. It's it's way AI uh data centers are very profitable relative to demand. And the interesting thing is my partner and I, Will Horn, the CEO of Hypers Scale Data. We we're fighting off the fact that, you know, we trade at an $80 million market cap. We have 71 million of Bitcoin. We have almost 350 million of assets. And we reported this morning we'll do $300 million in 2027. And on top of that, which is insanity, the market is to me insane. I don't think they got it right because I'm a buyer of it. I own a ton of the company. have 56 million in preferred of our own parent company money in the company. We are going to start reporting

IBIDA uh and we're going to give the forecast out on the 4th which is August 4th and with $300 million of revenue and it's high margin revenue about about 150 million high margin revenue. I do not understand what the market's doing. I have no idea why GPUs other than the fact that we're aggressively building the data center. We have an ATM. I know that's a negative, but we're really, you know, it's it's they're we're investing in something where the cash flow and the evida is really going to explode. So, I'm not really getting the market, but I'm confident that AI is going to go through cycles, but there's no way to put that genie back in the bottle. No way. We had offers for so much money for our data center, and they were, of

course, obviously soft offers, a couple, you know, LOIs and stuff like that. We turned them down with a belief that AI was going to be in demand. And we're winning there in that regard. And so only 17% of the data center was leased out with options for $3 billion. And and and it is it is so high margin. It's it's amazing. And I'll tell you right now, I don't know how the capital markets going to play this out. But one thing I wanted to tell you that I'm seeing a lot of is we have 618 employees. AI is not eliminating jobs.

Not on our end. We have to hire like crazy. In fact, I will tell you right now, go go on Instagram. If you're looking for work in anywhere in crypto, if you're an engineer, if you're a salesperson for crypto, a salesperson for DeFi, if you're a person that is in customer service for financial services, uh AI is just making us hire more people. We This This is nonsense right now. These people that say you can just set it and forget it. That doesn't exist today. It may see the next 5 years of job creation from AI. I think the narrative is so dangerous. I sat with someone in Congress highle congressman very high level been there for years told me flat

out and partners with the Chinese. I've got no issue with the Chinese. But he flat out told me that people are being funded to be negative on data centers in America. They're spending money because it's it's an arms race. the the other governments are basically attacking our citizens and getting them to protest. Stop using your Apple phone then. I don't know what you're protesting data centers for. Our data center does not use local water. We recycle it. We do not use local power. We we meet all no noise ordinance and we still get protested against. It makes no sense.

Americans are the only people that protest against themselves. It makes absolutely no sense. The last one I heard was uh that AI data centers are replacing our farmland. We have to save the farmland because uh the the AI data centers are are eating up all the farmland. This is I want a farm. I've said on the show before, I want I want a bunch of acres. >> I don't know if you have to beat this. I don't know if you have to beat this. It's total horseshit. This place we bought which was uh 35 1/2 acres. Now we own 88 acres. It was completely unused. They were parking RVs. They had 30 megawatts of power. where they're parking RVs in this 617,000 ft² data center. We've been mining there for 5 years and now we have p people in

Michigan demanding the the noise go down. It's been there for 5 years. If anyone who's protesting who's acting now somehow that they're selfrighteous about it. Oh, listen to how bad the noise is. It's all political. It's below the It's below And by the way, >> we love that city. We love the people there. We have no issue with them. But for them to argue that we're bad citizens, we've been there for five years mining. It's a madeup concept. >> Someone did an analysis. I think it represents 13 millionth of the farmland in the US. We've got a long way to centers are not taking away farmland.

That warehouse that that data that that copper plant was unused. We're going to bring 500 jobs because we have robotic center of excellence there too. Uh with with a business we own called Omniresent. I wish people would just take a step back, >> allow yourself whether you're Democrat, Republican liberal conservative get rid of the genre of this. Take a step back and ask yourself, are you better than you were 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago? We you got to remember less than 100 years ago, we didn't have running water in houses. This is like we got to we got to walk this back a little bit. AI is completely changed the way I do business. Completely changed it. And I am a more productive chairman. I'm a more productive with my staff. We are we are so bullish on AI. The the the

volatility of the market's not going to matter. AI is going to change the game. >> Yeah. Well, you're I mean, we've seen you in Miami. We've seen you all across the dock. You're you're out here. You're more vocal and you're representing, you know, the company as a chairman should be. So, kudos to you. I mean, there are very real things that I want to call out of this outrageousness. something you mentioned which is that you know you've got partners in China and and a lot of respect for the people but >> you mentioned that there's propaganda money that's propaganda put into our country by the the foreign adversaries to try to >> change the narrative and make us infight fight ourselves slow our progress >> no question

>> how do you know like can you just give us because I think you know there's a lot of people that are affected by the naratives and affected by the propaganda. And then you've got sort of the I I'm going to put them in quotes because I don't think they're nec like they're conspiracy theorists until they're proven true. >> Yeah. >> How do you know this to be true? I I I literally if you look at my Instagram, you'll see that I'm very uh in touch with the political community and I have a couple friends of mine that are good friends that are in Congress that are in committees that are high level that have just flat out told me it's the case and they have evidence of it and I have to believe that they're right. Uh, and uh, I would just say to you that, you know,

I had uh, lunch with the vice or dinner with the vice president, I think two months ago, JD Vance, >> JD Vance. I was with uh, Trump. I'm losing times and dates. I'm getting older. I'm 56 now. Uh, going to be 57. And I would I didn't hear this from Trump, but I defin I'm not going to comment on what JD told me, but high level congressmen and Congress people, women have told me flat out that they have evidence of this. But this one particular congressman who's so high ranking and been there for such a long time. I absolutely believe this is to be the case. And I think there's evidence that that makes sense that I mean it it will slow the US down. I don't know what the reason would be for other than maybe someone wants to win the IIA the AI race

which I don't I don't think I don't think that one government can win that race. I think ultimately as we talk about the US dominating that space from a from a capital perspective I I mean to be cheesy but I think it's a humanity question. Humanity deserves AI. This is the point of moving us forward in whatever game we're playing, right? We're here for a short time. We're all going to benefit from it. And if you let all the noise go away, this is a humanitarian thing. It it is I can't tell you um from a guy who was dyslexic, how much AI means to me. from a guy who had trouble in school writing and and comprehension um how over time AI has I I'm a lot better at than I used to be before AI

you know obviously but it is changed the game and the narrative of response and research and that's a humanitarian thing that literally will I think Elon Musk is right and there's going to be a time and place where productivity is going to take over and we're going to change the way we think about money I don't know when that is by the way >> wow >> he's a big thinker Right. >> Yeah. Absolutely. >> I think when you look at aentic AI and you put in >> physical AI, robotics, Yes. >> and you put in digital AI and then financial infrastructure and the ability to borrow, uh you're going to you're going to squeeze a lot of margins out of the system, especially in banking, and you're going to you're going to see that ramp through the economy in terms of

productivity. This is one thing that when when people ask on this show about a time horizon in terms of decades, right, we've got our tokenization thesis and our DeFi thesis on on a bit of a shorter timeline, but when I think, you know, 15 20 years out, robotics is something that continuously comes to mind, especially now that we've got the mind, we've got the intelligence that can be inserted into this robotics, you know, physical form. Once we, now that we have the arguably harder part, it's just about pumping out as many of these physical forms as possible. That's just an engineering manufacturing question.

Is this a focus for the alt blockchain? You mentioned that a very fast and you think it's EVM, but you know, open open-minded blockchain is the right infrastructure in order for these forms to be transacting with one another. Is this a focus for the alt blockchain going forward? We we are focused on on the idea of tokenizing all real world assets and non-real world assets making them highly available to trade 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year and making payment processing so fast and so easy that global trade is effective that FX is all the idea of any transformation of digital where you're going to use

anything to pay anything is a gentified and has high speed with trust with security, right? And you're going to get that by adoption. You it depends on the numbers you use, but if 3% of the world has ever been in crypto of any form of crypto and a little bit, you know, maybe less than that for Bitcoin, there's so much room to to go, right? If you think about tokenizing hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets ultimately uh and making them uh uh you know formation of capital is going to be the biggest deal right you if you look in Africa I've been there multiple times if you in Africa and other parts of the world

>> when I was there in 2018 it was I think it was 18 or 19 most of the people I spoke to in um didn't even have never heard of Bitcoin >> and now Now we hear we are six, seven years later. They're all using some form of DeFi in their wallet for top up services to get paid in this way. And I think that all that's going to converge and you see that happening with the commercial banks with the Visas, the Mastercards, American Expresses, traditional banking and the way it's done. Reserve banking, you know, I I I'm not going to say it's it's going to go away, but reserve banking is going to be challenged by DeFi banking. That's my opinion, right?

>> Reserve straight out reserve banking >> and DeFi bank. I mean, when you think about us being transparent, we here's how much Bitcoin we have. Here's the address. It's not debatable. Here's what we use against it. Here's our rate. It's it's the greatest thing in terms of transparency. >> Yeah. And and we've long said on the show that it is the most powerful tool for human coordination. And that means trust. It means legitimacy. It means the verifiability. And it means all the financial value that's incorporated into this blockchain. I want to close on this and just make sure that I got the these numbers right.

300 million of revenue. 17 the data center is at 17% capacity right now. Sign could and 17% could generate $3 billion >> over 20 years. >> Over 20 years. But you guys are trading at a was it $85 million market cap? >> Yeah. So let me be clear here because obviously we're a public company. So we're publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange American. We've been around for 26 years. Um it has a lot of businesses inside of it. So I I ultimately offer to shareholders that I realize they think it's confusing. It is a conglomerate, but its core business is the data center in Michigan. That that data center has 30 megawatts of power right now. 20 megawatts of critical has been already leased out to a Neocloud

provider in California. Fast forward to the fact that they have an option to go up to 52 megawws. That would be 17% of the data center, 3 billion over 20 years if they exercise all their options, which means we have 83% to go. We just bought another 50 approximately 50 acres of land around the facility. That will be on its way. that's going to be an asset generating a lot of free cash flow, a lot of IBIDA. Um, inside the business is a bunch of other businesses, mainly a hybrid private equity firm that owns things like cranes, hotels, uh, licensed lenders. It has 500,000 nodes on the alt blockchain. It owns a part of universal defi through yuyu. A very big conglomerate small company asset base about 370 million uh cash cash

equivalents restricted cash about a 100 million 71 million of that is Bitcoin and of course it has an ATM. I think that's the negative that people don't like. But that's going to buy Bitcoin and fund the data center. Um we do have options now to borrow against our Bitcoin at really low rates. It is a I in my opinion it's very inexpensive. I'm not soliciting the stock. I own a preferred in the company worth 56 million. I have the right to put another hundred million in. I'm a big bullish I'm very bullish on the company and old capital group which is inside there. I'm super bullish on the on blockchain which is not reflective of the revenue. We this morning forecasted more we believe more than 300 million for 27 in revenue.

But when you look at the asset mix of where that revenue is coming from, it's coming from AI data center. It's coming from the blockchain. is coming from software and that revenue is higher margin, a lot higher margin. And so we're going to we're going to put out our EVO forecast in on on March 4th, which is next Tuesday. And we're really we're really a big believers in what's happening with AI and the blockchain. The block the blockchain the protocol of blockchain. I I I travel around the world. I've been around the world three year three times in the last year. I met you in a couple different places. Nobody knows yet. It's all as much as you see on your feed, other people's feeds are not that feed.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> And nobody understands this yet. We're I think we're in the first inning. I really do. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, Todd, really appreciate you you stopping by again. I mean, it's great to see you again. I'm looking forward to the next conference already. Um, I I appreciate your longterm time horizon and your unique vantage point given that you've got a view on so many different facets of the business. We're going to get all >> I love the roll up that I I love you. [laughter] When I first met you guys, I started watching your guys' podcast. I thought it's really informative. It's really one of the best ones out there.

So, I've just become a big fan. You know, I met you I thought I met you in Hong Kong. You say that's not caseam. I I don't You're saying it's Miami. >> Predictive past tense now where next time it's going to be Hong Kong. Exactly. Yeah, we're going to be we're going to be at token uh in Singapore. We're going to be in Hong Kong. We're going to be we're going to be everywhere because the alt blockchain is going to be in 172 countries. We're going to go visit as best we can every single country and proitize the idea of decentralization about what's going to happen around DeFi and your ability to move money around. And what's great about universal DeFi and its new tokenization platform is you can tokenize on multiple platforms. We're we just want the people to be in the EVM networks out there. It's going to be

it's an amazing growth opportunity and it and Hyperliquid's done an amazing job. But I will tell you, we're tokenizing all forms of commodities for spot uh with the Wyoming Reserve and and uh it's there's just so much happening. Imagine the number of assets, the number of public companies, the number of private companies, the number of loans. Imagine the scale that's going to happen in securization and tokenization. Todd, man, thank you for reminding us that we're still early. Really appreciate you taking >> You know, it was funny. I say this to people who look at hypers scale. I've been at this for 10 years. I tried to do a blockchain with my partner Joe uh 10 years ago and we were told, "Hey, you're going to probably get in trouble with this one. Now it's legal. It's done the

right way. Got great legal behind it. We we didn't do an ICO. We do an emission over 10 years. I'm super proud of what we're doing despite the stock price. Yeah, it's such it's in such a unique position given that it's it's at the convergence of so many mega trends that are still playing out right before our eyes. Um, so >> I beg you guys consult your financial adviser. It's not a solicitation on my stock. I'm just telling you the way I see this. Please be careful. >> GPUs, right, on the New York >> GPS on the New York American. Yeah. >> Stock I think is like around 12 cents. >> It's insanity. I was just looking.

>> It's total insanity in my opinion. That's just my opinion. >> 1168. >> Yeah, it's completely insane. This morning we announced 300 million in revenue for next year and it's down. That tells you how insane it is. I don't want to reverse it. We do have a five for one approved. I don't want to. I'm doing everything I can to fight that off. Okay. >> But we have not made that decision yet. We're going to do everything we can to get people to understand there's value here. We're putting out our EBA. Listen, anybody who's who can think about this, why would I be putting out Ebida numbers on Tuesday? Why would I be doing that? I mean, come on. [laughter] >> You guys heard it here first. only on the roll.

>> You did hear it here first. >> Todd, thank you so much, man. Always appreciate it, guys. We'll be right back. FOMC meeting happening right now, guys. Don't go anywhere. >> Thank you. [music] [music] >> [music] >> Yo yo yo. What's going on, guys? This is Itan with the rollup. We're going to be patrolling the streets of New York City getting answers to the questions that

you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in? How much do people actually budget? We're going to have people from all over, all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded. There won't be a mayor or politician to stop us on the streets. We're going to go everywhere. All five burrows. We're taking over the 212. We get deep. You [music] know, we get deep.

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You know we get deep. [music] We get deep know we get deep know we get deep we get deep [music] know we get deep we get we get deep we get deep suggest markets think you'll have >> rate unchanged below most tailor rule estimates >> mandate inflation stays high why should rates not be higher today Um so rates are higher today than they were 42 days ago.

Um markets have made decisions because we stepped back in part from trying >> we're up across the board up above 64. >> Market judgments have moved up on what nominal rates are across the Treasury curve. That doesn't mean we take them as by dictation but we're observing them. So I think it's a mischaracterization to say that markets haven't reacted because we didn't move today. Markets are reacting in real time. Uh in the period ahead we've got important decisions to make about the policy rate. Markets in the intervening period I think have quite a bit of uh decisions to make.

Let's see if I can put it this way. Uh monetary policy matters not just by what we say or even what we do. Monetary policy matters by how it affects the real economy and these prices that we see in financial markets is one of the many ways in which it affects the real economy. Um we'll be continuing to watch that market information, see how it responds to incoming events and that can help inform our decision-m when we meet in seven or eight weeks.

>> How would you characterize of the in the family fight the last couple of days of you and the other eight members who wanted to hold? Was that a strong conviction or was that a hair trigger uh uh close call on holding versus tightening? >> Well, I think uh you know the vote the vote was nine to three. Um the broader discussion to my ear over the course of the last days showed a lot of agreement on the hard questions. Uh the four questions I raised at the outset >> about what's really happening in the economy with the shocks and absent the shocks. what are our tools and our capabilities? Um, uh, what's the effect on prices on output? I heard a lot of commonality on the questions. Were there

different leans on the answers? You bet there was. Um, so could people come to different conclusions? Absolutely. But my own judgment is um, this is a period of watchful thinking, not watchful waiting. And I think the score on that vote was unanimous. Uh Colby >> thank you. Colobby Smith with the New York Times. You've mentioned that looking at the Fed's policy tools is one element of a three-prong strategy to address the inflation problem. So, I'm curious how you view the effectiveness of those tools. If inflation is too high and not coming down, is the best remedy to raise interest rates?

>> So, that's that was the discussion in the last two days. Is that the dominant remedy? If inflation continues to be elevated through the forecast period, interest rates could well be part of that solution. But I wouldn't say it's in isolation. Um, I tried to describe in my remarks today a point that I made in to the oversight committees a couple of weeks ago. I think there was a misimpression by some in financial markets, by some households and businesses that central bankers like me, we set a 2% inflation target, but maybe we were more tolerable of a somewhat higher inflation target. In economics, we'd call that the revealed preference.

And so, might it have been rational for people to think, well, their inflation target somewhat higher. the what I heard in the last two days, what I've heard in eight and a half weeks is no, we will deliver the 2% inflation target. That is the committee's definition of price stability. So, one way absent the tools that you reference to ensure that we get there is ensure that expectations are centered around the right number. Um, and I think we've made some progress on that. I am not suggesting we're done on that. It's worth reiterating. And ultimately the business we're in Colby is performance. We are going to be judged by how we perform. Um and that's what we intend to do. The inflation

target making clear expectations is one part of it. Making sure we demonstrate we're responsible for it. We're not blaming is another. And our policy tools like you referenced is the third and uh equally consequential part. How are you factoring the fact that a large portion of the inflation overshoot is being caused by supply shocks as it's mentioned again in in the statement? Does that blunt the effectiveness of rate hikes in your view? >> Um, first on the premise of your question, it was almost as if you were listening to our discussion in the last day and a half. A lot of our focus was on trying to understand and identify underlying inflation dynamics amid shocks.

We take these shocks seriously. There have been a series of them that have been hitting this economy. We're not looking through them and saying, "Oh, they don't matter." But we're trying to understand is to what extent are these shocks broadening in their effect, broadening in their impact on prices that are quite far removed from it. Our goal is to have growth that is broadening and inflation that is becoming more limited, more circumscribed. Uh, I'll be the first to admit the shocks make this job and this policy conjuncture a little tougher, but that's among the chief questions we've asked ourselves and around the room people have different views on it. I tend to think in the coming months we're

going to refine that view and have a better judgment and we're going to have market prices trying to help inform it too. Edward, >> I think they're going to be pushing towards a trueation number. >> I guess trying to get that down a little bit more specifically in your mind would be the argument then for a pause today. >> So I wouldn't characterize what we did as anything like a pause. I would characterize what we did as a rigorous review of the economic situation. I would characterize what we did as a review of the big hard questions and I'd characterize it as a view of what our

own homework is to try to resolve those questions in the period ahead. Um, if you were to try to force a description that this was a pause, I would say financial market prices would take the other side of that. Financial market prices in this intermeating period, they didn't pause. They reacted to the inflation data in one direction, strong economic growth in the other direction. Um, and uh, nominal and real rates went up. Did the Fed take an explicit change in its policy rate today? No. But I think that's the beginning of the story, not the end of the story. And if I could, I did want to ask, not forward guidance, but looking forward.

Traditionally, a Federal Reserve chairman uses the Jackson Hole Summit as as sort of a reset of monetary policy. How do you look at the speech that you're going to make in August? >> I look at it like a blank piece of paper right now. Um I I have not begun consideration with the incredible team here what would go into that document. Um I think you characterized it correctly. Historically, at least from my first tour of duty at the Fed to more recent periods, it would be sort of a setting up speech more often than not of what was going to be happening in the fall. I haven't made any judgments on that, but um those are judgments we'll have to come to. If I could in the high mountain air in Jackson, Wyoming, I'd

like to also frame the big questions. There is a tendency, especially with the proliferation of meetings and press conferences to get caught up in the myopic. Did you do this by a quarter or do that? Ultimately whether we deliver on price stability matter some the decisions we make in six or seven or eight week periods but they matter more what are the big questions what's really happening with productivity what's really happening with demographics what's really happening to the global economy amid the shocks um haven't made a decision whether it's going to be a big picture speech or whether it's going to be a more traditional setup for all the action we're going to have between

September and December. I will tell you one other thing that I am doing between now and Jackson Hole which is I'm checking with those task forces. Um my first principle of establishing a task force is find the best subject matter experts anywhere in the world and put them together especially put them together with other people who might disagree with them. Uh in the next couple weeks I'm going to be doing a check back in. Uh, I've given them time to sort of think hard about their agenda, their debate, their schedule, and when they might be ready for prime time. I'll be do a little bit of that checking and uh, that may or may not inform anything I have to say in Jackson.

>> Nick Tro, the Wall Street Journal. Uh, Chairman Wars, I want to follow up on Col's question um, about policy transmission. You've said there's no cruel choice between stable prices and full employment. Um rates bring inflation down by cooling demand. It's generally thought that can show up in the labor market. If that's not the channel you're relying on, what is? >> So, let me go back to first principles, Nick. Um I don't believe that uh either part of our mandate is generally at war with the other part. I do not believe that price stability and full employment is an either or proposition. Um there have been policy makers uh over the last

several generations who have thought that there is a strict trade-off there. That isn't my judgment. In fact, my judgment is if and when we deliver on our remitt, we're going to be satisfying both promise. We're going to have price stability and full employment. And in fact, if you want to do the most harm to the labor markets, you would run a period of high inflation that's variable such that employers, businesses wouldn't really know what's going on. So, I think the two parts of our mandate are equally important. We have no legislative orphans here. I've been talking mostly about price stability because we're doing pretty well collectively as a country as policy makers on the full

employment side but we're doing considerably less well on prices that's why we describe them as elevated and that's what's taken most of our discussion um in terms of transmission mechanisms of monetary policy I think different tools work through different transmission mechanisms the interest rates work through lending channels and credit channels maybe confidence channels in foreign exchange. The balance sheet probably works through some other channels like signaling and portfolio balance. We're keeping full a breast of all these tools in making policy. But if the suggestion is somehow we're going to be fine-tuning aggregate demand so it catches supply, that's not my mental model. I don't think we're

great in the fine-tuning business. We're trying to get supply and demand in broad order. But really what we're doing as we sit here today at this press conference is I think we've got a reasonable sense of what aggregate demand looks like in this economy. We're inferring aggregate supply. We're making a judgment about what productivity is. And in some sense there's a race between supply and demand. and the surge in business capex in around AI, it's making that calculation a little harder to judge, but in the period ahead, we're going to be trying to judge just that.

>> And if I could ask, where exactly was the disagreement today? Was it about the inflation forecast or was it something more around the the the risks uh the tactics? >> Yeah. So, I'm going to let the I'll let the denters speak for themselves. Um, the way I heard it over the last two days was overwhelming agreement on objectives and authority and commitment. I didn't hear anybody walking away from it. Um, the judgments as to how best to achieve the price stability. That was probably the question that we were trying to answer. Um, what's the best move? What's the best strategy? Um, what's the best way to achieve it? And a

second question that was asked is when do we need to make those harder calls? When do we need to make those decisions? And like I said to one of your colleagues, uh I was comforted that markets in the intermedating period weren't reacting to us. They weren't reacting to dots or to speeches. They appeared more than ever to be reacting to real-time events. So they're gauging themselves the how restrictive uh the Treasury curve should be and that I think has been a a useful development.

We don't endorse any particular market move but I'd also suggest we observe them with keen interest. >> John >> Janelle Marte with Bloomberg. Uh following up on that, there was more uncertainty in the markets about what the Fed would do at this meeting. To some extent, you might think that's what you want to see. But my question is about is there a point at which you would not want to surprise the markets if they were pricing in something with higher certainty that was opposite of what you were intending to do? What are the risks that you see associated with that?

>> Yeah. So, it's a good question. Surprise is not the objective function. surprise is not um what we're solving for. We have a clear north star. What we're solving for is how to make the best decisions. Almost everything else should be in service to that goal. By not spoon feeding markets, by not previewing our decisions, by not sort of giving nudges and leans, my colleagues and I have found in the intermedating period, what we're getting is the views from a very accomplished economist.

That's the internals of financial markets. Instead of just uh repeating or echoing what we are saying back to us, they're giving us somewhat not perfect, their own judgment. Um so uh surprises are not the objective but at the same time I would say we didn't come into this meeting feeling constrained by the full range of alternatives we had in front of us. >> So some of your peers have continued to discuss how they think about policy decisions and if you don't offer your reaction function or your way of thinking about it how concerned are you that you're seating control of the narrative? So, not very concerned. Uh,

that's a short answer to the question. Um, when some people that follow the Fed say, "Well, we don't want your forecast. We don't want your dot. We just want your reaction function." Part of me hears the what we really want is your forecast. What we really want is your dot. In terms of reaction function, let me sort of disabuse uh people of a question that may or may not be real and be out there. any central banker uh especially a central banker where uh the labor markets are more or less at equilibrium. Any central banker when he or she sees underlying inflation moving higher he or she is more inclined to

tighten policy again. when you've achieved the other side of your mandate and you see underlying inflation falling, he's more inclined to loosen policy. That's my reaction function and uh I don't suspect it will uh cause people to not continue to pry for more because the truth is for a very long time in a lot of countries coming out of the 2008 crisis. We're in crisis mode. We were purposefully providing a lot of information, trying to provide a lot of assurance, trying to tell people exactly what we're going to do, offering forward guidance with clarity as if we're tying our own hands behind our back. Well, in crisis mode,

that strikes me as a very prudent policy. But in more benign conditions, it strikes me as worth revisiting. But markets and market participants and reporters have learned to devour all that information. So I take seriously that the pullback of forward guidance requires some transition. Reform isn't easy, but our general judgment is going to help us make better decisions and in so doing satisfy our remit. >> Paul Weissman, there's a mic.

Thank you. Um when you talk about the 2% inflation target, what measure are you relying on? >> Yeah. So I'll give two answers. First, let me give the proper standard answer. The um the Federal Reserve every January outlines a statement of purposes and strategy. And in that strategy document which I believe was dated January of this year, it describes a measure of PC inflation as the as the objective function there. Um I have enough of my So that's our number. We're sticking with it. Who knows come after next January what we might say about

strategy. I suspect the task forces might might have something to add. But I'll say this, some version of the Lucas critique, some version of Goodart's law and economics should remind us that when we talk about uh measures of inflation or something else and we describe those measures as being consistent with our objectives, we might make them such that they're not very good measures or very good objectives. broadly if you said to me standing in front of you I abide fully by the strategy document we're going to deliver 2% inflation and not a whisper more but to achieve that I'm looking at a

broader set of inflation data than PCE so without sort of fully revealing my cards um I'm trying to understand like my colleagues what's the underlying generalized change in prices that are happening in the economy it is not perfect science. Um I might have said 42 days ago, I've got a task force for that, but we have a data project that's trying to look and see whether we can't separate the noise from the signal. And so if you would hear a message from me, yes, I care about what the PCE prints are. I care about what the contributions are from CPI and everything else, but my my lens is broader than that. Uh even though the remitt is quite narrow.

Mike McKe. >> Michael McKe from Bloomberg Radio and Television. Uh I'm struggling a little bit with some of what you've said today and maybe you can help clarify this. Uh you've said over and over again that your job is to bring down prices to get prices stable to hit your target and that you will hit your target. the market says you're not there yet because they've raised rates. Uh but all you've talked about today is talking about it and it's not like members of the committee weren't there before you talking about it. So I guess what the

American people might be asking is what are you waiting for? >> Yeah. So believe it or not, this press conference is not all I've done today. Um, we have spent an inordinate amount of time in the last two, two days, two weeks looking at our monetary policy strategy, evaluating our tools, um, thinking hard about the sources of data that we have at our disposal and we wish we had. We've also thought hard about the period ahead. What among these questions will be answered with more clarity, certainly not certainty. So the decision we'd made today, the discussion we had in that

room was the farthest thing from inertia I can imagine as a point estimate at this very moment in a choice between two alternatives. You heard the results of it. But I would tell you that this discussion was far more robust and our thinking about how best to achieve that target is advanced and over the coming months I expected to be advanced much more significantly. If you were to sort of if I were to steal a follow-up question I won't let you you won't be giving it up. If I were to steal a follow-up question, well what's what's the world think about what you've done?

I would again reiterate what we do isn't just about what we say. It's not just about what we do. We're in the performance business. Um and so so if I look at the Treasury curve, if I look at the dollar, if I look at a lot of things that are internals inside of financial markets, I think what they're broadly saying is um that this committee does own it, has the credibility to deliver it, and they believe like I do that we will. Um uh but I don't want to leave you with a misimpression. We've got no magic wand. uh this isn't something that we're going to be able to carry out in days or weeks, but we're going to

deliver on the responsibility that Congress gave us and today's meeting and the preparation for today's meeting was an important step towards that destination. Uh, I'd like to follow up on the task forces as well and ask what vetting did you do of the people that you appointed to the task forces in particular given Mark Andre's substantial political spending $25 million in just the past year to back candidates who oppose stricter I AI regulation. How can the public be confident that a committee he co-chairs will provide an independent assessment of AI's economic effects rather than one aligned with the interests of the AI industry?

>> Yeah. So, I selected 15 uh incredible subject market subject matter experts to tackle five of the most important questions that if we get the answers right, we're going to do a far better job in delivering. And if we get the answers wrong, we have a problem. The comfort that I can give you and your listeners is we're the decision makers. Uh the chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve and the members of the board and the FOMC, we will be the consumers of the outputs from five different committees. The judgments we're making will be informed by but not at all determined by these outside

groups. Um my theory of the case in establishing the task forces were to pick people with extraordinary talent uh depth of expertise and a divergence of views inside every committee so they too can have a family fight. Um this is not outsourcing to people that aren't known and haven't been vetted. This is seeing whether new ideas can catalyze a broader, better, more informed discussion inside the room. And I'm very confident that we're going to be able to do that. I am impressed by the credentials of these 15 people. And full disclosure, I've known almost all of them for a very long time. And I think

they're going to give their best views on the subject. But ultimately, these are decisions we're going to make and we're accountable to our oversight committees and to the remitt Congress gave us to deliver. >> Hi, Ann with Reuters. Nice to see you again. Um, so I need a little help here, too. You've you've said repeatedly you have no tolerance for inflation. Um and yet we are seeing above target inflation repeatedly for five years and through your term so far and sure you have no magic wand but you have not taken action. You just gave us a little peek

at your reaction function as well. You said that if underlying inflation is rising that you would tend to uh think that you might need to tighten and with the exception of the most recent inflation print that is what we've been seeing. So could you explain what you mean by no tolerance for inflation and what you plan to do about it? >> Sure. So Ann, I hear from you what I hear more broadly from households and businesses. Impatience.

Deliver it already. Um this is not a this is not an excuse. This is a fact. This FOMC this board has been in business for eight and a half weeks. Um this the the patience the impatience that households and businesses feel have been going on for 63 months. Um, we are on the job. We will deliver. We are focused like a laser on making sure we can do it. Um, but the suggestion that we're going to be able to do it with our magic wand is one I want to disabuse you and everyone else of. But the discussion the last two days give me more confidence even than I had eight and a half weeks ago. this

team that we have at the FOMC, the support that we have from board staff and the new hard questions we're asking, we need to resolve those. And as we resolve those questions, get smarter on those, we're going to deliver on the remitt. Um, you don't have to take my word for it. Uh if you look broadly at uh market prices, they are certainly not saying all clear, but they are working in concert to to keep us on our toes and they have tightened financial conditions in this intrammeting period. and um and that has given us uh uh that has provided us some some some comfort that uh that we've got the ability and

capability to deliver >> and and and is your um read or your I guess faith in markets uh ability to sort of make a judgment and then you to take signal from that judgment. Is that how does that um affect you when you come up on the September meeting and markets are seeing a near 100% chance of a rate hike as they see now? How does that feed into your decision making and your thinking?

>> So, we're not going to be constrained by market prices. So, we're not going to be constrained or take verbatim from what the market's doing, but I think it's useful and to understand that markets can be a very good source of information. Not a determinative source, not a perfect source, but if we're trying to land the plane and deliver 2% inflation and we take a very useful source of information and we get it all fogged up by giving it our own forecasts, by providing rolling commentary, I can assure you that we're going to have less information, less ability to land the plane successfully and deliver price

stability. We're just trying to make sure that that source of information is as direct and unfiltered as possible. It isn't to the exclusion of data sources and opinions and other surveys, but if you're hearing from me, we wanted to make sure we were getting a better source of information. I think in a relatively short time, we are. >> We'll go to Brian Chung for the last question. >> Hi there, Chairman Worsh. Brian Chung with NBC News. Um, so you said you'd be open to having press conferences when there's news to make. So today, no change to rates, no forward guidance.

For the average household, I guess, what was the news today? Um, so apparently it was news that I had a press conference. Um, let me just see if I can offer some clarity on that. Between now and year end, um, my predecessors and the Federal Reserve committed to press conferences this year. I'm committing to press conferences this year. That might be news to the people in this room and of no particular interest to your viewers and your and and and your readers back at home. Um what I can offer as assurance is that um the Fed's on the case that this Fed chairman feels better about this board and this committee's ability

to deliver than I did when I showed up here on the first day. And I showed up pretty confident. Um, I've been heartened by the reception that I received. Uh, no doubt in some of your, uh, commentaries today, you'll talk about a divided >> All right, we are back here in Vegas at the Rare Evo Conference live from the Arya Hotel. Uh, it's my first time in Vegas, but won a couple hundred bucks playing blackjack yesterday, so you know, I might be back. Um, Steve Gregory is our next guest. He is the CEO of Binance US and we're going to be talking about BinanceUS, Binance.com, everything that's happening here as well on the exchange side of the world. I really enjoy seeing the unique vantage point

that these exchanges have given that you know retails flowing, different asset classes, tokenized equities, whole bunch of things going on. Very, very unique vantage point happening here. Steve Mets, welcome uh welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to have you. >> Thanks so much for having me. >> Absolutely, man. Um, just give us like the high level. I mean, it feels like we're in this transitionary phase. This is kind of what we've been saying on the show. We're transitioning from bare to like this pre-bull phase. Maybe the market's in apathy. What are you seeing on the ground at these exchanges as you're operating? You know, given that you've got a sense of the flows here, they say bare markets die in apathy. Some people think we've got another leg down, capitulation. Some

people think it's just a matter of time. We're not going much further down. Now we're just going to be here for a little while. Based on the flows that you're seeing, have you seen the typical market conditions that are consistent with an apathetic market, you know, lower volatility, sort of a consolidation of assets, consolidation of focus? What are you seeing when you when you're looking at the flows going through Binance US? >> Yeah, it's a great question. Uh it's going to take me a minute to go through all these, but you know what I've definitely seen is more engagement with the passive products. So like the staking products, we offer this like cool boost product. Uh other like yield products, we're starting to see more interest in that. Less in the trading, but sometimes we're being pretty aggressive with like what we're listing now, and we're seeing like some of our

best listings we've ever had on the exchange with some sort of like smaller token. So like some of the community is definitely excited. We haven't seen like the typical volatility in like the Bitcoin ETH, maybe ETH a little bit of a breakout now. Um and we've also started to see a lot of like older accounts rotating some of their positions now. So, I've seen like accounts, you know, that onboarded in 2019 that had pretty stable balances start to become active again. We've also seen a bunch of new users come on with pretty significant balances. You know, I think that there's a reshuffleling. People have more than one exchange and we're just trying to win the balances from other ones. So, I think like we've sort of seen like, you know, stable coins coming from other local exchanges or US-based exchanges to ours because we listed a new token and

then, you know, engaging with that new token. And I think um you know we've also seen some of the L1's get more popular too which is kind of cool. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I think you know a lot of this is uh the result of sort of this evolution in the market. People are a little bit less concerned about the decentralization theater right. So they're kind of going to where the apps are where the activity is. That's where the action is. And they're caring a little bit less about maybe some of the nerdy nuances that had consumed the industry for a while. And so it sounds like that's consistent with what you're seeing on the exchanges on the asset side. >> Definitely. We offer offer more staking assets than any other platform. So we're starting to see that we think we offer over 40 stakeable assets. So we see a

lot of movement into that now and that's become like a good part of our business. >> And would you say this is uh still primarily retail driven but it's retail that's now gotten a little bit mature. They're not chasing the 10x 100x. They're chasing like this nice passive stable staking product that can generate them some yield, give them a good return and and they're not, you know, gambling and shooting for the hills anymore. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think like just for the market cycle right now, I think more people are just like holding, getting a little bit of that extra yield from staking and then, you know, just waiting for the next move to come. >> Yeah. And and so given that, you know, you've sort of seen this shift from like more trading to more passive staking elements, how much are you looking at um like the

revenue models when it comes to BinanceUS? Maybe you just scoot scoot in a little bit. I think they're trying to bring you a little closer to the mic. um the revenue models for for Binance US like where where are you seeing primarily you know these streams are you seeing certain streams uh sort of slip like as you're looking at targeting more market share in the US I mean you know there's teams that are targeting IPOs they're out there they're consolidating they're doing a ton of M&A is this sort of a similar game to what you're playing you guys what kind of game are you guys playing when it comes to growth >> good question you know I think volume largely dominates market share I think that What I want to have is much more healthy retail to institutional balance.

So if you look at like some of the Coinbase or something, all the volume's institutional, all the revenues in retail, and that split is getting like over the past few years, it's gotten more and more skewed uh against retail. And I want to be an exchange that's much more healthier. I want to have a more of a retail focus and also still be able to get the institutional volume. And I think that's what will lead us to more long-term success. So like when I'm thinking about our products, I want to do a lot of retail products early to try and bring the users on. And once we get that product going and then the market choose that the institutions I think will follow because the institutions are much more fickle but it's very clear the products that they're going to want with we got to nail the retail market first

and then like let the public choose our exchange. I think like Binance US was sort of a backup exchange for a couple years here while we were sort of in hibernation for you know past couple years with regulatory issues but I want to make it the primary exchange and like how do I win people's like primary balance like how do I go take it from the new players and like what's going to be the new product for that and I think you know we really think about like our user funnel and what's going to win us screen time. >> So I'm thinking like how can I get more products in to sort of entice them to come over leaving another bigger exchange. M that is fascinating think about it in terms of screen time because when we when we're looking out there at the competitive landscape obviously

there's the deposits conversation but then there's also what are you having on your screen at any given time and so you know you could think of that in getting involved in you know the model UI or giving you know giving more education to these market participants just so that they they're continuously coming back you know we've seen other exchanges take a more social approach that has been you know tumultuous as of recently And so what what are you targeting just to maintain you know this level of attention on Binance US there anything creative here? I think that you just have to be really really careful and nuanced with your approach and like one thing that I really want to work on especially our marketing team is to like understand like exactly how the app store works like understand how inapp

events work understand like getting featured you know what I mean like >> if you can make your ad you know this size versus this size you're going to get more clicks and sort of like how you move up in SEO and I think like we have a lot of things that we can do at our fingertips that probably won't be done and some US exchanges are not that good at it and that's why I really want to compete and I think like that pays dividends long term. Okay. >> And that's one thing we're really really emphasizing now. >> And and so as we sort of think through to the future, let's first just get caught up here. You you mentioned that Binance was sort of in this hibernation. What do you exactly mean by this hibernation and and why did that happen?

>> Yeah. So Binance US was sort of drugged into the legal troubles of Binance.com and CZ. So Binance US actually didn't do anything wrong, but because our founder was convicted of a felony, they had lost some licenses. And the SEC targeted, you know, Binance US as well. So CZ got pardon. The SEC dropped their case. We've sty started to get back the money transfer license we have um that they took away because, you know, he was charged with a felony. Um and now we're starting to build it back. So we were basically just in hibernation sort of like the exchange was operating, but we weren't being aggressive. We were just sort of like dealing with the blowback of that. And now everything is sort of clear. We can really go be aggressive again and go get market share.

>> Yeah. Okay. And so given that you're sort of it's funny because Binance has got like this Goliath brand worldwide but maybe playing as an underdog in in the US. How much are you looking at you know I mean it seems like now you're making up this ground but how much are you looking at the strategy that worked for Binance globally and now implementing that in the US to to sort of balance this uh this >> great question. Uh great question. I you know I think that we benefit from the Binance brand like quite a bit right. So we have, you know, a massive amount of organic traffic because of the Binance brand. It's probably the most recognizable band in crypto. You know, I think like globally it's many times larger than Coinbase. It's many times larger than all the other exchanges combined. So I think, you know, it does

more volume than NASDAQ on a daily basis. I think what we need to do is we also have the same tech as Binance.com. So we have the same matching engine. We have like largely the same API endpoints. You know, some of things like KYC and stuff are specific to the US, but largely the product. we can ship a lot of the Binance code that gives us a real good advantage because you know they have a very fleshed out product that the market has already chosen outside of the US so we can sort of like move very very quickly and that's what we're going to do you know we're going to leverage that big brand that the market already chose and bring it here to the US and now like really compete against >> yeah and and you mentioned how you know most most users have kind of multiple

exchanges and it's just about shifting some of the attention from Binance US being kind of the backup exchange to being the one in the forefront I want to get your reaction to another exchange Now blockchain that has recently gone live which is Robin Hood seem to be crushing it and also kind of have this barbell approach RWA memes kind of retail institutional like the two wolves right just curious how sticky you think some of the things that they're doing there are do you think this is like new shiny thing mercenary capital chasing you know the the flashy new thing on the block or do you think you know there is thing there are things that Robin Hood has done with Robin Hood crypto, Robin Hood chain that are ultimately building

a moat and you know are here to stay. >> Definitely. I you know I think they've done really well with that. I mean it just shows like distribution is everything right. So like we need to leverage on our finance US name. You know we have 1.5 million funded accounts. We have like over 7 million total accounts. So we have a pretty good distribution chain too. We have Binance smart chain obviously but that you know we don't control that but that's on the platform. Yeah. >> I think we want to be sort of chain agnostic. We list everything. I'll list any L1. we'll list any sort of thing and we just want to you know provide value for our customers. We'd even list the Robin Hood chain if it came down to it. You know, we don't we see it just better for our customers getting access to like

whatever they need. Obviously, real world assets are going to be cool. We think that's going to get bigger. We're intending to get a broker dealer to hopefully bring some of that here when the rules get clarified with the SEC. Um but, you know, keep advancing. What What do you How bullish are you on this clarity act? Like what what is that how important is it to the business that this goes through? >> Yeah, I think like federal preeemption is pretty much everything, right? I think like that'll give institutions like what they need to really be able to build on this asset class. Like if you have 50 different regulators and you're at the you know mercy of what how they define money transmission in their state, it's very difficult. Um it's very it's great for lawyers, you know, what I used to do, but uh it's not great for

business and continuity purposes. So, you know, I think federal preeemption will really give this industry the blessing that it needs to really grow it and may if we get clarity, we may have the biggest cycle ever because obviously institutional capital will really flow in >> and and who do you think are the biggest beneficiaries of the institutional capital flowing in like given your strategy as you're thinking through institutional versus retail and then the onchain component of this entire industry? Do you think there's a particular segment of this industry that is particularly poised to benefit? I think stable coins most likely, right?

And then, you know, by virtue of that, the preserving the dollar hegemony globally. Yeah. Right. I mean, I think if if all stable coins are transacted in the dollar, everybody wants the dollar, everybody wants treasury bills, right? There it's a default buy of treasury forever. Maybe it gets us out of the debt crisis. I think stable coins are probably the easy answer. What I think though is, you know, what people will say is like, um, crypto will be the plumbing for everything. So, it'll be the backbone for everything. Like, it'll be how, you know, AI agents transact, how people transact, payments. Um, so you know, I think like this could be what creates that, you know, unbelievable super cycle that we've all sort of been waiting for.

>> Yeah. And and how does how does an exchange think through this? Like you you you mentioned how, you know, given the current market conditions, you've maybe, you know, went a little bit further and broadened the aperture for the for the assets that that you're listing in terms of new listings. Is is there going to be consolidation kind of a narrowing if we do end up in like a a bullish phase because you don't need to broaden the aperture in order to get volume or h how has the listing process evolved over time you know from through market conditions but also just through the the way that you know we've approached new asset listings in the space over the last couple of years.

>> Yeah, good question. You know, I think that, you know, we used to be much more conservative with listings, I think, a few years ago. And then sort of like after the memecoin stuff happened, the SEC sort of allows memecoins. It's not really much of a risk. We, you know, obviously engage outside counsel to do all the securities analysis and everything like that to make sure we're not going to see any like major market manipulation. But I think, you know, we can list a lot of things that have a community and if that community has support for something, inherently it may have value. And that's what we want to see. We want to list and we also want to move the whole ecosystem forward. So if we see cool token projects that our retail may want or even institutions may want, we're happy to list it. You know

what I mean? It doesn't >> Yeah. And and so like it it feels like a lot of these new tokens I mean I I'm actually curious. Maybe you can just double click on a couple. You probably can't mention like particular tokens here, but as a category, why do you think new token listings are doing particularly well right now? Because for a while there, I mean, it was it was low float high FDV world out there. it was like VCs, you know, you get a little bit of a pop and then, you know, it was sort of not too good after the initial launch. What do you think changed about the way that, you know, the capital structure is with these tokens listing process? What do you think caused that?

And what are you seeing in that category of new listings now? >> Yeah, I mean, it's a really good point. I think, you know, last cycle, last bull market, I think like the memecoin craze kind of ate up a lot of the liquidity for everybody else and sort of that's why we didn't really get the higher highs that we thought we would get in sort of like the mega caps. Um, and now I think that people are seeing like value in this stuff. So, they'll see more volatility when it's really hard to move Bitcoin. I think like the ETF flows sort of dampen the volatility a little bit with like Bitcoin and Ether. So now people are seeking volatility outside that and some of these meme coins or even just like lower market cap tokens have that volatility because there's no ETF in a lot of them and it's kind of

you know kind of back to the crypto original days which is kind of cool. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so it it feels like yeah we are sort of like returning to principles a little bit. Also, we washed out a lot of uh a lot of sort of the the a lot of the VC capital just didn't really flow in and it was require it required the space to sort of, you know, get more creative with the way that we were structuring these things. Now, we're starting I feel like we're starting to see a little bit more of the financial experimentation that, you know, we saw back in like 2016ish. >> Um, and so, yeah, are you particularly, you know, is it memecoins? Is it kind of like this AI crypto stuff? What where do you think like where do you think that the attention is flowing now that is a

more sustainable trend? >> You know what I'm starting to see is a lot of explosion of stablecoin issuers. So we had a lot of different companies coming to us. They're saying hey we're issuing a stable coin. Can we get it on there? You know like this is banks, this is asset managers. This is even like prop shops. Um we're saying like okay we'll see where it wins out. You know they're all usually on like an L2 or on ETH mostly. Um and then we'll just try to list them and see like what happens. Yeah. And I think like in the future it'll be sort of chain agnostic and stable coins will just settle on like in a centralized exchange it won't matter. And I think like you know we'll see how that plays out. I'm really excited to watch that.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean that is ultimately we have this saying on the show that a dollar on chain tends to stay on chain. And so stable coins growing is just better for the entire space overall. it's more likely that those stable coins end up flowing into, you know, D5 protocols, flowing into DeFi assets and then everything gets rerated for a TAM that is an order of magnitude larger than what we were ever, you know, picturing before now that all of these things are considered. Um, and so stable coins is huge for the entire thing. I mean, earn products and and you mentioned kind of these passive products as well is just, you know, continuing to build a more sustainable approach. Uh, the last thing I want to ask you about is tokenized equities and just kind of rwas in general. How important is that

to the business strategy at Binance? >> I know. So I I feel like that you just look at the market cap of tokenized equities and like it's exploding, right? Um you know, obviously Binance.com launched it maybe like a month ago. Obviously they're massively. I don't know how big it gets in the US because you know by virtue of just being in the US we can get to a brokerage account. I think maybe outside the US it's probably a little more valuable. But I do think, you know, the onchain tokenist equities, if you can get past the transfer agent stuff and make it like the agent of record is the actual token, a bare instrument, >> I think it will explode the US because it's just much more convenient. Um, but there's some AML issues with that and stuff like that. But, um, we're super excited. We want to get our broker

dealer just to see like where this goes and try to build out products on top of this. We launched a web 3 wallet last week. We're going to have tokenized equities in the web 3 wallet and then, you know, try to expand from that, bring it on to the centralized exchange, too. And I think a place where typical broker dealers aren't really thinking but new broker dealers given like cryptonative broker dealers that are now breaching into this world with whether it's tokenized equities or just listing them on the exchange are now thinking about using those as collateral using them as margin and per >> absolutely >> how I mean how much demand do you see from Binance US customers to add these sorts of things as collateral? Dev, I I I this has been my thing and I think probably the next cycle is uh you know

crypto as collateral. Yeah. Becomes like a really really big product. I just feel like for retail it just makes so much sense, right? Like we want to do the hold. We don't really want to sell. Interest rates are super high. Why can't I just bargain my crypto? If it's a stakeable asset, crypto, I could buy down the interest rate. I think it's like the best asset. It costs nothing to foreclose on collateralized crypto, right? You can just we cuss it anyway. Um I I think that this is a way for, you know, retail to get credit. you're even institutions to get credit and this product starts to really explode and I'm like really bullish on this personally and I want to bring them a lot of products in house in Binance US.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I I mean I think this is what everyone's excited for. It's not only the 24/7 you know global settlement a lot of people I think now with onchain the onchain economy like they just kind of treat that as table stakes. Now it's like activating the the capital efficiency absolutely of these of this asset. >> Especially like with younger people too, home ownership being down, a lot of people access credit through like a home equity line of credit or you know borrow against their IRA or 401k or something like that. But if you hold crypto, it's just an easier asset to borrow against, right? Like if I borrow against my 401k, like a check comes in the mail after like a month and a half and then I'm paying it back in some weird way. Like on crypto, it's just so much easier.

It's a natural collateral asset. Yeah. >> So I think that's the future. And and so I I just another another thing occurred to me here because I want to think through sort of like the exchange landscape in the US. You know, you guys are prioritizing. It feels like tokenized equities and and margining these are is is a priority for a lot of these exchanges. I'm curious as you think through and predicting is hard and I I'm not as like really specific predictions, but the the market share dynamic of exchanges in the US, right? It feels like there's maybe there's a half a dozen that are sort of vying for significant market share and you know we've seen the way that some of these technological uh developments have taken

place. We look at the AI side it's almost a duopoly at this point. You've got basically Anthropic and Open AI are like winning the frontier model race in the US and then you've got Grog, Gemini, you've got some other ones, but what sort of trajectory do you think the exchange dynamic, the market share in the in the exchange industry is going to follow in the US? Do you think it's a winner or take all? Do you think it's a duopoly? Do you think like there's going to be something that Binance US does that sets it apart from the other exchanges in the US? What how are you thinking?

>> I definitely think there's been consolidation. I think like a lot of the small exchanges have gone down. I think we're, you know, even last week we saw, you know, BitMart went down. >> BitMart and BitMX both. >> Yeah, BitMX outside the US, but Bitmart in the US at least, BitMart US. So, I think, you know, obviously we're going to see more consolidation like Bitstamp was bought by Robin Hood, you know, FTX is down. So, we're seeing consolidation already. >> I think right now what I want to care about the most is like creating a healthy exchange, beating the other exchanges on specific categories and specific numbers, and then everything else will sort of fall in place and doing right by our customers. And I think like over time we will win back the market share we had because the market already chose Binance US prior to

you know all the legal issues. And I think like we can get back to that if we just stay the course >> and and what are those categories? What are those numbers that you're treating as north stars >> cost per acquisition and average revenue per user. I think that's pretty much the key. Like if you can you know acquire users cheaply obviously organic traffic helps quite a bit with that. And then you know how much revenue you get from that particular user that's what makes you ultimately competitive. And I think like but we can win on so many other things, you know. Um and I I think it's looking at it more holistically, not just like a trading fee model. And I think like we're trying to institute that. But it's a if you keep your team focused and like >> very very focused on the customer

feedback loop like we will get there and we'll always be relevant if we can master that. >> Yeah, it's a very principled approach and I think it's a it's a fundamental one, right? I mean, it's just sticking with the basics, strong fundamentals, and uh ultimately that is what builds a very very sustainable and successful strategy. Uh Steve, I mean, I think that's I think that's all I got, man. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks for doing it, and uh yeah, we'll see you again real soon. >> This is a great interview. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. >> Yeah, we'll see you next time. >> All right, guys. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with our next guest. Tim, you're good. You're [music] >> [music] [music]

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>> And we're back here live from Las Vegas, the Rare Evo Conference at the Arya Hotel. Having a terrific time. Might uh play a little blackjack later. Who knows? We'll see. But today here, next guest, we've got Jamie, the CMO of the Minutes Network. Um I'm really really curious to learn about Minutes Network. You guys have been a fantastic sponsor of the show today and so really really appreciate it. >> Pleasure. >> What's that? >> It's a pleasure. We're always happy to be a sponsor. >> Absolutely. >> And maybe uh maybe I'll take all of your money later uh in the casino. [laughter] >> Jamie's the house here. So Jamie, it's your first time on the show, man.

Welcome. >> Thank you very much for having me. Pleasure to be here. >> Tell us a little bit about the uh the Minutes Network story. Obviously, you guys are are, you know, partnered with World Mobile. These two are going together very very nicely together. Um and you're, you know, putting on this rare EVO conference. I think for a lot of our audience, Minute Network might be flying under the radar a little bit, right? You guys launched a couple years ago. >> Yes. >> And so you've got a deep pin network. I was doing my research a little bit. You guys have the World Mobile is sort of the hardware side. It's the cell phone towers, >> data. We like to I like to I I look at World Mobile as data and minutes network as voice.

>> Voice. >> Two brother companies though. Um two missions and visions but very aligned. one collective family. There's a a lot of uh integration and connection between the two communities and then you network is an application that we've launched together collectively between minutes network and world mobile. Yeah. >> Beautiful. All right. Well, that's where we are going to dig in. There's a lot a lot that we want to talk about. So, first let's start with the minutes network vision and then we'll talk about maybe the collective vision and we'll talk about unit network. So, tell us a little bit about the vision of this. So I would say the the vision of M network is connected communications.

>> Okay. >> Uh the vision is to uh be the largest telecom carrier by user base by 2030. >> Who are current who is currently the largest telecom provider by by user base is it >> in the in the traditional world where I don't know 80 probably a Chinese mobile company Chinese mobile >> but we're operating in a in a in a in a in a very different space and we are really I think at the cutting edge of where intelligent communications are going >> okay >> and are becoming uh we obviously leverage with minutes network token x decentralized infrastructure uh and we're very focused on opening up um the

sort of telecom sharing economy okay we believe it's very important that uh for everyday users uh who are participating and helping this industry grow they should be able to partic participate in the value that the industry creates. >> Absolutely. Let's fill in some of the gaps here as we're visualizing what this telecom world is going to turn into. I heard you mention intelligent communications. >> Tell us a little bit more about what makes communications intelligent. >> Rise of the robots. >> The rise of the robots. >> Software agents are everywhere. They don't need us anymore. They are talking to each other. So, we're actually in the process of launching uh the telecom exchange.

Uh and this is where agents can uh uh act autonomously, interact with each other, uh and they can, you know, identify capacity, they can um buy roots, they can basically do everything that humans do on a telecom exchange. >> Okay, now look, I mean, I'm paraphrasing. So AI, we all love AI. We've all got it integrated into our terminals. We're all full stack engineers now. Uh but AI is uh playing an increasing role in the importance of preventing fraud, right? Making all of our systems more intelligent. We obviously use it um at the switch level.

Yeah. >> Right. For switching calls. Uh we use it to u you know prevent fraud. We use it to optimize cool quality um cool economics. Uh and then as as we move forward like I said with the telecom exchange we're we appreciate now that AI agents are starting to transact with each other talk to each other devices are now able to commun so AI is changing who and what can communicate. >> Yeah. >> So we're very aware of that I think very much at the forefront of that. >> Absolutely. And so let's let's think through how this works at the deepin level. First, I think it would be helpful maybe you could explain why Minute Network World Mobile, why what is the blockchain component? Is it even a

blockchain component or is it just more of this distributed network component that fits into this this verticaliz? >> So, and then later today in the keynote I'll I'll try and explain all of the elements in our ecosystem and how how the parts fit together. So, Minutes Network is the sort of commercial carrier grade, you know, um, wholesale international voice and SMS carrier. >> Then we have Minutes Network token X. That's where the blockchain comes in. That's where the decentralized and distributed infrastructure kicks in. And we have 3,000 nodes.

>> We have 2500 validation nodes, 500 switch nodes. Okay, that is the the in the the decentralized infrastructure that uh our community are participating in and they hold those nodes and they stake the Mntx token to those nodes. >> Okay. >> So we so we have you're either operating one of our nodes as part of the decentralized infrastructure or you're a token holder and you're staking those tokens to those nodes. >> Got it. Okay. >> Yeah. So, we have a very uh vested, passionate, focused community who who are very focused on the long-term uh results of of our infrastructure. Yeah, we're like 86% staked of the of the MntX supply that's out there is staked and

that shows our you know sort of the passion of our of our community and how they are very vested in the long-term success >> and the people that stake the Mntx token and secure the minutes network are they helping to provide telecom services to >> they're providing the provisioning right by staking the nodes we now have these 3,000 nodes right And the combination of the validation nodes and the switch nodes, they'll verify and validate network activity. Okay? And then they'll switch the calls. They'll make sure the calls get delivered.

>> Now, it's very part of the ecosystem is our proprietary software. It's called mint. We have a number of tools. Uh and those tools will ensure that um we're optimizing cost, we're preventing fraud, but the uptime of our switches uh and our validation nodes is 99.99%. >> Super reliable, which then creates trust, which is critical for like sort of you know sort of connected communications, especially in today's age.

>> Beautiful. And so as we're thinking through this, there's a cell phone service that we can purchase from the network. Correct. >> No. So for for a minute's network, you're not going to purchase cell phone plans. >> Who calls? Who's calling? >> So Okay. So right now there's probably 600 people on a phone call. >> Okay. >> Right now there are over 30 countries where international phone calls are being made and delivered across the minutes network platform, our network. So we are terminating paid international voice calls and SMS messages.

>> Okay. >> Do that every day and so on any given day one and a half million minutes across our platform from Pakistan to the Philippines to Vietnam to Spain to Peru. >> You name it, we cover it. >> Incredible. And so how can our audience >> leverage this network? How can they get involved? how you know that they can they can purchase this token and they can stake it in the network and they can help provision the network and switch these calls. But if I want to make a call and I want to help I want to do that on the network, how do I do that? >> So we you don't have to worry about making a phone call on our network.

Okay, so but if you were let's say calling your mother back in England or Spain, you most likely would run across our network. However, if you have a mobile device, another way to participate and more directly with your phone uh is to download the UN network app. >> Okay. >> Network. So, UN network is a collaboration between World Mobile. >> Yeah. >> And Minutes network token. >> Yep. >> UN network app allows you to do proof of work for the telecoms industry with an application. >> Okay. >> You're going to connect to our network.

You're going to make sure your phone is turned on, has good connection, and then there are a number of tasks that you either sort of are, let's say, network tasks. You don't have to do anything necessarily beyond keep the phone on, make sure you've got good Wi-Fi, good uptime. But then there are more sort of uh sort of discrete opt-in third party tasks or first party tasks like CLI, like entropy where you are performing proof of work for the telecom. Yeah. >> Why this is very interesting is up until now the industry you they've had labs they've had synthetic devices and they've sort of had backwardlooking what they think is intelligence and assumptions about their network in other parts of the world. U network is now

allowing active devices to provide real time real world intelligence on real networks globally. So for example, UN network is already in,50 cities, over 120 countries, whether it's 25, 30, 35, 40,000 devices that are giving the telecom industry real time intelligence, not synthetic devices in a lab a month later, >> right? >> Very, very, very powerful. >> Yeah, absolutely. And so there are lots of um deepen projects out there. Some of them have have struggled to find product market fit. But like you mentioned 1,250 cities, you know, hundreds of phone

calls like there's actually real adoption here and it's happening on this network and it's secured by these stakers. This is a real deepin network operating at scale. >> Yes. >> Why do you think minutes network world mobile network this this collective how was it able to find product market fit whereas others failed? Well, so the leadership of both Minutes Network and World Mobile come from the telecoms industry, very experienced and the wider telecom and Vo teams at all of the the team members at M, they understand telecoms very well. They've been living and breathing it. They realized that there was a real lack of innovation certainly on the GSM side. So there was an opportunity with sort of modern technology uh and with decentralization

and with blockchain to combine existing technology in a novel way and to basically innovate in a very lucrative very like you know multi-billion dollar industry. >> Yeah. >> Uh and I think that's you know very exciting. So there's always a need to communicate. There's always people making phone calls right. we always have to communicate. So >> I don't know if the problem was always there but the business model has always been there. The revenue's always been there.

>> Yeah. Yeah. >> So now it's question okay let's innovate. that supply these new technologies and and more importantly you know in terms of the vision and the mission there's we now have an opportunity to allow the people that are paying and building and helping these large carrier networks telecommunications grow to actually participate and share in the value that it creates. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So tell us more about the revenue equation here because I think a lot of our audience is focused and learning about some of the opportunities that exist in the market today. there is this MNTX token. We can stake it. I'd imagine there's some sort of yield or reward that you get from staking it in addition to maybe the upside in the we have well we have epoch rewards and and our early

uh you know holders of the nodes uh and token holders have been receiving monthly epoch early staking rewards uh every month network terminates x number of millions of minutes and SMS messages in the marketplace. The carrier interconnect partners pay minutes network fiat revenue. Minutes network then you know provides minutes network token with service fees for provisioning the decentralized infrastructure. Min network token then distributes those rewards and you know epoch rewards to holders and token holders.

>> So there's real revenue here that is coming from the network. It's not emissions in the token like we've seen so you know so long. You know, you you you start off with 10% of the circulating supply. The rest of the 900 million tokens are just printed out of thin air and then they're just distributed. That's not what >> No, no, no. We took the baseball back to the printing machine. No printing machine allowed. >> Baseball back to the printing machine. I love it. So, there's real revenue that's getting distributed to token holders >> like cold hard cash that you can get from staking this this token. >> Yes. And so, we have very clear we have great tokconomics for minutes network token.

>> How much revenue are we? So it um you know what that's a very good question and and in terms of as of today I haven't even sort of thought what of our our latest amounts um >> but what I would tell you um is it on the token side and with the tokconomics you can see right it's very clearcut no team tokens are being issued >> we have a very healthy uh burn mechanism yeah >> right so it's almost like depending on you know if if less tokens are staked right? Then more tokens are burnt. If more tokens are stake, then obviously less tokens are burnt. Uh we then also with minutes network token uh and and not that I want to confuse you, we have

this amazing technology called jingle and jingle allows us to turn a a voice call and terminate it as a data call. >> A data call >> as a data call which allows us to capture a lot of the margins. >> Okay. Jingle as a technology can be integrated into an existing application. So you as a developer or as a publisher and then let's say you know an app that you use on a regular basis has Jingle inside of it. When you get your normal international phone calls when you answer it because it comes through jingle we've removed a load of wholesale intermediaries to get the call to you.

It's higher quality. It's an HD quality. Uh and we're able to capture more of the margins. some of the margins are shared with the application owner and in our tokconomics some of the uh margins are shared with the caller and the call and so that is really an incredible way to have web3 mechanisms in the background and to onboard sort of web 2 users around the world callers callies into web3 just by receiving the international phone calls they normally get >> yeah it's a lot and I appreciate I'm sort of paraphrasing Yeah. And so I remember watching the Blackberry movie which was kind of one of the, you know, obviously

>> I loved the Blackberry >> that quity keyboard, it was lifechanging. >> It was incredible. And they also had this way of doing phone calls so that they could scale the network an order of magnitude. And that's what it sounds like is this jingle technology allows you to scale the amount of phone calls. We don't think about it because everyone's got unlimited data now and these sorts of things, but you know the bottlenecks that still exist. So you guys are innovating on the telecom network. You've instantiated this blockchain and now you've been able to scale the amount of telecom bandwidth an order of another order of magnitude so that you can supply some of the countries that you mentioned in 1200 cities with a more accessible alternative to the telecom giants that exist today.

>> Well, yes. What we're doing is we're providing everyday users with the ability to turn their devices into active contributors to the network, right? Uh provide real-time intelligence to the telecoms industry. For example, fraud is massive, right? You're a carrier. You're in the UK and you but you have numbers all around the world, but you have no idea what happens when someone in Mexico or someone in Peru or someone in Nigeria is calling your number in the UK. You don't have the infrastructure. You don't have the people in those countries. So you're assuming so. But now with your network and your device, you're able to like help that telecom provider understand

actually what's really happening to your numbers. Are they being intercepted? Are they going to someone else's voicemail? Are they even connecting? What is happening? So like real time intelligence and that's across telemetry. It's cost caller line identification. It's cost now entropy. Uh we have a lot of tasks that are coming to your network. So, Jingle is a is a very interesting piece of technology that allows us to terminate international voice phone calls in a way that that we get to capture a much higher margin and therefore we're able to reinvigorate carrier profits for our partners. We're able to capture higher profits margins for ourselves and we're able to then share those with the people making the

call and receiving the call. And that's what we mean by the telecom sharing economy. And that's where we sort of when we think all right so we say our vision you know our mission is to onboard two billion users by 20 by 2030 >> two billion users by 20 >> that's the mission right so the vision is to be the largest carrier by user base also because of the mntx tokconomics and the fact that 15% of the tokconomics get split between the cooler and the cool e means that we're going to be able to onboard non-native web 3 users >> by from an action they're doing normally every day which is making and receiving >> and they probably won't even realize that they're accessing this on a distributed network and there's this token that

>> under one minute you have these tokens and you can withdraw them. You can withdraw them as tokens or in fiat. Yeah. And you know, as as we all know in web 3, we're abstracting away the complexities of a wallet and you know, and all the language and it's just very simple and it's a couple of clicks and here you go. Uh, you know, bit of KYC maybe, right? And uh and uh and uh you can redeem your rewards. >> I'm looking at the minute network token now. I mean, it's up today. Uh what do you think this thing can do? Well, so I this is what I this is from my personal opinion is that we're very we've been very focused on the building. We've been very focused now on the launching uh and now

we're in the process of scaling. >> Yeah. >> Uh we are not um in a hurry to seek attention in the sense that we're not trying to trade on you. We're not like a being good. We're not trading on social. Uh and we know that the best way for long-term token price it is to deliver. Yeah. Right. And when we continue to grow the revenue that we translate then into the service fees into the buybacks for the token that then go into epoch rewards that then get restake to the ecosystem. That is the best way right to drive attention and interest.

>> Jamie CMO at Minutes Network. You're you're saying all the right things. >> I know. I was practicing all the buzzwords. I had no idea what I just said to you. I come from [laughter] video games. I'm like it's no it's it's it's fascinating what we're doing and I think you know it's very you know the winter is cold right to your point. Um I think you know all industries it's been very tough. Um and there are elements telecom there's nothing sexy in a way about telecom but I think you know I think we're getting to a place now where all of our pieces are coming together and the concept of a telecom sharing economy and the way that oh now you know the communications infrastructure that I I'm part of every day you know and and I'm this generating massive profits in these boardrooms

these bars actually now I can participate I can contribute and I can share in that value this is very powerful >> yeah you're the man Jamie minutes network token in Mntx. >> You have to come to the booth and you'll have to download the UN network app. We'll get you up and running and you get one of these t-shirts. We've got one in every color. >> Very nice to meet you. >> It's great meeting you guys. >> This has been Jamie from Minutes Network. We appreciate their support. This is the most incredible setup that we've had at any conference. Look at this news desk. Look at this banner. >> It's so fancy. You should come to our booth, too. We've got couches. We've got t-shirts. We've got backdrops. We've got pull-ups. We've got vibe. We've got banter and two times only.

>> Yeah, banter and vibes. Jamie and I are going to be bantering and vibing at the blackjack table a little bit a little bit later tonight, guys. We'll see you there. Don't go anywhere. Next guest is Eleanor Tourett uh speaking on clarity. We will be right back. Don't go anywhere. >> That was fantastic. [music] [music] >> [music] >> Yo yo yo. What's going on, guys? This is Itan with the rollup. We're going to be

patrolling the streets of New York City, getting answers to the questions that you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in? How much do people actually budget? We're going to have people from all over, all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded. There won't be a mayor or politician to stop us on the streets. We're going to go everywhere. All five burrows. We're taking over the 212. We get deep. [music] You know, we get deep.

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[music] >> Hey. [music] Hey. Hey. >> [music] >> We get deep. We get deep, you know. We get deep. We get deep. We get [music] deep. You know, we get deep. You know, we get deep. [music] We get deep. You know, we get deep. You know, we get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. [music] You know, we get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep.

We get [music] we get deep. We get deep. We get [music] we get deep, you know. We get [music] [music] >> Welcome back to Crypto in America, live from Las Vegas. I'm your host, Eleanor Tourett. >> I was genuinely confused. [laughter] I was like, Robbie's lost it. All right, >> we've got Eleanor Terret. This is the rollup. We are live from Las Vegas at the Rare Evo Conference and we're going to be talking about clarity, clarity,

and more clarity. Uh Eleanor is the woman in the know and uh she was a late addition to the slate today. So, I don't have her on my run of show, so we're just going to chop it up. Eleanor, how are you doing? >> Yeah, I'm great. Robbie, how are you? I'm good. I'm good. I'm uh I'm sort of oscillating between the nothing ever happens and so much is happening. Yeah. >> Because it feels like every day and night there is some new news around ethics language or yield or BRSCA or whatever the acronism is. You're the clarity person.

>> So are you in the nothing ever happens camp or the everything is happening all at once camp? Yeah, it's everything that's happening all at once, but it feels like hurry up and wait, right? And there's this urgency to get it done. August recess starts next week, but there is very little to suggest that they have the votes to get it across the finish line at this point in time. But I keep saying it seems it is changing by the minute. It really is changing by the minute. It's a fluid situation. I feel like all I'm doing is, you know, checking my email, checking my text messages, checking Twitter to see what updates are coming through. Also, I'm sure you find this as well, but operating in Las Vegas, three hours behind the East Coast is very confusing when you're trying to keep up with real-

time news, right? Yeah. Um, but yeah, it is it is constantly changing and I think it is a case of >> can they get to the 60 votes needed to invoke closure, which is, you know, something that may happen next week. I think there was some hope originally that Senator Thoon, Leader Thoon, was going to perhaps uh call a vote this week. Doesn't look like that's going to happen now. They obviously had the Iran Russia sanctions bill that took priority and it looks like it's going to maybe go through uh maybe quicker than expected.

It looks like they have the votes to to push that through. So, we could be looking at next week for So, we got to talk about Senate procedure, right? It's not just a quick, you know, let's vote on this and and it's kind of done, right? There's a lot of arcane Senate procedure that goes into this. You know, you got to invoke requires 60 votes in order to uh go on to the next part of the process, which is the motion to proceed. After the motion to proceed, you start working on amendments and then you kind of got to start the process all over again. In between those, you've got 30 hours. So when you think about the timing, right? Next Friday, all the lawmakers go back to their constituencies and kind of go on summer recess, there's really very little time.

So now we're talking about are lawmakers going to stay longer over recess and kind of try and get this done. I think there is a possibility there's a world in which if they get the votes to invoke closure and they, you know, the Democrats are on board, the Republicans are on board, they could stay longer done. >> Is there a precedent for that extending past recess if they have something on the table? >> There is. I I can't off the top of my head give you an exact piece of legislation, but it has happened before for important pieces of legislation I believe like you know reconciliation, spending packages, that kind of thing. It's never happened for a crypto bill.

We definitely can tell you that >> we're in a lot of first for everything. Exactly. Exactly. >> Okay. So, we've got to get first to this cloer vote and that is ultimately going to tell us whether or not we're going to proceed and then there's a couple steps from there. But it seems like if we can at least get to the closure vote, it would mean that we probably have the 60 votes and it would probably mean that we're in a much more likely to position for this to continue. There's this 30 hour timeline and then there's things that happen afterwards. But if we can get some sort of movement in the next week, then we're on a much much greener pasture at even after recess.

>> Yeah. So, it's also going to be a bit of a forcing function, I think, if leader Thun calls a vote and then it kind of it it forces those folks to come to the table on the issues that we keep hearing about, right? You know, you've got ethics going on. >> We saw the ethics proposal come out in the text last week. Go ahead. >> Let's take No, no, let please let's take these one by one, right? Because there's ethics, there's yield, there's several other provisions, but let's start with ethics. This is the thing that's been on everyone's mind. It's been the biggest hold up. >> [clears throat] >> What is happening with ethics? From the outside looking in, it seemed like they would prohibit people from participating in memecoins as fundraising mechanisms.

Maybe you can just help articulate the ethics language and and tell us whether people on both sides of the aisle are satisfied with this language. >> Yeah. So, I'm going to pull up the exact text language so you know I can give your audience maximum value here. But what essentially is happening right now behind the scenes is that that text did come out last Wednesday. The Democrats perhaps, not surprisingly, came out against it because they say it's not satisfactory. They think it doesn't do enough to prevent President Trump from profiting off of his crypto ventures.

That really is sort of the the core issue here is President Trump has managed to make a lot of money while in office in, you know, the last 18 months. He's made over a billion dollars >> and a lot of it has been from his memecoin, from his involvement in World Liberty Financial, which is his son's uh platform. >> Yep. >> All of this is very unprecedented as well. There's been no sort of um blueprint for this before. So, a lot of this ethics language that lawyers have been working on, you know, staffers, people with like law degrees, you know, a million law degrees have found very challenging because you're running into issues, you know, constitutional issues.

you're kind of like coming up with a bespoke framework here and then the the White House really has to be the one to sign off on it at the end of the day. So the White House did send over a framework to Senate Republicans. Senate Republicans said this looks okay and then when they present it to the Democrats, they said it does not go um as far as we want it to. Um the the headline I suppose I don't want to dig through my my Twitter to find the whole thing um is that you know it will prevent members of Congress, government officials, the president, the vice president, their spouses, members of Congress from issuing sponsoring digital assets while in office. There is a sunset clause uh of 2029.

>> Yeah. >> So they cannot go beyond that. Basically they cannot enforce this beyond President Trump's presidency. Um, it also uh it let me pull it up. >> I guess I guess [laughter] may maybe the best question here is what is lacking from the ethics language to satisfy Democrats right? >> What is what is missing there? >> That that was probably the second thing I was going to say is that it requires government um it requires the DOJ to be able to sue to enforce ethics provision. What the Democrats really want here is state attorneys general. They want a role for these state AGs to be able to sue to enforce sue the DOJ to enforce lapses in ethics provisions, right? The Republicans really don't want that.

President Trump, the White House really doesn't really don't want that. The the Democrats really do. And there's back and forth over like how that could look. Is it, you know, really feasible? That's sort of the the key tension point here. Senator Tom Telis is leading those discussions with Senator Ruben Ggo from Arizona. There may be a breakthrough in the next couple days. We'll have to see. Um they have to send that proposal though to the White House. Trump has to be okay with it. If he's not okay with it, there's no bill. >> Would you anticipate that let's say Republicans compromise with the Democrats and they say, "Sure, we'll we'll let the Senate or excuse me, the the state attorney general sue the DOJ in order to enforce these rules." How many lawsuits are like would you anticipate that as soon as the

rules go through we would see this flurry of lawsuits from the state attorney generals given that if they are given that power >> potentially yes and you've seen a lot of state ags take it upon themselves to sue because they feel like they have that you know sort of like autonomous power right you look at Leticia James in in New York um she's sued a lot of crypto exchanges she sued like individuals um she doesn't necessarily like crypto it seems she's come out with a letter in the last couple days saying the Clarity Act should not pass. Um, state AGs have, you know, taken on these, uh, lawsuits that the SEC dropped after the, uh, you know, with the advent of the Trump administration, uh, a state AG out, I forget which state it was, but, they took on the same lawsuit against

Coinbase that the SEC dropped. >> And, you know, so you see, um, you see initiatives like that and you have to kind of think, well, you know, if that if that doesn't, you know, that doesn't war you, then this could potentially, you know, lead to lead to other things down the line. And I think Republican senators are worried that with the shoe on the other foot, you know, a Democrat administration potentially in the next couple of years. How is that going to look for us? >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it kind of goes both ways cuz if there was a Democratic administration and now they start using this uh as a fundraising mechanism or start, you know, finding some loopholes. Could be the Republican state attorney general that go and sue.

So, >> Exactly. >> Yeah. We'll we'll see. We'll see how that plays out, but obviously we're sort of playing the game as it stands right now with the Republican administration and sort of putting rules together with this in place. Um, >> the Democrats are playing a key role here though because they are the ones that need to >> bring up the the vote count to 60, right? About you've got about 53 Republicans right now. They've got the leverage. You need about 10 Democrats to really get those the 60 votes. So, if you don't have those, you don't have a bill either. >> I spoke to Rebecca Retig of Reddic. She's fantastic. Um, she was explaining how the Clarity Act is a win for Democrats. They just don't realize it. We've been operating in this unregulated environment, this wild west

of crypto for so long. Um, Democrats are, you know, everyone wants consumer protections, these sorts of things. But for some reason, you know, Democrats are opposed to actually regulating this industry because it looks like it would legitimize the industry. And especially while the president, who's a Republican president, has benefited so much and made so much money from it, they don't want to be seen as legitimizing the industry. I also saw, I don't know if you saw this, this is a fascinating watch because we're so zoomed in on the industry.

>> You know, John Oliver, he's got like this Tonight Show. Yeah. Did you see the segment that he did? Yep. Yesterday. >> Okay. What did you think about this? I watched the whole thing. I thought it was fascinating, especially after hearing from Rebecca Reig who said that this was a bill that was going to be a win for Democrats. But then the narrative that is explained and uh you know put in front of the the the mainstream media, if you will, is that um Trump has made so much money from this from this industry. uh we should regulate the industry but the clarity act is not the way to do it. That was ultimately the conclusion that I think John Oliver was drawing and so I think that is sort of indicative of the narrative at at large at the moment. Is

that the consensus view right now from the outside looking in and do you think that's a fair assessment of of the clarity act? >> So I didn't watch the whole segment. I did watch a clip of it that came up on my X feed and yeah I did see the part where he said you know the clarity act is not the way to do this. I do think there's a lot of PTSD I will say from FTX especially among Democrats who took money from Sam Bankman Freed >> gave time to Sam Bangman Freed who ended up being you know what he was and I think a lot of folks on the hill have not recovered from that and they see crypto as synonymous with FTX and with SPF and I think there's a world where they just can't see beyond that you know no matter what the industry does to

maybe redeem itself to kind of you know look beyond that time and grow and mature it's just not going to change a lot of these a lot of these folks minds. And I don't think it's just Democrats. I think there's some Republicans who also feel the same way. But to Rebecca's point, I think, you know, there are in this bill and as someone who's, you know, gone through the latest text, you know, there are things in there that would prevent another FTX. So, while Democrats can say, you know, we don't want this bill to enable crypto billionaires, right? That's a that's a common line. I think John Oliver might have even brought that up. And Ben McKenzie, the the OC actor, has been on the hill talking about this as well, saying, you know, do we really want to enable crypto billionaires to keep, you

know, making more money than you. And then you know there there's that but then there's also the world where you pass the Clarity Act and there are bankruptcy remoteness protections in there where if you know God forbid a crypto business or an exchange does fail and then customers actually get the same rights that they would if a traditional exchange or a traditional financial platform were to go into bankruptcy. So there are good things in the bill. There are things in the bill that people are not going to agree on. And you know it's unfortunately crypto has become a partisan issue. I think it is for all the for all the you know I say propaganda for all the messaging out there that crypto is a bipartisan issue >> I think it it parts of it are and I think it's gotten better but I think it

will always be a partisan issue and I think FTX played a big role in that >> yeah absolutely and it's indicative I mean it was totally unclaimed land uncharted territory it just so happened that Trump and by Trump doing it representing the Republicans kind of claimed doicile and dominion over this uncharted territory. It was totally fair game for so long. Democrats could have said, "Hey, there's a lot of things that we like about this industry. We like that it's fair market access. We like that it democratizes access over the entire world." There could have been a lot of things that the Democrats ended up, you know, supporting about this industry, but they decided to just sort of sit back on their heels. Elizabeth Warren was, you know, kind of the the the, you know, staunch, you know, opponent to crypto for so long. And that

has now put us in the position where you know Republicans support the industry, Democrats seem to not. But these things can easily change. Uh they are so path dependent, but they can easily change. Um the last thing I want to I want to chat with you about here is uh the the language that came out last night. >> Yeah. >> BCSA >> BRCA >> BRCA >> the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act. >> Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act. Um tell us about this. Why is it so important? We've sort of moved from the yield issue to the ethics issue now to the BRCA as like the highlight of what is holding this up. Where are we at on this? Can we reach consensus?

>> Yeah. So, I've been told that BRCA is one of about three verticals that Democrats really care about and really have been the core of the issues that we've been reporting on, talking about for months now, right? You got ethics, you got BRCA, and you got sort of um conflicts of interest with exchange verticals, that kind of thing. with the BRCA, Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act. Tom Emmer, uh the House Majority Whip, came up with it. It's his bill technically. Um it basically assures blockchain developers, software developers, that they will not have to be criminally liable if they publish code. So if you know you you create a platform, a protocol and you know someone from North Korea comes in and uses it and launderers money, then the

writers of that code are not going to be hauled up in front of court and sent to jail. >> Similar to what's going on with Roman Storm, what happened to the uh the Bitcoin the Samurai wallet developers a lot of uh activity, a lot of uh businesses have gone offshore because of that. That's what Tom Emmer says and that's why he created the blockchain regulatory certainty act. It is contentious because crypto really wants those protections in there. It's sort of a non-negotiable for the crypto industry. Law enforcement has been very vocal that they want to see changes to it because they think it it uh rolls back some of those um abilities for prosecutors to be able to go after bad actors and law enforcement to really be able to kind of go after um onchain crime. You've seen a lot of the police

groups come out in recent days supporting the bill as a whole. Even with the BRCA uh in there, >> it is now mostly the the prosecutors um who have issue with it. And what you saw last night was Katherine Cortez Masto. She's a Democratic senator from Nevada. >> She's been kind of key to this whole negotiation uh with BRCA put out proposed changes that that she said in the statement was sort of the culmination of talks with the White House, with the Treasury Department, with the uh the attorneys groups. Um and actually you saw White House and Treasury come out and say, you know, this is nothing to do with us. We did not agree to this language. what we're trying to achieve on BRCA is not what you proposed. It's far from it in fact.

And you know what you proposed is is not negotiable. It's uh it's going to damage um software developers futures here. It's going to you know they came out strongly against it. >> Yeah. >> And so what you now have is you know Katherine Cortez Masto has been a key um sort of get for um you know she's a key vote. Um she you know >> it's going to be interesting to see like how this plays out really. Um, and you know, as as much as ethics is a big issue, BRCA is is also a very big issue. So, it's it's still in flux. We'll see what happens. But that that happened last night. It was kind of a big uh big drama.

>> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. This is now taking the spotlight as the most contentious issue. Um, and >> staking and um staking uh stable coins is also, you know, in there as well. Uh the compromised banks are coming out against it. They always they have been uh credit unions as well. They are mounting that uh that front against it. Cody Carbone told me on stage today you could see technical changes around the Tisalo bricks compromise. >> Cody Carbone is going to join us in about an hour. So we're going to hear directly from Cody. >> Yeah. >> Eleanor, what is the probability here just >> Oh, I hate giving probabilities.

>> That's just what the people want. I'll tell you here. I'll give you an anchor a little uh over under here. Uh the prediction markets which don't have a ton of volume here. um are putting this at a 30% chance. It was at 37% most of this week and last week, but >> it's passing in 2026. >> Passing in 2026. >> Yeah. >> At a 30% chance. Over under. You don't have to give specific predictions, but over under 30% chance of this thing going through this year. >> Can you explain over under to me? [laughter] >> Do you think it's over 30% chance or under 30% chance >> of passing this year?

>> Yeah, >> I think over. >> Oh, all right, guys. You heard it here first. That's a bullish word on the probability of the Clarity Act happening this year. And then because you're hearing, you know, maybe there's some strategy to to get it done in September. I mean, for all the, you know, for all the the deadlines that have been missed and I >> there's always the situations and the expectations, they always sort of seem to be in flux and they always change. And uh, you know, we'll just have to see. It's never done until it's done, I feel like.

someone who's been covering this over. >> Yeah. Awesome. Eleanor, thanks so much. Absolute pleasure as always. You're doing incredible work in DC reporting uh on the most important developments in crypto. Guys, we'll be right back. We're going to set up our next guest and uh don't go anywhere. This is the rollup from Vegas. >> Cheers. >> Cheers. [laughter] >> [music] [music] [music]

[music] >> Yo yo yo. What's going on, guys? This is Itan with the rollup. We're going to be patrolling the streets of New York City getting answers to the questions that you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in? How much do people actually budget? We're going to have people from all over, all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded. There won't be a mayor or politician to stop us on the streets. We're going to go everywhere. All five burrows. We're taking over the >> 212.

We get we get deep. We get deep. We get we get [music] we get deep, you know. We get deep. [music] We get deep. [music] We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep.

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>> We are back live from Vegas at the Arya Hotel at the Rare Evo Conference today. This is the rollup. We're going to be chatting about clarity with Ron Hammond, head of policy at Wintermute. Uh Ron has been on the hill. Uh he has also uh participated in the early early early days of the Clarity Act. He's seen this thing uh from start all the way to where we are today. I can't say finish quite yet, but we are hopefully nearing a conclusion and some closure on this whole thing. Ron, man, absolute pleasure. Thanks for coming, >> dude. Likewise, man. First time on the roll up. Uh it's your first time Vegas that so uh yeah a lot happening a lot of good energy here and uh I know another

talking clarity that's what everyone's talking about Elanor's uh you know >> that's what we want to hear about >> exactly >> and so I mean tell us a little bit it's your first time on the show so give us a quick background on like how you ended up at Wintermute your your journey through policy in the digital assets industry uh you mentioned before we started that you were on the hill so uh tell us a little bit about about uh you know ultimately how you found yourself in the position that. >> Yeah, sure thing. So, I used to work for Congressman Warren Davidson. This is back in 2016. Uh I was his financial services staffer. So, I was in charge of everything financial services, taxes, trade, healthcare, a whole slew of things. So, but I was uh one of the the young 20-year-old guys that works on

Capitol Hill that you might have heard of that can't really do a lot of the leg work uh here, even though I'm not a lawyer, rely on a lot of important lawyers in that space. But, uh my job task was to write the first market structure bill um to regulate the crypto industry, which was at the time, no one's ever done that before. Uh so I worked with uh four Republicans, four Democrats. Um it took a long time to get this moving but in 2017 we had the token taxonomy act which uh has morphed over the years and about 800 pages later to the clarity act that is now. So uh I've been dealing with market structure for almost 10 years now of my life. Uh but started on Capitol Hill for 5 years. Uh worked on that bill and when I saw that bill went as far as it could in the

house side moved over to Ripple to be their in-house lobbyist. um was the first of its kind which was exciting back in 2020 right before the SC lawsuit came out which is something else to say the least. Uh then move over to the blockchain association. So I was their lead lobbyist u more on the Republican side but represented about 115 companies ranging from folks like Wintermute but you have your Coinbases your A16Zs um your Fireblocks you know all across the spectrum. I was they're pretty much deacto lobbyists whether they had a lobbyist in house or not uh for 5 years during the Gensler era and then uh when Trump came to power uh wintermute was signed to expand over from the UK to the US office and uh they reached out to me and said hey I think you guys' be a great spot and so uh now I'm the head of

policy for winter mute and we do uh I do both uh London and DC so I was in London last week and uh they were talking about the clarity act they were talking more way of like I think America's going to screw up and I think we got opportunity here to move forward so uh it's a little weird now doing both kind different jurisdictions, but at the same time, I've been involved in this fight for quite some time. So, uh, got all the tea and everything I can help out. >> Very cool. So, we were just talking about how John Oliver did this segment and describe Did you see this? >> Oh, yeah. >> Okay. Did you watch the whole thing? >> I didn't watch the whole thing because I couldn't go through it. I just want to make sure that we have proper context

here because I I I watched it and it ultimately look the first it was a 25minute segment. The first 23 minutes were was essentially just explaining everything that we already know about Trump's involvement in crypto business practices, how much money he's made, the the World Liberty Fi as well as the memecoin, explaining memecoins. It was really 23 minutes of just level setting. The last two minutes drew this conclusion of the Clarity Act. Look the okay the the last two minutes of this segment was essentially we need to regulate cryp crypto but the clarity act is not the the way to do it that seems to be the narrative that the legacy media complex is running with and

so I'm so so and that's in the US and so I want to juxtapose that with what you're hearing abroad is that a similar sentiment because I heard you say that the London sort of you know environment is looking at the clarity act thinking that we're going to mess it up it sounds similar it sounds similar to John Oliver saying look we should regulate but we shouldn't do it with the clarity act. What are you hearing abroad and then yeah tell me about your reaction to the segment on John [clears throat] Oliver. >> I'll start the se the reaction first because I call the cast of characters that we come out the work every single time a crypto bill seems to be moving in the right direction or in the precipice of getting a vote. It's always I mean John Stewart's been in the past but John

Oliver is now a new one. Of course it's right the week hypothetically they could potentially have a vote on clarity. Great timing, not not at all correlated whatsoever. And this is what, you know, the legacy media does. You know, at least on the lobbying side, a lot of people think it's interacting with folks uh on Capitol Hill, the politicians, the staffers. You know, a lot of my time is with the media because candidly that media carries so much weight narrative-wise. And it's really unfortunate when you have these, you know, really biased sources on one side or the other who are trying to juice it to get their own game, stuff like that. But at the end of the day, narratives drive politics. And that's the unfortunate part. How can you really uh boil down the clarity act of 800 pages into like two or three sentences to do

whatever objective you want? In this case for John Oliver, not shocking, Ben McKenzie, not shocking. Uh it's very much this enables Trump corruption or this deregulates the crypto industry which like yeah but regulations are going to be deregulated because there's not many on the books right now just the rules from the FC CFC and others. But I'm not shocked like this. We had the same thing in the Genius Act uh like a week before there was a huge um 60-minute special actually on like the corruption of stable coins and tether being an issue. So there's always these forces at play. And I mean to be completely honest, having been inside the belly of the beast, a lot of it does reside in DC. There's an apparatus uh again for for clarity, anti-clarity, pick an issue. Um but there's apparatus that use the media um you know,

podcasts, whatever to try to get their narrative out there. And that is the most damning thing because guess what? We're dealing with a bunch of new senators who have never dealt with Clarity Act. You know, we've dealt with a subset of CL of uh senators who dealt with it like about 28 or so. But there's about 75 others who have never voted really on Clarity, have not dealt with Clarity. And they're being told by the banks, hey, guess what? Rural lending is going to be decimated if not completely gone from your state if clarity act passes. And you're hearing this for the first time saying, "What? What? What do you mean like rural lending is going to be gone?" Or they're saying, "Hey, guess what? Trump made $2 billion, but he's gonna make $4 billion after this bill passes. And if you've never dealt with

this space, you're going to try or you're gonna at least latch on to that narrative. And that's unfortunately drives DC a lot. So the media uh you know, lobbying and Hill staff and the drafters and senders themselves really ties in together about how do you present this? Uh and that's why the crypto industry has done the best job of being um a vocal mouthpiece of like what we exactly want. There's also of course we're decentralized. There's a lot of competing voices, a lot of uh different viewpoints, but overall, >> it's kind of sad, but also not shocking to see this. I mean, I would not be shocked 60 Minutes has another um special on Trump corruption or clarity or some of that fact coming pretty soon.

I would be shocked if John Stewart gets back in the mix. Um but these are things that we've been through before. I've seen it happen multiple times. Um and it's a little unfortunate. Moving over to the UK side though, at least again, I was there last week as I mentioned. Um, and it's been really weird because at least United States, we've been talking for years. We are behind when it comes to, you know, pretty much every other jurisdiction. Take tokenized equities. I mean, the EU's got rules in in the books for that. We don't. But that has been the theme for I mean almost a decade now where you've seen the EU overregulate, take the first step. The United States saying we're going to do better and a lot of it unfortunately falls to Congress, which takes time. Um, but at the same time, the UK, so their at least

how their system works, their framework goes into place October 2027. like that's full on rules are out there. Get in compliance. You have a year and I was at the House of Lords uh last week and they're a little giddy. They're saying I think the US is actually kind of screwing up here and we can take the lead. Uh and for them at least the UK narrative I've seen a lot in my uh year or so lobbing them has been uh investments. They're seeing a lot of foreign investment not come to the UK. They're seeing a lot of investment leave the UK for Abu Dhabi especially Dubai uh United States recently and they're saying we want to onore that. And so I've seen, especially in my short time doing the UK of the year, it's pivoted.

In the past eight months, I've seen the UK say a little more standoffish. We're not sure this industry should be here or hey, we're going to put some pretty ownorous rules to now saying, >> "Hey, we're going to work with you." Very similar kind of we get with Hester Purse and the SEC now. They're saying we're going to work with you. Oh, and by the way, ours for sure goes in effect next October. Uh, and I don't think the US is going to do that. And especially a company like Wintermute, you know, we do 5 to10 billion transactions volume wise daily at this point. That's a lot of regulatory risk to leave out there saying hey we think your business model is be fine or you know trading wise be fine in the US for the next two to three years but that uncertainty what you know

creates this question of are we going to worth the investment of putting the United States this much uh if we know this could potentially get rolled away u just like that if it's new administration so these are tough decisions to have uh but again when you have billions of dollars on the line this is for one company think about all the ecosystem here as well >> oh yeah >> why would you take that risk um and So like that's the situation we have now. But it's weird seeing the UK go from we got catch it to the United States, you got catch the United States. Like they're kicking our butt to now saying like >> I think we actually got an opportunity here and they're kind of like they're sitting with the grin and I'm like I don't blame them. They're right.

>> How real do you think that opportunity is because we've got this friendly SEC CFTC regulatory regime yet we are having trouble getting this thing through, you know, the Senate and and into legislation. Do you think that there's a real risk of American companies leaving the US in order to go to somewhere where there is a regulatory complex like the the UK and you know despite the friendly SEC CFTC complex that we have here? >> Yeah. I mean take me uh before I joined them actually they were not involved in the United States whatsoever because it was the regulatory hangup of saying hey I think if we get involved in United States markets we're going to have an SEC uh subpoena weighing in our desk uh in a couple months. And you know candidly a lot of companies you know

that ran the gambit and said you know we'll take that risk they got on the receiving end of uh a wells notice uh and again many times if not almost all the times was unjust uh and in some cases struck down the courts. So but that's millions of dollars you got to put up in legal fees. It's millions of dollars you got to think about for staffing as well as uh wondering hey are we going to actually be here in like 3 to four years or are we going to pay an extra hefty amount just to deal with the regulatory compliance? Like I mean it's kind of weird but like lobbyists as much like my role it sucks that you have to employ them because you really just want to have a clear rule so you don't have to hire a lobbyist but this is

unfortunately the situation the the industry you find yourself in. And of course tech same thing AI same thing. Um >> I think you're going to be fine Ron even if that goes through I think you're still going to be with a job even though you man >> it just goes somewhere they just get out re reallocated to the next bill that that we're pushing through whether it's per or prediction markets. I'm sure there's something on the horizon on both on both of those uh categories. I mean feel free if you want to comment purpose market like I think like I mean honestly tax is gonna be the next big thing for crypto like if hypothetically clarack got signed a law tomorrow like there's a lot of question on tax like you know mark to market ly like kind exchange dimminimus like these are kind of huge

huge issues at least when you're trying to tax you know at least have the regulatory rules for crypto tax there's a lot of question marks on it um the bill I worked on back in 2016 I referenced did include a dimminimus tax provision but again that's like small there's about 15 other provisions that we need have clarity on and this is not like just crypto firms want like a tax break. This is like traditional finance firms saying, "Hey, if I'm hedging this, what actually is the tax uh implications for hedging such an asset?" Uh so these are major questions that major institutions, not even just crypto native are asking. Um there allegedly is going to be a vote on a package of sort for crypto taxes in September uh from the ways of Means Committee.

>> Now, it won't probably get signed a law this year, but like that progress has been moving slowly behind the scenes. If clarity wasn't the big thing we're talking about, we'd be talking about the tax stuff because that one's like really moving up fast. Yeah. >> Um and especially in a bipart if it's a split Congress next year, >> those things should still be on the table here. I think also to think about closing the wash shell loophole, I think that's like the big pay for they're looking at. So if they can close the wash shell loophole as a way to pay for all these other tax uh either incentives or breaks, >> um you know, it's a pretty balanced approach, I think, honestly. So uh we'll we'll see what happens there, but I think tax is going to be probably the number two thing coming up. And to your

point, prediction markets, man, like that's going to be likely the Supreme Court um going to be decision what 2 3 years probably. Uh we'll see what happens to sports betting. But like for win, we just got involved in the prediction market side things providing liquidity for um certain uh platforms. So uh you know there's a lot of question legally like hey like what state is cool with prediction markets? What state's trying to ban it? And we've seen recently in some cases they've actually told um like Gali for example, I believe it's Minnesota to unwind all the trades which like >> that's ridiculous and like that's going to cause so much of a headache. Also, if you're a company and that's like president for one state, you bet New York, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, all these other states that lean uh pretty anti- either this administration or more blue, they're

going to probably follow suit. So, um, again, there's millions and billions of dollars on the line here and, uh, it sucks that some of it is getting hung up on the political reasons, but candidly, too, like these are really tough questions that we have to work on, solve. Um, and that's happening behind the scenes right now. >> Yeah, there's, uh, there's a ton happening outside of Clarity as well. And so, I mean, we've got lots of time and, you know, those prediction markets have a ton of money to pay any sort of potential fines there, but I'm sure we're going to be talking more about that. Um, you mentioned that you had some tea and I want to get to this because um, look, I I think it's no surprise the narrative from the legacy media has been, hey, we need to regulate this industry. They but they don't want

to legitimize it. And so they're sort of caught between a rock and a hard place. And so they've resulted with John Oliver saying, "Hey, you know, we need to regulate this because it's a wild west and you know, the bad actors are making too much money from this, but this is not the way to do it, right? because this would legitimize it too too much too quickly. So, so what what's happening here? Like what are some of the things that you can tell us and maybe we won't hear from from other people reporting on that. >> Yeah. So like behind the scenes um so that you actually make a really good point how you frame it. It's like if it's not clarity then what is it? Um and typically for a lot of these big bills, the ones that actually have a chance moving or do move eventually, there's

usually a Republican version of said bill, a Democrat version of said bill, and they usually meet in the middle. They clash. You know, whatever party has more power maybe gets a little more they want, but overall it's like the the balance of both ideas. They clash together. The Democrats for years and again a lot of this to blame is Gary Gensler. Yeah. He was telling them don't worry about this. You don't need legislation. This is all SEC. These are all securities. Don't worry about this. My remit. And for years we were saying like that's not the case, man. like, hey, Democrats, and maybe the Democrats who eventually did join the Republicans uh on this, uh they're saying, hey, like that's not the case. This is a new asset class. The securities laws have been updated 90 years. They probably didn't think about crypto back in the 1930s.

Like there are a lot of different risk parameters here. So the Democrats did not have a counter bill to fit 21 last year to clarity this year. And so now it's saying, well, we hate it for, and this where I get personally frustrated is, you know, we hate it for the yield issue, and that's the bank lobby. we have for prediction markets not being closed off that's the American Gaming Association probably people who fun this room um and uh you know a bunch of things you know I think the worst one I encountered me personally again this is back in 2017 we had a Democrat sign on um the Congress awards for went on NPR and at the time uh there was a lot of kurfuffle about the border wall uh which is kind of seems like it's so long ago but the congress award for he got asked

on NPR saying hey like you know how are you going to fund the border wall the bill he was working on was like buy a brick for the wall even though it wasn't a brick wall. Uh and the congressman offh hand says like I don't know I mean you can fund it with uh you know personal donations you know whether it be in dollars crypto um stock options you know whatever there are many funding mechanisms if you as an individual say this is a Republican that said this >> but this is not related to the clarity act or the token tax act what I was working on nothing related to crypto he just made an offhand comment at NPR saying you can maybe for the border wall with crypto among other things >> the headline that comes out of NPR the next day says congressman wants to fund

the border with crypto and I get a call from the Democrat office that we had lined up that I was my boss and I work on for >> one little off-hand comment just puts your work in a position and he said you know I don't want to fund or I only on this bill because I don't want to fund the border wall and it's politically looks horrible for me in election year and we had to explain to him multle times saying like this is not about the border wall there's nothing to do with this and eventually he saw through the politics and said you know what I'm going to go forward but that's the kind of crap Unfortunately, we're kind of seeing that now with the Clarity Act where Democrats are throwing any excuse whatsoever. Some, you know, maybe has some merit, others may not, but like

I've been through a situation where it's in many cases no merit whatsoever, but the politics is so strong and the election year is so divisive that they don't want to be optically seen as this. And that headline is all it can change. And that's why I mentioned the media in the early part of this interview. It's just like, yeah, the media carries a lot of weight because that's what the regular people see every single day. And a headline is enough to move a needle. >> It's narrative control at at the foundational layer. And for so long, this industry has moved in unison. And this is true of of the way that these assets have moved in the markets.

Bitcoin goes up, everything else goes up. Everything stocks zero interest rate environment. Everything goes up at once. Everything goes down at once. Everything has moved in unison. We're finally, it seemingly starting to get some market maturity. And this market is getting a bit more sophisticated where look, you know, if you're a token, but you've got some really strong revenues, hyperlquid, right? And you're buying method token, you got a good business model, you're gonna token's going to catch a bid, but one token is not like all tokens. Like there is some uh sophistication in this market now where these things are becoming less correlated. And I think that could be true. I'm I'm going to pass this over to you as a question which is that is it is it true of the narrative within DC and the regulatory

powers that be that this is also the case where we've got more market sophistication more market knowledge and it's not just crypto umbrella term everything gets buckled up into this per prediction markets bitcoin altcoins everything gets bottled up into this crypto term no like have you seen in in the trenches in DC that people are finally starting to untangle Bitcoin, from blockchain, from altcoin, from security, from token, from equity. Like we're finally starting to get some some education in this market. It's starting to get more sophisticated and hopefully we can move forward with a more mature position.

>> Yes. Um, and I think we were doing really really well. And that's when the politics gets involved and that's when, you know, you can have everyone really in the weeds and and candly like a lot of these centers who are in their 70s and 80s are having really deep conversations with a lot of good lawyers that many haven't been on this podcast before and like they're in the weeds like they're full on like trying to understand the AML obligations or the BSA requirements or the custody provisions. Um, you know, these all these other every senator has their own sticktick or their own angle uh of what's important to them. And unlike the House, these guys carry a lot of weight. One Senate vote means a lot, especially when you need 60 to get across the finish line. So, it's the unfortunate part is that a lot of these

conversations have been happening for years. And it's now when the politics gets involved, when the $2 billion Trump headline comes out, that is what, you know, mass all of it. And of course, in their mind saying, "Why would we give you guys a win?" >> Um, you know, months before the election, it's like, look, this isn't even a win. Also, the amount of negotiations that have happened on this bill. I mean, I'm going to see use the word water down, but like the Democrats have been involved. Even though Republicans are only in support right now, they have been involved in every single step of the way because Republicans saying, "Hey, this is a serious effort." >> The committee that this bill originates from has passed three bills in the past decade. And like these bills do not happen often. So, the fact that we're at

this point is crazy, but also important, but also shows that at the end of the day, politics can sometimes uh overtake. And that's the most frustrating part because like maybe in November it'll be done and maybe that you know the side that is you know objecting is gets their wins in the election they now feel happy they can do it but overall it's just like it's not about the actual like >> industry itself it's about one man it's like look there's millions of people involved in this stuff if you're going to make it about one guy >> uh you know it's a little frustrating and like honestly again having been through this years it's like if it's not Trump corruption it's going to be something else next next year next week there's always an excuse and >> that's why that committee's passed three bills in a decade. So,

>> and that's just it's the state of the world right now. It all sort of it's been a very top down sort of regime the last two years since Trump took office and uh we're now seeing the effects of it. All of the work that you know Democrats Republicans Senate you know, lobbyists such as yourself, all of so many people, so much work has gone into this yet it does seemingly come to one one head. >> Exactly. I mean, one thing I'll say too is also like trust me, if we could just buy a bunch of the Trump memecoin and all of our regulatory problems would be gone away. Do you think every company we buying the Trump memecoin, but that's where the narrative is out there and it's like guys, like we're going through a broker dealer application with PINRA, it's like you bet like if we could just

like make all these problems go away and just buy a bunch of, you know, Trumpcoin, do you think we would have done that? It's like do you think any company would have done that? It's like yes, there are rules of the road for a reason and like it's not this narrative that's put out there. Just buy a bunch of Trump's token and you're set and guess what? You're off to the races. Like it's it's false. I wish it was that easy. Ron, let's put a button on this thing. Do do you think Democrats can spin this narrative such that the Clarity Act is a win and they're not going to legitimize? They're going to they're going to it's it's a win for Democrats, right? And they can spin that to their constituents. What do you think the probability here is that this thing goes through this year seemingly before

the August recess? >> Uh I mean before August recess, it's like I mean it's a 5% chance 0% chance candidly. And that's because there's all these other rules you got to do. Like, oh, hey, we want to have a vote. And it's like, all right, we have a whole week now to do set vote. >> Um, so I'd say 0% chance, 5% chance max in August. Uh, because they all leave August 7th. But like everyone keeps I hate this part of the crypto industry. We keep saying like these uh these kind of makeup deadlines like, oh, it has to pass before August 7th or game over. It's like, I get why you're creating a sense of urgency. I get why the lobbyists are pushing this like aggressively. I want this done. I've been doing this for 10 years. like I want this done. It's been years. Um but

like let's get it done right. Let's get these folks like there in the room. The text has been out there for months. Um last year I mean 78 Democrats in the House passed this. We weren't talking about yield. We weren't talking about um ethics uh as much. Like this is like these 78 Democrats realize they're running on the wall. This needs to happen. >> And I think the senators now are like, "Hey, this is the last train leaving the station. So if I want to get, you know, one last shot at Donald Trump or if I want to get one last shot of the banks or if I want to cap my legacy, this is the way we do It's like, hey, let's not hold ourselves to artificial deadlines. We got several weeks left in Congress. I know there's a bunch of scheduled things you have to do, but like the votes are

there. Like we've counted the votes. Like there are there. It's just you got to make sure that either a politics goes away and then b um the banks, man. Like I would say the banks have lobbied very aggressively the past two weeks where yield is now coming back up on the table. Like we like we're saying it's a done deal. It's dead. It's done. But I mentioned this earlier part. We talked we've been talking to about a quarter of Congress. There's three4s of Congress. Now, mind you, the lobbyist aren't talking to them, but they haven't been in the trenches on this issue for years like many others have. And so now we're having like even Republican senators. I had a call from chief of staff this morning saying, "Hey, what's this yield issue? I've heard you guys are trying to screw the banks over." I'm just like,

"Oh my god, dude." Like this is a negotiation twice that the crypto industry has made. >> Where were you 6 months ago? >> Exactly. And I described the whole situation. He goes, "Oh, wait. So the banks already made a compromise and now they're reneging other combines because they still want no yield." I'm like, "That makes a lot more sense." But I'm like, yeah, the way you they get dressed it up, it is what it is. And back to the media lastly, the um like Morning Money, Politico, Bloomberg, anything DC publication, if you pull it up right now, it's all about the yield. Uh and how rule of lending is going to go away and yield is the issue. And it's trying to target those 75% of of senders who just really aren't in the trenches. And that's why I'm getting these calls.

That's why other lobbyists getting these calls because they're scaring them and like they have not been through this rigma roll. And it's frustrating because the banks have lost this issue, but they're not letting it go. And um it looks like they're willing to have no like no certainty for market structure if it means in six years or four years they're able to close that loophole cuz they're not going to do it the the regulatory way. They're going to try, but they're going to fail. But they're going to try through Congress. And they have now decided, hey, we are willing to take the long game for a better Congress that will ban yield entirely. And that's shortsided them. And that's why Goldman Sachs and these investment banks who are now bucking uh the consumer bankers or ICBA or American bankers like that's big. It's showing the investment bankers

are like hey retail get in line. So >> uh so we'll see like that's a really like under the surface there's schisms in the banks and some of them are willing to take the long game if it means banning yield and that long game could be eight years. And so you're saying that there's a separation between the rural banking uh and the uh and then and then the large investment banks like the Goldman Sachs of the world. >> Yeah. And I would say, you know, I was writing legislation back in 2017. I was talking to Goldman Sachs. I wasn't talking to Wells Fargo. They didn't reach out. Uh JB Morgan um so I was talking to uh retail community banks as well as more of the investment banks. Um I will tell you the retail banks were not heavily caring about this stuff.

They kind of blew me off early on. Like Goldman Sachs was like right there with me and like we were talking him NASDAQ IC. So everyone talks about this is like a crypto industry bill but like clarity started off a bipartisan but b like the banks exchanges and trappy was heavily involved in saying this text and like give their input and they have been for years. >> It's just unfortunately the politics gets involved and also I would say the ethics noise we're seeing in the media. >> Yeah. >> It's not all the political parties involved here too. The banks are pushing the lever here. um the American Gaming Association, they're heavily pushing on that narrative as well. So, there's a lot of folks who are pushing the political angle knowing that it will destabilize the bill. So, there's forces at play that we may not see,

>> but they're heavily involved in what we think is politics. >> Yeah. >> Ron Hammond, head of policy at Winter Meet. Man, thank you so much for coming on. would love to have you on again, you know, before this August recess and just as there's more developments, you know, please come back and keep our community updated and keep keep myself updated as well cuz a lot of things that we hear from you that we don't hear from everyone else. Really appreciate it. >> Yeah. No, anytime. And you guys have a great platform. I've been a huge fan. So, uh, have you come on anytime. So, >> thanks so much, man. Guys, we'll be right back. Don't go anywhere with our next guest, Cody Carbone. [music] >> [music] [music]

[music] >> Yo yo yo. What's going on, guys? This is Itan with the rollup. We're going to be patrolling the streets of New York City getting answers to the questions that you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in? How much do people actually budget? We're going to have people from all over, all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded. There won't be a mayor or politician to stop us on the streets. We're going to go everywhere. All five burrows. We're taking over the 212.

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[music] >> [music] >> Yo yo yo. What's going on, guys? This is Itan with the rollup. We're going to be patrolling the streets of New York City getting answers to the questions that you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in? Welcome back to the rollup here live from Las Vegas. We're at the Arya Hotel at the Rare Evo conference and it's clarity, clarity, and more clarity. Cody Carbone, the man from the digital

chamber who is in DC making it happen literally with his bare hands pushing this bill across the finish line. Cody, man, good to see you again. >> It's good to see you, Robbie. Thanks for having me, man. >> Absolutely. just tell us like what is what has been the energy like are you sleeping like what what has been the energy like in DC >> not sleeping I don't know if that's just from having two little ones at home or it's the bill it's probably a mixture of both but no sleep uh we're in the thick of it right now like this this bill is on the one yard line the time is to get it done now uh so it's a lot of negotiating uh a lot of back and forth between Republicans Democrats the White House Treasury and you my role is to

offer the industry perspective. Hey, if you guys are going to, you know, try to push for this tweak, here's how it's going to impact us. Um, so it's it's been surreal uh that we're we're here. We have we're finally on the precipice of getting a market structure build done. It's without it, the US will never be the crypto capital of the world. So, it's our Super Bowl and uh it's it's all hands on deck, trying with my bare hands to get it across the finish line with a lot of other help uh from industry leaders, but right now is the time. Yeah, man. I mean, where where to dig in here?

Let let's start with the time frame. Um, it feels like it's the it it's the Super Bowl. It's one yard line. It's the fourth quarter. It feels like we have to do this thing by next week, next Friday, August recess. All of the Congress people go back to their constituencies. Um, how real is that deadline? You know, we've heard sort of a bunch of goalposts in the air. We've heard procedural vote. We've But what are the and how much time is on the clock?

>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Yo yo yo. What's going on, guys? This is Itan with the rollup. We're going to be patrolling the streets of New York City, getting answers to the questions that you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in?

How much do people actually budget? We're going to have people from all over, all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded. There won't be a mayor or politician to stop us on the streets. We're going to go everywhere. All five burrows. We're taking over the 212. We get deep. [music] We get deep. We get We get deep. We get deep. We get [music] We get deep.

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[music] [music] >> Yo yo yo. What's going on, guys? This is Itan with the rollup. We're going to be patrolling the streets of New York City getting answers to the questions that you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in? How much do people actually budget? We're going to have people from all over all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded.

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[music] We get deep. We get deep, you know. We get deep. [music] We get deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> And we're back. Uh, we just took all of

Las Vegas's money, so they cut our internet just real quick. Uh, can't help that. Uh, we're still here with Cody Carbone. Uh, and the Clarity Act still isn't through, but the August recess is a real deadline. Um, these guys go back home. Uh, they start campaigning for midterms and these things. Next Friday. Um, but there's multiple steps, right? And so, you know, we've got a time on the clock, right? August 7th, I believe, is one of these deadlines, but there's multiple deadlines out there. once the midterms take place the next year September these things um multiple deadlines also multiple goalposts like procedural vote ultimately signing this thing into law just give us a sense of what we should be targeting what is a

realistic goal for us to have before this August 7th deadline and how much further along do we have to go in order to get that >> you teed it up well Robbie I mean for a bill to pass the Senate there is multiple votes before final passage that have to happen. It needs to be brought to the floor. There needs to be motion to proceed. Then there's amendments and there needs to be a closure vote, which is historically what everyone says, 60 votes. You need to get 60 votes to end debate. That's the closure vote. And then go to a final passage vote. For me, where we need to see progress over the next week before they break for recess is that we have to begin that process and have some of those procedural votes.

You need to tee this up where when they get back in September, they're only here for three more weeks. All they need to do is vote on final passage and then they send it back to the House and the House votes on final passage. So August 7th should still be considered a real deadline. If we're sitting here in a week or, you know, next Friday and they did not put this bill on the floor, there was no calendar time, there was no amendments offered, there was no procedural votes, then we failed. That means that this bill is likely not going anywhere this Congress. Who knows what happens in the midterm elections? If Democrats win either the House or the Senate or both, we're likely not getting this bill up again. And so then we're waiting until 2029 for a next administration two Congresses from now

to really take up market structure again. So we have to see progress in the next week. If you are sitting out there and watching and you don't want to understand all the procedural nonsense of the Senate, just make sure you look for whether there are any votes on this bill. There needs to be one of those motion to proceed. There needs to be amendments. They have to begin the process. So September is really, really easy. quick vote on final passage and then it goes to the house. Quick vote there and then to the president's desk >> and and it seems as if this all gets reduced into this procedural vote, this procurial vote because if it is put to a vote, then it's probably going to pass. They wouldn't put it to a vote if it would wouldn't pass. And if it passes this this initial vote, then it's most

likely the case that they're going to end up signing it in September when they come back. So, it really all rests on getting the 60 votes uh because that would ultimately put us in a position to have the vote. Where are we on the path to 60? I remember you coming on the show, you gave us like literally senator by senator on who was on board and who was not. What's the update? I think before it was 11 and we were closing in on seven. If we could get seven of the 11, we were in a good spot. Where are we today on the path to 60? So, when you look at the Senate makeup right now, there's 53 Republicans, 47 Democrats.

Your hope is that a majority, at least 50 plus Republicans vote yes. I think we can get 51 votes, potentially 50. Mitch McConnell, we don't know what's going on with him. So, if he's not there and can't vote, then you need And then there's two other Republicans, Josh Holly from Missouri and Rand Paul from Kentucky who voted no on genius. Historically, just don't like voting on digital asset bills, don't like voting on bills in general. >> So, then you've got 50 Republicans who need all to vote yes. Then you need 10 Democratic votes. There's a group of 12 Democrats that have been working with the Republicans to get this bill over the finish line. There's 18 Democrats that voted for the Genius Act. So, we're targeting those 18 to see how many of those we can pick off. We need at least 10. Right now, the biggest issue is

ethics. And I I know it's been talked about on your show today by Ellie and by Ron. >> Ethics is the ball game. Now, this bill has become unfortunately it's a 616page bill. Unfortunately, it's less about the substance of what is a true market structure framework, what is a digital asset security framework, a digital asset commodity framework, a tokenization framework, and about how do we from a democratic side, how do we take the president to task? How do we make sure that the president specifically, and while it's broader than that, it applies to all government officials. How can we make sure that he can't profit off the digital asset industry? It has become a political gainer. That is a really ugly place to be in DC. And unfortunately, that's where we are in a lot of bills in DC.

For Democrats to feel comfortable voting yes and to get those 10 votes, they need to extract enough on the ethics side where they can go back to their base in the upcoming midterm elections and say, "While this was a bill that President Trump liked, we were able to really punish him, punish the White House, and make sure that he can never profit off this." >> The president has to sign this bill. >> And so getting him comfortable with something like that is going to be really tough. and it has been really tough. Ethics has become the whole ball game and that's unfortunate. I wish it wasn't the case. Um I'm still confident they can get there.

>> They are working diligently and it's the White House, Treasury, Republicans and Democrats saying we need to find a deal here. Let's not hold up progress and trillions of dollars coming into the US capital markets through digital assets >> by not being able to strike an ethics deal. That's the whole ball game. There's some other issues that need to be resolved. Uh, and I know you talked about them at length today, but if you get ethics, I think you get those 10 Democratic votes. >> Okay. And so the I mean it all comes down to ethics. What my understanding of the ethics language as it exists today is you've got this statute of limitations until 2029. And then you've got essentially putting uh restrictions on certain officials that would prevent them from fundraising via crypto,

specifically meme coins and these sorts of fundraising mechanisms. It sounds like, you know, this came from the White House. They put this through. They're okay with this. The president would sign this. But Democrats are not okay with this. They're not satisfied with this ethics language. The way if I'm trying to cut through this to a breakthrough here, it sounds like the way in which Democrats could spin this to ultimately tell their constituents that they got to win and stick it to the president is that, hey, Trump made a lot of money via crypto.

There isn't really I don't see Trump bending the knee and capitulating any of the money that he's already made. But if there's a compromise here, it may and I'm going to phrase this as a question. I'm just curious to get your thoughts on this. Does the compromise here look like Trump made a lot of money on crypto, we can't get that back, but we're going to make damn sure that he can't make any more money on crypto. Is that a compromise that you think the president and the Democrats would feel satisfied with? I think I think that's what the president has offered thus far. It was like, I'm going to limit what I've already done. My money is in a blind trust. Uh I'm not going to issue any tokens. Everything Democrats from the beginning have asked for, President Trump says, "Hey, I agree to."

>> Okay, >> it's pretty unprecedented because there's been no other president that has put controls and limits on himself from making money. Now, it's not going to be good enough for Democrats. They've already told us as much. I think they would like to extract and take away some of the money he's already made, whether that's devestment to his kids or put that money somewhere else. They also the biggest piece that they don't like is that the sole enforcement mechanism here is the US attorney general who is appointed by the president. And so Democrats are saying, how can we trust that the person who was appointed by Trump is going to then prosecute him?

They want state attorneys general to also have prosecuting power. There's constitutional questions of whether state attorneys general can even sue federal officials. >> Um so it's there's a lot to work out. They also don't like Democrats don't like that this provision only applies to this White House. >> They want to make sure that the next administration could potentially go after President Trump for anything that he's done during this White House term. >> I think there is a deal that can be made. It's going to be really tough. There's going to hopefully over the next 24 hours uh we're going to see new ethics language that is being brokered between some Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats. I think there's going to be a role for state AGS in there. Uh I think there's likely going to be an

ask for devestment of money he's already made. And then it comes down to whether the White House has accepted that. The White House has gone to far lengths right now to offer ethics language that is unprecedented. Um but it's, you know, you have to get 60. So there's going to have to be more negotiating and hopefully, you know, the White House sees that any deal here, the Getting Clarity Act is good for the country. Hopefully Democrats see that the White House is being a good negotiator because they have been for a long time. So I I'm still confident we can get a deal. >> Yeah, man. Cody, I I just What are you watching? Like are you you're you know, you're talking to the senators like what are you what >> baseball?

>> You're watching baseball. [laughter] >> Anything but but No, I'm just kidding. I'm I'm watching for, okay, we're under this truncated timeline now. >> Yeah. >> Where can we strike deals, right? >> We have to strike the ethics deal. Yeah. >> To me, that's that's number one. Where else can we start to strike some deals? Patrick Witt at the White House on, if you look at the law enforcement side, has done an incredible job in getting some of these law enforcement groups to move from I oppose this because of some BRCA language or some DeFi language into now supportive. If you look at the new text that was released a week ago, there's a whole new section on law enforcement. It's the pro most pro law enforcement bill we've ever seen. An incredible consumer protection regime.

I'm hoping that that side is yes, there's still some concerns from Democrats on BRCA, but I'm hoping that side is mostly, you know, done. We have to see the ethics deal. So, I'm watching for over the next 24 hours. Can we get an ethics deal? And hopefully tomorrow, uh, by the end of this week, we start to get this bill on the Senate calendar. we start to have some floor timeline and then we have the votes over the next week. If we don't again, if we're sitting here a week from now and we haven't had any votes and this bill is not on the time on the calendar and they're not going to take any action, I think it's we're in a really tough spot and we're probably looking to the future and what rulemakings can do for us.

>> Yeah. Um prediction markets have this about 30% of getting signed into law by 2026. You were you taking the over or the under there? >> Over. I'm more bull bullish. Really? Yeah. I with all the headwinds that we're facing, >> uh, all the, you know, trials and tribulations of this, it reminds me a lot of where we were genius. >> Okay. >> People forget that Genius failed its first vote. >> People forget that it was after, you know, Genius passed the Senate, went back to the House, it was a group of Freedom Caucus Republicans that President Trump had to call in and advocate to accept this because they were going to oppose the bill. This reminds me of that. Nothing in Washington is done easy. It's a 616 bit

page bill that is going to set the United States up for success for decades, centuries. Like I imagine this is what like the Securities Acts of the 1930s were like trying to get something of this magnitude done. It's never going to be easy. But no one has left the table. >> It would have been very easy for Democrats to their credit uh the fact that they haven't left when this text came out last week and they didn't like it to say, "You know what? There's two weeks left. We're done with this. We're not going to get this done." Everyone wants to get this done and until people leave the table, I'm going to be optimistic because I really think there's a chance. We've been working on this for almost a decade. Uh now is the shot. We've never been so close and I think policy makers more than anyone

feel that like this is our opportunity. >> I still think it gets done. >> Cody, you're the man. You're uh literally pushing this bill across the the line with your bare hands on behalf of the entire industry here. Uh, we appreciate it and uh we appreciate all the hard work that you're doing in DC, man. >> No, I I appreciate you guys. You guys are the ones getting the message out there. So, thank you. Bummed Andy's not here skipping out on us, but no, appreciate you, Robbie, always and the home rollup crew. >> Um, you're the man. Yeah, it's a team effort. Glad we're doing it together. Guys, we're going to be right back with our next guest. Don't go anywhere. We're going to have a great rest of the afternoon here from Vegas. Be right back.

[music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> Yo yo yo. What's going on, guys? This is Itan with the rollup. We're going to be patrolling the streets of New York City getting answers to the questions that you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in?

How much do people actually budget? We're going to have people from all over, all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded. There won't be a mayor or politician to stop us on the streets. We're going to go everywhere. All five burrows. We're taking over the >> 212. [music] We get we get deep. We get deep. We get we get [music] we get deep, you know. We get deep.

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Itan with the rollup. We're going to be patrolling the streets of New York City getting answers to the questions that you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in? How much do people actually budget? We're going to have people from all over, all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded. There won't be a mayor or politician to stop us on the streets. We're going to go everywhere. All five burrows. We're taking over the 212. We get deep. [music] You know, we get deep.

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[music] >> Welcome back to another episode of Stabled Up, our premier weekly show covering the ins and outs of digital dollars, stable coins, and the future of [music] decentralized finance. show is made possible by FRA and FRA is powering the financial engine of the internet powering FRXUSD and genius compliant stable coins. This is the [music] stablecoin super cycle made possible by FRA. Now enjoy stabled up our weekly stable coin. We are live from Rare Evo at the Arya Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is 110° outside and we are just on the precipice of the markets being that hot. Um, we're here with our next guest, uh, Las Vegas local. Uh, you guys know

him well, friend of the show, Sam Casmian of Frack Finance. And, uh, Sam is no stranger to the show and our stabled up segment. This segment is powered by FRA. And, uh, we are very, very, very grateful to Sam and Fra for supporting the show, supporting education in the space. Sam, >> I would say uh, welcome to Vegas. How do you like it here? But you've been here much longer than the rest of us. Maybe I should say welcome out west and uh you know all the way here uh it is 110 so I don't know if that's uh melting for New Yorkers but welcome to Sin City. Frack is based out of here uh for people who don't know. Uh it's a it's a great area because I think we'll we'll talk about

kind of the opportunities and things like that that people are um not seeing yet. But I think uh it's an interesting time. We were just discussing about how, you know, the market prices might not feel bullish, but there's so much good business deals and all these things going on that it doesn't feel like the prices and the deals are are meshed. >> Yeah. Um I mean, you've been here like through the ups, through the downs, you you've been building through it all and so you've you've seen a thing or two in your day. um when it has, you know, if you were to compare this with previous market downturns, previous market conditions, you know, this one feels a little bit different. Anytime I find myself saying this feels different, it feels like, you know, we had BitMart

shutdown and BitMEX wound down and like there have been some casualties in the market, but we haven't gotten like the big collapse. We haven't gotten the Teral Luna. We haven't gotten the FTX. People were saying strategy. Some of them are still saying strategy, but do you think we're gonna get the big collapse here that pe some people are calling for, other people have said that we're bottom? It's just a matter of time and matter of apathy that that we'll move through. But when you're looking at some of the business cycles that are out there, how much more destruction in these business because it feels like there's a lot brewing beneath the surface. Maybe clarity go through, maybe it doesn't. that with tokenization, stable coins, which we'll get into, like

so much that is signaling to us that crypto is not dead, the industry is not dead. Whereas in previous cycles, it has felt like maybe this thing won't come back. It doesn't feel that way this time. Do you think, you know, it's just because we haven't seen the big casualty yet and then it will feel like that or what what do you what do you think feels feels the same or feels different about this time? Yeah, I mean I my personal view is there's there's no like uh giant dead body under under the crypto ocean, so to speak. It's it'll be macro. Uh whether you know all this geopolitical stuff is is a bigger deal than people think or it's a smaller deal than it currently is. Who knows, right? Uh that's the only mispricing. Is it too

too high or too low? And I think that's what we'll find out in the next 6 months. And in terms of like, you know, where everything's going, like you said, this time feels very different because you can actually describe what the difference is. So, I'll like say it as you're you're seeing around here in Vegas, like before in a bare market, you you didn't see like the secretary of state or like the senators or institutions actually being participating on the ground floor. Like here, I was actually just talking to the Nevada Secretary of State uh FRA being based here. very apt good conversation.

Uh a lot of opportunities that are not, you know, usually talked about. For example, maybe in a uh the government during the incorporation process of a of a company in Nevada, which has been really hot uh after Delaware, right? You can get stable coin account, a fraet account, a virtual bank account, all of these neoank things that are only currently applied to retail, right? Crypto traders, right? you need to bring them to other markets that are honestly bigger than the average crypto trader, right? That there's like there's like 200, you know, crypto cards or or whatever. That's a nice business, but they're all trying to attack the same exact demographic of like spend your stable coin and trade and then like get

a token reward, right? We're also building something there with a totally different outlook, right? And so like the there will be a FRA card and and a and a very interesting programmable card that won't look like any of the other 200 or so, right? That's going every every week. And and the and the point is >> you need to bring this technology to new opportunities and and when you see the opportunities left and right, it doesn't feel like a a bare market. when you're talking to the the secretary of state for a a large state and when you're talking to a senator and then they're like, "We need to bring this this banking, this technology, the stable coins, this payment processing uh to all of these places to our state, to our businesses, to our people." And they

actively want to push that forward rather than being like, "Oh, well, let's wait like 2 years or whatever." They actively want to schedule calls, see if if they can push this forward immediately. That's totally different. You could describe how how different that is, right? And so there's also obviously Vegas being uh sin city and the you know gambling capital of the world, there's also private sector opportunities as well, right? It spans both public and private, >> right? And so from a secretary of state's perspective, which I think is a great framing because it feels representative of the the actors that are now the market participants and those typically have not been the market participants, but a secretary of of state is looking at increasing tax

revenue for its state primarily, right? And Nevada is a great example because they generate so much income in taxes from the casinos if I'm understanding correctly. And so, you know, being such a primary income source, I'd imagine that both the private sector and the public sector are looking at new opportunities to increase their income. And by virtue of that, the the Secretary of State is able to t you know, generate more tax income as well. And so, the most intuitive example here feels like well, you know, the state's got its reserves. It's got a budget and it's got money and it can put that money into a stable coin and it can earn money from reserves. How I mean are those the kind

of opportunities that we should be thinking about on a state level and if so how does FRA help a state accomplish those goals? >> Yeah definitely. So that that's a very interesting like financial structural kind of side of it. In fact, one of the things I think that will be pretty popular to to do is back genius compliant collateral, whether it's bank deposits or uh government debt with stable coins that are strategically aligned, right? Like uh let's say casinos want to integrate like FRAUSD or some kind of stable coin and in return the deposits are in uh banks that actually do the the pay and payouts for the casino's normal business, right?

There's just a lot of these structural things that creates much more positive flow and positive value across the entire ecosystem. There's also just efficiency, right? Like if you think of the secretary of state, they incorporate companies, they collect corporate tax, incorporation tax. And what do you do when you incorporate a company or startup, the first thing afterwards is you need to open a bank account and run payroll and all this stuff. And that takes a while. What if you could just have that all done digitally? Because you could have a neo bank, something like FraNet, something like all these other ones, right? There there's there's a lot of these opportunities, but what if you could have these things just be instant? In fact, what if the real like distribution is we just do the incorporation on behalf and then you immediately get like a full account,

right, for your business and then running uh the the payroll through stable coins, getting yield for however you want your your business to borrow, tapping them into DeFi on the first day, right, when your company's actually incorporated. There's all these avenues that you could just bring the efficiency of digital assets, stable coins, payments and and hook them on the actual crypto rails from day one. Uh those are not really being explored, right? Like right now we we see like a lot of the conversations trading which is great, right? But it's like it's like per design. And it's like uh cards for crypto natives that you know want to borrow and and use like a and stuff like that. Those are all great, but probably

there's going to be two or three winner takemost of that exact kind of feature and functionality, right? There's there's places where you can really create a lot more value uh from zero to one in my opinion. What what is your take on um these maybe you would call them neo banks but I I probably call them stable coin centric banks like Arabore right the guy from anal is like you know kind of gone and and and done this and it and it sounds very similar to um what you're describing you know you open up a business if this gets integrated into the business registration flow you can open up a lot more of these out of the box and and you know with the current regime whether clarity goes through or not um and and an agency, a regulatory agency that kind

of flies under the radar a little bit more so than the SEC and the CFTC is the OC, which is in charge of all the banks, banking charters, these sorts of things. And they've been issuing charters for like cryptonnative companies to to do these things. >> They've been giving them out like candy is what I what I say basically. I mean, so yeah, I mean that's, you know, you're saying what we're all thinking and so like is that sort of the path for maybe not every one of these 200 card, you know, you got a crypto card, you can spend your thing, right? But, you know, is that a path that that you and FRA are exploring to help integrate with some of the more, you know, regulated bodies at at at be here?

>> Yeah. So, actually, it's great you brought up Airborore because they're actually our our like newest partner that that we haven't fully congratulations Yeah. announced yet, but they're we have a official FBO FRAUSD reserve account. It's Genius Compliant. They're an FDIC insured bank. Uh we're doing some interesting things with them that we'll actually announce pretty soon. But exactly as you're saying, it's these innovative banks. Their software is fantastic, by the way. So, I give a shout out to Eravore uh and um Palmer, Jacob, all all the guys there. And um it's it's exactly the type of innovation that's needed. Um the important thing to to think about though is that you have to have layers, right? Like if you want to accomplish a certain thing, you can

get these charters. If you want to accomplish uh a certain other distribution channel, you don't need it necessarily. So for us, uh I think we'd look at it probably next year. Uh and and so that's that's kind of our timeline. And and I mean you're you're a leader in the stable coin space. You have been for a long time. And so just from an educational point of view because we have operators that you know listen to stable up and they you know take away some um you know potential guidance as far as how they should navigate some of the market conditions like when and why would it make sense for a stable coin company or a neo bank to pursue the OC bank charter route versus not? When when does it make sensor to do so?

>> Yeah. Uh it's a good question. So it depends on what services you're offering and in what order you want to offer them, which is actually the other important thing. So for example, if you want to be the direct actual uh entity that holds your own reserves and you can actually potentially do some interesting things with them, right? Like for for example, if we deposit FRAUSD's genius compliant reserves at Arabbor, which is FDIC insured bank, Arabore can obviously hypothecate them. They're FDIC insured bank. they can give you know mortgages, credit creation, all this stuff.

>> Could we work with them in a positive sum manner that uh creates interesting credit creation in uh a specific sector for for example this is not actually uh official or anything like that. So it's just an idea. Imagine if we deposit nine figures at uh Arabore and then we say, "Hey, our predominant business base is in Nevada, for example, and we have tons of companies that have been using our Neo Bank. Could you extend them credit based on your own uh risk analysis and stuff obviously, right? But prefer credit creation in in this region.

That's a win-winwin, right? Triple win." Um that's like for example something if you want to do that all inhouse um you should probably pursue an OC charter, right? Uh but first you could you could do it with a strong partner, right? Um for example, with us, the other thing that we're saying is we're working on this really novel card in in the uh last couple months of this year is hopefully when it'll come out in Q4. Um there's a lot of ways to issue cards, right? That's why there's like 200 of them or something like that, right? But we're trying to get a uh direct uh BIN relationship with Visa rather than using just an API uh endp point or partner. We looked at a lot of them. Uh, a lot of them are great for different use cases.

And so it goes back to your question, when would you actually want to uh go all the way for certain things. It depends what you're trying to offer uh and and how quickly you're trying to actually offer it. So for cards uh full 100% interchange pass through novel designs of of a of a credit card that's hybrid with uh crypto, which usually they're all debit, right? And actually that's a the regulatory reason. and also compliance reason cuz other BIN sponsors would not be comfortable with saying okay I'm going to issue credit against some you know crazy type of uh architecture uh they're they're fine with saying okay safe stable coins USDC you know fra USD whatever uh fine you know you could spend it as a debit card

so we had to go direct we had to actually take responsibility we couldn't build what we're actually trying to build without going direct uh which makes it harder but it also makes it more technologically innovative. >> Yeah, absolutely. And that I mean, you know, there are barriers to entry in some of these spaces and and sometimes for good reason and it it it takes uh someone who's up for the challenge to overcome some of these barriers to entry. um you reminded me of something that I I saw on the timeline over the last 24 hours or so uh with respect to Visa but also Open USD which um is you know out of tempo and you know has kind of been not so much talked about in in

recent times since it came out and I think a lot of people and companies that originally endorsed open US dollar have sort of taken a more generalist approach uh which is sort of a leadin to to what I want to ask you out here which is um a tweet from Lorenzo and he's a friend of the show from Arch Invest's digital asset team and he said on on Visa's earnings call the company was asked whether OpenUSD would compete with Circle and Tether and and the established stable coin players and Visa's response was that Visa going forward would remain multi-coin multi-chain our role is not to pick winners our role is to help clients connect to the stable coin ecosystem securely and at scale regardless of which stablecoin network or infraure

structure ultimately gains adoption. Um, and so given that a lot of companies signed off on this open US dollar thing, it seems like a lot of them don't want to handicap themselves when it comes to accepting stable coins across multiple networks. >> What is your perspective on the way that card settlement networks like Visa and Mastercard and Discover have been approaching the stable coin space? How has it evolved? And given that now you're seemingly enter the space and please correct me if I'm wrong there, but h what is your now positioning as it relates to some of the incumbent card providers and settlement networks?

>> Yeah. Uh that that that's a great question because uh actually I guess as as a background since starting yesterday I should say FRA has also joined the OpenUSD alliance as probably the newest member. But this is a great question because that also applies directly to to us. I think every single company depending on whether they're an issuer of a stable coin like FRA uh card network, they have different priorities in what they see the value that they can both bring to the OSD alliance and consortium and then also get out of it, right? Uh for us, for example, when we were were talking directly uh with the stripe and and bridge team that created the consortium, right? The idea for us

is obviously we issue our own stable coin. Uh OSD being genius compliant means that we can essentially accept it onetoone. We would like to actually be uh able to do onetoone mint and redeems and actually have this clearing house ability offer it in all of our products. Although our credit cards like the kind of the way that it was said on on the Visa call that you quoted, if someone wants to spend OSD for specific esoteric reason, they're more than happy to, you know, use our product to spend it.

Right. For us, what's most important is being able to offer one:one orchestration, onetoone onoff ramping, onetoone system with OSD. And that is actually a net value ad for OSD if in geographic areas and and sectors places use it, right? Same thing with like card networks. They they probably don't want to be extremely opinionated, but they would love to have the economics, the onetoone mint and redeem uh additional integration APIs and and all these things. The power of the consortium is not necessarily everyone having like a strategic uh alignment of pushing this over another. It's everyone having uh a strategic alignment to at least accept

it at the same time, which is half the battle, right? Because imagine you're starting a stable coin that's not in a consortium. You'd have to have Visa accept it directly as a settlement stable coin on on Visaet, right? you'd have to have all of these like Black Rock, you know, mint and redeem assets with it instead of USDC. Well, now they do O USD and USDC, right? That's a very substantive thing that I think people are are are missing. Who has the actual incentive strategically to push OSD uh early? Probably Stripe and the Tempo team, right? And obviously, they're very capable, very, very smart team. And uh I think there's some some cool things that we can build with them in in DeFi and

neo banking together, but they have the the farthest alignment obviously. Everyone else has an alignment to make sure that it's accepted, it's integrated, uh it has unit economics and that is a very important thing. I think people are miscounting that. Another way to think about it is if everywhere accepts a stable coin as a as a unit, the less likely it is to actually be redeemed in any one particular place because you have to make upstream payments that are accepted also in OSD. For example, if we're going to uh mint Black Rockck, you know, Biddle or something like that, uh overnight we might hold the OSD cuz we know that next day Black Rockck would accept it because they're, you know, part of the the

consortium, right? There you go. Now the the the time duration of someone holding billions and billions of it is increased, right? And all that stuff adds up. So, I think it's a very substantive thing, but people might be overestimating consortiums. They're not private uh shareholders on the same cap table, right? Obviously. >> Yeah. And I I I think we've had previously a similar conversation and you've you've explained how the creme de la creme for a stable coin is to be accepted as money. And if you can get that, you've essentially, you know, gotten yourself into the echelon of of staying power, sustainability, and these sorts of things. And and it sounds to me

that the more cohesion there is in the stable coin market, the more winners there are in in the sense that and and the question that I'm getting to is ultimately are are you a like a stable coin monoist or a stable coin pluralist just in the sense like is there going to be one blockchain or many blockchains? Like it it seems to me that if there are working models where there are onetoone redemptions and there's partnerships and everyone can have their stable coin, but they can all be redeemable for one another. It it creates a cohesive ecosystem of stable coins that if one of them is accepted as money, they're all accepted as money because they're all equally redeemable for one another. Is

that a vision that you have to get into like the positioning of like accepted as money? Is that sort of ultimately where we're headed? And is the thesis of ultimately arriving there, is that correct? That everyone sort of forming these partnerships and and and creating a redeemable network for one another helps to achieve the moneyiness of stable coins. >> Yeah. Uh, I think to answer your direct question as a monoist or pluralist, I guess it depends what you mean by plural, how many, right? I'm an 8020 type of person.

I think there will be a few uh that are 80% of the entire stable coin market cap, which I think is going to be trillions by 2030. Uh, like at least a couple trillion, 3 to four trillion is still Scott Besson's estimates, right? Um, and then the 20 other percent is the the longtail, but there will be a lot. So, I guess you could say closest to uh a pluralist and hopefully FRAUSD is in that couple 80%, right? The I think five or so probably that makes up that that 80% is it would be my guess. Um, the way that you said it actually is really smart. Maybe the next Visa network or Mastercard is all of these consortiums of consortiums being joined like FRA

being in it, Circle being in it, you know, the the OSD consortium, FRANET, the onetoone clearing house. There's other clearing house companies that have relationships like we have a relationship with the Better Money Company. It's a it's a new clearing house company and uh they do Frack USD, they do USDC, they do uh all of these. And so those that that network connection of all of them maybe that is uh the next visa right maybe that is where most commerce will be uh in like 5 years right um I think that there will be a lot of stable coins we we also do an issuance uh system we issue Sonics USSD Somnia is USDSO we're talking to few others and one of the first things that they would get out of all of this

is immediate oneto oneness full rails all of the integrations uh that Fraxus USD has uh maybe not as many as like Dex uh things across networks but in their network which is exactly what they they want they they reign supreme right and so that network now connects onetoone and orchestrates with everything that we've built so I do think it's an 8020 rule I do think that the next kind of visa kind of thing is is being built right now technically might be a super network of of visa because Visa is the this consortium, right?

>> In the consortium as well. And so it Visa could in theory partner up with other other networks that would have right they they could partner up with a Mastercard or a Discover where they were typically seen as competitors, but now in this new stable coin space, they could be seen as partners. These roots are way more open than than people think. I know there's like concerns of like, oh, a consortium made of like US tech companies and stuff like that, but I think you're right in that the these consortiums, right, the the asset is self-custodial, right? Going between Visaet or or Mastercard if you like swipe at a different place or there's overcharge or FX fees that there's no way you could get out of with all these.

You could withdraw it to your web 3 wallet. You could deposit it in like Frastead. We'll do one to one. If if the others don't, we'll do one to one or maybe one time we might not be able to or something. They they probably can. You could withdraw it. And so the actual c control and custodial relationship is totally different. And these are open networks even though you know genius requires blacklist and things. It's very very much a big step up of what it was before. >> Yeah. Um, we've said on the show multiple times, I think every show we do mention FRA at least once. And so, typically it goes like, you know, FRA is open, open, stable, borderless, and and genius compatible.

Open, stable, borderless. I think I think, you know, are all are all relatively straightforward. But it's the genius compatible part that I'm just curious to hone in on a little bit more because with all this clarity conversation, it was we we were reminded at recently that there's still rulemaking that is happening with Genius. And so when you say that, you know, FRA is genius compatible. What does that really mean and and how much does that help to separate it from some of the other stable coins that are out there that don't fall into the genius compatible category? >> Yeah. Uh, it's a great question cuz I was hoping the OC would do their uh rulemaking on July 18th, but like they I pushed it back to I don't even know when now. It might even be early next year. I

don't quote me on it, but um what we mean and I think what most people mean is to the best of our understanding and our council and uh and Claude uh right >> Claude. Yeah, I have to be honest, right? uh the assets that back FRAUSD and the way that it's custodied in segregated FBO accounts and the fact that we uh can redeem the entire supply and they're entirely custodied by qualified custodians, money market funds, securities, treasuries, and FDIC insured bank deposits. We think it matches the the Genius Act. Now, obviously, no one's been licensed. As

you said, the guidance hasn't even finished coming out. So that's why we see >> compatible and not genius compliant. >> Exactly. >> There's not even rules that would say what is compliant, which is exactly what you're saying, but to the best of your ability, use your best judgment to make sure that it is compatible with the rules that are most likely to be put into place. >> Exactly. And actually the the importance of that can't be uh overstated because there's a lot of you know partnerships and and everything that we'll announce towards the end of Q3 and then into Q4 with either states or private sector uh well-known companies that uh probably everyone's heard of and uh maybe people have stayed at in in Vegas when when

they're here. uh the most important thing when they want to uh hold a stable coin in their reserves for like payouts or corporate uses or accept it as payins and not immediately convert out of it on the spot. Is that is this thing regulated or is it like compatible with it when when Genius is licensed and and regulated and everything like that? And if you you say, "Oh, it's like a decentralized stable coin or something," that's that's a deal breaker, right? And that doesn't mean they can't be good decentralized stable coins can't be good onchain uh digital assets, synthetic dollars, yieldbearing dollars used in in DeFi and and everything else. But this anchor of

a real digital dollar that uh is a stable coin that companies, states, uh all of them are are fine with holding more than a millisecond before converting out of it. uh that is a hugely important thing and we can say with confidence from experience that uh there will be a lot of you know companies that have agreed to hold FRAUSD but also other genius compliant stable coin just from the talks that we've had. So we know this this exists multiple like like places. >> Yeah. Well Sam as always man um appreciate the time. You're extremely thoughtful. I I I love how big we think when we come on these shows. cuz I feel like we ultimately get somewhere where the space itself wasn't there before we had some of these discussions. Um, in

particular, the uh, you know, the way that some of these networks could be constructed. Um, it feels like we're still early days, which is incredible uh, because we've come so far, you've come so far. Um, and, uh, you're a tremendous partner of the show. We really appreciate your support and, uh, yeah, we're really excited for, uh, for the future here. >> Thanks, man. Yeah, it's great to be on. Uh, enjoy Vegas. Uh, it's good we have AC here. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Sam. Appreciate it, man. That's been uh Stabled Up episode 43 with Sam with Fracks. Uh we're going to keep Stabled Up rolling and be back with our next guest after this, guys. We'll be right back.

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You know, we get [music] deep. We get deep. You know, we get deep. We are back. We're live here with our grand finale, our last but certainly not least, guest uh from the Lighter team. We've got Maggie Parsons, who is the head of operations at Lighter. And uh we're going to we're going to close the show off with a bang. And so, um, we've had Vlad on a number of times. Uh, Vlad is, uh, I mean, he's he he's such a deep thinker, so it's incredible to have him on. And I think it it is evident in the way that, um, Lighter's architected, uh, the amount of thoughtfulness and care that you've put into the protocol

itself. Um, from the security, um, all the way to all the way to the user experience. Um, so we'll we'll get into it, but Mac, it's your first time on the show, so welcome. >> It is. Thank you for having me. >> Absolutely. Thank you for coming. Um, I'd love a little bit more on, you know, how you ended up finding Lighter. I've got a bit of a a background here. Uh, you were at, uh, Lunch Club, uh, which was, um, an early early, uh, rendition here. Uh, also product manager, PS audio, business management at Enterprise. So, a bit of a a bit of a tour, but you know, these things are sort of general, you know, business considerations. How did you find digital assets and how did you find lighter?

Yeah. So, I've been working with Vlad now for almost seven years. I kind of fell into tech in this space through a friend that I went to college with. Um, and yeah, kind of joined the early lunch club team. I was employee number seven or eight I think and you know was working on various things kind of ops related with lunch club and then you know a few years in we decided to pivot into the crypto space. We've been building lighter now for the last three plus years. Uh, and I've just kind of been along for the ride. Um, I think it's it's been a really unique opportunity. It's not every day that you get to build multiple products, multiple companies, if you will, with the same

core team. And >> I think, you know, we all love a challenge. We all love solving hard problems. And so I wouldn't say I necessarily intentionally got into digital assets and and crypto, but I think, you know, I was really into working with this team. We have a amazing engineering team. They're brilliant. Vlad's brilliant. It's been such a pleasure working with him and kind of being on this journey with him for the last several years. Uh how could I not? Like I I just had to stay. And uh I feel so fortunate to be working on the things that I am and kind of at the the frontier and cutting edge of innovation and technology and finance and yeah it's it's a really exciting time. I so I I want to hear a little bit more about the

evolution of lighter maybe in in the early days because Vlad had I I saw a clip of Vlad recently on Twitter talking about how you know Lunch Club was sort of this early AI uh you know networking platform >> and and this is effectively the same core team as you mentioned the same core technology as I understand it that is now lighter and and so as I was thinking through this I just found it fascinating the the generality of this protocol and and the thinking behind yourself and Vlad and the core team because you know at the fundamental layer here this is a matchmaking engine. Exactly. Right. And so maybe you could just talk us through >> how like what were some of those

conversations like when it was like okay we're working on this this networking platform. It's almost like an AI enabled LinkedIn and it's helping you know business professionals network and find one another and and kind of matchmake you know people that could do business with one another. Now you're matchmaking orders, you're matchmaking bids and asks. Like what what were those conversations like, you know, as you were going through this transition? >> Yeah. Uh I you kind of spot on. One of the things that our team clearly does well is building matching engines. Uh so that's kind of been a consistent theme. But I think yeah, you know, kind of early days of of Lunch Club, you know, we were decently early to the the AI boom, if you will. And we kind of built this product. Originally, it was

matching people in person for professional development, you know, networking purposes. And then, you know, when the pandemic happened, I joined, I think six months before that, and when the pandemic happened, you know, we kind of were forced to to pivot a little bit. So we switched the model to video meetings. It did very well through the pandemic. We raised some capital. Uh and then I think you know 2021, end of 2021, early 22, I think consumer marketplace just wasn't doing super well. We still had you know three plus years of runway that we had raised in in our series A. Uh and I think you know our our board and our investors were really supportive of us just trying new things. Um, you know, the lunch club wasn't necessarily the the moonshot that we had planned on.

We tried a lot of different things. It was a really interesting, great product, but I think it was just a little early. And so, you know, kind of with the support of our investors, we, you know, we kind of tinkered with multiple different things. I think at the time, you know, there was there was definitely an interest in crypto, but this was, you know, the entire team was kind of involved in figuring out what we were going to do next. And I think I I' you know, we very much credit Vlad to, you know, not just saying this is what we're going to do. Like it was it was a conversation. We kind of came to consensus around what it was that we wanted to build together and and what, you know, hard problems we were going to solve. So I think you know just where

crypto was at that point how popular it was becoming the interest of some of our engineers when it comes to you know tinkering with smart contracts and cryptography and then Vlad's background kind of starting his career in Tradfi and you know really experiencing some pretty big market moments there. I think crypto is just a really natural fit for our team and again like you said we we built a matching engine for Lunch Club and we built a matching engine for this. So, I think it all just kind of fell together quite nicely, but we were all part of that decision and and figuring out, you know, what the next step was going to be. And we had great support from our investors as well.

>> It it's evidence that the team and technology is incredibly nimble. >> Yeah. >> Um and the the capital preservation strategy is extremely prudent to maintain runway, you know, through this difficult time. CO was a difficult time for businesses all over the world and you know have a a pivot if you want to call it that in into a world that was almost completely unknown despite the matching engine technology and and still have the capital and the thoughtfulness to to ultimately execute and now uh be proven correct and be proven successful.

It's it's a really cool story. Um, and I I just can't help but think, you know, there's so many companies out there that didn't have the discipline or didn't have the forward the thinkingness in order to, you know, continue to to stay determined through the tough times and maybe, you know, decided to wind down rather than, you know, pivot into what could be a completely, you know, new territory. So, kudos um on this. And now now you guys have built, you know, a Goliath. And so, before we kind of dig dig into another topic here, I'm just curious like is there another pivot? like what it seems like you guys have kind of hit, you know, hit hit uh >> hit hit a nice product market fit here and so I take the answer is probably no, but I'm just curious how you might even

approach uh that question. >> Yeah. Uh I think I think we've we've definitely feel like we've hit good product market fit with this one. I think this was just such a natural product for our team to build. uh you know we have an engineering team full of you know Olympiads bas basically who just thrive on solving hard problems and you know Vlad's talked a lot about kind of the core pillars that we we kind of were our north star when we built lighter you know so verifiability security low cost low latency um you know composability within the rest of of DeFi and the Ethereum ecosystem and so I think you know our our team has done a great job of executing on that lighter been you know we started building about

3 years ago. It took us 18 months to really kind of build the core technology and to launch and you know there were others that beat us to market. Uh but at the end of the day I think we took the time to really solve the hard problems and that that's paying off at this point. And so it's been great to see especially you know more recently kind of our I think our thesis being proven and uh yeah it's it's it's been an exciting time. I think there's a world of opportunity ahead of us. The team's really excited about building options. um the partnership with Robin Hood, that's been very exciting. And you know, I think we're at a time, we're a US-based company. I know Vlad's been pretty outspoken about that and and kind of our thesis there. And I think from a regulatory perspective, we're at a

really really important and and you know, interesting time in in you know, this journey. So, it's been exciting to work on those things. >> We we certainly are. I mean there's multiple super cycles that are happening right before our eyes and they're converging and it feels as if um you know lighter is is one of the teams that's at the convergence of the tokenization super cycle rwas as well as per right at at the center of attention here um Robin Hood you guys are partners um and you know this has sort of been taking the world by storm on multiple fronts you know you got the meme side as well as the RWA side and so I'm I'm curious how h how you're approaching this partnership with Robin Hood given their success and given that they've got sort of this two-sided approach. Also, I

just want to shout out I I I learned that the the Robin Hood tokenization model is is really fascinating because it's almost like a tokenization on demand. An order comes through, they tokenize it uh and then deliver it to the end customer. Just curious, how are you thinking through partnerships with Robin Hood and continuing to grow the proliferation of assets RWA on chain with, you know, some of the some of the largest partners in the world? Yeah, I mean I think one thing our team does really well is build great tech. And so I think, you know, when it comes to working with partners like Robin Hood or Telegram, you know, anywhere where our tech can lend to an existing user base that they have, like when we can blend

what we do well with what they do well, yeah, >> you know, that that's kind of lightning in a bottle and and we like capturing lightning in a bottle. And so I think, you know, we're really putting a focus on partnerships where that is the case. And I think there's been no better example. The Robin Hood team has been phenomenal to work with. They've been easy to work with. Um, and so I think we're just excited to kind of continue exploring more of these. And there's, you know, a whole world of opportunity out there when it comes to folks that we can partner with and and leverage our tech and, you know, per world assets, tokenization, that that's just the start.

>> Any any generic, you know, given that you've now been able to capture lightning in a bottle a couple of times, is there any, you know, a word of advice? how how have you been, you know, just how how have you been able to do this? And for other DeFi teams that are out there and they see you working with Robin Hood and they see the success of Lighter and the Pers, you know, market as a whole, what what would you say has been the cause of your success? >> Yeah, I mean, I think we have one, we have a great BD team. They're hustling all the time. Um, but I also think I know Vlad's talked about this before, like you know, we our our engineering team, we have, you know, a number of forward deployed engineers, if you will.

So, they're very hands-on with the customer. They're very hands-on with these partnerships. Um, I think they're able to execute on these partnerships. And we've also kind of been able to put ourselves in a position where we can now like repeat these things much more easily, right? So we've we've basically set it up so you know we we kind of did the heavy lifting up front for one of these and now it's just very kind of repeatable for the next ones moving forward. So we're able to move very quickly >> and I mean it it it again speaks to the you know the agility of the team in order to pivot and then find success. It shows that you know there are very generic patterns that you've been able to recognize. Matchmaking is matchmaking whether it's AI you know networking systems or you know it's it's matching

um in an order book. And so similarly, you've been able to replicate success across, you know, a wide uh range of ideas and and and disciplines. Um, another one is kind of mastering the token. And I'm I'm, you know, curious to talk a bit about the burning mechanism and the buyback mechanism that that you've implemented because, um, this can seem very foreign to a lot of teams that are out there. There's been teams that have done incredible tokconomics, but not so good on the on the protocol side, and then vice versa. There's been teams that have done really well on the protocol side, but not really well on the tokconomics design side. I I think Lighter has done a good job on both. Um adoption is growing, the the the token buyback and burn model, people seem to

like it. And so it now seems like these can go hand in hand. And so I'm just curious, you know, a as you've shifted towards these permanent lighter lit burns, um it's funded by protocol revenue. This is what I think the market is demanding. They want burns not excuse me they want token value acrruel but not via token emissions. They want it via revenue and then they want a very predictable and assured method that they can now use to value the token going forward. And so, you know, h how just generally a message to token holders like how how does finance ensure consistent value acrruel for token holders when it comes to making sure that this mechanism is very predictable as revenue continues to grow this value

will acrew to token holders? How do you how do you make sure to communicate that and ultimately how valuable is that for token holders? >> Yeah, I think you know programmatic buybacks is somewhat of a standard these days. I think I think it's, you know, we're seeing that much more frequently. Um, you know, and I think that's something that we committed to very early on. Uh, you know, Vlad, I don't know if you saw it, but he recently put out a piece that kind of talks about how we think about equity versus token. Um, and I think, you know, we've we've always been very committed and we've communicated to the community and, you know, have have just kind of stuck to all value that lighter generates acrru to the token, right? Like I think when

we raised kind of our last round of VC funding at the end of last year, kind of ahead of the token launch, everyone was aligned on that thesis. So, you know, investors who kind of were around previously, if they, you know, weren't interested in that, they had an opportunity to get out and at a great price. Um, but I think at the end of the day, our entire cap table is very aligned on value acrewing to the token. And so, the the burn that we did recently, it was just formalizing, you know, kind of what we've been communicating around that. Um, and, you know, we did it on Ethereum, we did it very transparently. And so I think yeah, it's just we've kind of committed to that and and we're following through on that at this point in time. I think when

it comes to our structure, you know, we're a US-based company, right? >> We're just we're a regular CC Corp. We don't have a foundation. We don't have a separate lab. Like it's all just the same entity. And you know, this is something that I thought through quite a bit over the, you know, two years prior to our token launch was really like I think we saw the trend of setting up a foundation and kind of separating these things and a lot of that happened for regulatory purposes. I think there was a lack of clarity. You know, building here in the US wasn't, you know, there was a little bit dangerous and launching tokens. Uh there was just, yeah, it was there was a lot of gray area around it.

And so I think you know certain projects did what they did to continue to be able to operate and you know somewhat out of necessity but I think you know we kind of had the benefit of going back to first principles and kind of really thinking through the structure and we've been very committed to building here in the US and being a US-based company and you know we we placed a bet on the regulation kind of coming around and you know I think we were fortunate in in timing and kind of being able to kind of go back the first principles on this and not necessarily just take the same playbook that others did. There's certainly, you know, a lot of valuable lessons that we've learned from folks who have launched tokens before us and

we've adopted some of those things as well. But yeah, like we are very committed to all value acrewing to token holders. We have alignment with our investors on that and that's something that we're very committed to moving forward. >> Yeah. And and there certainly is the benefit of hindsight as you've seen, you know, so many tokens launch uh before the lighter token. Um and then you had the benefit of, you know, patience in in not launching the foundation prematurely and launching the token prematurely, right? That set up uh easier and simpler corporate structure that allowed the the token to ultimately flourish rather than this split token equity vehicle. And so, you know, a as now that you're live and the token's live, um there's not so much

more hindsight. Now, it's sort of a a bit of a paradigm shift into being more so of a pioneer uh for PERPS in the US. Uh I realized Vlad is um you know, part of the CFTC innovation council. >> Um and I I think you have also spent you know a considerable amount of time working on the regulatory front. What are some of the operational and regulatory considerations that you're making now given that this is sort of happening in real time and you don't have the you know the examples of hindsight at at your disposal. How has the operational strategy shifted you know for for uh some of the decisions that you're making going forward? Yeah, I mean certainly just navigating this in in real time and and taking, you know, new facts, new circumstances, whatever

is happening on the hill, you know, any advancements that there's, you know, with clarity. I think figuring out what it looks like for us if clarity passes versus if it doesn't pass. You know, I think we've had a number of really amazing conversations with the CFTC over the last several months. They've been incredibly engaged. uh you know this is an administration and an agency that is very pro- innovation. They're very forwardlooking. Um and so I think it's been great. We've kind of taken the approach of helping educate. So Vlad and I have spent a lot of time with folks on the hill uh you know kind of educating them about lighter how our technology works how we think about you know the future of finance. I think one of the

really important things especially when it comes to DeFi, I think it can be very scary to regulators because, you know, the the focus and and kind of the narrative around it has always been like it's just used for illicit finance. But I think when you really get into the value of open-source technology and the value of onchain technology and self-custody, you know, it it ends up being more of a friend and a tool to the regulators, right? like you can catch things much more in real time. You know, things are happening in in Tradfi every day. You know, the whole Bernie Maidoff situation, right? Vlad's talked about that, too. If all of that was on chain, like it it's a lot easier to capture that in real time. Yeah.

>> And so, I think it's [snorts] we've been we've just been trying to take the approach of helping educate folks uh in Washington and really try and and kind of push forward on figuring out how to be licensed here in the US. I think we've always kind of had much more of a forward-looking and and approach when it comes to regulation and how we think about regulation. You know, we've always been very invested in and committed to trying to onboard institutional liquidity. And when you're talking about, you know, institutions, they have whole compliance teams. then you know it it's it's important that you know you're kind of thinking through the regulatory elements and implications of that in

order to try and kind of onboard some of these players and so you know that's something that we've been very focused on and you know we continue to kind of engage with the CFTC and working towards getting licensed so that we can open to the US market you know kind of work on partnerships with folks that are that are based here in the US as well and and kind of bring per in a decentralized way here to the US >> a lot of the winners ers that uh seem to have continued to just, you know, win over the years have have been the ones that have sort of preemptively regulated themselves. >> Um and and those are the ones that ultimately, you know, were able to take best practices and then set the example when it when it came to the rest of the industry adopting those standards. Um,

now that you're in that position, um, I'm I'm curious. You know, you've got this partnership with Robin Hood, I think, is a great example because they have made RWAS and memes, but we're going to keep memes to the side just for the for the sake of this question. You know, a as part of their strategy that they want to continue to scale over the years, and I think lighter is part of that strategy as well. And so as you're thinking through scaling access to ROWAS and scaling access to per um together with Robin Hood and in general, how have you been I guess regulating yourself is one way to put it, but also how have operations, regulatory and compliance all sort of work together so that you're ensuring that you're not and and a lot of

companies have, you know, taken a less prudent approach because of the profit motive and they've said, "Hey, we can make a lot of money by sort of you know, selling out our user base, right? And then they turn their users, but they make a lot of money and then they're off in a year or two. And you've taken a much more prudent approach. And so, how do you manage the listing process, some of these features, product to ultimately make sure that you're maintaining fair market access? You're you're protecting your customers. they're getting access to the products that they want, but you're doing so in a way that maintains compliance and regulatory, you know, reasons even in the absence of there being clear rules of the road before clarity be before, you know, there there are clear purpose legislation.

>> I think building trust is really important and that is something that, you know, especially when you're talking about assets, finances, things like that. it, you know, it's it's really important that you build trust with your users and so making sure you're doing things that are, you know, testing and and ensuring the security of your platform and, you know, the verifiability of transactions that are happening those, you know, we've we've done those things through the way in which we've built our tech and and, you know, choosing to build on top of Ethereum, which, you know, I think has been around for 13 years and for the last 10 has operated basically without any issues, like those are really important design and and technical

considerations just to build a baseline level of trust with users. Um and I think you know transparency around our intentions and the fact that we do think regulation to some degree is important you know like these these kinds of markets should be regulated not necessarily just like here's existing regulation let's slap that on and it works. I think, you know, smart regulation and and working to kind of get to, you know, new market structures and and things like that is definitely important. Um, and I think, you know, working with a partner like Robin Hood, they have great brand recognition.

They've built a lot of trust with users. Um, and so things like that, I think, incrementally kind of [clears throat] help you build that. Um, and yeah, I mean, you know, there are definitely projects out there that kind of prioritize more on the the economics of of what they've built, but I think, you know, we're we're building for the future. We're building for, you know, what we see as the convergence between Tradfi and DeFi. And so there there are certain things like security and verifiability that really matter. >> Yeah. And and you mentioned Ethereum. I think that is just um something that has gotten lost in in the recent rhetoric online has been the the foothold that Ethereum has in the convergence between Tradfi and the onchain economy. It's

still the most stable coins. It's the most developers. It's got, you know, this this really really strong fundamental case as to why it makes sense to build there. But I'd also just love to hear from your operational perspective why Ethereum made so much sense and why it was so important to build there and and also how you've been able to take what seems to be a a significant amount of market share in the Ethereum per landscape. It feels like lighter is the go-to per uh exchange on Ethereum. How have you been able to achieve that? Yeah, I think you know again going back to the point around security uh you know when when you talk about building an exchange and building trust with users it's it's

really important that you're doing that on a secure layer. I think we at this point we kind of look at Ethereum as the settlement layer for the future of finance. Um and so I think we're we're committed to building on Ethereum. You know I think a lot of you know DeFi and assets are on Ethereum. So, you know, having composability with all of that and being able to leverage assets on one platform as collateral on lighter, that's there's a huge value proposition there. >> Yeah, that that is massive. Um, Maggie, I think that's it. Um, where where to next? Rare Evo Las Vegas, you're our our final. I'm getting word that we might have one more special guest after. I don't know. Our producers are doing some

things behind the scenes. We'll we'll see what happens there. But, uh, what's next for Lighter? Just, uh, you know, what's next for the that that the community might be might be excited about? >> Yeah, I know the the team's really excited. I mentioned earlier they're working on building options. Uh, that's I think another hard problem that they're really excited to solve. And I think, you know, there's no better team to work on that than ours. But one of the things that I'm really excited about personally is just continuing to kind of work through the the registration process and engage with the CFTC uh, on on trying to get to the US market.

That's really exciting time. >> Awesome. Maggie, thank you so much. Congratulations on all the success with Lighter and uh it's been an absolute pleasure uh chatting with you. >> Thanks for having me. >> Absolutely. Thanks for coming on. >> All right. Um guys, we're going to be right back and then we're going to close out the show. We may or may not have a special guest. I don't know what's happening. It's been seven hours with these bright lights in my face and the producers are saying that we've got one more guest. So, uh we're going to see what happens. Don't go anywhere. >> [music] [music] [music]

>> Yo yo yo. What's going on, guys? This is Itan with the rollup. We're going to be patrolling the streets of New York City getting answers to the questions that you guys have most. What are people trading? What are people investing in? How much do people actually budget? We're going to have people from all over, all different investment classes, people who are dead broke, people who are dead whales, people who are just loaded. There won't be a mayor or politician to stop us on the streets. We're going to go everywhere. All five burrows. We're taking over the 212.

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>> Get into it. Leo, we are live. Um guys, we've got a special guest here. Um so you introduced yourself as Satoshi. >> Yeah, that's me. I'm the guy. >> You're the guy. >> I am the guy. And so >> I have so many questions here. [laughter] Okay. >> Sorry about that. >> No, no, no, no. It's good. It's good. I like I like having questions. And so, okay, you said you haven't really been in public in the last 14 years.

>> Really? Just never >> never in public the last 14 years. Let's start there. >> Okay. >> So, 14 years ago. >> Let's start let's let's rewind the clock. Okay. 14 years >> or more. >> What's that? >> Or more. >> Or more. Let's you go ahead. Why don't Let's start. I want to start where you want to start. Let's start from the beginning. And I want to hear your story. >> I don't I don't have any speeches or other stuff. If you have questions, I'm happy to answer them. >> Okay. So, let's >> I do well in a QA environment, but yeah, I don't have a pitch. I mean, one thing in particular about me, you know, whether it's back with Bitcoin and blockchain or my new tech, you know, I

never promote myself. I never say for anyone who, you know, buy anything I've made. Uh, no advertising, no marketing. Yeah. I just make stuff. >> Okay, >> that's it. >> I just if people find value in something that I made, great. That's wonderful. >> Okay. I just want to make sure that I'm understanding correctly. When you say you are Satoshi, you mean the inventor of Bitcoin? >> Yes, that's correct. >> Okay. Do given that the inventor of Bitcoin and Satoshi's identity has remained a mystery for the entirety of it its existence last >> I revealed my identity October 31st year and a half ago.

>> October 31st, a year and a half ago. What happened on October 31st, a year and a half ago? So I spent the last 15 years you after basically April 2011 let me back up one sentence and say Bitcoin and blockchain that was a proof of concept >> okay >> it did not have the right DNA to be this this is crazy you know it was just a very basic proof of work to demonstrate uh having multiple right masters on a network where you can write a value to any of those nodes and then have that information replicated.

Yeah, cryptocurrency is just a balance in a wallet because there are no coins, you know, it's just a number. So terms of proof of concept, if you can write that number to any one node and it replicates to the others, hey, proof of concept proved. But that never had the right DNA, you know, for many hard stop reasons. It could never be a global monetary system. It could never do retail transactions. You know, nobody's going to stand in line at the grocery store and wait 10 minutes for settlement, you know, paying with Bitcoin or something. So now my new tech, the underlying engine

is called Fractal, and I spent the last 15 years on that. I also made a global monetary system, full banking infrastructure, point of sale. You know, if you look up, you know, a monetary system like in Wikipedia, there's a whole laundry list of topics and pieces and parts that need to be implemented. Unlike Bitcoin, as example, that just does one thing. It's not robust. There's no there's no fraud protection. There's no roll back capabilities. a lot of things.

So yes, for the last 15 years, I spent more than 30,000 hours at my desk making what I call the replacement. So for example, blockchain, you can write one block at a time sequentially, not asynchronously, just sequentially. And on top of that, it takes 10 minutes settlement per block. Nonetheless, whatever it was years ago when traffic was really high, it would take 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 60 minutes. So the new engine fractal instead of doing one at a time, it can do 34 billion simultaneously transactions and full settlement settlement anywhere in the world in a third of a second.

So the difference is 10 minutes one at a time or third of a second with 34 billion at a time simultaneously. >> Okay. So that's fractal. Before we get to fractal >> Oh, we don't we don't even have to talk about that. >> Okay. >> I'm just here to answer your questions. >> So, right. So, no, I've never been in public. Uh the only reason I'm here uh that gentleman right over there was yeah hey was coming to the conference and I like to play poker at Arya. So [laughter] I've been here for hour and 10 minutes.

So, I said, "Hey, I'll I'll come over with you." And just a little bit curious to see all the uh wow all the I guess you say derivative thoughts based upon what I created originally. >> So, when you say you haven't really spent too much time in public over the last 14 years, none. No time in public. >> Too much. Zero. >> Zero time in public over the last 14 years. >> And you say you like to play poker at the Arya. >> I do. Help me understand how you can play poker at the Arya and not be in public over the last 14 years.

>> Well, I guess admittedly everybody that works in the poker room, they all know who I am. >> And they know you as >> Satoshi Nakamoto. >> Satoshi Nakamoto. And so >> they know what I made. >> How? >> But they respect my privacy. >> Okay. >> Yep. Yeah. I don't play large sticks or anything. I just >> You just like to play. >> Yeah. >> You have a >> MGM >> players card. >> Players card. And it says Satoshi Nakamoto. >> Oh, cover the numbers. >> Oh, cover the numbers. But it says Satoshi Nakamoto on this player's card.

>> No, it's actually legal identity. >> It's a legal identity. >> Yeah. Nobody bothered to look for it. >> Yeah. I have a legal DBA. >> I am Satoshi Nakamoto. >> Yeah. And so >> you change, we don't have to get into your identity as far as like if but did you change your name from something previous to because you don't look particularly Japanese >> and so how did you >> from the white paper? >> That was from the white paper right >> and so you have a le you didn't change your name but you have a a doing business as correct >> Satoshi Nakamoto.

>> Yeah like an actor things like that. >> And how did you come up with that name? I'm sorry. I was just uh laughing about I don't know whatever the guy's name is. I don't even remember who he is. Fake Toshi guy. >> Craig, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. That guy jumping around with the samurai sword and telling some story about like oh whatever 400 years ago. Some convoluted >> Yeah. No, it's actually really simple. I was watching Die Hard Nakatomi Plaza. Uh, literally 30 seconds of word smithing, you have Nakamoto.

>> I almost spit out my coffee. >> Sorry. [laughter] >> I mean, the truth is so much easier than some convoluted story. And then Satoshi, I had this awesome Suzuki Hayabusa. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Motorcycle. >> Motorcycle. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. It takes Suzuki once again. 30 seconds of word smithing and we have Satoshi. That's it. Okay. >> It's not more complicated than that. I've got so many. The more the longer that we go on, the more questions I have. I think you can How do you How do you know this guy? >> He is a brilliant brilliant person. And >> is he really Satoshi?

>> The inventor of Bitcoin. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. One of the community members. >> From what? From what community? The Bitcoin community. No, I have a little telegram group. >> You have a telegram group? >> Yeah. >> What's that? >> Verdison group is the name of the group. >> No, Verdison Defi. >> Oh, Vertus Defi. >> V as in Victor. E R T I S N. >> Very. Yeah.

>> Okay. >> Yeah. Uh, yeah. this gentleman in the telegram group I guess spent like the last 6 months trying to prove or disprove my identity which for me is I mean it's ancient history >> so so let let before >> but he wrote a book that's wrote a book that's >> definitively proves I mean he found all the Easter eggs in the source code >> you left Easter eggs in the source code >> oh lots of them the breadcrumbs have always been there nobody bothered to look at the source code >> let's um >> they just hypothesize with oh yeah it's So, let's get into it. So, so you know, this book is coming out anyway. And so, so let's start with the Easter egg that evidently dropped on October 31st a year and a half ago. What happened that

night? Because I don't think we or that day. We don't we didn't we I don't think we got a definitive answer to that. >> Okay. >> Well, my new tech was ready after almost 15 years. >> Fractal, >> right? Fractal. And then I did a currency on top of that just for a onetoone comparison against Bitcoin and blockchain. >> Okay. And that's called Verdison. >> Okay. >> Uh, right. >> Verdison. >> Yeah. >> Is the name of the currency on top of the fractal. >> That's correct. >> Okay. >> Right. Um, sorry. What was your question? >> My question was, you said you revealed your identity on October 31st.

>> Yeah. There are a lot of breadcrumbs. >> A lot of breadcrumbs. So, >> Easter eggs in the source code, the original source code. >> Yeah. Like for example, the epoch. That's just what makes me laugh so much. So if you look at the epoch, which is the, you know, quote, beginning of time, you know, that's technically an integer value, which means it has a maximum value. So if you're doing production software development, which I have lots of experience with that over the years, when you push something out into production, you know, you go from development staging QA production.

when you push something out into production, it would make logical sense that you would set the epoch, you know, the beginning of time to that date. So, you'd have the maximum life for your product. So, you know, do you want Bitcoin to stop working in 2035 or 2075? Kind of makes sense, right? The epoch in the original source code is my birthday from 1970. And >> that's the that's the Go ahead.

>> So people make this whatever somebody made this knee-jerk reaction. >> Oh, the epoch. Oh, that's a Unix time stamp, you know, for the epoch. Well, but nobody bothered like there was a read me. >> Mhm. >> You know, version 0.0.0 and 0.0.1 and so on and so forth. And it says specifically this Bitcoin was developed using vis Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0. >> It runs on Windows period. It does not run on Linux, Unix or otherwise. And it is says right in the readme in the future it will.

I guess nobody read that. You know, it wasn't created with freeear, you know, open source or otherwise like Visual C++ 6.0. know back then was $1,200. You know, I'm not some neck beard having anarchist living in a World War II bunker. I mean, I've always been, you know, a professional, business professional. I've done extensive work for like nine out of eight or nine of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies. I mean, I have decades of experience creating enterprise level solutions.

Yeah. Yeah. I am definitely not some manarchist. And that was that was I'll get back to the breadcrumb crumb thing. Let me just tangent just for a second. >> Yeah. The guy that did that HBO documentary. Oh, that pissed me off so much. >> Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, I watched the Finding Finding Satoshi, right? >> Uh I don't remember what it was. >> Okay. I think that was the name of it. But they essentially claimed and I don't remember I I know uh oh the name escapes me but it was two two uh two men that have since passed is who they claimed collectively created >> yes howiny and >> but he received the first transaction >> from you >> right

>> so >> he didn't send it to himself >> okay >> let me let me >> sure >> touch on that HBO thing and then get back to the breadcrumbs before we, you know, wander off too much. >> Um, right, that HBO documentary, >> boy, it pissed me off >> cuz that was in October >> Uhhuh. >> 2024, so almost two years ago. And my new tech was ready and I had intended to release the Verdison white paper on October 31st, 17 was 16 year anniversary.

whatever. Yeah. 16 17 I don't care. Right. Like I said, that's all ancient history for me. >> 15 years. Yeah. >> Right. But this guy with the documentary, he made me out to be, as I said, some neck beard having anarchist living in a bunker, wanting to disrupt the Fed, overthrow the government. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm a suit and tie guy. Always have been. I wear suits, ties. I do professional work. Yeah, enterprise level stuff. I've had a very long and I guess successful career.

So that made me look wrong. You know, like for example, people that work for the government or otherwise, they're still people. They still watch HBO. >> Mhm. So having this new mindset of who I was, which is totally 100% wrong, that would put me in danger, >> you know, real danger. >> Mhm. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, I've had eight assassination attempts over the years. >> You've had eight assassination attempts on your life.

>> Oh, yeah. I have lots of scars to prove it. >> Yeah. >> Let's hear the craziest one. What is the craziest assassination attempt that you can tell us about? >> Well, I mean, I've been shot, stabbed nine times, four home invasions with intent to hurt me, uh, got poisoned twice, and run down by a truck at my house. >> And these were all people that discovered your identity. >> Somebody knew, right? Somebody knew.

Yeah. The first time was in 2011. That was part of the reason I'm like, "Okay, I'm out." Cuz Yeah. >> So, you stopped posting on Bitcoin Talk forums in 2011 because there was an attempt on your life. >> That was one reason. >> One reason, >> you know, Silk Road, other things like that. That goes completely against my ethos. You know, I make things. My purpose of being here on this planet is to hate help the 8 billion hardworking people of the world. Like, I mean, it's Yeah, it's kind of strange. I created money, but I don't care about money at

all. You know, I don't live some extravagant crazy lifestyle. >> It's a nice watch. >> Oh, thanks. Okay, that's really nice. [laughter] >> What kind of watch is that? >> A Richard Mill. Okay. How much is that? A >> little under 3 million. >> Well, it's a drop in the bucket. I mean, Satoshi's coins, your coins. >> Yeah. The actual number is 1,12,50. >> That's the amount of coins that you have in your wallet >> with multiple wallets. >> I mean, a million coins with Bitcoin at 64,000 or whatever it is right now.

>> I mean, that makes you a trillionaire, right? >> Well, actually, my new tech tokenized equity has been sold of my new tech at 5,000 US per tokenized equity unit um with you know basically$ 1.85 85 billion in two purchases. >> The new tech has a $500 billion >> market cap currently. >> Why? >> Which I own all of it. >> Okay. And and and why did you need to sell the new tech or raise money for the new tech?

>> No, no, no. I have self-funded all this time. I've been developing it all in secret in privacy myself. I've done absolutely everything myself. Not a single human being has touched any of the new ecosystem and >> right >> but when you say that it's been sold at $5,000 per equity >> that was a couple weeks ago >> that indicates to me that it's been sold to someone and so someone bought it and in exchange who received >> one person bought $900 million worth another person bought $950 million worth and so it was a total of 370,000 tokenized equity units at 5,000 per and

and I had offered I mean I wanted normal people to be able to have this so I had reserved a small amount that I've offered to people on telegram which I mean there's only 19 people you know in the group you know >> can I join can I join the group >> sure it's by invitation only but um >> if I give you my >> he can help you out >> he can help >> Alex can you get the uh the group link from what's his name? I don't want to just point to him and say that guy Travis can uh what's that?

>> Oh, do you have the YouTube? >> Oh, to to show Rob. >> Yeah, >> it's Rob, correct? >> Yeah. Yeah, it is. >> Sorry. >> No, no, that's okay. Um, sure. Yeah. No, come on. >> Right. >> Feel free. Yeah. >> Yeah. I created a YouTube channel >> five years ago. >> Okay. basically to audit my work because no one would actually believe that one person could create everything I've created. >> Is this profile picture? Is this you? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, that looks like you.

>> Yeah, that's me. [laughter] >> And so this YouTube has 341,000 subscribers. It has 116 videos. Guess who's back? Satoshi. >> Blockchain is obsolete is actually the best one. blockchain. >> There's a there's a playlist called the Satoshi Satoshi sessions that goes really in depth into the fractal technology. >> There's a video on here that says hitting golf balls through plywood. >> Oh yeah, that was Noia Classic in Louisiana. >> Yeah. >> Aringer was there. He was the long drive champion.

So he asked me to join him. >> And so do you mind putting me in this group? It's just a YouTube channel, but there's a >> No, but you mentioned this the Verdison Telegram group, >> right? So, >> yeah, >> you can get all the tech updates that he posts per >> Right. Well, the the tech updates is a channel. >> Yeah. >> But there's a group that has what is it 19 people, right? >> Oh, that group. So, we shouldn't say that one publicly, like people. >> Yeah, we can. >> It's the only way that I >> afterwards. Just uh give me what's your handle. We can >> I'll uh here I'll show it to you.

>> Yeah, >> it's uh >> it's right there. Can you see it? >> Just take a screenshot. This is cool. Appreciate >> it. That's the That's the handle right there. >> Yeah. Thank you so much for >> uh I guess I'm grateful for you asking. >> No, I'm grateful for you existing. >> Yeah. >> So So Travis, since we got you here, how like what ultimately you've been in the Bitcoin space for a while, the digital assets face for since >> Not really. I mean in 2012, one of my 2012 that's >> my friends told me to get in and I didn't I kind of was like okay I probably should get in at 10K and it was just kind of playing around but then I just put it down for years and then picked it up again in October and just started researching all everything in the space

and so really just since October I've just been going back into understanding blockchain and wallets and everything. >> Okay. And so you you've been around for a while and so you realize that like the identity of Satoshi has been a mystery for a long time. Can you just tell us like what ultimately gave you the confidence and that this man sitting here is the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi himself? >> I mean when you sit down with him and you spend time with him, it just becomes apparent like there's no other no one else who could know this this kind of stuff. So um when the book comes out, you know, >> not by me.

>> Absolutely. He didn't write it. Somebody in his vertices community wrote it. um speak for itself. I don't see publicity, >> but this new tech that that he's building speaks for itself in my opinion. Does it matter if he's Satoshi or not? To to me it doesn't. You know, what I've seen from his new tech is irrelevant. >> You know, the new tech competing. I brought him here. You know, I thought this would be a really cool interview. >> Um he said he said sure. He was all for the conference. I didn't know if he was going to come or not. You know, I was going to come and then he said, "Can I come?" I said, "Sure." Okay. I don't know if you wanted to be out in the public, but uh he did. He was uh he's already come out.

>> So So [clears throat] if the the tech spoke for itself >> Yes. >> And I haven't seen the tech, so I don't know, but like you know, let's say >> Verdison YouTube channel, right? And so, you know, a lot of people are going to look at the tech and they're going to see the tech and, you know, if the tech was put out there similar maybe to Bitcoin in which there was no knowledge of who the developer of it was. That's not the case this time. You know, by coming here and talking about the tech, you're saying that I am Satoshi. I am the inventor of Bitcoin. I am now the inventor of this new technology.

>> People are naturally going to associate your identity with this new technology. And and so it does matter somewhat in the sense that, you know, to have confidence in a new system, they're going to have confidence in its creator. >> Yeah. >> And they're going to >> I mean, I've I've seen his original white paper in his individual studio >> basically written. >> Yeah. My notes from August 2008. So, >> you know, there's a lot of things that people typically say when they're >> I think you guys can understand my disbelief. I mean, a lot of I >> Well, yeah, this is not me revealing my identity today. That was October 31st.

>> Almost two years ago. >> Let's finish that. Let's finish that story. Okay. >> Right. Well, the new tech was ready. This time instead of writing a white paper, I wanted to make sure that general audience, a normal people could understand what I've created this time. So I decided to do a video white paper which is on the YouTube channel. >> Okay. >> Now, how did 350,000 people find me? I have no idea cuz like I said, I don't market promote. The videos that I've released out there are intended for the general public to explain how the new stuff works.

>> That's it. You know, I don't pitch anything. I don't market anything. I never say, "Oh, buy this or that." Never. And I Yeah, I don't like publicity. But I mean, it was it was a trade-off. It's like, well, what I've created this time around for the last 15 years, uh, it's my Mona Lisa and Bitcoin blockchain. To me, that's like a kind kindergarten art project in comparison, you know, it's paramount.

Yeah. So, I weighed the options. You know, bad for my safety. Sure, a lot of people won't believe me, but I don't really care because I'm not I was never on a mission to prove my identity. It's like I'm me. If you don't believe it, I don't care. You know, it has no effect on my new tech, what I do, my course of my life. So, yeah, it's actually better if people don't believe that I'm me. It's better for my safety. So, but anyways, yeah. So October 200page book that definitively proved that.

>> So October 31st couple years ago is when you put out this video. But what is it about this video that is the damning evidence that you are Satoshi? Well, >> we had a lot of talks and basically the conclusion was when people see the new tech, there will be no doubt, you know, they'll come to the same conclusion, you know, of where I came from in the first place. You know, who I am, you know, and honestly speaking, in the last almost 18 years, there's only been two original ideas.

Bitcoin with blockchain called it time chain uh and fractal versus yeah there's only been two unique ideas. I mean I'm not trying to insult anybody here at the show but it's all derivative thought. It's blockchain blockchain blockchain blockchain. Well yeah I made that. So these are all implementations on top of what I already made. Not revolutionary not unique. The only two unique things in the last almost 18 years were both created by me.

>> There's a couple. >> There's a couple more things just like the um >> go on for hours and hours and the [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank Thanks for coming up Travis. And so there's a couple more things that like, you know, are the just first things that people pop, you know, pop into people's minds when they think like >> like why you haven't sold any of your coins, you know like >> no, >> you know, when it when it comes to like >> it's against my creator's pledge. >> Your creator's pledge, >> correct? Which is on the website for Verdison.

>> Okay. >> You know, spells it out very clearly. I do not profit from any of the things I've created. My purpose is not revenue, money profit. You know, I don't care about money. You know, I don't seek attention. I'm not looking for the spotlight. You know, I just make stuff. And I've been blessed to be able to make things or solve problems that other people couldn't solve. >> Right? So that's my purpose of being here, you know, planet Earth, you know, in this time is to use those blessings that I've been given to help all the people of the world that are being taken advantage of. You know, whether that's uh through crypto scams, schemes,

shitcoins, meme coins, it's all all of it's just engineered to extract money from people that don't know any better, you know? So, I've definitely quietly positioned myself as a guardian angel for the people that don't know any better. Like, if there's one person in the world that you can trust, it's me because everything I've made is for them, not for me. Hence my creator's pledge. So, no, that Bitcoin never going to move. Well, never going to be sold unless somebody brute force attacks a wallet and you know that happens. quantum.

>> Well, I mean, we're looking at almost 18 years now >> since your Genesis block, so to speak. Yeah. 17 and a half, whatever. I can guarantee since then there have been lots of very powerful computers just to trying to do a brute force attack. >> Mhm. >> And once again, it was just a proof of concept because when you generate a private public key pair and the public key is your wallet address. Mhm. >> giving you it's giving away half the secret.

>> So, >> Mhm. >> you know, the way to brute force attack would be just generating private keys which then has the associated public key. >> And if you look at all the wallets in the public ledger, if you got a public key that matches one, hey, you you now have access to the funds. Mhm. >> So, you know, I have no quantifiable numbers, but I can definitely say there's been massive efforts for the last 17 plus years of doing brute force attacks. >> Mhm. >> It's like, yeah, when you see like in the last year or so, oh, hey, this 14-year-old wallet woke up, you know, oh, wallet from 2011 woke up. It's like, >> yeah, what do they call it? Diamond hands or something.

>> Nobody would have held on to it that long. Well, unless they're me, you know, because I'm not looking for money. But anybody else who bought Bitcoin, you know, over the years, they were trying to use it as an investment vehicle to hedge against inflation, you know, to have something that doesn't, you know, deteriorate in value. So, yeah, those wallets that kind of magically wake up, you know, my guess is those are the result of brute force attacks that were finally successful, >> right? So I mean blockchain, Bitcoin, it it never had the right DNA. It was just a proof of concept. I mean just the simple idea of using the public key as a wallet address. Yes, that's a huge

vulnerability. You know, that doesn't work for global finance and protecting people's money. You know, I think about all the normal people in the world. You know, they're out there working a job, whether it's manual labor, professional, or otherwise, and they're doing their best in life to provide for their family, their children, you know, to leave something to the next generation. And of course, they're fighting inflation all the time. You know, you put money in a IRA or whatever, by the time you take it out, it has hardly any spending power compared to when they earned it. So my one of my principles is you know when you earn money like you

know fits in your hand right when you're 20 years 50 years in the future it still has the same value. >> Mhm. >> You know it's not like pouring it through a a civ. >> Mhm. Mhm. >> Yeah. So yeah there's many hard stops in the Bitcoin blockchain proof of concept. you know, vulnerabilities that would never fly with me in a long-term situation. >> You know, my my new tech is designed for the next hundred years plus.

Yeah. Can't be hacked, can't be compromised, and it's designed for all the hardworking people of the world to protect what they go out and they spend their time every day hurting. I we have a a chat on the live stream. >> You have a live stream chat? >> Yeah. >> Oh, no. >> And uh let me >> guess. Oh, you're not Satoshi. >> Well, they're they're [laughter] understandably skeptical. >> Move some coins. >> They're skeptical. >> Oh, move the Genesis block. They don't even they don't even realize that the Genesis block the 50 uh 50 Bitcoin reward, you know, for mining the block. It can't be moved.

It's not in the inventory of what can be spent. Yeah. So, what's in the wallet of the Genesis block? Yeah. Can never move. But that's people's uh you know, not insulting anybody. When I say ignorant, I don't mean it in a cruel way. It's just lack of knowledge, you know, but in a very ignorant way. People want wanted me to prove my identity by, oh, moving, you know, Bitcoin from the Genesis block. Well, it actually can't be done. Oh, what about one of the other, you know, wallets from Satoshi Air? But they, >> like I said, they lose sight of the fact that I don't need their approval.

>> I'm not seeking their approval. You know, I only revealed my identity because that horrible HBO documentary. And I really need to set the record straight about who I am. You know, I'm a, you know, yes, I'm a coder, developer. I started when I was 12 years old. You know, I started using C++ in 1990 for my first commercial product. You know, I've done endless work for Fortune 500 companies. You know, there's a big deficiency in my personal opinion for Microsoft SQL Server in 2007 and stuff like that. I was doing as I said consulting work whether it was SQL optimization

or coding or whatever for a lot of really large companies and the only replication strategy was active passive which meant you have one server that you can write to and then one that's sitting there doing nothing in case they need a failover. Well, that's a huge horrible waste of resources and to me it didn't make any sense. Why shouldn't you be able to write to multiple servers, multiple nodes, you know, in a corporate environment, you know, where you have 10, 20 servers. Sure, mining would work for that because it's within a corporate atmosphere.

Uh, >> sorry, I lost my train of thought, but um the >> you're explaining your journey through your >> initial Yeah. So when SQL Server 2008 came out from Microsoft, uh I think it was like around August or something like that, I was really hoping that they were going to implement a much more or a stronger replication strategy and failover, but they didn't. So that's what I made. proof of concept demonstrating writing to multiple nodes on a network and then replicating the data with strong consistency.

Eventual consistency is uh like what's used in Facebook as an example. Like you make a post and maybe your friends see it, you know, a second later, but somebody else might see it an hour later, doesn't show up because what they're dealing with is they're dealing with global scale and they're trying to retain speed. You know, that's kind of the that's the holy grail of distributed computing, speed, scale, and consistency. So they chose eventual consistency because it doesn't really matter. You know, picture something like that. But if you're dealing with somebody's money, once again, they were out there the normal people working a job to earn this money.

It can't just vaporize, turn into nothing disappear. Uh yeah, sorry, got off track again. But u right SQL Server, it was 2008. So I solved the problem with Bitcoin and blockchain which was just a proof of concept from the data replication perspective on an enterprise level. So why Satoshi Nakamoto? I didn't want to stop getting very lucrative work with Fortune 500 companies or be on the outs with Microsoft because most of my work came through them.

>> Hey, I made something that defeats SQL Server. >> Whoa, whoa, whoa. >> Take a hike, you know. And I also didn't want a first- class ticket to prison, you know, because at the time there was no crypto. I made it, you know, at this point, yes, there's wonderful adoption, you know, from governments, institutions, normal people, which certainly is great for paving the way in the future, but you know, if you roll back the clock to 2008, you know, there was no Telegram, Facebook, things like that. Social media was not a thing. I mean, the only way to really communicate with people was a message board or email.

You know, phones didn't have GPS or things like, you know, it's like you have to put it in context. So, yeah, I created a solution that did what SQL Server didn't. Yeah. Did I use a pseudonym? Yeah, of course. Because I didn't want to stop getting work. You know, I had a 9,000 foot house. I didn't want to, you know, stop paying for it. And uh yeah and you know I didn't want attention from authorities because at that time is something radical and new. Hence a sudin which once again it's just die hard and my busa no deep story on that >> and and so [laughter]

this is this is >> and so so that so the secret server thing explains the invention of of the blockchain but you didn't need a currency. for that. >> Well, see once again, nobody looks at the source code that I made like for example the atom system atom you know the idea with that was with trans when transactions this is all built out you know not just hypothesized so the idea was it would basically build a reputation score for nodes on the network to then optimize routing of traffic Well, if you're making if you're using

uh proof of work, it doesn't matter if that minor joined 10 minutes ago or 10 years ago. Everyone's create treated exactly the same. So why was the whole reputation system made if in proof of work it doesn't matter or for example you know how nodes find each other uses a publish and subscribe model which has channels. Now, if you're just dealing with currency, it only needs one channel. Send, receive, send, you know, back and forth. But it has 256 channels and multiple ones are being used.

So once again, why why have 256 channels? And I think it's actually I mean I don't you know this is not verbatim but I mean I had a comment in the source code of hey I don't even know if 256 channels is going to be enough because it was a data enterprise data architecture not a currency >> or you know Bitcoin script well that's actually a stack machine based upon the fourth programming language from back in the 70s I think it was 70s yeah you know effectively what you're doing is you're passing a command with a predicate, multiple predicates, and it's a stack.

So, just like plates in a buffet, you know, they push down and then take the top one off. Well, that's how a transaction executes. It's using, you know, Bitcoin script, which really is a stack langu, you know, stack machine, right? or you know that's overkill if you're just making a cryptocurrency or >> yeah there's a marketplace built in why do you need a marketplace if you're doing cryptocurrency this is in the source code you know there's also u reviews being able to rate transactions well it wasn't really made for you know a currency well enterprise data

marketplace reviews, publish and subscribe 256 channels. >> Yeah. Uh what else? >> And and and you're saying these are the Easter eggs that you left in the source code. >> Well, that's just enterprise architecture right? >> You know, if you look at the source code, it's drastically overengineered and overarchitected. If all the purpose was was just do a cryptocurrency, you know, that was basically a last minute shoehorn. to have a test group. >> You know, who wants to really well once again, you didn't want to attract attention as trying to defeat, you know, the

Microsoft and Oracle, you know, top two companies in the world when it comes to engines, >> right? So, yeah, cryptocurrency. Oh, electronic cash. Great. I'll test it because you always need QA. You need testing. >> Yeah. So, >> so yes, if you actually look at the source code, look at the architecture, it's very evident that it was not intended for what it was used for, >> much bigger. >> You you thought to yourself, hey, I'm I'm I'm inventing something here that could potentially overthrow two very large companies. And so in an order in an in an effort to

remove suspicion from these two companies, I'm gonna I'm gonna treat treat I'm going to I'm going to try to I'm going to use it to leverage against something even bigger to draw the suspicion from something even bigger like the the US government who could who would then see it as a threat to the US dollar, >> right? It feels like going and if you were worried about the threat of of taking on these two companies, why put yourself in a position to threaten the government which would be bigger than the two companac operational security for 16 plus years.

>> It's very difficult to be invisible. Yeah, >> very difficult. >> And you put a lot of work into being invisible, but now you're here, >> right? But I had revealed my identity. >> October 31st, 2024 with the new white paper, new tech. Yeah, like I said, it was it was it was a difficult decision. It's like, do I give up my anonymity so I can make videos to explain the new tech or do I just give people some black box and have the same consequences as before?

>> I mean, the first one worked out pretty well in terms of user adoption. >> Yes, but nobody really understands how it works. >> What do they not understand about it? I mean, there the technology has been adopted more so as a store of value than maybe a cash system, but what what else is there to understand that isn't understood? the underlying architecture which is right there for everybody to see. >> But when you say underlying architecture, not you mean blockchain. >> Yeah. >> But people are I mean you've got >> maybe not using it for the best of purposes, but we tried you know health records on the blockchain and you know NFTTS and different personal information.

>> Sorry, not real NFTs. >> I mean I also find NFTs laughable but maybe for a different reason. >> Well, not anymore. I made real NFTts. Yeah. And a tokenized stock market and a global monetary system. [snorts] >> Yeah. >> And so what are they not exactly understanding about the original invention? >> They understand what they need to know, but they don't understand how it all really works under the hood. >> Hate to say it, but experts are really not really experts. No, I mean we've long said that uh I mean this thing is so new and so early that you know anyone

claiming to be an expert is just >> and it's all very surface level detail. >> Yeah. >> Can you can No, [laughter] no, no, no, no, no. So, so I would love a couple more Easter eggs here like um >> Oh, back to the epoch. So you mentioned the epoch when red as an integer is your birthday. I that does >> the epoch the start of time >> according to the Bitcoin blockchain. >> Right. Right.

>> The original source code Yeah. >> is my birthday. >> Right. >> Right. >> And >> which logically if somebody looks at it like why would the epoch for Bitcoin be 40 years in the past? Like you're you're you know capping off the lifespan of your product by 40 years. There has to be a reason. But the knee-jerk reaction somebody made was, "Oh, that's a Unix time stamp 11970." Well, and everybody just says, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's great. Perfect." But like I said, if you look at the read me, it says specifically, this was made using Windows tools that cost money. It only runs on Windows, maybe Linux or something else in the future. So why

would there's no reason logically that the epoch would be a Unix time stamp. It's just it's not. >> So you were born on January 1st, 1970. >> No, no, I was actually born on March 22nd, but I ended up shortening it to 1 one. So I didn't give away Exactly. So it depends on what version of the source code you're looking at. >> Um >> Okay. What What about another Could you give us another Easter egg? Oh, there's lots of them. >> Um, >> oh, just quick tangent. So, it's funny, you know, >> they I laugh, you know, I've seen, you know, some YouTube videos and stuff and

you like, oh, this is the usual suspects list. They're always looking for some expert in cryptography and, you know, that whole whatever what was it called? Cipher. Cipher punk. Yeah. And I actually saw this brief interview with uh Adam Back a couple years ago and they were asking him, you know, well, who's Satoshi? And I remember in the video he said, well, he's going to be some he's never engaged with us. He doesn't show up for anything. Doesn't respond. Doesn't reach out. You know, no communication whatsoever. But he said he's going to be somebody you've never heard of before.

you know, somebody that's not in this space. >> Yeah. Somebody you've never heard of before, which Yeah, because that's not my space. I'm a suit and tie professional, you know. I am blessed to be able to make stuff that other people couldn't make. But yeah, so no, I don't have any interaction with any of them. But there's other factors like if you're trying to figure out, you know, who is Satoshi? So, first off, I'll just give you a few few logical steps, okay, which nobody bothered to follow the logic. Once again, Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 that cost $1,200 back in 2008.

DevTools now were free, but not in 2008. It only runs on Windows. So, you're looking for somebody who is an expert. Once again, if you look at the source code, the enterprise level architecture, that's not somebody who's new to coding or 15 years old or 18. That's somebody that has decades of experience building enterprise architectures. So that's one logical step. Uh the EPA that that was another logical step. Why would you set it 40 years in the past? You wouldn't unless 1970 meant something.

Now, Visual C++ came at a very interesting point in time in school curriculums, colleges. They taught Cobalt, Forran, a couple others, you know, old stuff because the the schools back in, you know, that era needed to develop a curriculum which took them a couple years. Then they need a teacher that can teach it who needs to understand the programming. Well, C++ came out in 1990.

Okay, like I had Borland C++. So before that came out, people were using Cobalt 4Ran and that's what they learned in school. Now to develop a curriculum around C++, it's infinitely more complicated and it's systems level programming, not user interfaces or otherwise. So, you're looking at multiple years to be able to create a curriculum and then have a teacher that's astute enough to be able to teach it. Well, what happened in 1996, 97, the web, HTML, JavaScript, well, any teacher can teach HTML.

So that whole learning C++ in school really didn't happen because of that window of the time frame of when it came out. So somebody that knows C++ coding you know whether you comment on the quality of the code or not but just you know enterprise level architecture and C++ that's something that wasn't learned in school that was because you had a real business or financial purpose like income you know for using it and learning it.

So, if you go backwards from when C++ with Warland came out, 1990, you needed somebody that already had experience, >> you know, somebody who was, you know, an infant in that time frame. No, that's not going to be Satoshi, >> right? Um, if you really go backwards and think about the academic and the other stuff, you come up with a time frame of when, well, I was born being from 1969 to 1973. Period. It's the only circumstances where the creator would have been born.

So if you look at the, you know, usual suspects list, anybody born before that, probably not because they're probably using Forran, Cobalt, and they have a career doing Cobalt programming, generally speaking. Or somebody that comes after, you know, that time frame, well, they're in the HTML and JavaScript category because that was taught in schools and easy to learn. >> But even something that that's not taught in school, you could learn after the fact. you you know there's resources libraries. Do you want to do something that's >> well for somebody who's never done it before insanely complicated very difficult you have to manage pointers memory management you know developing in C++ is not trippy

you know not like some of the programming languages now you know there's no such thing as automatic garbage collection or you know any of the features that exist nowadays so you had to have a purpose to use it and you had to have a reason to learn it so anyways is it really comes down to 69 to 73 for a birth year. If you look at the list of the usual suspects, that eliminates everybody except Adam Beck. He was also born in 1970. But I reached out to him 6 months before the white paper came out basically when SQL Server didn't do what it was supposed to do asking permission to you know what was this thing?

hash or something. >> Sorry. Ancient history for me. Um >> there was a few of them. Hashe, ecash, >> right? >> Couple others. >> I also remember I don't talk to anybody. So this is very unexpected [snorts] for me. >> I appreciate you. >> So yeah, I'm trying to jog my memory from a lifetime ago. Uh yeah. So he was the only one that comes in that time frame of when the creator would need to have been born, but he was the recipient of the the email. He's not emailing himself with some grand scheme. Oh, six months from now I'm gonna have some pseudonym and I'm going to do this thing. No, come on. Seriously, it doesn't make any logical sense. He got an email, he replied. 6 months later,

here we go. No, and yeah, we have people in the chat that are also saying when it comes to um moving your coins and doing these things, it makes sense. But when it comes to know given that you've now kind of launched like new social media with >> No, I don't use social media. >> Well, the YouTube that I have here is for >> Is that considered social media? >> Yeah, YouTube's a social media platform. >> Well, they're just explain your videos. >> Okay. And so given that you know this new technology is coming out and you've you've sort of soft launched it, talked about it on your YouTube, why and and also revealed your identity on YouTube.

Why do that on YouTube and not Bitcoin talk and post from your original? >> Uhhuh. But when it comes >> a lifetime ago for me, right? >> And it doesn't matter to me. >> I'm not trying I was never trying to prove my identity. >> But part of everything I put forward is just facts, >> right? But part but >> my life is my life. That's all. >> Now the next part of your life that you've talked about is this new technology. And part of this new technology is revealing your identity. >> No, >> not at all.

>> The I mean the timeline suggests that you've you've >> I understand that but you could have rolled out the technology and not revealed your you you you revealed your identity and rolled out the technology in conjunction with one another. And so it they seem related. They seem like you, you know, you could have revealed your identity, not rolled out the technology, or rolled out the technology and not revealed your identity in in the case that they weren't related. But given that you did that in in sync with one another, it suggests that revealing your identity is important to the new technology. And so in order to reveal your identity in the best

>> way possible to to preserve the most trust, it seems the way to do that would have been to use one of the methods that we've talked about like posting on Bitcoin talk or email or some of these things that have been >> put forth as yours, >> right? Well, the human brain looks for patterns. That's how it works. Like your eyes are trained to look for motion. things that sit still, you don't even see them. No, but something moves that attacks your focus. So, looking for patterns. Yeah, I can understand what you're saying because that's what the human brain does. But making assumptions or leaps, you know, that's part of what never revealed my

identity in the first place cuz people were making assumptions, making a leap, trying to find connections that don't exist. revealing my identity, like I said, was mostly around that horrible HBO documentary. >> Why did that why did that piss you off so much? >> It made me look like an anarchist and that's not me >> for the Silk Road. I mean, put Bitcoin in a bad name. Like, there was multiple other things that >> that's why I bowed out. I don't want to be associated with any of that stuff. My purpose is to help all the hardworking people of the world.

So having something I created used for criminal activities, I don't want any part of that. No thank you. You know, yeah, it kind of turned into a runaway dumpster fire, but you know, it wasn't what I created. It wasn't what the intent was. >> So sorry. Yeah, I guess it's a lot. >> I um >> I mean, I'm just me. I look in the mirror, I'm just me. To me, I I'm just a guy. I love my wife more than anything in the world. I love cheeseburgers and I make stuff.

>> It's pretty simple. >> Yeah. Let's run a quick I our our producers are telling us that server space or something is getting limited. So, I think we're going to get >> Sorry about that. >> We'll we'll cave on again. When is the when does the book come out? >> When does the book come out? >> It's done. I I don't I mean, he sent me a copy. I read it >> like damn. >> Okay. He found all the Easter eggs. >> When does the book come out? >> I have no idea. >> Um,

>> if you wanted to hold it in confidence, I'm guessing one of them could send you the book. >> Do Would you mind sending it to me? >> Yeah. Of course, right? NDA, whatever you guys need. >> Paperwork does nothing. If somebody really wants to work you over, they're going to. >> No signatures required. >> Got it. >> Yeah. No, just for Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Just for my own vendition, you know. >> Yeah. >> Um >> Yeah. Like there was one thing I never intended to prove my identity.

>> Yeah. uh you know revealing like I said it's just the facts of my life and I'm not shilling anything not promoting anything you know this tokenized stock market has been done for three years >> I mean all this stuff is >> fractal technologies tokenized equity certificate common tokens 5,000 certificate number secure signed trading protected >> yeah nobody can steal your assets nobody can execute a transaction with your without your >> says Cody W was >> just an example. Says demo right down there too. It >> does say demo.

>> Mhm. Yep. Made a global monetary system. New money for the whole world reloadable point of sale. >> Mhm. >> True NFTts >> where it actually is a what I call a portable NFT and it lives on the chip. Mhm. Digital gold. >> Liberty Dollars digital gold. >> Yeah. Oh, that's the billion. This is the uh movie >> Thor the Dark World.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. How do you make an NFT out of a multiple terabyte Hollywood movie? Well, I did. >> Yeah. You know, anyways, I was never intending to prove my identity, but I did. I signed a message right after Donald Trump got elected >> and yeah, people would said, "Oh, that's uh that's fake." Cuz uh >> yeah, EC 25519 as you know, >> yeah, >> sorry. Sorry.

>> Didn't exist in 2008. >> You said you signed a message. >> I did. >> After Donald Trump got elected the first time or the second time, >> right? Second. It was >> the second time. So recently in the last couple of years. >> Yeah. You said congratulations and you said this message had it was EC what >> 25519 >> 25519 >> right and people say oh yeah your key is fake because even though you can go on any of the public key servers and validate the fingerprint you know it's funny like on I don't use Twitter well now X but I had posted on there in my uh my bio the the fingerprint >> nobody bothered to check.

>> Wait, so what is this EC25519? This is cuz it's not an elliptic curve that's used in Bitcoin. >> Correct. Right. Bitcoin is all shot 256. Uh but signing a message digitally digitally. >> Yeah. I had a key from 2008 which is registered at Satoshi bitcoin.org. And >> yeah, the method I was using was yeah, EC25519, which everything back then was like RSA.

So people say, "Oh, well that elliptic curve didn't exist. It only came out in like 2014 and like bouncy castle uh or 2013 with open PGP." Well, that's that's if you want to use a freeware implementation because you can't do it yourself. If you actually look on Wikipedia, that elliptic curve, the white paper for that, which provides all the logic for the math was in 2005. Like everything I do, I don't wait for some, you know, third party product to be able to do an implementation for me.

If I need it, I make it. So I wrote my own imple implementation based upon the white paper that described all the math of how EC25519 worked. So no, my key is not fake. Yeah, sorry. I'll skip all the curse words because it is kind of annoying. Like everybody out there seems to just look for reasons for me not to be me. Well, but it's because you choose not to do the ones that would definitively prove that you are. You >> could be a brute force attack.

>> I did sign a message. >> Whatever. But also, it doesn't really matter to my life. I mean, >> spent the last 15 years, >> like you said, it's just annoying. >> Yeah. It's It's like, you know, mosquitoes. It's just >> Right. >> Yeah. I spent the last 15 years developing, no money, no income, you know, from that. Uh yeah self-sufficient self-supported. I never wrote any white papers because most people nowadays, they write a white paper because they're looking for funding. I write a white paper after I do the work, which is just describing what I made

because I don't care about anybody else's money. I did very well on my own long before any of this. >> You playing poker tonight? >> Hell yeah. >> Let's Let's go play some poker. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> All right, we're going to wrap this up, guys. It's been like 7 hours, 8 hours. I have no idea how long exhausted, I'm sure. And it's in and it it almost feels it almost feels like I'm dreaming. >> I'm sorry to tuck your ear off. No, no, don't no need to apologize. This has been >> I do feel badly.

>> Why? You don't need to feel badly. >> Your time your time is valuable just like everybody else. >> Well, it was uh it was a fun time. It was fun uh fun chatting with you. >> That's a nice suit jacket. >> It is. >> I appreciate that. Um guys, that's it. Travis, we appreciate you. >> Should I Satoshi? >> Nice to meet you, Rob. Good to meet you too Travis. >> Thank you. >> Already know you. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. I guess. Thanks for bringing me here. Yeah. This was impromptu, unexpected.

>> Likewise. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> All right, guys. We're going to we're going to call it a day. >> That is also not how we planned on ending the show. >> Yeah. My mouth is so dry. I never talked to anybody. >> All right, guys. Um, we're going to go play some poker. >> Yeah. >> So, uh, shout out to all the sponsors on the show >> and, uh, we couldn't do it without you guys and, uh, much love everyone behind the scenes.

Alex Brick everyone watching, uh, everyone rocking with us in the chat. Freedom guy, Andy's in the chat, one-armed Bandit, Jin R. [laughter] We've got we've got a whole cast of characters here. >> Very clever names. >> Birds 1811. >> We love you guys. >> Signing off from uh from Vegas, the Arya. It's been uh it's been it's been one heck of a show, guys. And uh we will see you next time. >> Peace.

>> Very well done. >> Thank you. [music] >> [music] >> Everything. [music] >> [music] [music]

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