The Next Crypto Bull Market Will Be The Biggest One Ever

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>> All right, Arthur. Singapore token 249. Last day of the week. Uh, busy week F1 this weekend. >> Yeah, it's been great. It's good to host everyone into the great hazy city of Singapore. >> Yeah, it's I don't think it's ever been like this before. It's great. >> This is really bad. This is really I mean, this happens every year, but not this bad. >> Yeah. And then, of course, the you know, we get a conference dump on the market. I mean, what's new there? You got Justin Drake tweeting about quantum at all. I mean, classic. I mean, come on. Oh, it's still in 2049. Of course, the, you know, 10% >> didn't go down that much. Bitcoin went down like two or three% like >> we're still 80s.

>> Yeah. >> Are you de-risking on quantum news or speculation? >> More stuff actually. >> Okay. >> What what in particular? >> Uh, my analyst is researching RBA stuff. Uh, I think it's a good narrative after the Catrini report overnight and you know, Wall Street guys are muppets and so these guys have given them a playbook so you might as well get in the sandbox and start start playing. >> Yeah, I agree man. I think I mean like one question that we've been asking and I'm just going to ask you straight up is if the tokenization thesis is correct, who's going to win the most? What company will benefit the most? Right?

And I think that's kind of what Satrini just answered and that's quite literally the I mean it's a multi-t trillion dollar question in terms of market cap is that's going to come into this industry. How do you think about that? >> I don't think about what company's going to benefit the most. I think about what is most misunderstood that could rerate because RDB tokenization. We've all been talking about this for 10 years. Like it's not new. And there's, >> you know, different tokens or public equities have been spewing this nonsense for a long time. And maybe some of that's already reflected in the price and they're not the best investments from a asymmetric risk return profile, but that my analyst is looking at, you know, what are his picks for like, you know, RDBay narrative? Okay. Is it misunderstood? And then most importantly, like I want a busted chart,

>> like something that's completely because that's how you generate like 5x in a few months and without putting a lot of capital at risk. So there's like the, you know, new coin, good coin, old coin, badcoin saying, but when you say busted chart, you're talking about things that have been around for a long time. Like old coins >> or like I it doesn't have to be a long time, but like something that's like down 75 80% from, you know, some local level. Like that's like I want to be in that >> rather than mess with like new launches. >> Yeah. Because still I think unfortunately most projects have the high FTV, low float nonsense. they have a lot of pre-sale investors and so you got to be really careful about when is unlock how much are they unlocking like game theorying that out in terms of when

you want to get in and when you want to get out and so I want clean charts yeah clean chart >> so okay you know let's give some context on this Citrine article this tokenization super cycle right and then we'll get into the macro today we'll talk about the kind of broader picture for Bitcoin and crypto as a asset class but let's just fix it here because this just dropped and I think it's important to understand the context there >> yeah and The name of the article was breaking down the wall which is kind of a different paradigm of looking at it like we talked about the convergence of DeFi and TRDFI maybe it's converging to RWAS the the term that we've just been kind of thinking through as of recently is this financial singularity where it all becomes finance how do you see that

like when you think about what is mis most misunderstood it still sounds like RWA are relatively misunderstood what what in particular do you think is most misunderstood about the financial singularity. >> How much money are you actually going to get make, right? Is it, oh, I just put I transferred the stock that was sitting in DTCC and some sort of like paper digital receipt and now it's sitting on some blockchain, whatever it is, doesn't really matter. Like how much money can you actually make doing that? I know a lot of funers will tell you, "Oh my god, that's like a super twin like whatever." But like, okay, you're doing better bookkeeping. Thank you.

>> Um like but like where are you actually going to make money in tokenization? I think that has been the issue with his narrative for a long time. But again, that's a secondary concern. If you know, the standard bearer of contrarian thinking for Wall Street Muppets says it's time to buy some tokens, then you buy the tokens. They don't think about that. >> A lot of the like the the fundamentals that like improvements that they tout are, you know, 247 markets. It's, you know, the added utility of being able to use some of these things as collateral or leverage. Um, and then it's the composability that maybe some of these things get with one another and like how I take it that's not really that important. It's more the perceived notion of that that's important. So when

you're thinking through like the benefits of that we've had guys like Santiago Santos come on and be like hey it's not really uh those themselves it's more who's going to benefit from them like you know for instance companies or >> Yeah. So like Robin Hood, you know, it's better to invest in like a Robin Hood because they're the ones implementing the technology rather than like buy the meme coins on Robin Hood. >> Yeah. >> What do you know, and I spoke to Vlad, you know, at his conference last week and just talked to him for, you know, five 10 minutes and, you know, he his whole thing is this kind of democratization of access. And, you know, when I think about that, I think about we're just exporting the US equities market and the US assets globally as our next big export. if you kind of put your macro hat on, you know,

and so when you think about that lens of exporting the US capital markets, what I think about is we're just going to dump on the rest of the world, you know, but what I think is actually happening is we're actually just opening up the doors for more liquidity to come into capital markets that is going to flow onchain and eventually flow into protocols and capital, you know, and assets. So, I guess just to kind of round out the thought and question here is since you put this piece out, obviously Wall Street's coming on chain, they they're going to feel way behind, you know, is it do do you do do you just buy Robin Hood? Do you go all the way down and buy like, you know, an L1 blockchain like a plume? Do you go to derive in their options layer? Do you go to the per

platform? Just kind of give us a sense on like how you think about like the trickling of the capital as it pertains to this broader kind of investment thesis. So I think at the high level I want to be able to tell a very interesting story and I think the best story I want to tell is AI agents will run all of your financial services. How are they going to access these financial services? Because if I can tell that story about whatever it is in the RWBA vertical, then I could talk about, you know, trillions of agents doing all sorts of things and super cheap 24/7 rebalancing your portfolio, like all these discreet transactions, creating all these fees, right? I want to tell that story. It doesn't really matter what it is that they're actually doing because if I can tell that story with a

straight face and people can nod their heads and believe me, then that's just gonna pump because everyone believes that everyone believes that there's going to be lots of agents that compute's getting cheaper. They're going to become more ubiquitous. They can do more things better because they have more power behind behind them with the compute that's cheap. There be like, you know, Facebook is going to manage your financial services, right? Whatever narrative, right? If I could tell that story and then whatever it's a token, it's a company, whatever their technological solution plugs into that and benefits from the agentic wave rather than loses out, then I want to go long that stuff.

>> You you mentioned that you have your analysts looking into like the categories out for sure. Is it an agent or an expert? >> I like I like analysts because they're well he's younger, right? So he's going to be more degen thinking like I don't want to Okay, cool. Yeah, you can make another like 30% on some $10 billion market cap stock or crypto. Like that's not really going to move the needle, but I want the 5x return in a few months kind of thing. And I'm willing to take a bit of risk. >> So what are you what are you looking for, you know, DGEN thinking is one component of it. What what else are you think like looking for out of your analyst?

>> Tell a story. Tell me a story >> like about why this is a good investment or why you think this is going to do what you think it's going to do. And does a story make any sense? And does a story pick on things that people already intrinsically believe in other verticals around the you know economic and financial sphere. >> So revenue founders uh growth story just broadly just put together a a put together a thesis that is believable that has kind of different components but you know it's kind of a a vast array of different components.

>> Yeah. and make it sound sexy. Like there's obviously I think the Asian thing is the best part about the Catrini piece, right? Because >> that's what I think where they're really saying is it's not going to be a wealth manager who's going to use any of this stuff. It's going to be your autonomous AI agent. You're going to give it a set of rules and objectives. >> It's going to figure it out and you're never going to know that you traded on derive or pendle or whatever, right? Or Robin Hood. Like you don't care, right? At the end of the day, you just, you know, set your agent loose. They have guardrails and then they trade and they manage your money and you don't know what they did.

>> Yeah. And so I got to ask, man, we kind of went through a multi-year last four years. It's been kind of a punch to the face for the industry. I mean, we had a bull market. Bitcoin went what 125. We had a little bit of an echo uh echo bubble in some very select tokens. I mean, Hyperliquid did well last bull, but I mean, other than Hyperlid and a couple others, I mean, alts were a let down. Ethereum was a let down. But why is this, Arthur? Because we kind of had this era where everyone first of all kind of we took the we took the clothes off and was like we're all swimming naked here. None of these tokens have value. None of them have any revenue. None of them are making any any money.

Investors are just dumping on us. It's just a complete I mean it's just a complete a complete bare market for like 90% of the token market. But now with the Catrini piece fabled old season feels like it's coming because what do we have now? We have a real narrative with a real kind of wall like Wall Street institutional backing. So there's capital that's going to come into the market, but we have onchain businesses that there's a clear growth story to tell because of this agentic finance uh use case compiled with this tokenization wave. You've got businesses on chain that I can now look to allocate capital in. You might want a 5x in three months. I might want a 50x in 10 years or five years. You know, I look at Hyperlquid today and it's maybe you think it's not, you know, it's it's it's

it's already overvalued or valued at its fair price. There's other assets though that that you can look at and be like, hey, you know, this if tokenization happens and this whole kind of aentic finance thing happens in five years, this thing could be making, you know, billions of dollars of revenue a day, doing buybacks, etc., and be like a real company. And so, I think people are starting to believe again. And I I I'm not sure that there's even a question there as much as it feels like we've achieved the same level of like quote unquote utility that we had in 2017 when it was like oh Ethereum smart contracts like it feels like there's like this breakthrough kind of financialization trend happening that will will push the market a lot higher due to this actual belief we had you know we did a pod with

uh the Mr. Memecoin Mr. from your ad right and it was financial nihilism was like nothing else matters altcoins are terrible buy memes that's that feels like it flipped I have a thesis for near for hyperlid for derive for pendle for lighter for whatever the hell right uh zcash just talk to us about kind of about that collective belief returning to markets and why that's so powerful for the reflexivity of this market >> what I think is belief grounded in cash flows we've been burned so many times you started with ICOs was complete there's nothing behind it then we said okay we can't raise money that way, then we're going to go to this VC thing.

There are some good things that got funded. Now, we just went to the other extreme. Nothing good gets funded. They just, you know, spend the money on the parties and they don't come back. Uh, you can walk around token and KBW and there's not a lot of people here because they spent all the money and the founders retired when they're so like we've done that. And so, now who's left, right? It's people with real clients spending real money and they're handing back money to token holders. Those are the only project that can survive because it is expensive to run one of these things. So, the Asians are going to use what's Lindy, right? What's been around for since 2020, um, DeFi summer, right? There's a lot of primitives that have been around since then. They don't have the same sort of, you know, price earnings multiples in the crypto sense

that some other things do. It's a beaten down stuff that's really well used, right? And I'm sure you can rattle off a bunch of names of tokens that are like everyone uses them. >> You know, the PE ratios are very reasonable and they're composable. Lego blocks, all those sort of things we've been all been talking about. And so just look for the things that have Lindy that's been around since DeFi summer that are still here making money. Maybe they just started giving money back to token holders because their lawyers let them or whatever they felt more confident to do. So use that. I don't think I don't think this is going to be a wave of people starting new project and those doing really really well. I'm sure there's going to be lots of copycat stuff but like >> you know the stuff that's going to 10x

is going to be already tradable right now. I'm not looking to do any deals and investing token to RWA. We've been building this stuff since 2020. We don't need any new stuff. We got it all here. >> It's already Lindy and it was Lindy based on the crypto native tokens that made it Lindy over the last few years and now it's ready to rerate in terms of the TVL aum >> and the TAM addressable market that is now coming on chain as a result of all of the other asset classes that are getting tokenized. >> Yeah. >> 150 billion now. We're talking trillions on chain. we're having a multiple 10 20 50x of capital >> and that flows into the protocols that have established themselves through the years and I was at this OKX event and Vitalik was speaking and he was kind of

talking about how the evolution of agents and bots on chain and how you know we've kind of all probably traded with a bot as a counterparty up until now but eventually we're going to get to a point where it's all bots it's all agents and there's no applications and everything's headless and it kind of now I'm realizing that like the re like we've kind of called these protocols, but it's kind of it kind of I realize now why we're calling them protocols is because even if there are no applications, they still can work. Like there there's yeah, they're smart contract protocols that can still establish like some utility for bots or humans and it doesn't have to be, you know, an app with a UX.

And so, you know, that is sort of one part of the thesis and we've been kind of preaching this barbell. On one hand, it is the smart contract applications and protocols that are, you know, real onchain businesses have real revenue, real product market fit and activity. And now >> token economics, buybacks, >> token token economics and buybacks and actually sharing that revenue with the with the users or the token holders and they're getting legitimized by regulators in the US and President Trump shaking hands with, you know, the the leaders of some of these protocols. And then on the other hand, you've got hard money, scarce assets, you know, Bitcoin, Zcash that sort of benefit from accommodative macro monetary policy. Now that I think it's somewhat consensus, as long as you don't believe the quantum

fears right now, we'll absorb that in a matter of weeks or months and and people are starting to come around to the idea that we've bottomed. It is the bull market. Now, I think people are starting to think about outperformance and where to place the chips for the next few months and years in this cycle. What do you think outperforms the hard money scarce assets side of the barbell or the onchain businesses benefiting from the legitimization of the industry? >> I mean, it really depends on the price that you pay. Price is what you pay, value is what you get. So again, I don't know if you bought Coinbase or Bitcoin, maybe Bitcoin outperforms Coinbase because Coinbase is already a large situation. But if you're talking about, I don't know, a sub1 billion market cap shitcoin that now has been rerated because of agents will use my protocol

and spend a bunch of money, then that could, you know, do 20x and Bitcoin does 5x, right? So, I think it really depends on what it is you're trading, you know, the relative size of the things that you're trading, how much risk that you want to take in terms of, you know, protocol risk and smart contract risk and all these types of things. So, it really depends. >> So, just to add to that, you you mentioned you have a big ETH position. Yeah. What is your portfolio allocation with regards to that barbell? Are you heavier into like, you know, I put ETH in the store value category? You know, I probably wouldn't put Soul in there or or Avalanche for example, but I put ETH, Bitcoin, Zcash, gold, etc., you know, and then you got these kind of onchain businesses in this Catrini report and

also crypto equities. What are you heavier in? >> I mean, we're so big in Bitcoin. This is not even nothing other anything else is like irrelevant. Um, so we just trade other stuff to make money to buy more Bitcoin. That's the game. That's the name of the game of the fund. And so even if we have a large position in ETH or you know all these other coins, it's like okay, we harvest profits and then we buy more Bitcoin. >> Bitcoin seems the most at risk of this quantum thing. Are you worried at all? >> I think what you know Drake was really was this is what was isn't what he was saying, but the practical implications of what he was advising was proper address hygiene, which is something that people have been preaching since I've gotten into crypto, which is do not reuse addresses. Okay? Right? you know,

use the most up-to-date um signature type, right? So, like, you know, obviously you shouldn't be using wallets that are using the protocol of the Satoshi coins, right? Those are the most at risk coins from this theoretical quantum encryption issue, right? So, I think it's like, you know, you and your friend are in the forest and a bear is chasing after you. You don't need to be the fastest. You don't need to be Usain Bolt. You see, be faster than your friend. Yeah. >> Right. So if there is a you know Q day or encryption break or whatever it is you know lipstick signatures get broken right there's going to be a certain subset of things that get taken down first and you'll know what that when that happens you just don't want to be in that first rate in that first wave.

So practice good hygiene. You know, don't reuse addresses if you don't have to. If you're trading, okay, whatever you're trading is obviously more at risk than is what's in your cold storage and hasn't been used before. Like these are all like things that we all have heard about. We don't properly internalize them until something happens. An example would be sort of the cold card hack, right? >> Do we really think we all needed to roll 100 dice? Well, guess what? You did which is unfortunate, right? So like this is crypto, right? These are the things like we know what we're supposed to do, we just don't do them. And another I think metaphor to think of is like think about people who live in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, right?

>> I talk to people all the time in the conference. Oh, you live in this place. It's like, you know, it's a war zone. He's like, yeah, the first day was kind of whatever. Then, you know, we saw the missile go over. We heard the alert on our phone. >> Oh, it got intercepted and we went back to sipping our drinks, listening to house music on the beach, right? Like this is what's going to be this cute thing. Even if it is real, and I don't know if it is or isn't, doesn't really matter. We're humans and if Bitcoin doesn't go to zero in the next week or two weeks because the encryption's been hacked, there's be something else in the news that catches everyone's fancy and we'll forget about it and it'll be irrelevant. So like this is how we act with wars. We're going to act this way

with this encryption stuff. So I think my advice and what I'm practicing myself is good address hygiene and there's extremely intelligent people who are looking at this problem. This is not as if we don't we're not aware of this risk. It's a known risk. >> Yeah. unknown unknown here. >> And so on that note, you know, I I I recently had a chance to speak to Naval in person and just talk to him kind of about how he thinks about his writings and his work. And you know, he's all about timelessness, right? He's all about kind of e emanating, you know, words and lessons that can stand the test of time. And you know, one of the core properties of a store value asset is to stand the test of time. You know, you put gold in a bunker underground, you bury it, you come back 20 years,

that gold bar hasn't changed form, shape, or whatever. it's still one gold bar regardless of the price. So when it came to kind of like the financial surveillance conversation which is kind of aligned with this address hygiene take is he was like look you know on Bitcoin the issue is that you can have 10 wallet addresses mix your things sec exchanges yada yada yada but there you know chain chain chain analysis exists you know I mean it always has even now in this age of AI we've already had chain analysis in this age of AI you know the the ability for big corporations governments etc to uh practice financial surveillance has increased dramatically and has gotten a lot easier. And so obviously he's got this whole like Zcash is this hedge to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a hedge to the monetary system. Zcash is a hedge to

Bitcoin. And so I just wanted to kind of understand I if you align with Naval's kind of like privacy oriented theme and just really about, you know, Zcash, but also about privacy's returning to the cipher punk kind of uh roots that we've had and also in the narrative game. Just curious kind of like generally if you think that there's uh some substance to what he's saying there. Yeah, absolutely. There's a substance. Um, you know, Naval Red Pilled me on Zcash at a dinner last last token and yeah, made a lot of money for my fund based on that conversation. Uh, I think at the end of the day, it's a spectrum, right? There is super privacy and then there's convenience and you kind of have to see where you are on that spectrum, right?

Gold in a bunker, great. But like, if you need to actually move a million dollars of gold, it'sing heavy, right? So, like there's a reason why Bitcoin is better than gold in some circumstances. But then gold does not require activity to exist. The bitcoin bitcoin must be moved must be transacted for miners to earn transaction fees at a fundamental level. So if bitcoin doesn't move it's worth it's worth zero right but gold cannot move. You know atomic physics keeps it value what it is is gold. So again it's all there's no such thing as safety. It's all a spectrum and a a probabilistic spectrum of what you can accept versus what you're really willing to give up.

>> With that being said, as so we're kind of, you know, talking about the these store value assets and private money, Bitcoin, etc., Zcash, you know, macro has changed quite a bit. So quantum is obviously a thing, but I think what's going to happen is we're going to have some macro news. We're going to have some other kind of, you know, news from the SEC that that's going to, you know, as you say, bring us back to this kind of collective amnesia. That's crypto. It's collective amnesia. We do it all the time. So, so you're you're still heavy in Bitcoin. It it you know, you so you're you're steering more towards like the hard money scarce asset side of this barbell. And so, you know, one of one of the things that you said, I think last year when we were doing this podcast was, and it stuck with me, was that the

only option politicians have is to spend money. They have the option not to spend money, but then they get voted out of power. It's like realistically the only option is that they do spend money. And so when you see, you know, the bond market doing what the bond market is doing and the macro environment and Bessant claiming that he's the house in your mind, does that tell you that we're going to have to fix something? And does fixing something mean printing money? Like when you see the the 30-year bond upwards of the 10 year and the 30-year, five and a half, upwards, >> like does that tell you we're going to accelerate the pace of printing fiat dollars? Nominal bond yields are a combination of real growth plus

inflation. Right? So you have to determine what why why are bond yields rising. So what is the nominal GDP of a particular country? US nominal GDP is let's call it 5 6%. So then a 56% yield on a 10-year is pretty reasonable. So these yields aren't unreasonable based on the growth of the nominal growth of the US economy. But the question is whether that's more inflation or is that more real growth. And that's sort of a you know a question that you have to make. But I think the the bond yields has to be put in the context of you know there's a guy named David Dredge. I'm an LP in his fund convex strategies OG derivatives trader and he coined the term the hunger games. So there's only so much capital around right and there's all these different people governments

and sovereigns and companies competing to borrow money. At the top of the heap we have AI right? So, the AI companies are building God. And therefore, they do not care what the interest rate is because if you're going to build God, God's infinite. And so, I will pay infinite money to build God. 10, 15, 20. They don't [ __ ] care how much they pay uh on the uh interest rate because they know they're going to bail out anyways when they [ __ ] up. So, like it's great that they're they're crowding out the sovereign debt markets. Next on the list is, you know, US government. The US government will borrow every single dollar that it needs to borrow. Period. End of sentence. Right. And so this whole conernnation about the yields and hyperinflation, it's not happening.

Like everyone will buy a 10 year 10% 10% coupon 10-year bond if it gets to that level. Whatever they're going to get theirs, the problem is for everybody else. The problem is the French. The problems are like they're the number one problem right now. Like why would you buy a French bond? It's [ __ ] it's nonsense. Yeah. >> They spend so much money as a government. They're externally financed by the Germans and the Japanese. They're in this [ __ ] up thing called the euro. They have no energy. They have they're riding in the streets like and yet they're saying, "Oh yeah, please come buy my 10-year bond at I don't know, four and a half, 10, 5%, whatever it is, right?" So they are [ __ ] >> The US government's not [ __ ] They'll be fine.

>> So I think people have to sort of put things in perspective and they say these bond yields are, you know, going crazy and like it's going to do stuff. I mean, yes, they will print money at the end of the day, but in me in the US's case, it might not be be because of five and a half on the 10-year. >> On that note, we had, you know, you know, you mentioned this I'm the house thing. Worsh comes out, hikes rates, you know, a couple weeks back and the bond yields jump higher, right? Like they don't even blink. They go higher. Um, and people are calling a bullish hike and calling for potentially one more hike. You know, I was out at Jackson Hole prior to our last show and you know, you know, we had spoken about how kind of Worsh is kind of like a bit of a

puppet right now and you know, there's other forces at play. Rate hike happened, crypto pumps, uh yields pump. It feels like the situation's gone out of control. Like it feels like if the rate hike didn't do it, what you know what's next? Um is there another bigger hike? Like like is the situation out of control in your lens? What is actually happening with regards to why the bond yields have kept rising? Oil is still at an elevated rate, right? We got one hike, we make it another in December after the midterms. Like what like is the system are we experiencing like the first very obvious uh to the kind of like the mainstream investor that the system's completely broken? Like what's happening?

>> So I think first of all I don't believe that the price of money is more important than the quantity of money. So the bond yield told you the price of money and I think people focus too much on the price of money like oh what's the yield on the Fed's Fed funds what's the yield on 10 year whatever right like yes it is important it has a definitely has an impact on discount rates and all that kind of stuff but what's more important for us as crypto investors as scarce asset investors is how much fiat is there in the world how has that changed and so if you take a look at the Fed hike right fed hikes 25 basis points 0.25%.

So how much or little or none or negative liquidity that did that create in the system, >> right? >> So the Fed has the interest on excess reserves. Banks hold $3 trillion with the Fed and the Fed has to pay them an interest rate that's within the upper and lower bound in order to peg rates at that level. Right? So the Fed raises rate rates 25 basis points that creates $7.5 billion of extra income unearned income for banks. On the sec and the second part is treasury bills. So T bills essentially are cash that yield Fed funds. And so if the Fed raises rates 25 basis points again that's another um what is it 17 or something billion dollars of income because about $7 trillion of T bills outstanding. So I

estimate that for every 25 basis point hike you generate 20 250 25 billion of extra liquidity. And it's not extra liquidity going to impoverished plebs. It's going to banks, financial actors, the banks don't eat, right? They just consume more financial assets with more money or pay dividends to rich people who consume more financial assets. And when you pay more money on tea bills, people like myself who've got a lot of tea bills and make yields. Great. I'm not I don't need to buy more food. What do I do? I buy more financial assets. I buy more gold, Bitcoin, real estate, you know, watches, wine, whatever it is that floats your boat to maintain purchasing power. You go and buy more of it because you just got a raise from the Fed. And this is this happens because when you have a highly indebted economy that has

most of its borrowing at the short end, you when you raise rates to supposedly fight inflation, you actually create more inflation. >> And this is a study, I forgot the name of the economist. He wrote about Brazil in the 1980s and he has, you know, empirical evidence and you can see, you know, the central bank of Brazil starts raising rates. Brazil's heavily indebted. most of the borrowing is at the short end and you see inflation ticking along higher as they raise rates and so >> because there's more quantity of money being created by those excess reserve interest >> and this is why Bitcoin ripped when they raised rates. So a question based on this like >> correct me if I'm wrong the >> people and and departments that are in charge of the financial system call it the Fed or the central bank all around

the world is it true that they use the quantity of money to fight the price of money meaning like everyone's screaming about bond yields like they they the tool in their toolbox is to change the quantity of money and that is the the way that they try to solve the price of money >> depends on the philosophy Right. So Vulkar in 1980 what was it 79 81 82 he his radical thinking at the Fed at the time was okay we are no longer going to target the price of the of money.

We're not going to target the discount rate anymore. I will restrict the amount of credit in the system. Um I forgot exactly how he did it because a bit different in the 80s than it is today. He basically targeted the money supply, the total amount of money and that was how he got interest rates to behave. >> Very very powerful. But now the theory the thinking at the Fed is all about the price of money. We adjust this these rates these policy rates that we have and this is how we tinker with the economy and then obviously if we need up then we go we start printing money. We we talk about the quantity >> of money but we don't we don't analyze the impact of our price of money um decisions based on how much money it will or not create which is more

important in my view >> in the lens of the bond yields being at the highest rate in however many years I think since ' 07 or something like that you know do we need to see that come down for the broader scarce asset markets to do well or is that just a is this just kind of like the like basically what I'm trying to get at is that there was a a way of thinking that was like, you know, this is the range for bond yields that's appropriate. We're now above that range and in people's minds, that's where 08 crisis happened in that like we are in that range, right? So, you know, I always get scared of this time is different, right?

this time is never different. But it like is this a okay uh state of the financial system as it pertains to the specifically in in the US to still enable a larger crypto bull market like how like what do what would you want to see or need to see to validate the the kind of crypto bull thesis into 2027 or perhaps like invalidate that based on these macro factors? >> Well, I guess look at how much money is being created. So right if you look at the price of money impact so you know every 25 basis point hike is $25 billion of extra liquidity that's going to go into financial assets and the quantity of money side you take a look at Fed plus banking balance sheet so while the Fed has essentially stopped reserve management purchases since October August 14th the banking system has taken

up the slack and this is the direct policy of Bess and Nworfs they both have talked about the banking system needs to be the engine of credit creation in the United States not the central bank and so the central bank balance sheet basically been flatlined. But if you take a look at the total um balance sheet assets of the US commercial banking system, it's up about two $200 billion since October 14th. So that is why money is financial conditions are great. If the banks are going to increase their assets, whether that's by creating more loans and when a bank loans money it create it creates money a loan creates its own deposit or it does securities financing or buys stocks or buys treasury bonds or whatever, right?

It increases the size of its balance sheet. It is increasing the amount of credit and liquidity in the system. And so if you look at the combination of both, this tells me that we are looser and looser and looser. And the banking system is doing exactly what they've been told to do, which is create more assets, lend more money. We don't want to do it at the central bank because, you know, people got pissed off that supposedly we were creating inflation. It should be in the central the commercial bank's hands. >> The question becomes, what's the trade? And so the last Satrini article was the Fed Treasury Accord and was talking about this creative financial engineering that they could do to unlock a whole slew of new liquidity. Then you've got this other fun, creative financial engineering going on in the crypto world where it's like more the

tech side than the financial side, but these are ultimately both kinds of financial engineering. And so again, the question becomes, what's the trade? Where's the outperformance? Would you rather buy the banks, like the bank equities, because they're going to be implementing this technology and potentially have a lot more like liquidity to work with, or would you rather buy the infrastructure and like buy the crypto tokens that are going to be the protocols that the banks are going to use? >> Depends on the price. Yeah, >> tell me ticker entry and exit. >> Target and don't dump on me after 30%.

All right. Um, you know, you know, one of the things that Rob, that that that I think is important though is that if you take this to his fullest extrapolation, the extreme, right, with this bond yield happening, what's happening is, you know, uh, Scott Besson's going to come out in no on >> Yeah. November 5th quarterly refunding announcement. >> Announcement. They're going to buy another what four to eight billion dollars of these longdated bonds. But what's happening here is there's a there there's a now a need for a structural bid for short-term T bills in the US to kind of even out this imbalance. >> Not really. Again, T bills are great.

Everyone in the world wants T bills. He doesn't need to sell T bills. He needs to sell 30-year bonds. That's why, you know, >> okay, so perhaps there's not a a necessary demand, but there is a there is a reality that stable >> with the Hunger Games. I think going back to my analogy in the Hunger Games, the rate on the 10ear, 30, or 20-year bond to the United States government is irrelevant, right? They will spend regardless of what that is. >> Like it doesn't matter. >> Now, every other sovereign yield prices off of the United States. If US rates, if I can get 7% on my 10-year United States, what do I get to France? 8 n 10?

>> That's the problem. It's not the United States that's the problem. It's everyone else who has to price off of that. Who isn't the reserve currency issue? Yeah. >> Who doesn't have energy self-sufficiency, food self-sufficiency, two oceans with no enemies, right? Everyone else has other issues where their finances matter a lot more, but the investor says, "Okay, well, I will give 7% to the US, so I'll charge you eight and a half." And at 8 and a half, it breaks a lot of people's back. >> And is printing their way out of it the only way out of like France at 14%. Like >> yes, Frans will implicitly leave the euro. If you are a French depositor or you hold French bonds as a foreigner, they will say, "You no longer have access to your capital. We're going to bail you in and we are going to create

create um banking reserves in France to buy French stuff." >> Mhm. >> Which essentially breaks the euro. >> And so there's kind of like this broader trend of repatriating capital. Like you've written stuff on France potentially fit, but then you've also written stuff about Japan Inc. and how they're also repatriating capital. And so Japan, France, well, France is France has no capital. Japan finances France, Germany finances France, China finances France, right? And so they're saying, you know, let's put our money in our for our people.

>> Okay, I need to sell something. What do I sell? Well, I can't sell the US stuff because I have a military base, got a security agreement, whatever. Right. So I sell the French stuff. Like who if I sell China or Japan? >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I I I guess what I was trying to kind of get there through what you've which you've answered is that there's not this like structural demand required for for the US because the US is kind of we're all right right it's okay but what is happening is stable coins are growing and they obviously under the Genius Act they have to be a T bill backed for like 95% of them uh less than 93 days I believe is the exact duration requirement and so what there's this kind of exporting of the US dollar dominance happening in the digital form

and with agents it's going to just accelerate to be just everywhere. I mean obviously in the cryptoverse you know stable coins are US dollar uh you know that that is you know what stable coins are and so I guess is there a way in which the US dollar or sorry the US government is incentivized to a grow stable coin uh you know total outstanding supply to extend uh its kind of hedgeimony of the US dollar across the world and its reserve currency while also you know at the same time then building that structural demand for the short term for the short term which then If you extrapolate that even further, which I'll probably get hate in the comments about this, is like the US government is then incentivized to really pump out of crypto because, you know, in crypto bull markets, you get stable coin expansion, which helps their

goals. Is that too far of like mental, you know? >> I mean, is there a correlation whether or not it holds this time around? I don't know. We'll see. Like, does it hold to the extent that it generate enough demand to move the needle? I think the big issue with the stable coin narrative for in terms of acquiring US bills is you have to have other countries allow these US tech giants to operate in their countries. Like it's not clear to me that you know the large other countries with larger populations are that they're going to let Facebook and X and Amazon and all these large US companies bank their people because they don't let JP Morgan just come in there and do

whatever the they want. Why would you let Elon and Zuck and these guys essentially be the back door to destroy your ability to control your money supply? Now, we'll see if how stupid these people are who run these countries if they're going to let that happen. But that's what Besson is trying to do. He's saying, "Okay, great. I need I need tea bills." I don't know how much the demand that will create, but great. Okay, Facebook, we're not going to slow you down. Go and allow WhatsApp. You can now have banking and someone can send this like, you know, it could be a Facebook dollar, whatever, right? Tether, it doesn't matter. You could send this around to people. This would great in the Philippines, Indonesia, a lot of places around the world that have up domestic currencies. very high penetration of social media run by US

companies and now all of a sudden you've disintermediated the reserve banks the bank the central banks of of these countries that have 100 plus million people like that's what Bess's trying to do ultimately the question is whether or not these leaders are that dumb and they're going to let him do >> yeah and so that's kind of the hole in the stable coin you know >> well it's not I I would I don't think it's necessarily a hole in the stable coin thesis because there could be a regional play to these stable coins and the dumb or not sovereign leaders ers that see the US dollar coming for their local currency could go and create a stable coin themselves.

>> Nobody wants any stable coin of like you only want the only stable coins and this is something that we practice in terms of our investment. I don't want to hear about your non-dollar stable coin. Nobody wants it. So like don't pitch me. >> People don't even want dollars. >> I love it. Let alone I mean we're in the US so like I'm all for the US dollars. I mean it's not about whether you like it or not. It's just like nobody wants it. If you talk about fiat currencies, the best of the worst >> Yeah. >> is a dollar. >> I mean, even if they gave you some sort of like like even if at at the central bank or the sovereign level, they gave you some perks like some income.

>> I mean like take Singapore, Hong Kong, a lot of these Asian countries, maybe these aren't the right right example, but like the domestic banking system is very efficient in most countries, even developing countries because they they leaprogged all of their legacy, right? They have mobile payments, they you know, you bank on your phone, it's instantaneous, right? to bank and local currencies extremely fine. The issue is that like there's high inflation, you have very low ability to generate returns to outpace that and so you want you know foreign dollar-based assets and that's what is restricted and so that's why you want the tethers and the USDC's and that's why your authorities in the banking system don't want you to have them because they want your capital in rupia in peso and all these other things >> that undermines their entire their

entire thing. is a so is the theory when it comes to like France or anything any other country that this could happen to when you know these other bigger ones that finance these countries try to repatriate they and then they sell the the assets in France and and the others is the idea not so much that like the central bank of France is going to print their way out of it but more so that like they need if you're in a France banking system and you want to like retain ownership over your capital you want to like buy Bitcoin so that you don't get your funds locked into >> at a very simple level if I was a depositor. I would move my euro to Germany. That's the first step. Don't even talk about >> German bank.

>> Yeah. Don't even talk about crypto, right? I do not want to hold a euro in a French bank. That is risky. Whether you're a foreigner or I do not want to own a French bond as especially as a foreigner. And the leader of the finance miners of France basically came out and said like France doesn't have a debt problem. Other people have a French debt problem. Like it's your problem that you own my because I'm going to make sure that you can't actually realize that. They said this legit straight up last summer. >> What's the impact on Bitcoin of that? So, I wrote rant through this in my article and the impact on Bitcoin is okay, we're talking about money, printer, go burn. We want it to really burn right?

>> Yes. So, like we we need them we need the Fed to really like step on the gas, right? And they're not doing it. They're not they're not doing enough yet. >> Oh my god. But the thing about France which is in is interesting I I've learned over you know the last few years is if you talk about the financing of T bills and the basis trade and all those sorts of things 20% of repo financing is BMP paraschen so general and credit o right 20%. massive in terms of their impact on the repo markets. Now, these banks are French banks and they have a lot of debt and as soon as the Japanese and the Germans and everyone else starts selling their debt, they're going to have a solveny crisis and depositors are going to flee to Germany, they're going

to flee to Luxembourg, they're going to flee to all these other Euro nations and all of a sudden they're not going to have a lot of deposits versus all these losses that are nursing on their books. >> These these French banks specifically the three. >> What do you do when you have an issue of hemorrhaging deposits, right? You can't be lending to US hedge funds to do a basis trade. Like some of the largest lenders in this non-bank financial market are the French banks, are the Japanese banks. And if these guys are not lending because their balance sheets are impaired, then all of a sudden the Fed needs to step up. And so the RMP that was paused on August 14th needs to come back even bigger because as Besset needs to increase the size of his issuance, he needs more financing from hedge funds. And the hedge funds need

the banking system. And if you remove 20% of this financing because the French banks are dealing with their own issues in France, >> then the Fed has to plug the hole. That's where we get the burr. >> And so to to just kind of keep going on that on that train of thought, we've got um another another couple Fed meetings this year. We've got this event on November 5th with this buyback of these bonds. Uh you've got the midterms coming up and you know what, next month. So just kind of take us through the next quarter or two as far as like what you would expect to happen from these from the kind of central bank uh from the Fed from this election and just kind of what that what kind of concoction are we stirring here? I mean, I think the number one thing you need to focus on is

France at the end of the day, right? As a near-term catalyst to more money printing, it's that everything else is like, okay, maybe the Fed raises 25 basis points, maybe they don't. Like, it's not really going to matter in terms of like, oh, how do we get Bitcoin to $125,000 like immediately, right? So, I think it matters probably more if Trump continues to bomb Iran and oil keeps going up, right? That's going to put more pressure on global sovereign yields than anything else. And so, everything else is kind of irrelevant. I have no idea what he's going to do, right? And so that's probably the most important thing to a general rise in sovereign yields which obviously impacts countries like France disproportionately and that's what we care about in terms of creating more liquidity. There was a macro post recently by this guy Andy Constan and he was you know basically

equating this quarterly refunding program or quarterly refunding announcement that'll happen on November 5th to the one that Janet Yelllet did back in August of 2023 that marked like the end of the bare market back then. Can you just explain what the quarterly refunding announcement is and what happens in it? >> So, basically, there's a theory that the Treasury should tell the market how they're going to fund the government. Okay, this is our expected receipts, um, deficit, whatever, all that kind of stuff, right? Outlays. Here's how much we're going to borrow. Here are the teners we're going to borrow. Here is the the the schedule of what we're going to borrow. Like predictable ways so that everyone knows what they should be doing. I don't know who which which Treasury Secretary started this sort of

announcement, right? And then in addition to the uh QR is the Tback report. So the large banks have this thing called the Treasury borrowing um advisory committee, right? All the large banks in the US sit on it. They advise the Treasury. The Treasury asks them questions about certain things and they and they write reports and those reports are are published. So like what was important about 2023 and September was that >> they they sold the market on this thing called uh we're going to issue more bills. You essentially drain the reverse repo. So even before >> it was November 5th in 2023, the whole street knew that Jen was going to say this in this um release and they were going to engineer this program to drain the reverse repo. Now I'm I haven't been

following what if there's going to be anything significant happening in November 5th. To my knowledge, all it's going to be is best probably issue more B uh more tea bills. Okay. >> Okay. So what? Right. That's not a big deal. Mhm. >> I'm not exactly I haven't heard them tease anything other than that, you know, okay, more maybe more and more more buybacks. >> Do you think Bessin also kind of follows this principle of no forward guidance? >> Absolutely not. He does what exactly what Janet Yellen did because it has exactly the same problems. >> And so you're still of the mind that the Fed rate is even is somewhat irrelevant to this broader picture because if they do if they do hike, you still get this additional liquidity. Um the real issue here or or the real concern is rising sovereign bond yields that's going to

affect countries like France. That's going to lead to the Fed having to make more of an emergency response than this kind of like you know calculated $6 million emergency response. We don't need just standard. You're not going to get level response. >> We're not going to get what we want in terms of the burr, >> okay, >> from the standard meetings. >> And you're right. You think we would have heard something by now if it was going to happen in >> November. I don't know what like change it up or whatever he's going to do. Like they're going to tell the market. >> Okay. And so just to be clear, do you believe that that is required to send this thing to all-time highs or do you believe that, you know, slow slow growth, right? Is it just more of a speed thing? Like, okay, you you believe

we're in we're in a bull market. It's just a matter of this the pace to get to new alltime highs is dependent on a potential big burr moment. >> Basically the pace. We care about the pace. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Of course. The longer the tits. >> Yeah. Yeah, we got like 15 more minutes and you've got a sick watch. Thank you. >> Do you mind if we just zoom out and just talk like I don't know like what your life is like? >> Like like do you have kids, man? >> What kind of watch is that? >> This is um uh Otsuka Lowtech. So it's a very indie Japanese guy and you have to uh submit a it's a lottery to get one of these watches. They're not super I mean in terms of like indie watches is not that expensive but it's hard to get and

so I saw one at one of my dealers and then the stores. Oh, I like that. It's cool and I guess fresh. >> Yeah. Are you you a watch guy in general or just kind of >> Yeah, I like I mean I like them. I like you know indie stuff like you know I mean I got all the standard stuff you know the AP Royal Pad but whatever like everyone's got. So got to have the like gota have the new >> and so what what's your daily driver Arthur? I see you posting photos on the way back from tennis sweating bullets in in in some car. >> Yeah, so I have a Ferrari 296 GTS uh like 2023, I think. Um yes, it's chill. >> You can't really drive it. You can't really drive it fast in Singapore. It's just, you know, something to do.

>> And and so you're a big tennis guy. >> Tennis ski. I ski a lot. >> Yeah, >> ski three to four months of the year. >> Favorite spot? Uh Nikko in Hokkaido. >> Yeah, I got I got I got, you know, I drowned in in Myoko in February this year. I was literally drowning. Can't get the snorkel up. >> Yeah, seriously. And then I And then I found myself in southern Argentina for that El Nino and I was there for about two weeks and it was just >> I was there too. It was good. >> Yeah, it was sick. >> Have you ever had uh experience skiing where like >> you've had to like dig yourself or like someone out like just like >> No, we thankfully >> never have that happen. Um but we practice it. So >> I usually ski with the same guide every

season. So we see like 30 40 days together. So, like, you know, it's very important that I know how to [ __ ] save his life cuz he's going to be one in front. >> So, yeah, we'll do a whole day of practice of like, you know, tying somebody up in the sling, like, you know, walking them out of the the zone, running around with the backpacks and the beacons and like, you know, avalanche theory, like all sorts of stuff. So, I spent a lot of time on the the safety aspect. >> And did you grow up with your family skiing or friends or how how did you get into it? >> Uh, my dad started me skiing when I was three and I'm from Buffalo, so it's cold.

husky. >> It's not as fun in Buffalo. Look at this [ __ ] ice. >> Yeah, Japan is is much more fun. >> And you know the thing about Japan that I found that I liked, I mean out west in states I ski a lot. Uh Utah, Colorado, it's just steep, gnarly, and you get powder, but it's like this like it's like, you know, you have to go on these black runs to get powder that are like very gnarly. >> I know. Jackson's pretty good, though. Jackson's got good powder. Yeah, Japan not so high elevation and there's obviously steep spots, but I, you know, when I was skiing there, I just found it to be, you know, there was a lot of like these blue runs or black runs, but it was like, dude, I'm not like terrified at the at the angle that I'm skiing on.

I'm just I'm just floating and having fun and like dodging trees, but like I'm not like like terrified. Like I'm not >> Yeah. So, the thing is the thing that's going to kill you in Japan is usually a gully, like a river. There's um some of those you might fall on one of those and get covered by the avalanche over top or you hit a tree. That's what kills people most most of the time. Or being and like going where you shouldn't go and that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's not like Europe or New Zealand or you know out west in the US you get these like 40° shoots and like boom, you get done by an avalanche. >> And so one of the things Arthur that that I found has been a constant is like I get this this this fix out of doing

like you know I'm going to go to to Philippines and surf after this. It's prime season there. You know pretty solid reef breaks call like two to four meters. It's been a little while, so I need to get tuned up for a couple days first and then I'll and then I'll charge. And I was just texting Chris, Chris from Placeholder, and he's a big surfer guy. And I was like, "Dude, I'm just ready to get a full barrel, get out of there, and like get my mind blown." Like, and he's just like, "You got to commit." He's like, "It's all about the commitment." And so, you know, I get this adrenaline fix from action sports that I don't need to just, you know, rip a line or like, you know, go chase a chick or like rip, you know, get drunk as because I'm like I get that fix from

that and it's a much healthier fix than like, you know, those previously mentioned things. And I also find that I take a lot of risk in markets, right? I'm like I'm I'm I'm happy to have like, you know, my chips on the table. And so, it's kind of like I find like how you do one thing is how you do everything. I'm just curious if you've had any like, you know, learnings, takeaways, if you see things similar in your life, just Yeah. I mean, I like I like skiing and I do a lot of ski touring. So, you're basically in the middle of nowhere, you know, with your backpack on, your food and all your safety gear and stuff and you're just hiking volcanoes. I just find it very peaceful, meditative, and obviously you're super present cuz, you know, you could die. It's definitely >> risk out there and you've got other

people in your group that you are responsible for. An avalanche happens, you got to dig your friend, you got five minutes before he dies or she dies, right? So, it's, you know, very, you know, makes you present, which is great. I think I think I think you know the people who do climbing or bass jumping or the squirrel suits like they're all about the the flow state presentness of all these activities and that's why when you have this you know existential risk you dial in and there's nothing else that matters except that mountain >> you get out of there. Yeah. You have to come back home safe. >> Yeah. Like going in the ocean on big days as well is the same thing. Like there's no there's no like you're just eyes are on like the next one, right?

It's just like you you know you better lock in, you know? Sim similar question just kind of reframing it like do you find that your risk management strategy or philosophy is similar the way that you manage risk on a mountain in in an avalanche or you manage risk risk in the markets? >> Thankfully I don't have to take a lot of risk. Um I think at least in our our trading strategy. So, you know, thank faithfully to us, we have a lot of capital, so we don't have to make 100x. But I get it. A lot of people in the trenches like, you know, I believe everything you guys are saying, but I don't have a lot of money and getting expensive and I I don't see a forward path of my job making enough ends meet.

So, yeah, I got to tra trade this 1 million market cap memecoin and hope it runs to 100, right? Like, this is the only way that I can make enough absolute money to make it matter, right? But I'm not in that position. So I can, you know, a 2x return for me is great, but I can put a lot of capital against it and I'm not gonna take I'm not going to trade a, you know, sub one billion market cap coin because I don't have to. So how much money >> does it take to like, you know, there's been like a bunch of numbers that kind of get thrown out every once in a while by different, you know, people that are like at this point you reach the point of diminishing returns where it's like, well, not diminish. Yeah, I guess diminishing because you don't go

backwards ever, but like you know it it once you cross 50 million it's like the next incremental dollar doesn't mean as much as the incremental dollar getting to 50 million for example. Have you found that like there's a number where it's like that's kind of all you need? >> I don't know what that number is. I think it's more so why do you why do I engage in financial trading? Because it's a game and the yard stick is how much money you make. I like playing games. So that's that's the competitive nature of it. And and I think you know pick any of your like super successful hedge fund managers that's why they're doing it. They don't about you know another hundred billion dollars or 10 billion matter right like but and and on the like what is enough like I don't know it's when you get freedom of your

time whatever it is like you like to do you are now able to do it whenever you want to do it. It could be just hanging out with your kids right you don't need a s you know a billion dollars or a million dollars whatever it is depends on where you are. On that note, you know, what was the what what was the difference for you? And I'm sure it happened quick with Bitcoin, you know, going from zero to 10 mil. What was the difference from that versus going from 10 to 100 versus going from 100 to a bill? Like what what was the core mental or strategy differences that you had to play? I mean, obviously it's just like risk, you know, preservation, but like >> how did your mindset evolve? >> Yeah. And like what was like what what what Yeah. What changed from from those

points? >> I mean, just drink better wine, eat better food. Other than that, like I I got into this game because like I wanted control of my time. And thankfully, you know, ever I only did five years in banking. And even the five years I did, I wasn't like some of my friends, right? I you know, I got in the office at like 7:30. I took two hours for lunch. I was done by 5. Like, and if my boss said stay later, I was you. I'm not. I make money. So yourself. So like it's like I wasn't And this is why I only lasted 5 years. >> There's a reason that >> you know, >> so I was like always like, you know, I didn't need to be the rich. just like okay I can go to yoga when I want to go and go you know hit the weight sack and

I was happy right it did whether it was having a few hundred grand or like millions it's kind of irrelevant >> so you feel like you had freedom over your time even when you were a banker >> way more freedom than everyone else that I knew and it wasn't obviously in investment banking where you like are doing pitch decks and all this kind of stuff >> and where do you where do you think that mindset came from in the first place >> I just always wanted to you know be able to play the sports I wanted to play or you know go where I wanted to go and I just that's just how I am >> like the you mindset you know that like I'm going to play the sports that I want to play I'm going to go where I want to It comes from like be good at what

you're doing, right? Not like you like I'm at my job. It's like I make money and my job is to make you money. So get out of my face about coming to this meeting at 6:00. >> So Arthur you kind of you know invented per actually you liquidated me in 2017. >> I didn't you no you liquidated me. You me a long time ago >> months of depression. I ran up my snack and it was gone. And it's my fault. But you definitely had my wick. Um you you get my stuff. Um anyhow and and so you know you came in in this part of the industry where it was like banks, big government sucks, smart contracts, take the middleman out, um the truth machine, you know, 2008 the industry now and when

you come in, it's like FOMO, memecoin, social trading, this influencer is rich. I'm watching Rasmer and Thread Guy and like I'm trying to be like a young billionaire. Do you still do you still have that same cipher punk like kind of ethos deep down and like how do you think that you know how like do you think that the industry has lost it? No, I don't think I think all these are representations of the same thing, right? The whole financial nihilism is a reflection of the fact that money doesn't matter, right? If you take away, you know, the dignity of human labor, then you get this you get the society that we have, right? Western society, Eastern society, everyone's kind of in in the same boat unless you're at the top of this of this food chain. And the social trading, the you know, influencer

economy, all this stuff, it's all the same stuff. you we guess might have expressed it differently back right after 2008 but obviously the younger generation has a different frame of reference for the same problem. So are you have to you know with that in mind I appreciate that because like the industry I think was gone through a bit of an identity crisis in the bare market. I mean we always do in the bare markets institutions are here ah we've lost the ethos. I don't know. I think, you know, there's some there's some good returnings to privacy and like uh you know, I think self-custody is something that is is been has been a struggle for a lot of people and I think it will continue to be. But, you know, something else is this kind of uh fame and like I'm just curious if you regret being so

famous in the industry. >> I mean, I'm famous in crypto. I'm not really fly do you f do you fly private all the time? >> No. I uh I love Singapore Airlines. I think it's the best airline in the world. If I could fly direct on SQ, I'll fly on SQ, right? Like at the end of the day, private flights are more dangerous than a commercial airline. Like you look at, you know, hulls lost, right? So you want to be if you can fly on a on a commercial airline and you fly first class or sweets, whatever it is that you can afford, great. I do fly a lot private because, you know, maybe I want to go skiing in Argentina and that's the fastest way to get there, right, so it really depends on where I'm going and the airlines that I have to choose from.

>> Yeah. Our first podcast with you was like 2022, 2021 maybe. Um, you know, we've all, we were probably 21 then, 20, you know, and like we, you know, we had a lot of freedom then and, you know, the number on the screen is much bigger than it was then and but, you know, somehow I have more responsibilities and I have to work harder than I did back then, which is funny how it works. Um, and so I just wanted to see if you had any any words of wisdom or any just any you know I think you've seen our growth over the last years and you know the whole media market has is different and it's consolidated and I think you know we're we're really gunning for it at this point and so if you had any words about the roll up and just kind of your

experience on the show uh that would be >> I mean I think at the end of the day it's and this is what I tell young people like oh yeah what do I need to do in this new economy? Well, unlike when I started, you could have a personality at a large company, right? Like >> I think there's I you guys are based in New York. I remember it was what a year ago year ago, two years ago, there was this article in was it FT or Wall Street Journal. It's all these like 20-year-old bankers. I got a Rolex. I'm going to I don't know what the club is you need to go to these days. And like I'm hot. I work at Goldman Sachs and I work at PWC, whatever, right? I'm like grid on you guys cuz like if you did that when I was

an analyst, you would be fired immediately, right? you were not allowed to talk to the press about how good your life was as a baker or you went to these clubs or you know did whatever the you did right so I think now it's about creating your own personal brand with these new technologies with the internet the distribution obviously with AI and all this it comes down to the distribution solved now it's like okay create your own brand that's how you become successful and obviously this is what you guys have been able to do because you know running a podcast in whatever form whether it's you know podcasting now or it's a variety show you know decades ago So it's all about personality, but now with the distribution and the internet, you can do these things without a lot of money and it's all about how much effort you

put into it and your personality and connecting with your audience. And obviously you guys have been very successful at that. So I think you guys are the model for the younger generation because it's all about what you can create yourself. It's not about writing on the coattails of some company who doesn't give a about you. >> Yeah. And I mean that's been and first of all I appreciate that. Um and second of all, I mean that's been the mo like I I dropped out. Rob's got a math and philosophy degree, you know. I I called him and I was like, "Dude, you can either work in academia for the rest of your life, make your 60k a year and be smarter than the rest of us, or we can make some money." And he was like, "Let's make some bread."

>> That phone call a little bit. >> Um, >> yeah, man. This has been great. >> Yeah, this has been a lot of fun. >> Arthur, I appreciate it. >> I mean, Arthur, like what do you what kind of market cap you think flop can get to? >> Yeah. talk to us about flop. >> Yeah. So I mean at the end of the day this this a binary bet, right? If we believe that agents are going to proliferate and I do and we believe that compute will get really cheap. It is and it will continue to get cheaper as we build more data centers and there's going to be it's trillions quadrillions of these things running around doing so. This is the whole thesis behind the the tokenization, right? And so they need an economic layer or transaction layer to coordinate their activity just like we

use currencies fiat currencies obviously not crypto to coordinate our care our our activity. The scarcity in the agentic world is compute and you know how efficient do you do things using compute and so whatever currency you use now this is what we're building flop to do it should be convertible directly into compute and once you get there you think about okay there's all these agents they are 20 on 24/7 they communicate at the speed of light and they conceptually handle things in a way that we can't even comprehend because it's just not how our organic brains logically function so what follows that if the 8 billion 8 billion human economy has created all these like you know multiundred billion dollar payments

networks then the quadrillion infinite number of agents are going to create the most valuable network ever created is going to be the one that powers the agentic economy now I'm taking that bet I think I want to have a shot at flop being that so it's either that or it's zero >> and so that's a bet and I like that >> I love it you're the I appreciate it, man. >> Yeah, that was awesome. Thanks. >> Cheers. >> Yeah. Yeah.