Polymarket's $2B Deal with ICE Changes Everything | Weekly Roundup

Transcript

the technology changes so so fast that if you're not close to what's going on the ground level, you're kind of gonna miss these big kind of generational opportunities. Do you actually think that the users on Poly Market understand which blockchain it's it's on? And I remember having this conversation with Shane like it's like, hey, why why is it on Polygon? He's a very practical-minded CEO and leader and I think very much obsessed with what does the end customer see? Basically, I congratulated him. He said, thank you. uh you know today was a day to celebrate then to smell the roses. Tomorrow it's back to war, right? And that has always been his mindset is every day he wakes up going to war to win this market and to build the business that he thinks uh is going to

just be, you know, generational. This episode is brought to you by Block Damon. You'll hear more about them later in today's episode. The Digital Asset Summit, our premier institutional conference, is right around the corner in London from the 13th to the 15th. will be at the old Billings Gate with some of the largest banks, funds, and allocators as they explore how to gain exposure to crypto. We'll have a ton of great speakers, including Dan Moorehead, Joe Luben, Guy Young, and a bunch of amazing side events so you can meet some of the largest names in the industry. So, follow the link in the show notes to find out more and use code Empire 200 for £200 off your ticket. Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This

podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Block Works. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the companies, funds or projects discussed. What's up everybody? Welcome back to Empire. We got the roundup. We got Rob back in action. Rob almost have forgotten that Rob was part of the crew. Honestly, Rob, join the last time you joined us. I I can I can I tell you something? I It was two weeks ago. In that two weeks, I've had like four people come up to me and be like, "You've really transformed Empire. Like, you should keep doing what you're doing."

I'll tell you who. Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. Your cousin, your wife. No, no, no, no, no. It was like it was like literally in Singapore at um this like side event, a a guy who's like a like a sales guy at like one of the custodians came up to me and he was like, I just want to tell you something. He's like, you got to keep doing what you're doing. Like you've transformed that podcast now every week. And then and then he asked you to all the Dragonfly assets. And and then I heard it from another VC yesterday. So, you know, I'm just telling you like we're we're a team, but it's been brought to another level, you know, like it's 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals five. So,

well, should we have a a prediction market of or like a real time barometer of like sentiment of Empire Pod? Like where where's that Yann? We got to do the TB the the the tickers in the bottom. We got to do sentiment live stream coming. Coming, sir. Coming. Yeah, we have nice new design for Empire coming out. We got the tickers. We got all that stuff. the whole Listen, I I gotta get on the graphic though, okay? Like, you know, right now I'm I'm tagged on the Twitter, but the graphic you buy. Rob's Rob's that kind of guy that you extend a hand, he chops off your arm. Rob's in the middle of this picture right now, too. We're just on the side of Rob. Baby steps. Baby steps. It's like vesting, you know? It's like you gota you got to work your way up to it. It

took me, for what it's worth, it took Listen, man. I'm just gonna say, it took me three and a half years to get a hoodie. Three and a half years to get a hoodie. Well, that's cuz no one got a hoodie. Mike and I were so cheap with merch. We were like, "No one gets merch. We don't It's a stupid use of money." I now actually think it's a good use of money. But yeah, Sante, I I don't know. You said it's like investing. And I I think you understand now how I invest and I don't invest with any patience whatsoever. No, no, we we got that from the get-go, man. There's um you've been busy, sir. Uh I mean, look, there's a lot to talk about, guys. Going back to business. Um let's let's start with market. Let's start with Poly Market. So, I think um I

think you two can both do some victory uh laps here. Um Santi, obviously you were Parafi when you guys did um Poly Market very very early. I think I think uh Ben and Parfire are maybe the largest shareholder um from second first or second largest shareholder. Yeah, I think they're I think they're number two behind Founders Fund. Behind Founders Fund. Well, and now ICE. So, they're number three behind Founders Fund. Yeah. So the the big news is um uh they are rais they they raised they are raising they raised two billion from ICE. ICE owns NY and a lot of other capital markets businesses. Um but most well known for owning the New York Stock Exchange and they invested two billion uh as well as a they have a data distribution deal or markets

distribution deal as well with the New York Stock Exchange and ICE uh at a I think it was $9 billion valuation. Shane becomes the I think the headline was the youngest self-made millionaire in the uh billionaire in the world. Um people proceeded to share a lot of cringy internal screenshots which uh you know I can rant about if we want but anyways hats off to Poly Market. Nice work to you too. Um but would love to hear maybe more color on this deal. Poly market also announced Shane also announced two other deals that had happened that never really got announced. One was I think led by Founders Fund, one was led by Blockchain Cap. I might be getting that wrong, but yeah, maybe you guys could give us a little bit more color on on just like Yeah. the success story here.

Yeah. I mean, Sant's been Yeah, he's been in it longer, so he should do more of the conversation about the the early days. We um so that round that happened in 2023, late 2023, early 24 um we did alongside Founders Fund, they priced it. We were the largest uh investor in that round. Um and then the you mentioned the next two rounds. The next round was led by blockchain cap right before the um right before the election uh which we also participated in and then there was another founders fund led round out of their growth fund earlier this year um at a at a $1.2 billion valuation that we we also participated in. So so we've been backers of Shane for you know call it you know coming up on two years. Um

we've known him for a long time. We've been I think believers in him as an entrepreneur for since the beginning. He's like got such you know just incredible ambition, maniacal focus like even during the worst of the bare markets 22 and 23. He just was always convinced that he was going to create a generational company which will created the markets for every everything. He I I think you know is obsessive in a way very very few entrepreneurs are. You know there's a lot of entrepreneurs I mean there's two entrepreneurs on this podcast with me and like the level of obsession that he has is just a level that I think very few people are able to

reach. And um that was Can you go can you go deeper on what that actually looks like? Um because I think a lot of founders maybe are listening being like I'm obsessed. I work hard. Um, and I've spent a little bit of time with Shane, and I I I know what you're saying, but only because I've spent some time with him. Can you maybe go deeper on that? Yeah, I I think with Shane, um, he had a he had a vision very early on. And, you know, he was not the first prediction market to get launched and and Sante could probably talk a lot about this too because he was there in the beginning, but he was not the first prediction market to get launched. He you know there was Augur which obviously Joey Krug uh was a f one of the founders of and is at founders fund down led that

round. There was you know Koshi was launched actually before um before poly market but he had this vision that at when he's a young guy that he was going to create a market for everything. That was the vision. That was the thing he said from the earliest of days and then he put it in his tweet yesterday. Right. Every time I have talked to him since then, his belief was that uh prediction markets and event contracts created better information flow. They needed to exist to coalesce uh information and incentives and they were needed there to be an a market for everything so you could have direct access in a way to express views, right? And that, you know, vision of his started, I think, in

the late, you know, 201s. And every single time you would talk to him after that, that was what he was building. There was never, oh, like, ah, hey, listen, I don't necessarily have PMF yet, or hey, this market hasn't done well. Like, maybe I'll do something else. There was never, oh, like, you know, I've had this, um, he did the the, you know, he kind of had this thing with the CFTC in which they settled and he didn't waver at that point. You know, FTX went down. He almost ran out of money. He just paid himself less. Kept working on it. Right? There was never a time where I think he had anything on his mind other than I am going to build this business and no matter what people are saying to me, no matter how bearish people are, no matter how little money I

have, no matter how um the market is perceiving what I am doing, I know that this is going to be a generational company and I am going to build it and people will understand eventually. And you know, yesterday uh or or two days ago was kind of the culmination of that. But and and I wrote in a tweet that I put I also think it's the beginning of now the rest of the world realizing what he said, right? And now the rest of the world coming into understanding that he is there needs this needs to exist, right? And I I um him and I exchanged a few texts on Tuesday and you know to his credit and I I love this about him every time I talk to him. He said you know basically I congratulated him. said, "Thank you. Uh, you know, today was a

day to celebrate, then to smell the roses. Tomorrow, it's back to war, right?" And that has always been his mindset is every day he wakes up going to war to win this market and to build the business that he thinks, uh, is going to just be, you know, generational. Um, and so that's what I loved about him, man. Um, as as been tradition now, everyone's tweeting about like screenshots about conversations with Shane. I I'm going back down memory lane. Are you pulling up some old emails here, dude? No. No. No. Not emails. March 2021, we're closing the round. Um, it was I think the first round at like 15 million or so.

15 million, I think. So, we're like sub 20. We participated and it's it's it's, you know, testament of what Rob's saying. You know, I go back and we we were back in the early days. Shane and I were going back and forth. What's that? A 600x. So, it's 9 billion. We're uh you know I will say Shane is one of those founders that and I tweeted about this the other day which is what was different because you had Augur funny enough Joey started Augur didn't work now as a founders fund did the round one of later rounds um on poly market and look there's a couple things of like why this actually worked and look a lot of it is easy to like in hindsight try to like diagnose and like path dependency and

whatnot Not, but it really starts with the founder. I mean, Shane Shane was early in Ethereum. He was like a crypto, you know, cipher punk uh was at NYU and kind of had started Union didn't work out well and then was like, "Hey, I want to do prediction markets. It's the future of media. I'm like obsessed with this idea and and we share with that like I was like absolutely like you know Parifi we we had been investors in Augur. It didn't work." And so it's just a really good example of you. It pays to revisit the thesis which is a lot of times people make an investment doesn't work and say totally discredits the category and crypto. How many times have we been in that scenario where like DeFi didn't work and so okay you discredit that or or per onchain didn't work and

then you have hyperlquid. So again, like the technology changes so so fast that if you're not close to what's going on on the ground level, you're kind of going to miss these big kind of generational opportunities. Um I think poly market prediction markets are still very very early. Um this idea of putting markets on everything is is just nent, right? Um but yeah, it's it's been a long long grind in the making. Shane is just super adamant about idea this idea the prediction markets are going to be huge and he stuck with it. Um I I guess like it's important to underscore you timing is important. The elections were super important, right?

Uh I would say like there there were key pivotal moments in the evolution of of poly market that you had like the first Trump election where it was contested and it was super heated and the attention just went to Poly Market because it was like a market and people were pointing to that and then You also have the downfall of mainstream media and correct and Trumpformatform and then you had you know geopolitical tension and people are looking at like you know events in the Middle East and like I remember it is in my estimation like the most breakthrough kind of consumer application the crypto has had and I tweeted about this the other day which is maybe something that we can talk about here or not. It's this idea of like do you actually think that the users on Poly Market understand which

blockchain it's it's on. I would tell you like you we all know where it is, but do you like it's on Polygon? And I remember having this conversation with Shane like it's like hey why why is it on Polygon? And and and he just he's a very practical-minded CEO and leader and I think very much obsessed with what does the end customer see? And then of course the crypton native crowd jumps in and says, "Well, what happens if Polygon's down? That's going to disrupt the service and all this like and it's fair. It's true, but you know, it's one of those it's it's just a good example of um do one thing really well and just continue to double down on that."

It's not to say Poly Market's perfect, by the way. like there's a tail end of markets that you know liquid sourcing liquidity for markets had been an issue and the Oracle dispute resolution had been an issue with like UMA and there was contentious stuff about how to do that and um but yeah no it's hats off to him Shane you know love to have you on the pod now that you've announced everything and I know he was I know he was sort of in a quiet period to get licensed in the US and whatnot through to this acquisition but we'll have to have him on I think he it would be a great conversation he told me his next immediate appearance in the US is going to be 60 Minutes I think so.

Yeah. 60 minutes. Well, I don't I don't know if he's actually doing that or I'd rather do 60 minutes than Empire. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. That's insane. That's great. Come on, Shane. Across 30 plus networks and 180 end points. Block Damon Earnstack unites staking and DeFi into a single institutional toolkit for crypto rewards. With multi-layered security, full asset control, and 247 support, Block Damon Earnstack is built for scale and regulatory clarity. Non-custodial staking, and seamless DeFi access all-in-one stack, direct access to DeFi with no intermediate smart contract or vaults. To book a demo, make sure to click the link in the show notes or head over to Block Damon Earnstack to find

out more. Thanks to BlockDamon for making today's episode possible. The machine economy is here. Devices are monetizing data for their users all over the world. Tokenized robots are generating revenue for token holders. The first machine economy free zone is live in the Emirates. And it's all happening on Peak, the machine economy computer. Head to peak.xyz, that's peaq.xyz, to find out how you can benefit from the age of automation, or click the link in the show notes to find out more. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk terms and conditions apply.

Um, I have a question for you guys. So, Shane, if you spend time with him, um, I'm going to people will laugh at me for saying this, but like he he has aura and he has, um, he has like a way of carrying himself. And actually, I've talked to ex Poly Market people, um, who who, you know, built helped build Poly Market with him. And I was like, was, you know, what's Shane's like deal like? Is he a really good engineer? They're like, oh, no, not at all. They're like, "Is he like an amazing product designer?" Like, "He does product design, but he's not like world class at it." And um and uh they're like I was like, "What what's what's the deal?" He's like, "He just drives the company forward." Oh, yeah.

And he's got kind of like a way a vibe of doing it that makes other people want to be around him. And I remember being at like the all-in dinner with uh you know, Chimath and Calcanis and all these guys in Miami. And Shane walks into the room and it was like it was like Trump walked into the room. I mean like everyone basically just like there's all these famous people in the room. Everyone goes towards him. So I guess my question to you guys like Rob and Santi as you coach other founders and now Santi you're in the founder seat and like Rob you you look at a lot of founders like what is the lesson to be learned there?

Listen, I think in my mind what Shane does is not something that can be learned, right? And so there's all these things that you can learn as a founder around, you know, business development and, you know, kind of convincing people to do the things that you want and engaging with them where they're at. And um those are not the things that like Shane does really well and the reason he gets people to do what you know is good for Poly Market or good for him. What Shane has is he just has to your point a an ability to share his vision and get other people to buy into his vision. Right there. One of the most important things and I'm sure both of

you guys know this that you can do as a founder is you can hire top talent. You can uh get investors and partners to share your vision to want to be a part of whatever you're building. And it is just again I think his maniacal focus and his belief and unwavering just like like there is no time at which you would talk to him and you would think he ever doubted himself right and like I I'm sure internally I guess I'm not sure but my guess is internally at some point over the last 5 years six years he doubted whether or not this was the the right path forward.

Uh but and never at any point did I talk to him that it did not seem like he actually believed he was going he was going to build a generational company and that it was not just that he was going to build it but this was it and it was always going to be this and so I don't know if you can learn that right but what I do think that you know maybe you can take away from it is that it is important to be the evangelist for your company. It is important to to be a storyteller. It is important to get the right people around the table to hire the right people. That is probably the number one thing that you see all of the best entrepreneurs and CEOs do. They tell the story in a way that gets

everybody else excited and brings everyone else to the table. Yeah, invert. Always invert. Yeah, I I agree with that, Rob. I agree, Santi. I'll help you tell your story. Um, what about on the fundraising side? Because there's a lot of companies that are doing really well right now and a lot of people fundraising and a lot of people raising a lot of money. To go raise $2 billion is not your typical throw together deck, put the data room and like go talk to some VCs type of type of thing. How does something like that come together? It's almost So just I want to make one uh point of clarification is um they raised one billion in primary and then there was a $1 billion tender. Um so so it's um it's a a billion that's

injected into the company. Got it. Um the but but regardless it's $2 billion from ICE. So um to your point still stands. Uh those deals are almost a little bit different typically and and I I don't have like full transparency into how this you know um happened with with Shane and Poly Market. He was um obviously wanted to keep a lot of it close to the vest as it was coming together. Didn't want it to leak, you know, etc. Um and and we don't have a board seat, so um so we weren't there at the board conversations, but they um I I typically in the really strategic deals, the ones that come from people like ICE, um they're both on the M&A side and the investment side, they

happen very much uh in a a kind of a principle principle relationship. So, you know, the founder of one talks to the founder of the other and they hammer out details pretty quickly among the two of them and then they go tell the team to transact, right? And they say, "Okay, well, like listen, like wouldn't it be interesting if these are the things we did together? Don't you think this could transform your company? Don't you think this would be wellreceived by the market?" You know, you saw ISIS stock price traded up on the day it was like up 2% um after the announcement, right?

And they said those types of deals happen almost more informally than a lot of the deals that happen with financial sponsors and that are maybe even smaller because they're the visionaries in the room who decide to do them together and then they go and they tell everybody else to figure out a way to make the math work. Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. I mean, we've all seen the deal with Elon tweeting with uh with Larry Ellison. He's like, "I think you should put a couple billion dollars in the buying Twitter." And it's like, "How much?" I was like, "I don't know. At least one." Um yeah, it's always like a it's always like some of the larger deals just come together easy far easier. Um and and especially if it's not like a sponsorled process. So yeah.

Yeah. When um so Rob uh Shane's been teasing a token, right? He tweeted out BTC, ETH, BNB, Soul, Poly. Um do you guys have any thoughts on if this comes I mean it seems pretty obvious that it's coming, but any thoughts on when it comes? I think it makes sense. Um the question is what is it actually the skeptic in the room might say what does the token do that you're not already accomplishing today in the platform. Yeah, I think that um is it going to be is it going to be a distraction?

And the other reason maybe not to do it would be does this prohibit uh does this prohibit a an IPO, right? I don't think so. My my my guess is that Poly Market will be one of the early companies to both IPO and have a token um that or be acquired maybe. Yeah. Yeah. By by ICE. Yeah exactly. Yeah. I mean there's there's clearly no reason for someone like ICE to do this deal unless they weren't considering future M&A, right? Like every time you see a deal like this, like that is the consideration, right? It doesn't mean it will happen, but that was that was my first thought actually. It's like they're going to buy within, you know, 16 months or so or two years.

Yeah. Um how big of a dagger is this for Khi? I will say one thing on the record. I've never forgotten that Koshi threw shade uh when when Shane You never want to kick someone when they're down and that just has etched an impression on me that I would never use Koshi for that reason. And obviously I'm biased, but like what are you talking about here? Are you talking about the um the Antonio Brown tweets? Dude, they hired a bunch of people to to throw shade on Poly Market when when he was down when the CFTC investigation happened, I think, when he went to when the FDI raided his his apartment. You just don't do that, dude. like focus on your lane and if you want to win, win on a on a fair basis, not just you never want to throw shade on a competitor.

Just don't do that. And so I don't care how good of a product it is. I will never use a platform uh out of principle because of that. And I've never I will never forget that. I'm going to I'm going to say something here that I I I probably I think I've said privately to people, but I probably never said publicly, but I'm just going to I'm going to go for it. uh on the on the podcast. Um I had a a reporter bring up to me somewhat of a conspiracy theory, but um when when the raid happened, I guess you know, whatever that was, November of last year, um it was broken basically while like the news was broken basically while it was happening by a guy, a reporter called uh Dan uh Primk. Um he's kind of like a Yeah, he's like a

tech reporter, VC reporter. um as absolutely as I understand it and this and I'm also regurgitating what I was told by by this other reporter like he has absolutely no um uh contacts at the FBI. He's never broken like an FBI uh reporter uh deal before. He's never, you know, broken any sort of like DOJ type of story before. Um but he does happen to be close to a bunch of people in Silicon Valley. Um and there is a belief among a lot of the call it media community that the um people either at Khy or close to Kawashi leaked under heard it was happening as part of the uh maybe as part of some of the investigation and uh leaked it to uh to

Dan to uh to put that uh to put that out there and that's why it got basically broken by a Silicon Valley tech reporter. Um, and then of course, you know, we know for a fact that they went and hired a bunch of um, you know, basically, you know, koss or, you know, people on Twitter to go and like tweet about it, right? Um, and then, you know, we've seen, I think, what looks like a significant amount of astroturfing uh, over the last, you know, few weeks specifically ahead of this announcement. And it just sort of feels like there is just a habit of like, you know, unethical behavior. Um that uh for me is talks a lot and says a lot about um you

know whether or not like I I would want to interact with you know that business. Listen, man. You want to you want to preserve your reputation. Like if you want to win, win fair. Win because your product's better. Um and and you know, don't don't discredit a competitor. like just win because you're better. Yeah. I asked um we have a episode actually with the Koshi founder coming out that I recorded with him and I asked him some of this stuff. Uh we recorded in person. It'll either come out this coming week. I'm trying to get there's a big acquisition that's getting announced on Monday or Tuesday and I'm trying to have them break some of have that announcement go live on uh on on Empire.

So we'll see if that happens. So if that does happen then Kali will go live the week after. But yeah, you guys you guys should listen to that episode. The last thing and then we can move on from Paul. Can you give us like a little like you know what he said to Yeah. like what is the response that I mean the response is basically like uh competition you know competition drives us to be better and we're we're we're friends and I was like I don't think you guys are friends don't seem too friendly um but there's there's more don't want to spoil all of it guys you gota gota get people to listen to the podcast uh the la the last thing we can move on from poly market is so Shane announced these rounds and I was reading through it was like I mean it's a hell of a list

like Ari Emanuel and Naval and Rick Rubin Ron Conway way, Travis Kalanick, and then Saquon Barkley. Uh, and I was like, I was like, Seaquin, that's crazy. Uh, and I was like, okay. So, I started googling Saquon's investments. Listen to this track record. He's invested early in RAMP, Ander, Poly Market, Cognition, Anthropic, and Neurolink. He's invested all of his endorsement money the last four years into Bitcoin. And he's an LP in Founders Fund, Multicoin, and Thrive.

I think he might be the greatest gener investor of this generation right now, dude. ESPN 30, what is it? 30 for30 or whatever that episode. Like most of the time they do it on athletes that go broke, but like he's up there with like Shaquille O'Neal, I think, also has made more money outside the court than he has in in his entire like NBA career just because he he was so good at a lot of these guys just take their endorsement money now. They don't like Marshon Lynch famously didn't spend a single dollar of any of his contracts. Yeah, Marshon Lynch. Uh I I guess Magic Johnson also has like a huge portfolio outside like but yeah I think I think he might be the greatest to ever do it.

Yeah. Yeah. Across 30 plus networks and 180 endpoints. Block Damon earn stack unites staking and DeFi into a single institutional toolkit for crypto rewards. With multi-layered security, full asset control and 247 support. Block Damon Earnstack is built for scale and regulatory clarity. Non-custodial staking and seamless DeFi access allin one stack. Direct access to DeFi with no intermediate smart contract or vaults. To book a demo, make sure to click the link in the show notes or head over to Block Damon Earnstack to find out more.

Thanks to Block Damon for making today's episode possible. The machine economy is here. Devices are monetizing data for their users all over the world. Tokenized robots are generating revenue for token holders. The first machine economy free zone is live in the Emirates and it's all happening on Peak, the machine economy computer. Head to peak.xyz, that's paq.xyz to find out how you can benefit from the age of automation, or click the link in the show notes to find out more. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk, terms, and conditions apply.

I'd love to talk about this idea of the stable coin duopoly coming to an end. There was actually pretty interesting news this week that kind of went under the radar, which is Jupiter's launching uh a new stable coin on Salana in partnership with Athena actually. So Jupiter, I think people don't fully understand just like how massive the Jupiter ecosystem has become. Um and Jupiter sits at a lot of the trading that happens and like money movement that happens on Salana. So, they're actually launching uh Jupusd and they're doing it with Athena's infrastructure and backed by USDTB and USDE. Um, and it actually it reminded me of this Nick Carter piece. So, I don't know if you guys uh Robin Santi, did you guys read this piece? The stable coin duopoly is ending.

No no I skimmed it. Yeah. Yeah. It it was a good piece by Nick. It basically just makes the point that like look in in throughout history in crypto, we've had two stable coins, circle and tether. And now you have uh both with Genius and all these other companies that allow you to launch stable coins like M0 and Paxos and Agora, you have the ability for you know hundreds of people to have their own stable coins and you know it's like two years ago we were all talking about does it make sense for everyone to have their own chain. Now we're talking about does everyone have it make have does it make sense for everyone to have their own stable coin. Um but yeah I'd love to get your guys' take on just like uh Rob I know you spend a lot of time in stable

coins like what what do you think happens from here? like who, you know, we we really only have a it it is USDC and Tether and their market shares are coming down a little bit, but like they're still obviously the dominant players. Um, who who else becomes dominant here? Like will we see a bank have one of the biggest stable coins? Will we see a uh, you know, a fintech will be cryptonative people? Like how do you what do you think about this? Um, I don't think it'll be cryptonative. Uh, so I think I would would rule that one out. I listen there are two things that are happening here which is that incentives are driving every company every wallet every fintech to want to have their own stable coin right um either it's for branding

reasons it's definitely for economic reasons um it's because they want to control the way those economics are shared there's just a a very clear understanding that these companies if they own the distribution already. They don't think that they should be sharing all of those economics or giving up all of those economics to, you know, the whoever the issuers, right? Um, and they also think there are things that they can do around loyalty. There are things that they can do around, you know, additional yield. There are things they can do around that create like stickiness in their product if they have their own stable coin. That is the incentive. And so we are in what I think are the early days actually of people launching their own stable coins. Now

the fact of the matter is is that people don't really want to launch their own stable cocoin in so much as that they have to go manage their own liquidity and they have to build out their own APIs and they have to build out the wallet infrastructure etc. What they'd rather do, of course, is they'd rather go and use, you know, one of these service providers who has built the API connectivity into the ramps who have deal, you know, direct me to Redeem, etc. And so, you know, that's why you're seeing people use, you know, bridge and and Agora and um and Paxos and etc., right? And so, um and and Athena, of course, um the that's going to continue to happen. Now, will any of these single like issued stable coins for like a specific fintech

or a specific financial services company be humongous? Unclear to me, right? Because they're, you know, typically only really distributed at the like point of contact in that, you know, whatever that that that company is, right? And like we've seen this with PayPal for instance, right? We've had pay pay USD, you know, that's um issued by Paxos and they've done a little bit of work to distribute it through their own uh you know application, right? But they haven't really pushed it as hard as they could have. Um and then they've done you know work to incentivize adoption of it in DeFi, which was really just meant paying a lot of money to DeFi proto people who are holding it, right?

But and it's grown and it's grown to some level because of that. Will it grow to you know 150 billion or 200 billion or 300 billion because of that unclear to me especially at a time when you know PYUSD is maybe the only like you know big you know fintech to have one out there at the moment but now let's say that every fintech has one right in the future and so I think we're just going to start seeing a lot of fragmentation and there's still going to be you know call it like the big um general purpose you know stable coins that are out there that are continuing to do But that said, like I don't think like I think Circle is in a somewhat tenuous position because they're really focused on being like the regulated stable coin

and for like you know businessto business transactions etc. And it's like very clear that, you know, if JP Morgan were to tell all of their customers that they could do treasury management on a JP Morgan stable coin and it it was better for them that like the people who are using Circle now for that purpose like maybe wouldn't use uh, you know, USDC anymore. Um, I think Tether is like very focused on, you know, the global south and they have brand recognition in the global south where like people don't say I want a stable coin. They say I want, you know, a I want Tether specifically, but they're still very much distributed by like the centralized exchanges, right? And so the centralized exchanges were to to, you know, say, hey, we want, you know, more of the the yield. That could be a problem for them.

So there is still, I think, opportunities or like, you know, surface area for attack. Um and I but I think we're in for a um a multi- you know month period maybe couple year period of just like disagregation of stable coins. There's always like a bundling and unbundling phases, but like the reality is where does the brand and recognition at the end of it it ends with one thing which is the US dollar and so people people are not going to necessarily have an affiliation is at least my hypothesis around hey I want tether USDT or USDE or PYUSD. It's like it's uh I worry if you're in that game stable coin issuers and it's challenging. I'd rather

PayPal, my appreciation is they haven't really pushed it as much because, you know, primarily last year it was difficult from a regulatory standpoint. They're pushing it now. They're doing it. They're I I was talking to one of the board members. They're they're definitely pushing it now. PayPal actually as a company is deeply I think over it. they've been I mean the stock has not behaved quite well but it has distribution has all these merchant relationships you're they're in an interesting position to to really accelerate that and I think ultimately I I would or maybe you're you're become I guess like maybe Rob you can help us dissect because you're investors in a

couple of these but like Athena taking an interesting approach to becoming like a white label kind of provider so to speak in in partnership with Anchorage, right? The first genius act compliant stable coin and then you have stablecoin issuers like Agora like how do you not to spend too much time on this but like where difficult to say because you're investor in all these but like where do you think what's a more defensible business model Athenas or PayPal's or Agoras? How do you kind of see the stable coin map matrix?

Do you want to be the platform that lets people issue the stable coins or do you want to be the stable cocoin issuer yourself or the distributor or the distributor or can the distributor be the issuer and if and so then it just collapses one layer? Well, I think it's that's a bit of a misnomer of a question. Um, and maybe you see smirking. Um, but the the the reality is is like being the infrastructure like Santi Santi I'm invested in Athena and Agora but but the being the infrastructure layer uh is I clearly I'm not this Kel conversation that just happened. So um no no but but the being the infrastructure layer is potentially defensible depending on you know how

much infrastructure that you're able to provide right so I think like Santi your point is getting a little bit to like if you are just the stable coin issuer is that a defensible piece of the value chain right and I think if you looked at how circle has kind of changed their business over the last year it's clear that they're telling you in the market that they don't think just being the stable coin issuer is defensible, right? What they're telling you is that they think they need to be doing other things that make them into a payments company that and that is where they get defensible. That is where they make their margin over time. Um I think that is probably right. Right. If you look at bridge, what has bridge done? Bridge is now, you know, they're they're the

stablecoin issuer underneath a few of these things at this point. Um but they are also offering people you know orchestration. They're also people people virtual accounts. They're offering people um the honor offramp. They're offering people uh card product, stablecoin product. And I think you'd be hardressed to find anybody that would tell you in any one of those products they were the best offering. Right? Maybe on um on part of the orchestration their AP they have really good APIs or at least on a relative basis to some other people. But, you know, most of what you hear in the market is that like there's a a better credit card provider, there's, you know, a better stable coin issuer, but there's, you know, maybe a better honorable offer, but there's not somebody who does all of these things, right? Um, and so they go and they offer

this consolidated uh product in a way that is is good um for, you know, a somebody who wants to build, you know, that type of business. And that's sticky because they now own so much part so many parts of like your business and what you do and how you create value. And so I think that's where we're seeing everybody move to, right? Um, Athena is a little of a different uh point because everything that like Athena is a a company or a protocol that is focused on acrewing value to their token. They're focused on accuring value to the protocol and they're not focused on acrewing like equity value in the same way. And what acres value to a protocol is often different I think and and we can all debate on what that looks like.

what a view is a value to the equity or at least it can be the same but there are other things that acrew value to the protocol and that's just like I mean if you look at the price of tokens what is the most correlated thing to the price of most tokens it's TVL right and so increasing TVL is probably in and of itself good for Athena and it accurs value to the token holders value to the protocol its value to everybody else and so they have a bit of a different incentive I think than you know these other people that we're talking to um owning the distribution is also great of course like it is very hard to build a distribution network. Um, it is probably harder to build a distribution network and then also harder to lose a distribution ne network than it is and

easier to build um a uh, you know, the infrastructure layer. But then, you know, maybe easier to lose. But there's reasons to build on both parts of the stack, especially if you know and especially in the direct to consumer side where winning eyeballs is a knife fight and it is hard and there's it's very unclear on how you actually do that uh for a lot of new new companies. Um yeah, I would say just most protocols. Yeah, TVL has been but also velocity that TVL is probably important for certain protocols like like you know depends on if hyperlquid for instance it's velocity I would say oi is important but yeah um don't you think the winners are just

wherever the customers are like phantom launched their own stable coin it's like uh you know you're not going to have like right now you open phantom and it's like USDC USD USDT it's just going to say it's just going to say dollars um yeah well and that's what I'm saying like you're it's hard to build tr like are people gonna be nuanced enough or have a preference for which stable coin? No. If it's regulated, if it's compliant, like if you if you have the trust that you have through your platform of choice, uh your bank, your NEO bank of choice, which is an evolving narrative now, shocker.

Uh but like Plasma for instance, hey, like people are going to care necessarily what type of, you know, provider in the hood. I don't know. Um did you see that Coinbase updated? You know how on Coinbase you get 4% for holding USDC? You see they took that away unless you're a um Yeah, they're they're bringing the uh non-member rate down to 0% APY. So, if you are a Coinbase one member, like if you're a subscri, you know how they have their SAS platform, if you subscribe to the platform, uh if you're a Coinbase One member, I think it's five bucks a month or 10 bucks a month, you get 4% APY, but if you don't, you get 0% APY.

The multiple on multiple on recurring revenue is much higher revenue, baby. Dude, isn't that isn't that what Robin Hood does, too? Like, isn't that Robin Hood Gold where like you have to pay for the monthly and then you get 4%. I didn't know that. That's where your boy Omar who's a huge Robin Hood bull might come in. But you are too. So, I thought I assumed you know. No, no, I I I Yeah, but here's the I was I was on Real Vision earlier this week uh and and someone asked me like what is it about stable coins that make it so interesting? And I think it was it's like go back to simple like lack of financial literacy. I remember reading is that like the amount of money that has sat in a checking account at JP Morgan if you look at their earnings

over the last four years is staggering. Yeah. And you would think that people would be sophisticated enough to like sweep that into a money market account and four trillion dollars right now is earning 0%. That's exactly what I'm saying which is like the other part of like in crypto we love yield and we're so mercenary about yield. Uh but like the average consumer doesn't necessarily think in those terms. I will say like in all my learnings in crypto like MetaMask I was really surprised when they were like making staggering amount of fees and you're like sitting there you're like gosh why are people paying a crazy amount to swap through this front end. It's like man like people will pay for convenience. I think that this does not go away. And so

again if you have the trust of of the consumer you can you can do a lot of things. Coinbase. How many times have analysts gotten it wrong where they're like, "Oh, it's going to zero. Fees are going to zero. They're going to be eaten away." And it's like, well, Coinbase is kind of synonymous with crypto. So, you have your assets there. It's fairly sticky retail base. Like, people are not necessarily like going on chain, you know, to clip a higher yield. And so, it's it's just a learning for me because I think in crypto we are super sensitive to these things. And then you one click, you know, you migrate from one protocol to the other and you're chasing, you know, yield farming and all this crap.

But it's like that's not how your normal your normal consumer really thinks. You know, they really don't want to. Most people really don't ever want to think about money or or if they're really optimizing it in the best way. Shout out to today's sponsor, Katana. Katana is a DeFi first chain built for deep liquidity and high yield. No empty emissions, just real yield and sequencer fees routed back to DeFi users. Incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR, Katana is launching with notable ecosystem of primitives, assets, and partners like Morpho, Chain Link, and more. Katana's 1 billion CAT campaign is live. Bridge and deposit directly into vaults in one simple click and start earning immediately on your Ether,

Bitcoin, USDC, and more. Follow the link in today's show notes to get started. This episode is brought to you by Geonet, the world's largest decentralized RTK network, delivering real time centimeter accurate positioning around the globe. Powering technologies that enable precise navigation for drones, autonomous vehicles, first responders, farmers, and robotics, Geodet shows that blockchain can be a truly transformative force. By delivering real-time centimeter level accuracy, Geodet enhances emergency response, boosts construction precision, and enables advanced navigation for drones and surveyors far beyond the limits of standard GPS. To find out more, click the link in the show notes

or follow them on X. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk, terms, and conditions apply. Let's uh let's shift gears to the trenches a little bit, which is uh uh Binance and the BSC, the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem. Um billion dollars, baby. So, I think this is something that happens in crypto a lot is like uh you you might miss the first trade, but then it's like what's the second order impact? And what happened here is uh we talked about Aster on the podcast. So, Aster is kind of CZ's uh competitor and Binance's competitor to Hyperlid. The second order impact of Aster ripping is that the Binance is that BNB has started ripping and the Binance Smart Chain

ecosystem has started ripping too. So if you look at the uh the 7day on all these prices uh bas basically everything's down between 5 to 15%. BNB is up 16%. Um I think I don't want to get this too wrong but I think BSC flipped uh Salana. Um let's see. Yeah, BSC flipped Salana in terms of 24-hour DEX volume. So, and active addresses actually. So, yeah, I don't know. BSC having a moment. It's funny how quiet the timeline is about it because it's, you know, a lot of the users are in Asia, but I don't know if you guys pay attention to this at all or have any thoughts on it.

Yes. Uh I mean, yeah, the question is Rob, how much how many projects are you seeing that are building on BMBB? I it's fair fairly quiet but a lot of them have felt like have started by XB&B employ like Binance employees but like out of a hundred projects you guys are reviewing on a monthly basis is there a meaningful uptick on people want to deploy MBNB? No. um you know and and and I I'm thinking through the portfolio right now my guess is there's of the you know 200 plus investments we've done there's less than a handful who have been built who have built on B&B right I think um listen they've done Pinus has done such

an incredible job right like you know Binance and Tether are the two best businesses in all of crypto right they've just completely um dominated their competitors uh in so many ways BNB be obviously a big part of that for for Binance. You know, obviously originally the BMBB token was just an exchange token. Um and then they and then they they launched the chain itself and they fostered a really, you know, kind of amazing ecosystem. Um that ecosystem though has not necessarily built the most valuable applications, right? The chain itself has become really valuable.

The ecosystem has become very valuable. The exchange is extremely valuable. But uh we haven't yet seen the applications become extremely valuable and be able to I guess permeate or proliferate outside of the Binance ecosystem, right? Um Aster seemed to be kind of doing that and being one of the first ones. Then I'm sure some people will tweet at me and and see things that I missed and and I'm sorry that if I if I have and um you think I'm talking about your your protocol, but um you know it strikes me that everything that happens on BNB today is still downstream from the exchange itself where you know obviously what's happening in Ethereum or Salana is you know more organic in nature right

which is why we don't see I think you know an uptick of engineers and and protocol um uh builders uh building their own. Yeah, I think this is all just one big trade which is people realizing that CZ is coming back. It's very clear something has changed CZ is coming back and I think it's you know my he is back but like he's not like publicly back like I would guess in 2026 probably early in 2026 let's call it Q1 maybe Q2 like CZ is publicly back at the helm of finance. Um, and I think like if you if you believe that you also believe that CZ is one of the best operators in crypto, what's the best way to long that? You just kind of get long BNB. Um, I think he'll take over Binance US

again, right? Because they kind of spun off BinanceUS. It was a separate entity. I think that kind of gets reabsorbed into Binance and Binance US probably becomes a real competitor in the US and yeah, I think this is all just one big trade saying, "Oh, wow. I Yeah, CZ's back." All right. All right. Well, um, one of the things obviously Salana hate has been percolating and on the rise. Um, I think people are just a bit frustrated that Salana is no longer like front and center. Um, any anything there that you guys are seeing? I mean on the timeline I have noticed just negative sentiment there. So sort of like number hasn't really gone up even though it has rall.

Yeah. Well Mer pivoted to Zcash. So Oh yeah. So yes, half of Salana to Zcash. Um I don't know. I actually don't think it's like hate for Salana. I just think it's Salana has their first real competition had their first real competition several months ago with Hyperlid. And I I see I see Hyperlid as being actually competitive to Salana. I don't see uh I I kind of agree with Rob like no one this maybe I'm just biased, but like I don't really know many good builders building in the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem. And I think a lot of the money that's being uh moved around on on Binance Smart Chain and on Aster is just kind of wash trading. I do think I know a lot of really good builders building on Hyperlquid right now though. Yeah.

And a lot of people So I think this is kind of just a continuation of like um So yeah, people just being like, "Hey, Salana's got some real competition now." That's what it seems like to me. But to but to me it's not it's not Binance. It's it's it's actually hyperlquid. I I don't know like to the point around um you know like there being some negativity on the timeline. Uh I think this goes back to like a lot of the conversations we've had around like the timeline itself seems entirely like people are happy or unhappy based on token prices. They're not unhappy or unhappy based on like what's happening in the ecosystem, who's building what, like anything else. They're unhappy or they're happy based on token prices. was I was talking to a a founder in Singapore um last week who had just

launched a token uh recently and it was saying like listen like we we we built this protocol this business that has like created a bunch of value you know is is worth billions of dollars today. Um we're trying to you know reinvent the way financial markets work. Uh, and yet like the token traded up and the traded down and like my entire timeline is just people like swearing at me and telling me how terrible I am and like how awful everything I have done has ever been, right? And it's like all I'm literally trying to do is is build a great product for them. And I think the the incentive mechanism when one like half of these people are anonymous uh and two like you have early stage you know businesses that have these tokens that people

speculate on with most of the time without doing a single you know lick of diligence um is such that like people and then people also get engagement when they're negative like there is always more negative engagement than there is positive engagement. So the second mechanism is just to be negative, right? Like everybody and so I find that um I don't know, maybe I'm getting old. There's like the boomer in me, but like I find Twitter to be like such a hard place these days because it is just Yeah, it is just so many anonymous people like bitching over absolutely nothing about all the time. And like I try to curate my feed and yet that is like still permeating so much of of of what I see. And it's because people just

they I don't know they they they they're like just glued to their screens on like what happens on a token price every two hours, every three hours, every five hours, right? Versus like thinking about like, you know, what are what are we actually building here? What are we doing here? What are we inventing, right? So I I've said this I think I maybe beat a dead horse on a bunch of these podcasts, but um I think Salana is going to do great, right? And I think Hyperlquid is doing great and BSC and Binance have done great. I think the market's doing great and I think the timeline is like nothing more than like a way for uh me to you know kind of kill brain cells and feel bad about the state of the world.

Vocal minority it's a thing. Yeah. But like it's almost like uh you know the real conversations are not happening on crypto Twitter. at the board levels and you know people out the NYC like that you know those guys are looking at poly market in a more disconnected dispassionate way and saying god gosh there's like 16 million people visiting the site elections are coming we can do markets on a capture retail audience and like pump on the streaming Robbie kind of betrayed us earlier today but like you know maybe you can share some of your experience there but it's it's like I I I think crypto's always been the merits of this technology have been entirely predicated on the token asset prices whereas like the technology is dis like you can dis something like Bitcoin is entirely reliant on the price

right because it's a commodity right it's like it's it's a digital gold to like it's like gold right if it goes up then it lends more credibility more more social consensus as a digital store of value but everything else you know price certainly should track and be a derivative of utility but like there's real utility in stable coins there's real utility in like settling that in these blockchains and and and asset ledgers um like crypto asset prices are are are incredibly like sensitive and and and and and so you you have to kind of be dispassionate from from the prices and saying, "God, yeah, like it's uh this technology is real. People are gonna adopt it. Every business is going to transition their flow to stable coins because it just makes sense." Like, you know, it doesn't matter if Salana's going up or down. Like people going to

use it like I mean, yeah. What do you guys think about privacy coins? Uh about Zcash ripping. Good to see it, I guess. Robin, you guys were investors in uh tornadoes. So maybe I can give a little con. So I was in uh I was in Dubai and uh the talk of the town was Zcash and we were there that you remember that party we were at? Yeah, it was like a Zcash party. It was like Zuko and and uh you know Naval is just out like I I basically feel like there's like a coordinated Nal got and Nal got a air dropped you know couple basis points to Zcash Ze supply. Let's put it that way.

Yeah. Um but anyways, nicely done, Naval on the What was the What was the catalyst? Like, you know, Zcash basically went for anyone that's been under a rock. Uh you know, Zcash went for like 30 bucks to like 150 plus like in in a matter of days. It's up from It's up from 50 to 191. 300% in a month. Um I don't know. I does feel like privacy could privacy is c like I think privacy will start start to have a narrative here. like you got the Zcash rerating um you've got Canton Canton goes live by the way can I don't know if you guys have been following Canton and um I don't know if Rob if you guys are investors or Santia if you if you have a take here but yeah in the OTC markets the Canton token

is I think their TG is soon but the can the token is has gone from like 5 cents to 18 or 19 cents in the OTC markets um in in like a month um so and then they've got their TGE soon so I believe there's um a single market maker on uh on those OTC transactions. Damn right. I mean, there's only like one place to get to get it right now. Yeah, that's what I mean. Right. So, yeah. Yeah. Um I mean, yeah. Is it is it a super efficient market? I don't know. But numbers going up. Fair.

All right. Um point taken. I'm just going to start flashing token like prices to you and then you you tell me if that's taken. Point taken. I get it. I'm just trying to build a narrative out of this thing out of out of privacy. one. Uh, all right guys, like like Poly Market's been like did that right in terms of valuation, but like it's it's been cooking for years like 2021, 2022 and and all of a sudden sort of all the rage. Uh, what is what is the next breakout consumer app? Like what's the next poly market? um or what is the next company that that you are seeing and saying, "Yeah, this company's going to crush because the founder's great." Or or um you know, it's it's it's not still in the narrative, but do you think over the next like six, 12 months is going to

be like, "Yeah, like I told you so." kind of thing. I don't know what it is, but I but I know where to look, which is I'm looking at like I would I a good weekend activity for someone listening to this, and honestly, I should do this. I'm just a little busy right now. But um would be going to Alliance Dow's portfolio or or six-man. I think Dudus has done a great job too. Going to the six-man portfolio or to the Alliance portfolio and just playing with all those apps. And the good thing about crypto is that so many apps are still so bad that there's a few that end up being really good. Like I saw dude tweeting about um like football.fun, right? And apparently it's apparently it's a great game. I don't know. But like you spend 30 seconds with that with a game, you can usually tell

if it's good or not. Yeah. Uh, do you have an do you have an answer? Uh me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Inversion. Okay. Well, I mean, you did you asked about like a a consumer app. I was I was going to ask Rob about Monad, but Monad obviously Monad car's not a consumer app though. No, no. Maybe something in the Monad ecosystem. Oh. Oh. Oh. You guys were investors. I'm an investor, too. But I'm just curious like you know that's coming. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think I'm on a um I'll preface this with just that like I am I don't really spend a lot of my time thinking about like cons direct to consumer unless there's like a financial aspect to it. So like you know DeFi or

like something like a poly market. Um you know I get asked a lot by my LPs like you know what have you done consumer and my answer is always poly market right even though at core poly market is an exchange right but I think it is like an inherently social application. Um, so when it comes to like other social applications like you know my answer would to you would be something DeFi related. Um, which I think is not what you're looking for. Um, I think like on Monad um, you know, super excited to for them to launch you know long time coming back since the early days you know just incredible team around that. Um, I think it's trading at what is it trading out today? 13 bill markets.

Yeah, in the pre market. Listen, I think in in Monad um you know, if you talk to the team there, there there's a lot that they're trying to build in that ecosystem and there is you know, Fantasy Top is a um is a portfolio company of ours and they launch on the ModNet test net and they're thinking about Monet I think for for for um you know, mainet. Um there are other things like that that are launching there, but the main focus there has really been you know financial markets. It's been payments. It's been um they they acquired a thing called Portal and made this guy uh Raj Perk the um the head of like stable coins and payments there. He's like probably the single best stable coin and payments guy out of blockchain. Um uh and he's very very talented and worked at Visa before.

You know, I think they're focused on that a lot. They're focused on DeFi a lot. Um and and in fact I think the only other application that we are investors in is one called purple which should be you know kind of the canonical perex on uh on monad. Um and that's where we've been focused when we've looked at companies on on monad. And so um I think that'll be the main focus you know early on and I think that they will do an incredible job at it. Like clearly the infrastructure is meant uh for uh better financial markets. Good stuff.

What else is going on this week? S&P launched a crypto index. Um, dinari, was that powered by dinari? Do you guys invest in that realm? We're not investors. Uh, big fan of Gabe. Obviously, he's been, you know, really successful in a bunch of different, you know, parts of his life. Um, I think we're uh, you know, what Gabe is doing is like a really slow burn and but he's going after a really humongous market, right? And I think we're we've talked to him a bunch of times and every time I come away being like, man, I love his vision and where he's going, but um you know, we've we've we've always I think struggled with maybe the slow burn aspect of it all, which you know, maybe I'll look back in 5 years and be like, man, I'm I'm an idiot, but that's why we haven't

invested today. It doesn't mean we won't. And I continue to talk to Gabe all the time and we have a good relationship. Um but we've uh that's been a little bit of the the back and forth there. But listen, I the broader theme of tokenization bringing equities on chain needing to be in some sort of standard that allows for like Robin Hood to talk to somebody else, but you don't necessarily need, you know, the DTCC. You don't need an actual clearing house. Um, I buy into like fully. I think the question for me is just like who actually is that intermediary or who actually is that infrastructure provider? Um and and I think that's very like unsure still.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um um cool. To bring up the more boring stuff before we go to content of the week. Uh anything going on the um regulatory front because it's been fairly muted. I mean government shutdown maybe has impacted that to some extent. Like two things that when I thought about saw the government shutdown like regulation and then also IPOs. Is there anything coming up in the horizon like Q4 that that is important? I mean IPOs would be the Bitco IPO would be Yeah. But but it should like it's delayed. No, like if there's government shutdown that impacts like registration.

Yeah. Government shutdown slows down the SEC though. I think the SEC got categorized as um essential workers. I think um but I I I do think it slows things down. Yeah, it's definitely slowing things down. We're seeing it um across uh like a bunch of the people we're we're close with. Um, I think parts of the SEC are open in essential workers, but not all parts of it. Um, I don't know about listing specifically, so I I I'll defer to you. Um, we were told that, um, the Senate Banking Committee is is is really trying to move the crypto market structure bill through, even if that means holding like a markup uh, mid shutdown. Uh, Casey at our team had a had a good piece on this.

Um, yeah. Yeah, it seems to be the um you know, I'm hearing that the last couple of days. I think I think I'm still somewhat dubious that it gets done. Um but uh hopeful. So yeah, new new spot crypto ETFs can't be approved, right, until the shutdown ends. Or I guess they can, but they just probably won't. It's probably not a high priority. Yeah, I'm not sure about the ETF specifically. There are some depending on the registration statement. Uh there is, you know, potent like if the SEC doesn't respond at all, you actually automatically go live. And so there's a few things like I'm hearing this in the DAT market right now. There's a few of the DATs that are specifically saying like if they don't hear from the SEC by

like, you know, the end of the month or November, they'll just probably take the point of view that they should be, you know, going uh effective. Um my guess is ETFs work the same, but somebody's going to listen to this and be like, "No, you're wrong, probably." Um but that's what I would expect. Yeah. Content of the week, baby. Let's get into it. What do you got, Santi? No, no, no, no, no. I'm I'm I'm never No no no no no no no no. I don't, man. I I I've been I've been reading just I don't What have I been reading, man? I I like Santi wants to like, you know, he wants to show me up afterwards. He wants to be last. He's like got to let Rob do his like fiction and then I'm gonna come in with like really highbrow.

Not really, man. Yeah, it does. I mean I Did you guys see the billion dollar raise for base power? You guys see Michael Dell's kid? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I saw that. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was reading Rob. You appreciate this. I'm trying to level up as a leader. I'm reading Bill Walsh's The Score Takes Care of Itself. It's pretty good, man. Some great great stories about how Good book. Good book. I read I read it. Yeah. By the Yeah. Niners and Yeah. Yeah. Good. It's a good one.

Yeah. I haven't read that one. Yeah. What are you reading, Robert? What are you What are you watching? Uh this week I've been watching uh Task. So it's um HBO show. Uh it's kind of about You watch all these shows, Rob? Just like classic 9to5. You know me like you know five o'clock I'm I'm completely off the clock, you know? I'm just watching TV. Yeah. Rob Rob's a 9 to5 guy, you know. Yeah. Not really.

Um I I've been uh I I actually like I watch I watched the episode last night like 11:00. I mean, normally I sleep by 11:00, but I've had a little bit of insomnia since I got back from Singapore and so I've been doing like the the late night TV. Um but I uh yeah, Task. It's like a HBO show, the creators of another HBO show called Mayor Vtown, which was good. um set in Philly I think and it's basically like um you know a biker gang that also happens to deal like fentanyl in the local area. They're like houses that they keep the fentanyl at and that they um and and that they sell it out of keep getting uh essentially like robbed by what they you know the FBI and like a

task force thinks is like a a maybe a rival biker gang. Um, and it's it's got um it's got some good actors in it. Um, it's got oh gosh, I'm blanking on his his name right now, but um it's called Task Force. It's called Task T A SK because they put together a task force. So like Oh, Mark Ruffalo. Yeah. Yeah. Someone else Yeah. Yeah. Someone told me about this this week. They said it was good. Yeah. It's got Mark Ruffalo. It's got Tom Pelffrey. Like it's a it's a good show. It's like, you know, as far as those types of shows go. I have such a lame answer to this which is I that was a way better answer than I have. I I listened to an ungodly long podcast with

uh uh Pavle Durovv the founder of Telegram on Lex Freedman. This episode is 4 hours and 40 minutes long. I could have listened to a freaking audio book. I'm in too deep. I got Sun Cause Fallacy. I'm four four hours in so I have to finish it. are you the kind of person that like has to finish it just for OCD reasons? Well, I was wondering if they would talk about the ton about ton blockchain and I was like four hours in haven't mentioned it once. That's a signal that it's pretty bearish ton like he hasn't mentioned it once in four hours. They just started talking about it. So now now I've got to get through this portion.

Speaking of I I think I might have mentioned it. Um the cheeky pint there's some good episodes there. I was listening to the Mark Andre. I listen to the I listen to the entries. He has uh I I clipped it hour. It's a hour and a half pot almost two hour pod minute 1 hour 1 hour 24. Go jump to the crypto section and they talk about like stripes perspective and then you know obviously a 16c perspective pretty fascinating stuff. Uh what um both I think it's Patrick that that talks about their evolution and Charlie and Charlie Charlie song too.

Yeah exactly. It's just a really fascinating and they make a really good um kind of analogies in like the fiber kind of compared to the AI kind of infrastructure deployment like comparisons to that. They also talk about how crypto became like a philosophical thing and how a lot of VCs were not willing to get past that which is alpha. Yeah, totally to and I think it's still true like um I guess maybe out of out of the premier kind of like traditional VCs there's like a lot which still haven't made a single crypto investment. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, totally. So, all right folks, thanks for listening.

We got have a um either the KI founder going live on Monday or there will be a big acquisition announcement and trying to get them to come on the show and that will go live a day late on Tuesday morning uh to time up with the acquisition announcement. So, either one of those. Appreciate you guys listening. We will see you next week. Awesome, guys. Thanks, guys. [Music]