PumpFun’s Impact on Solana, Circle’s IPO, and Elon and Trump’s Feud | Roundup

Transcript

I think the extraction narrative of Pump Fund is probably incorrect relative to the amount of value and people that they're bringing into crypto. How much of Salana's rise was Pump responsible for? I would say 80 90% of it. And so I think at some point you do have to kind of confront the fact that Pump is going to do their own token. I don't think they're going to launch their own chain, but they're going to build a lot of vertical DeFi primitives and eat a lot of the fees that are traditionally associated with soul outside of the MEV tipping and and kind of the Jetto world, which will kind of stay on its own. This episode is brought to you by Arkham.

Arkham allows crypto traders and investors to look inside the wallets of the best traders, largest funds, and most influential players in the crypto markets today. We'll hear more about Arkham later in today's episode. Quick shout out to Permissionless 4 coming this summer to New York June 24th through June 26th. We'll have speakers from all across the industry including Hayden Adams, Kyle Sani, Guy Young, and more. Get your tickets today by following the link in today's show notes, and make sure to use code Bell 10 to save 10% on your purchase. See you there. Hey everyone, quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode.

Nothing said on Bell Curve is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Our guests and I may hold positions in the companies, funds or projects discussed. All right, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Curve. You got Michael's one and two. Vance balance. This is why we pod for days like today. This is why we make podcast art. I can only imagine that this is the generational top in memes. Like the memes that come out of this have got to be some of the best of all time. It's so

good. I've never seen so many things go wrong at the same time. It's really unbelievable. Well, there's one thing going right which I'm sure we'll talk about which is circle. We'll put we'll put that one but it's a low float high FTV for the for the masses. That's what I was gonna say. All right. So, before we get into that, just to, you know, uh, talk about the salacious gossip of the day here. Elon Musk just tweeted, "Time bomb, uh, time to drop the really big bomb. Real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That's the real reason they've not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT." Uh, just tweeted this out. Tesla's down. I guess it was down 16%. Now, it looks like it's recovering a little bit, but

buy the dip. Buy that dip. It's okay. So, so here here's the Elon Bear case. I've been I've been telling people at weddings, dinner parties, is the the Elon Bear case for a long time, but it's here. So, uh, right now Tesla is trading at 200x forward earnings. There's a chance that Tesla has no earnings in 2026. Uh, he's crashing out on the president. He dropped the Epstein files bomb. The EV subsidies are gone. The solar subsidies are gone. He does have the Starlink card to play. He does have the SpaceX card to play, but I I think this is I think I think we will have looked back and seen the top

of Elon pretty clearly or or maybe the relative top. Who knows what he does later on. Uh but it's definitely not going to be something that is an immediate resurgence. It's it really will be interesting to see what happens with the power and the money and the bankroll of Elon versus the government of the United States. Um, and it it's it's kind of buried within the House bill, but people have started to pick up on it, at least the one that's gone through the process so far, and we'll see what happens in the Senate. Um, but what has at least been proposed is killing the 30% uh investment tax credit for solar within the United States as well as the EV credit. And those are two direct shots

at Tesla. And I think that that was probably the the fraying of the relationship. Um it's all been masqueraded as this bill just blows out the deficit. We need to cut spending, you know, blah blah blah. That's that's what Elon has been saying, but in reality, he's pissed that they're getting rid of the subsidies that basically built his business. And uh I think that that was the the straw growth of Camel's back. And now it's just it's happening in real time on Twitter. and and there's just like oh good I want to I want to fast forever. I mean, these are things that money can't buy really, just these types of days and experiences and well, I think so. One one thing that we

were just talking through is like, okay, what does this mean? And and what are the last couple of weeks mean? Like the the big beautiful bill, what does that do? Why why does this matter? How does this relate to crypto? I mean, I think the the very obvious thing is there's stuff that like, okay, all of the companies that are built around these subsidies, those are going to take a hit. Tesla primarily. um the or or solar companies in the United States. Um like they they've been rocked pretty hard as soon as the house passed the first generation. Um but then the question is okay well what happens to the rest of the market? If the deficit is like eight or nine% and not even getting cut, I I I think it's like buy every asset that you possibly can get your hands on that are

denominated in dollars. Uh the harder the asset, the better. um you know, Bitcoin, gold, um and and basically everything in between. Um we're big proponents of Tom Lee and Vance was just reminding me that like the bare market opportunity for the stock market was if Doge was too good and cut too much because what that would do is it would ultimately hit the revenue and contracts of all the businesses and the businesses would have, you know, less profit, less growth. It's austerity. Austerity. Exactly.

Um, I think the train has left the station. I think we tried to stop the train or slow the train down. In reality, we just sped it up and, uh, it's kind of a foregone conclusion. This was this was like our last shot. Um, now, you know, Doge is very obviously not working. There were kind of murmurss about this over the last few weeks, over the last few months, and then like Elon's taking a step back and like, oh, what does this mean? But, you know, it could just be like a little a little quarrel or or a tiff between the the two the two big guys. And no, this is an allout battle now. And like gloves are off. It's over. Um Yeah. The the train has left the station. Yeah. I think the other stuff

is Elon will Elon wants a broader cultural movement to drape himself in, much like a lot of other venture capitalists or or or people that are entrepreneurs. So now that that's not going to be the US, it's probably going to be something that logically follows his experience working for the US government, which is the deficit is not getting cut. um and seeing the Las Vegas Bitcoin kind of populism on display. I I think a lot of these, you know, billionaires, millionaires, whatever, like tech Illuminati that were in the White House are going to pivot towards Bitcoin, ETH, crypto, and and the notion that the deficit will never be cut. There is no

stopping the train. Um it's it's over and we're back. Uh so it's it's like it's great to see this. It's only took five months. Okay, last bit of fun speculation here before we get into crypto, but do you think this is enough to make Elon switch parties? What if Elon went back to being a Democrat? I literally just said this. I literally just said this. I like what happens if next goound he's like, "All right, here's a billion dollars to the Democrats." I I could totally see that happening. Um, and what does that do? What does that does it matter? I I honestly don't think that it matters that much. And there will be I I think money can only get you so far in elections. Like it helps with all the

things that you already have going for you. It helps with defense. It helps with getting your voice out, getting the narrative out. But if you don't have a narrative right now, which is how I would describe the Democratic party, if you don't have a leader, which is also how I would describe the Democratic party, you can't fix that with money. And and I think that that's the bigger issue. But I I could very easily see him switching sides um just out of spite. Where do we think David Sax's head spaces at the moment? This is such an interesting position for him. A hard place in the middle is David.

I mean the people the people who have facilitated all of this um definitely don't look right. Lutnik, uh, Sachs, uh, man, yeah, the the transhumanist with a chainsaw was not a natural fit for the Conservative party. I I don't think Elon is going to be welcomed back into the Liberal Party. Uh, he's already posted about starting a third party. And this is always where you kind of get with this where like it's kind of like Andrew Yang territory where he's like, "Yeah, we're gonna

start the Forward Party. We're really going to do this." And I think anybody who's like voted for a libertarian or volunteered for a libertarian campaign understands is they really have no chance of winning at all. I I think he understands that though. Like once again, it's the same problem. Like money doesn't fix that problem. Like we we are in a two-party system and you're either on one side or you're another or you're not participating. Like it you could just all right I'm done with politics. I'm steering clear. That was too. That's why this Silicon Valley should have never come to Washington, but they did.

And and now I think there was an era briefly as it was that tech was going to be really united with politics. And now I think the risk is that it's even further apart. Yeah, it's interesting. I, you know, you never know. Um, because I think the reason why pe the left really hates Elon. And if you look at a lot of the these like polls about who's more unpopular, Elon's even more unpopular than Donald Trump in a lot of areas. But I think I think the reason why he became unpopular originally was because he he switched sides, right? And it's kind of you hate the apostate more than the you know, you hate the one who betrayed the original values. And I'm not really sure what it there are a lot of crazy narratives around D1 out there. But um Samman played this the best of all.

Why? What's his position? Squeaky clean, you know, not too much on the left, not too much on the right. Focused on the product, focused on company, not showboating himself. He he he's long-term world's richest. That That's my bet. Well, I I would actually say the reason why he played this best is because he didn't have to play the game at all. Sort of like the second that you get brought into the ring, like you're going to get punched. It's, you know, like Zuck arena. He's fighting for these Middle Eastern deals. Oh, but he he's only in the arena that matters to him.

He's not doing this whole let's doge, let's do, you know, chainsaw stuff for the budget. He didn't choose to involve himself further than he needed to. That's correct. But, you know, Zach got brought into politics from 2016 and misinformation. And I'd say the reason why Open AI and AI in general will have its issues no matter what, especially as it gets more widely adopted by consumers and businesses, but right now it's still small enough relative to not having the mass scale that involves e that requires Sam stepping into the political ring and actually, you know, taking some shots.

He will eventually, but you know, maybe his maybe his terminal value is much higher right now because he hasn't yet, but I I bet he will. Fascinating time. Um, it's Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the reality TV era of politics, but this one's this has been a juicy day. I'm not going to lie. It's been I just want to see what happens. Arkham was created to make blockchains human readable and simplify blockchain data so that it is meaningful and useful to the average crypto user. With their new exchange, users can see what the top traders are buying and selling with Arkham Intel and then trade on that information with Arkham Exchange. To get started, follow the link in the show notes below. This episode is brought to you by Marinade. Marinade is a high

performance staking delegation platform that brings both liquidity and security to the Salana network by connecting soul holders with the best staking rates on Salana. Follow the link in today's show notes to learn more. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. Do your own research. Okay. Uh curious to maybe switching to crypto a little bit more here. I would love to get your guys take on the Circle IPO. So, uh I'm a big So, maybe to do a little bit of a rewind in a history of the of Circle the company. U every crypto startup is uh you know a roller coaster, but Circle in particular. So when Circle started back in I think 2017 uh they got an investment from Goldman

Sachs which was a huge deal at the time. Crypto is a really dirty word back then um and they were kind of you know Jeremy Lair and Circle was kind of the golden child and when you look back at that business model they did a lot of stuff. I'm not sure if people know this about Circle but you know they had kind of had this L1 payments app type thing. They had an exchange called Paloniex. They had a uh a uh OTC trading operation. They did a lot. They had their hands in a lot of pies. Uh and then when the bloom came off the rose and the ICO bubble imploded, Circle really struggled. Uh they basically had to do a fire sale of Paloniex. They shut down the trading uh the OTC trading group, which by the way CMS is an alumni of and

it looked like they were it almost looked like you were ready to write down the Circle Investment to zero. Um, and then they came up with USDC and Bellagi had a tweet thread a little while back about uh his role in brokering this agreement in between uh Jeremy and Brian and they created the center consortium and they issued USDC. This was really prestable coins being a massive deal. People had sort of theorized about them, but I think when USDC launched, it had a very very tiny market cap for a long time. Somewhere in like 200 to 500 million that the total combined was around the time that Tether was trading on Omni, which is kind of like on Bitcoin essentially. So really really nent market at that time and then Libra came out. So Facebook launched their

intent announced their intentions to launch their own stable coin which was Libra and that was a massive catalyst for the entire space that ended up getting choked off from a regulatory perspective but yeah over the course of the next couple years stable coins went from 500 million in volume or market cap to 300 billion today and Treasury just called for two trillion by 2028. So it's been you know an unbelievable sector and yeah in that time and even a couple of months ago circle was you know the uh rumors of it struggling a lot right it's uh you know pretty famously tried to IPO I think this is their third time um it looked like they weren't going to get across the finish line there were rumors we've talked about on this pod that ex like Ripple was going to acquire them maybe maybe Coinbase um and then rumors

last week was that actually the IPO was oversubscribed so I think they originally started at $21 a share and then they boosted it to 26 or$27 $7. Um, and then today, you know, when they started trading, I think now they're trading at about $75, but they were tra it traded over 100. So, I can't help myself. I'm uh, you know, I first of all, I love the idea of more public companies in crypto. We've really only had Coinbase historically, although I think Galaxy now made the switch to NASDAQ, so now we've got three, which is great. And, uh, underdog story. So, props. I'm happy for Circle. Uh, great result. But, I'm curious, what do you guys think about the IPO? Does it say anything about demand um for crypto companies? Does it open up the IPO

window or M&A or Yeah, just curious what your guys take is in general on the whole thing. I think my my big question here is how and we won't be able to know this for a while, but like how do we disagregate what is demand in general for new new issue versus demand in uh specifically for crypto or stable coins? And I I think you know if you look at Tore it's up 300% since his IPO you know lowflat now high FDV type opportunities. U E Toro has outperformed as well does have some crypto in it. There is kind of like this let's get our hands on new new issue especially in hot sectors. Um and so like that's one question as to like how much of this activity is driven by

that. The bankers obviously messed up the pricing. um you know a 100 plus percent pop on day one is that basically benefits all the people who bought into the IPO who are now able to flip it um not the company itself who sold the shares for 100% or 50% less than they would have otherwise um but it was you know continually overstretching the the range that they kept on setting so it's it's it's a hard process I mean this is a new new asset class and so ne next the question is how does this react to news in the crypto markets. Um what will happen when we expect the genius bill gets passed or or voted on I think next week and then passed. Um there will be

um a lot of attention around stable coins in general and crypto uh in general as well. But I I'm I'm trying to figure out how much of this is like whatever the float percentage is um and new new issue opportunity versus like cryptospecific engagement and activity. Yeah. Um I think uh we talked about the coreweave IPO on this pod and it being a barometer for the market. Obviously Michael you know alluded to it doing very well and so the the window is open and there's just been so few new issuances of company shares that these are doing well because there seems to be a scarcity effect. Um I think

Cororeweave is unique uh relative to Circle given that like the AI pipeline is is kind of unbounded at this point. The Circle dynamics of their business are interest rate sensitive uh you know economics sharing sensitive with Coinbase and then um just their adoption and uptick. I think of all those things we're probably most bullish on their adoption and uptick and traditional payment rail is adopting USDC. But the interest rate background is going to get harder and harder, especially for USissued stable coins that can only be at the front of the curve. And so I think at 18 billion, 20 billion, we're probably not buyers, but it's an amazing outcome for Jeremy and the whole

team. And I would expect that there would be more crypto IPOs coming pretty quickly post this. A lot of people are planning Q1 2025 to go public and they probably move that up to the extent they can. 26. Oh, right. Jesus, it's Question for you guys on this. How do you view um because on the one hand, yeah, I think that the there are a lot of um at the same time there are lots of tailwinds. There also challenges for stable coin issuers. feels like the barrier to entry for at least what are being is being dubbed in this new genius act as payment stable coins like USDT and USDC it doesn't seem like there are tons of new issuers there like there are relatively high cost barriers to entry

there I don't know it could be actually an advantage um and then could we could we talk a little bit about how are you guys like how much does this materially change the market for like M&A um new capital formation like we just haven't had that equity wins in crypto either like this feels like a pretty big win for early equity investors. I'm curious if you guys view that as being it definitely will help. I think being able to have technicorn outcomes uh either in the public markets or in you know the the token markets are great outcomes for the industry and right now when the rest of the industry and frankly the rest of the venture class is is starved for liquidity having liquidity right now is going to be a benefit in a lot of ways.

If you look at the holders of, you know, the shares, it's it's traditional equity. It's not even like crypto venture firms. Um, you know, I think Excel and Brier Capital and, uh, Oak Tree, they're not Oak Tree, but there there were a few, you know, kind of traditional owners of this. Um, but it's not the it's not the crypto natives that are the largest investors, which is interesting. uh a lot of them didn't exist at the time when this was invested in. But um I do think generally uh what will also happen is it just furthers the point of stable coins being this massive u potential business model where you can have, you know, not a ton of people, hundreds of people building a $16 billion business.

Um, and yes, it is interest rate sensitive, but you do have the scale of tens of billions of dollars uh of distribution. The only other places where you're going to be able to get that if this bill does pass and you have to, you know, abide by the standards that Genius requires you to, the generally the only ones that are going to be able to compete are the banks. And I think, you know, right as Genius was passed or or right soon thereafter, there was some rumored article about JP Morgan and a consortium of banks starting their own stable coin. are they going to be able to speedrun that, you know, in at and catch up to Circle? Like it it is a question. Um but also, you know, how much does that materially change the prognosis for for Circle or or stable coins in general? I think just

adds to the value of it because they're going to be going after different opportunities than what Circle is doing. Um so broadly I think it's positive uh for the industry and and bringing more stable coins on chain is going to be very positive for especially you know to your point Mike you know the non-payment specific stable coins you know the yield coins let's call them um there's just a huge opportunity once you bring tens of billions of stable coins on chain payment stable coins or or JPMcoin for those to get slurped up by anything that's yield generative and the yield you know structured product coins are are probably going to where you get that differentiated take, especially when you've got, let's say, in 2026, a new Fed chair and the short end of the curve

is getting dropped because they're dropping Fed funds rate. Where else are you going to be able to get that stable 5% yield? And and I think that that's going to happen on chain. You know why I think that um stable coins are uniquely disruptive potentially to the bank? Yeah, you guys probably know that like Helmler's seven power framework, you know, where it's kind of a list of different um attributes to compare different companies. And you know, one of those is counterpositioning. And the idea is that a newcomer adopts a business model that incumbents can't copy without self harm.

And I think this is relatively disruptive to incumbent banks in the United States for that reason. I mean this is literally a concern from Treasury's perspective on it's basically eroding that interest margin for banks and it does feel to me if I had to make a prediction I would say that those consortiums of banks issuing stable coins I bet they drag their feet um I don't think they're going to be hot out of the gate with this because not you know they've been waiting for a reg like clear regulations but it's disruptive to their core business model um just think about how from a balance sheet perspective uh stable coin. Imagine a bank acquired a stable coin issuer like Circle. What would that do to their net interest margin? That crushes their net

interest margin because they they move a bunch of uh they move a bunch of assets onto their balance sheet, but the assets are short-term treasuries. It's the lowest yielding uh you know, it messes up your that it literally erodess your net interest margin. Uh so I don't know. I don't see banks like rushing into this. Well, I I think it depends on the model that they choose, right? And the reason why the net interest margin would get cannibalized with something like a circle is because they're giving out 60% of its topline revenue in incentives. And you you'd have to assume a bank would be doing something similar. But like do you think JP Morgan is going to be giving you you know three whatever whatever three and three/4ers rate

whatever you're getting right now for USDC if you just hold JPM cocoin on JP Morgan? No, of course not. They're going to give you whatever the checking account rate is which is probably like 10 bits. And I would actually think if if you know JP Morgan was thinking about it in terms of net interest margin if there is demand and this is once again a very big if for na native JPM flows JPMcoin flows where I as a customer want JPMcoin on chain I'm giving dollars. So like I go in um in the same way that I do USDC I transfer USD in I get JPMcoin and then I put that on chain. I can't earn yield on that. That is, you know, coins that are in my MetaMask wallet or

whatever wallet that I'm using on chain to pay for things or stake or do whatever, assuming that there's integrations, JP Morgan's just flipping the full freight T bill rate on that. Like that increases their margin. It doesn't decrease it. Now, if they're having to give out 60% as incentives, sure, that that may take a hit. But right now, I think if it's just the pure play JPM coin and people think that or JP Morgan thinks that they're going to have like demand for this JPM USDC type stable coin, that's going to be actually very beneficial to their business. I just don't think that there's demand for it. Hold on. Help me think this through though in real cuz like let's just look at a really simplified version of uh like Circle's uh like USDC's balance

sheet versus what a bank's balance sheet is. So on the liability side you have the $1 worth of customer deposit and then on the asset side of the balance sheet you have different uh mostly fixed income securities right so where circle operates at the short end of the curve is the safest and therefore the lowest yielding uh asset that you could have on the balance sheet so if I were to move that into a bank on the bank balance sheet you have those same $1 customer deposits but instead of just having short end of the curve you have long end of the curve. They take duration risk.

They take credit risk. They go into different types of assets. They're higher yielding. So all else equal, if I were to move the $60 billion worth of liability, like customer deposits, which is, you know, USDC, and the asset side of the balance sheet, it would have to drag the average down because you're moving a bunch of the lowest yielding assets that a bank could have onto the balance sheet. Feel like it would erode that interest margin. That's correct. I mean that's why these things are not banks because the banks are actually more profitable than this this type of stable coin. Yeah. So you I don't I mean getting leverage to basically what you're saying is that if you're going to start a stable coin, you

believe it could have really really really really large scale enough so that it would outstrip just living with within a bank and kind of trying to build that technology product without stable coin rails. Mhm. Um so personally not very interested in that. I think with the circle IPO at 90 bucks. Um the things to to remember are number one there's a six-month lockup. So this is lowflat high FTV until uh I guess it is December. Um so we will know the real price of core wave in November and we will know the real price of circle in December. And just, you know, given where people think the cycle peaks and and when it peaks, at least on Twitter, you know, this could be

something that would potentially be a good hedge for existing holdings and and I kind of think of it like that versus, you know, framework should go off and buy some some uh circle. Over the years, we have seen a multitude of hacks, rugs, and bundled launches. The number one way that crypto traders can protect themselves and the wider community is through onchain analysis. Knowing who is moving funds and where those funds are going. Paired with their new exchange, users can see what the top traders are buying and selling with Arkham Intel and then trade on that information with Arkham Exchange. Arkham's exchange provides traders with the tooling and liquidity to take action in crypto markets based upon their onchain observations, bringing them the world's first exchange powered by crypto intelligence. To get started, follow the

link in the show notes below. Hey everyone, quick shout out to today's sponsor, Marinade. Since launching in 2021, Marinade has expanded their suite of products to provide solutions for both DeFi users and Tradfi, including liquid and native staking, as well as direct enterprise integrations. Marinad's platform is optimized for institutions to securely expand their exposure to Salana. Whether through the provisioning of custodial or non-custodial yield, integrating staking rewards into Salana financial products, or leveraging Marinade's bestin market rewards rate for revenue and treasury management. Whether you're in DeFi, Tradfi, or somewhere in between, Marinade has something for you. To learn more about Marinade, follow the link in today's show notes. As always,

investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. do your own research. Okay. Um, switching topics here for a second. I would love to get your guys take on um, so Pump Fun um, allegedly has plans to launch a $1 billion token sale at a $4 billion FDB. Um, and you know, there's not an enormous amount of details on this. They haven't publicly uh, came out and confirmed it. Um, although there's been quite a bit of rumor at this point. Um so the run rate the like basically uh the total cumulative revenue which has been largely generated within the last year uh from pump fund is about 700 million. Um so again if you were to do

some really uh simple napkin math like it's uh below 10 times trailing uh revenue which is actually relatively reasonable. Um, but I'm curious how you guys would think about just the opportunity of uh like Pump Fun in general um as a token here. Like it's kind of an index on the memecoin market. You know, we can talk about how robust um that is and how much legs you think it still has. Like that's kind of the main risk um in my mind, but yeah, I'm curious what you guys think. I mean, I I think as much as people would love to this not being the case, uh, Pump Fund is the largest by far consumer application on crypto at large.

Um, and it is making a ton of money and it's profitable. Um, and I would imagine that with the token, there will be some sort of buyback mechanism and it'll feed back into the token. Um, in the similar way to Hyperliquid doing, you know, the whatever percent goes back uh to the token, I I think that you could assume that anything that's revenue generated revenue generative at this point has value that flows back to the token. And so that's kind of how you could build a financial model for this asset. Now, what I think is different about Pump is because they have such a large install base and user base. I mean they they are basically all of the the consumer application activity on Salana but also generally all of it on all blockchains

too. Um and what do you do with that? And you know the last couple of months they've launched uh a mobile application for getting consumer crypto and consumer activity uh in front of consumers in in the form factor that makes the most sense from a consumer adoption perspective which is mobile. Um, and I could see there being a world in the same way that you have Robin Hood, um, who is getting closer and closer to the to the metal in terms of the blockchain and crypto side. Like for instance, I could see Robin Hood launching in L2. I have no information as to whether or not they're going to, but like that could be something that I would very uh would not be surprised by seeing. They're moving towards blockchains. I can see Pump moving more towards centralized activity

and trading and consumer applications. um and live streaming and and kind of the the communication mixed with speculation I I think is kind of the direction that they're moving. um exciting to see because I think you know there's a lot of people um who've been waiting for something like this and kind of questioning whether or not it was going to happen and you know all the early investors um hats off to them and and what it'll look like what looks like to be a successful opportunity um and outcome but yeah I think this will also drive this has the potential to drive the first real consumer wave in crypto in my opinion on on on pump specifically I would say that the pump token is probably a much

cleaner expression of the Salana trade and like the financial nihilism trade, whatever you want to call it, the cryptoconumer trade that currently is happening. Um and so you see takes on the timeline about you know how extractive it is or is perceived to be and people who don't like the ethos but at the end of the day it is you know almost a billion AR business uh with 80 or 90% margins um and it's selling at 4 billion so I don't think it's really mispriced and I I think relative to soul especially you know it will capture probably as much or more fees um and so you know I think Our um thesis on soul at the moment is is we want to own a lot

of jetto and we want to own the premier you know apps on the chain as well and invest from that perspective in the ecosystem and and no no slight to soul but there there is just a valuation discrepancy between the apps and the chain and I think those resolve with time um I think the other thing you have to do is notice that there's been a pattern of everyone [ __ ] on the core IPO ripped everyone [ __ ] on in the circle IPO ripped hyperlquid too ripped at a certain point you have to acknowledge that the IPO ICO window is open and it's not open for everyone but if you have business metrics and you're a legitimate company

and there's adequate disclosures and all of that this is a good time to launch okay so I have some uh some data that I want to share here because the the interesting thing about uh this token launch uh from uh from pump is this is the first time that there's been it depends on how you want to define this but at least some attempt at uh competition in the launchpad space. So pump was extremely dominant in terms of the market share that they commanded you know on the the launchpad side of things. It was like 96% uh for the vast majority of time that they've been in operation. um that has gone it's sort of

found equilibrium here at closer to 65% currently in between Zora actually Zora is the one that looks like has the most staying power despite uh the hatred of people on the timeline but like kind of other things like clanker uh believe the arena um let's bonkfun so there actually is meaningful competition on the launchpad side of things but what they have done extremely well is they've been able to uh supplement some of the market share that they lost with um with Pump Swap. So, if you look at the aggregate um amount of revenue or volume that they've been able to generate um for what they've lost on the bonding curve side of the trading, they've more than made up for in their

AM, right? I mean, people were posting the one chart of the the coin fees versus the pump swap fee, and it was like, look how far down the coin feed like this is a vertically integrated D5 primitive. Um, yeah, maybe they do, maybe they do whatever. And I'm curious to see what those uh metrics look like post token launch because, you know, I would imagine a lot of the token probably goes as incentives for choosing Pump to launch your whatever. Mhm. You know, um I'm a little bit I'm a little bit torn on it. I I actually don't have the same problem with Pump that a lot of people do. I'm I'm kind of rooting for it. Uh I I on the plus side of things. All right, here's the thing that I find

interesting. I I think you could kind of look at Pump as a as a comp to something like a hyperlquid or like a centralized exchange or you could look at it almost as a creator platform like an Only Fans. I think I kind of like it as an Only Fans type platform actually where you know when you hear uh it's like illicit, people kind of don't like it, but it obviously has product market fit. Um, and for people that are creators on each of those platforms, porn stars, memecoin creators, it's been actually quite good. Um, and I actually think Only Fans is one of the, if it weren't Only Fans and it wasn't, you know, related to pornography, it' be one of the big tech successes of the last 10 years. It's a phenomenal business. Um, and so I sort of look at Pun Pump from from that lens.

I do think in a way it would be simpler to underwrite the execution of pump as an exchange because there's a much more clear uh playbook for how to compete in that arena albeit it's much more crowded. I think their vision is to redefine uh kind of what it means to be a social media app and actually compete with maybe the only fans or maybe the YouTubes of the world. Um and they kind of see themselves as this is where creators can come to make money to begin with. The question is how do you actually make the next Mr. beast, which no one no one has really figured that out yet. And so it's it's interesting.

It's kind of like if you look at it through that lens, you're underwriting a really big swing. Uh I think from the token side of things, the $4 billion FDV valuation, people are going to look at as attractive. I I think the market will look at that as pretty reasonable. I I think of it as the the market is valuing it at probably a pretty fair value based off of just the valuation methodology as an exchange, but it has a massive call option on whether or not it can bridge the gap into social media or consumer platform, content platform, etc. And I don't think that those are mutually exclusive. I think the whole point is that they're actually they're they're combined in a unique way that I think the consumer world is moving towards

which is you know they've proven that speculation is a consumer application. I think that you start to integrate into chat and communication and live streaming all the different forms of communication that make this differentiated and you know you talk about uh only fans and and there are examples there but but the other one that I think about is whatnot and sort of like that uh the Tik Tok commerce. I don't know if you've ever spent time there. And that is actually one of the fastest growing segments of um e-commerce is basically like it whatnot is specifically for collectibles and Tik Tok commerce is like all the people who are like trying on clothes on Tik Tok and like you can buy them direct and um it's really interesting but it's definitely a live stream or a very small

sound bite or or video bite um form of commerce that I think most consumers are are kind of undervaluing um in instead of buying you know clothes from or shine. You're you're buying it from, you know, Pump and it's a memecoin which you do make money on it. It's just like speculation, entertainment, and and content. I think combining into a single app. Yep. Yeah. Nothing nothing further, Dad. But we've uh we've actually known Noah since he was doing NFT per and didn't do the first few rounds, but excited for this. I got a question for you guys. How would you assess the underlying health of the memecoin market? That's at least in my mind when I look at this the sort of the risk. Um, how would you guys look at that?

I would say it's, you know, in a casino there's a lot of different types of games and this is one of them. I think it has longevity and the trader P&L by wallet size data that was put out pretty, you know, edifying in terms of what it says about the profitability of these traders. And it's not that bad. you know, it's only a few percentage points below many traditional casino games. And so, I think the extraction narrative of Pump Fund is probably incorrect relative to the amount of value and people that they're bringing into crypto. How much of Salana's rise was Pump responsible for? I would say 80 90% of it. And so I think at some point you do have to kind

of confront the fact that Pump is going to do their own token. I don't think they're going to launch their own chain, but they're going to build a lot of vertical DeFi primitives and eat a lot of the fees that are traditionally associated with Soul outside of the MEV tipping and and kind of the JTO world, which will kind of stay on its own. Um, and so underwriting Soul as an asset gets harder and harder relative to some other, you know, assets. But I I think that's a little bit of why Soul was selling off the the past few days is people front running that. So may maybe that's already over, but we'll see. Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that.

I think I it'd be really hard to I mean you can just look at the total market cap of memes on Pump Fun as sort of a general proxy for health of that market, but also you probably want something like, you know, I think there's a reason why Only Fans releases like the amount of uh dollars they pay out to creators, right? Like that's what you'd want, right? Like that's the two-sided marketplace that exists. So you'd want creators and also speculators to be making money. So, something about the halflife um of a of a meme coin, I guess. And just intuitively, it feels like the shorter that halflife is, the less healthy that market is. Um you'd also probably want to see a certain percentage of uh memes over a certain dollar value. I don't know. There are

probably some statistics that you could cook up there, but if anyone has very sophisticated thinking around this, I'd be curious u to get people's thoughts. But we I I do want to go back to the Elon Trump feud because it is escalating a little bit. I do think it will have an impact on crypto now, just thinking about it a bit more, but I don't think it'll be evenly distributed. Um I'm a little bit worried about BTC being so close to Trump at this point as a large BTC holder and and I view ETH as probably a better bet in terms of less collateral damage.

What is escalating here? I'm not Yeah, Elon agrees President Trump should be impeached with JD Vance replacing him. Update. It's gotten worse. The vibes have deteriorated. Mike, you seem you seem uh what's your what is your feeling right now? Oh, I I mean, I'm just watching it all unfold. I'm in honestly I think I'm in like spectator mode of I just find it interesting. I can't look away. Um I don't know. I don't have a sophisticated I don't have a thought on um what it's going to do to crypto. I would trust your guys. I don't have a strong opinion on that. So Vance, I'll defer to your judgment there. But I I think look I I think in short run short

term it could be bad. Like market selling off means you know Bitcoin and crypto are going to move first. I think long run this probably extends the potential of the you know the bull market for Bitcoin um kind of the general uh price targets for all of these assets. Um I I think I do think that you know where we were in January was more we need the strategic Bitcoin reserve for us to you know hit 250k this year. I I think that that's actually just like like we haven't heard about that in five months as well. And like the the need that you have of Trump or the administration to affect, you know, Bitcoin or Bitcoin prices or crypto prices in general, I think is is kind of like out of it's not necessary at this

point for for those assumptions to be be true for for price targets to be hit. Now with all the corporates buying, now with all the um publicly cryp or public tra uh public crypto vehicles, like there's going to be enough buyers relative to sellers for all of these assets. I'm not worried. short run it may be a little wonky just because there's market market is selling off with every asset um and crypto will move first and fastest but I I think long run this actually increases the likelihood of hitting new all-time highs this year um yeah I I I think BTC will do well um I do think there is some sort of baked in political risk with people looking at Tesla and saying you know that that's what happened to the last guy that got

super close to the Trump administration right but who's who's the guy for Bitcoin owner or crypto now. It's just the price. Yeah, it's it's way easier than to blame, you know, a Neon. I I do think that Yeah, it's a little bit I I love how accepting obviously Trump is of crypto in general and how forward thinking he's been. I do think some of these family um and you know, his media empire like launching a Bitcoin ETF and it does open up. You're giving ammo to you're giving ammo to the other side, right? To Democrats to pull this down and call for conflict of interest. Um so yeah, I think whoever's got Trump's ear here. Um love that he's

supportive of the industry, but we don't need to give ammo for people to say that this is a Trump, you know, moneyaundering pet project conflict of interest thing. I think that at some point I'd think it kind of becomes damaging. I'm curious what you guys think or if it's just all good. It's definitely not all good. Um, too early to tell. I think there there could be this situation where Elon says the US is [ __ ] Let's just buy Bitcoin. Um, I think that probably is the case given that think about what Elon is going to continue saying over the next weeks and months. The budget is [ __ ] Congress is is toast. You know,

that isn't a good program. we need an alternative system. Um, that's definitely like one thing he could say. Another one is, you know, I'm just going to triple GDP. Frankly, I don't think he's in a position to do that with Tesla where it is today. So, I think he'll opt for the I'm going to start a third political party and it may be based around Bitcoin or some sort of crypto asset that is, you know, orthogonal to the traditional equity complex. Um, that that seems to be where I think he'll go and that will be very bullish for Bitcoin. But uh I think ETH being more neutral is is probably a better better riskreward play at the moment.

Just like the Sam Halman play, better to be uh under the radar. Yeah. No, he here here's the analogy. It's like Elon is BTC, Sam is ETH. Yes. Okay. I've got final uh final story for you guys. I would love to get your take on. Sorry, this is going to be just a quick uh level set here, but I don't know if you guys got a chance to read this end of the foundation era in crypto. This was written by Miles Jennings, who is the um legal guy at A16Z. And you know, just to set up, I mean, the TLDDR of this is questioning whether or not foundations are still necessary or if there's a better way.

And you know, I'm not just going to give a quick synopsis of the of the article and then I want to turn it over to get your guys' take. Um, but I I think it's helpful. He kind of goes into the the history of foundations and why we arrived at this in the first place. And for folks who weren't around for that period of time, I think there are two sort of driving reasons for why this uh foundations exist is one, we needed some kind of frameworks that we could legally issue tokens and there's a bit of an element of what's the legal way of of doing this and foundations were an answer to that. I think there was another ideological driver and component of that which is we want to decentralize these networks as much as possible. Um and we want a neutral steward to ensure

that that happens and that's largely the reason why the Ethereum foundation looks the way that it does today. Um and so obviously there are a lot of challenges around this and um you know we could talk about unis swap in a little bit because there was actually a really good bit of reporting from DL news on uh unis swap getting uh brought up in some of the conversations in DC but there's some challenging incentive alignment and operational frictions with this which is you know the typical path of a protocol startup is that you raise as a labs entity then you spin off a foundation and there it immediately introduces ch questions of like hey how can we make sure we're all marching towards the same direction here. You actually have to have separate missions. You can't have the same slack channels like does someone from the labs co or lab co go

over to the foundation? There all these real frictions associated with it. And then once there's a launch sometimes it's like how do I even communicate here to align all these different stakeholders. So there are real frictions and challenges associated with it. Not the least of which that a foundation there are real limit limitations around what a foundation can legally do. They can't they're not for-profit. They can't act in that way. they can't own or control uh even a pro a product which is for profit, right? So maybe foreshadowing some of the u unis swap challenges. But yeah, basically uh the what Miles is questioning is whether or not now is a good time for a better simpler alternative which is just companies. Um and his point is that the the regulatory landscape today is

different u than it used to be. U there might not be a reason to have the same structure that we've had in the past. Um and also we have better tools and uh more decentralized uh you know pieces of infrastructure. So he calls out Dunas which are decentralized unincorporated nonprofit associations like legal entities for Dows and then uh this is Gabriel Shapiro's thing but Borgs which are cybernetic organizations. So take some of the tools uh and components that you might recognize from a DAO setup grant program security councils etc. U and then allow uh these Dunas to govern them um in a way that doesn't make them a you know a security offering necessarily. So I would just be curious to get your guys standpoint here. Do you

think we're at a place where the US is secure enough where we can do away with this foundation structure that we've had for a long period of time? Um or are there still challenges that haven't been solved? What's your take on this in in general? That's a really good synopsis and overview and there's um I mean there there's just so much to it in so many ways. Um and I I would even say like a more global comment is we have kind of edited around into industry norms that I'd say we should be questioning at large at this point. You know one of them is you know 49.9% max to insiders 50.1% has to go to the community in some way shape or form.

you know, you got to do a a 10% airdrop because that's what UniS swap did. Um or or bigger. Like there there are just norms that have been developed and we haven't really gone back and questions questioned those assumptions and and maybe they were because at one point in 2021 some law firm gave some guidance that to become sufficiently decentralized, you needed this to be you know with but it's like that's that's literally one person's opinion from four years ago that literally is irrelevant now. And so I I would say as it relates to foundations and legal entity structuring and token distribution like we are waiting for market structure.

Yep. And being able to have a market structure bill will dictate all the answers to this. And I think you know hats off to Miles like he he has been the thought leader on all of this. Um push forward so many different ideas. Um and I know is in in communication with people who are are thinking about market structure and working on it. Um, I wouldn't be surprised if this is sort of like a precursor to some of the stuff that will hopefully get factored into market structure, um, whenever we, you know, see more of that, uh, or it gets further along. But yeah, we should blow up this foundation model. Like, why do we need why do we need to tie one hand behind our back when operating these things, you know, as a company versus a foundation? And, you know, you're selling tokens post uh, token genesis

event, but it's coming from the foundation, so the money stays there. you like you're a labs entity, but you're asking for grants from the foundation that you started. You're transferring your IP because it can't be on the I mean, it's just like you're contorting yourself like a gymnast just to be able to abide by some defunct perspective governance standards that probably like won't be relevant after this market structure bill goes live. And then the other vector here is like what's the jurisdiction that you're in? Is it the US? Is it Europe? Like what which standard are you going to choose to follow? So yes, to to answer the question succinctly, we need to blow up the foundation model, but we can't quite do that until we have regulatory clarity. Regulatory clarity comes from market structure bill. Agreed, Michael.

Agreed. I don't know, Vance, if you have any. I I could share, by the way, one additional article here that I thought was good and um you know, it's kind of this is the salient example when it comes to at least the misalignment and incentives here. Uh so DL News did a piece of reporting on Uniswap's Dow drama. um which has sparked debate um on decentralization in Congress and essentially it is a um the unis swap lab's chief legal officer Katherryn Min testified to a house committee um where Dowo governance sort of came under scrutiny and what's interesting is that one of these representatives Sean Casten who's a Democrat from Illinois um he actually referenced a squabble about governance u at unis swap and I don't know if you guys remember this but there

was a uh I think it was a unis swap delegate a little while ago who criticized some of the upgrades um that uh from unis swap was either V4 or uni chain where the DAO had not been consulted at all. Um and you know I think also and I love unis swap by the way. I think they're some of the best actors in the space. Uh they're great. I fully think that uh you know the reason why uh they're going through these challenges is because of uh a poor regulatory system. But, you know, I'm not I'm not breaking I'm not these are not this is not a particularly hot take, right? Like the token holders of UNI haven't done particularly well. They're not getting any of that. Um the trading fees that go through the front end, which all goes to labs. I probably, this

is my own speculation here. I have no inside knowledge, but A16Z has a relatively large stake of UNI. um they pro there was a line in that uh in the limitations on Miles post that a foundation cannot uh you know be associated with any for-profit uh product. So there are real limitations here but it also does make a lot of these tokens uninvestable. So I don't know what my point is here. I'm just uh it's I agree with you guys like this really does all come down to market structure. I know you guys have been highlighting that many times on this podcast for the last several months and yeah I just could not agree with agree with you more. Um and it's coming at a critical time to for I think tokens in general. But one one other one other thought um well

kind of two points. One one I think is um you we talk about this with founders especially at the early stages where it's like what are you going to choose uh token or equity as to where the value occurs. M um in the case of unis swap you do have both which is frankly the only example that I've found that has potentially successful both valued role to an equity in the form of the wallet and and token in the form of you know the uni token but clearing up this will help clarify that question as well which is how do you have an aligned incentive model across the board um but the bigger thing I think which would be really cool which is some of these cyborg and duna con constructs is you know the way that you vote and the way that you have

shareholder governance is you literally have to like take your shares and vote and in many cases if you hold them at like a black rock through an ETF like they vote on your behalf for shareholder governance and you don't actually get a say. Um, and but like that's technically how all of this stuff works from like a publicly traded CC corporation and it would be really cool I think you know and we're starting to get there with things like Sky where governance is going to be a little bit more automated and every month and until there's like nobody actually working there and it's just like a fully automated protocol and like that's really cool from a financial perspective. Um, but like we're going to start to get to these points where it's not people who are making decisions potentially or or it's just going to be

automated and it's going to be governance rights via the token. But having clarity around that and I know we're going back to like a 2020 or 2021 concept of like Dows actually having autonomous, you know, organizational authority and control. Um, that would be like the real cyber punk uh vision that I think would would enable so much more growth in this industry. It's not just like tokens are this new cool thing that like we created a new capital asset. It's like they actually help build this new organizational structure which is purpose-built for basically like the blockchain AI world that I think is coming more rapidly than people expect.

Yeah, agreed with all of that. Um so I don't know ending on a note of optimism. Uh I think with both of both the Genius Act and the Market structure bill if they hopefully got done this year. By the way, the the legal the crypto legal community has reviewed it very positively. Uh I think Jake Travinsky said of all the different iterations of the bill that he's looked at, this is by far the most positive. Um I don't know, I just feel good. I feel um Gabe Shapiro said the same, which like coming from him is is high praise in my book. Yeah.

Hard man to please. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know. Kind of look out at the end of the end of this year. I feel very optimistic. Um, so yeah, I don't know. End on a note of optimism and it'll be interesting to see. I'm sure all of our takes on man. Can you imagine the All-In podcast this week? That's going to be banger. It's uh Yeah, my my my final closing word would be uh you know, zoom out and and enjoy the process, enjoy the entertainment, and uh it's going to be a positive year. It might just take a little bit longer.

Yeah. All right. All right, fellas. Fun one. See you next week. [Music]