Ran Neuner on crypto all-time highs and which tokens will join

Transcript

GM. Good morning. Welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show where green candles bring back memories, delusions, and slightly dangerous confidence. I'm your host, Jay Hamilton. It's Tuesday, July the 1st, and today we are joined by Ran, co-founder and CEO of Onchain Capital. He's also the host and founder of Crypto Banter, a fellow crypto media business that's absolutely been crushing it over the years. One of the OG crypto media businesses. He's also the host of CNBC's Crypto Trader and so much more. Now, today we're going to get Ran's opinion on where we are in crypto markets right now and where he thinks we're going short term in July and through the summer, why Rand believes that the Fed is going to cut

rates sooner than the market believes, and what it's like to lose a hund00 million, and so much more. Before we jump in, I got to let you guys know Milk Road is hiring right now. We're looking for ahead of people, an operator, and some content creators. And while I'm on the topic, I know CryptoBanter is also hiring right now and I'm not a selfish guy. I want everybody to work in crypto. So if you want a job and you're not going to join Milk Road, you should check out CryptoBanter because they got great jobs and great opportunities as well. Today's episode is brought to you by Nexo, the platform that grows your crypto without locking it away. It's also brought to you by Letin. Get cash without selling your Bitcoin. Without further ado, Ran, welcome to the Milk Road Show. Jay, how's it going, man?

Awesome, man. Pleasure to have you. Thanks so much for joining us today. Let's start with uh um you put out a tweet yesterday that I thought really uh gave us a good gauge for where we might be at right now. And that was a tweet yesterday news dropped that we might get a Salana ETF as early as tomorrow, Wednesday. Uh and you said if you want to gauge on where we are in this market, the Salana ETF just got approved with staking and the price is up two and a half%. What do you think about the current market right now? Honestly, it's uh for me the hardest market that I've had to navigate in in it's actually for me even worse than a bare market. I'll be honest. Like I I I for me, this market

has been more frustrating than anything. And the reason why it's so frustrating is because if you look at at the markets, the S&P is is at all-time highs. Uh the Dixie is completely broken down. I was actually looking at the at the Dixie chart earlier today. I don't know if if you if you want to just bring up my my my my um my chart my my my screen but if you look at that at that Dixie chart that Dixie chart's broken down like the first Trump presidency. Now generally when you get the dollar breaking down like that what you want is you want to see risk assets going up. So you and we are seeing it. So for example if you look at how gold has performed in all of this gold is again like touching nearly alltime highs. If you look at the

S&P 500 that's touching all-time highs. It's actually you can see it's on a tear actually. Uh and then if you look at like silver which is one of the other commodities I think again pretty much if close if not at all time highs and the one asset class which is really really lagging is is altcoins. So bitcoin actually if you look at bitcoin you know theoretically bitcoin is very much at at all time highs like you know it's okay the alltime high is 11 11 or 112 and we're at 107. So, you can say like we're in alltime high territory, right? But if you look at altcoins, I mean, they they paint a completely completely completely different picture. Now, I'd love to sit here and tell you that my portfolio is is 100% in Bitcoin and therefore my

portfolio is very much at all time highs, but we all know that's not the case, right? Because our portfolios are in the next shiny object, which we think is going to is going to do well. And so, for anyone who is in altcoins, I think this is the toughest market we've ever had to navigate. And it's not only because altcoins aren't going up, but it's because they they they remain in a range. And what I've learned in my in my in my crypto career is that the most dangerous time is actually range is time when the markets are ranging because we we came here the people that came into crypto early were broken up into two parts. The first part were the technologists and the technologists literally came here for technologists.

They they're the guys that came here to build Ethereum and the guys that came here to build Salana and they aren't really here for well they are everyone is here for the money but they're not really here for the money. They were here because they wanted to really build technology and then you got the traders or the people that want the dopamine rush and the people that want the dopamine rush typically get destroyed in these side markets because what lands up happening is every time the market goes up one or two% they think this is the breakout, this is the breakout and then bang we get flashed out the next day. And so I don't know, to me, this has been like a very very very frustrating time. Um, I'm super excited about blockchain. I'm super excited about crypto, more excited than I've ever been. But, you know, in in this journey,

we go through tough times. And I always remind myself every time that I go through one of these slams, I always remind myself no matter how bad it is now, no matter how boring it is now, no matter how bad the price action is now, no matter how bad the choppiness is now, it's still better 100 times better than any other industry at its peak. Like you have to just keep reminding yourself of that. It it is patience is is a very difficult thing as an investor especially as a crypto investor where we are used to altcoins ripping and seeing days of you know 5x 10x 20x as a regular thing in the past cycles and all of a sudden this

cycle it's not happening. What? Jay, do you remember do you remember 2017 and 2021? We used to have like those tokens like NEO going up like 10x in a day. And we used to get like Icon going up like 10x in a day and Verge going up 10x in a day and Ethereum going up from $3 to like in in like in one quarter it went up like $70. I miss those days like that's what brought me into crypto and I miss those days now. So, so here's here's the natural question is are those days are those days over?

Uh, yeah, I think that we so I think what's happening to the market is the crypto market is becoming institutionalized. And so when things become institutionalized, they effectively become boring and regulated. That's like when you think about institutional markets, they become boring and regulated. And that's because institutions don't do high volatility markets. It's just not part of their mandate, right? And if you think about where we are in crypto, if you think about like where we are in crypto, we're at a point now where the narrative that's driving these markets is ETFs, Black Rockck, uh, tokenization, so real world tokenization. And now we're

starting to see the merge between trad. We're seeing it with Xtocks. We're seeing it with Robin Hood launch, trading onchain, buy launch, trading onchain. So that's pretty much what the narrative is. This cycle is very much driven by an institutional narrative. And the one thing that institutionals can't stomach is real volatility. They're not here for the real volatility. And so I think we're getting we're breaking up crypto into three parts. The first part is the tokens that benefit from tokenization and from institutionalization.

And that would be things like the layer 1 blockchains. That would be things like the big DeFi protocols. That would be things like the exchanges, etc., etc. Then the second part is the one at the bottom. And and and the part at the bottom is the meme coins. And so the same people that wanted to be in the casino are now being are going to play on chain. So, if you want that same dopamine rush that we used to get back in the day, you'd go to the 400 and 500 grand tokens on China and you'd go play in that casino and those can easily go from 400 500 grand to $5 million, but that's really become a casino. So, you literally know like before we used to disguise the casino by saying, you know, it's not a casino. We're actually making

investments. Now, we realize that, you know, we can just be candid about we're going to the meme coins. we're going to decide whether we we're betting on, you know, Fcoin or I don't know what the the latest the latest memecoin in the trenches actually is. And if you want to make longerterm investments, we kind of know that we're not going to get 5x and 10x returns, right? We just know that that's not the case anymore. And so we breaking we've broken up the market into three. The casino, the tokens that are going to benefit from institutionalization, and then pretty much everything else. Yeah, it's uh it makes it very difficult. Now, it doesn't mean that there isn't flows happening in crypto.

They're just happening in different ways. And you mentioned before, it's the institutional crowd. The institutions are the one bringing the flows. They brought them starting last year with the Bitcoin ETF. And we all thought, okay, altcoin season will come. And we all said, "Oh, yeah, it's okay that the Bitcoin hit all-time highs before the having. It's a little bit of a different cycle." But we weren't really paying attention enough. You know, we all thought, "Ah, it'll play out the same. It'll play out the same." But I think we're now coming I think now we realize it's not the same. And I I hope most of our listeners are seeing that as well because the big thing that I'm noticing is where is where's the money flowing right now? It's flowing into equities.

It's not flowing into tokens anymore. And once it flows into equities, you can't flow into tokens in the same way that flowed. You're not going to see that. So let me show you something. If you if you just be so kind as to bring up my screen again, right? And I want to ask you something, right? Like where would you rather put your money? So, your one option is you can put your money into, I don't know, an an altcoin or you can just go straight and put your money into Robin Hood. I just want to show you what the Robin Hood chart looks like. That's what the Robin Hood chart looks like. It's insane. Okay. Or or you can or you can put your money into I don't know, Coinbase here. I mean, let's just look at the Coinbase chart.

Or and you can see Coinbase is actually printing the same pattern that Robin Hood's printing, which means that if it uh let me let me give you another one. Robin Hood, Coinbase. I mean, we can we can go down all of these, even like Tesla, right? Like, you know, it's so much more fun to play the stocks now. And it's so much safer. And remember, the whole thing around around around trading is risk return. Like stocks are safer than crypto and they're giving you much better returns. So, if you got something that's safer and giving you much better returns, that's where the retail money is going to go. And to make things even worse, I actually did a show uh today on my channel and literally I actually show you the title of the show.

I said the whole X stocks frenzy is killing crypto. That was like literally the thesis of the show. Yeah, it is. It it is making altcoins very different and very difficult to predict. If long meetings and judgmental bankers are your thing, Nexo is probably not. Nexo is a premier wealth platform built for people who value their time and money. It's built for people who have idle cash lying around and want it to grow fast. Whether it's Bitcoin, Ethereum, or even Forex pegged assets like USDT or USDC, Nexo offers up to 14% annual interest and access to cryptoback credit in under 24 hours. Your assets need a platform

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Let me let me actually ask you here uh because we've been saying this for a while at Milk Road is that the altcoin trade of this season of this cycle is equities. It's whether it be whether it be the the tech companies that you're talking about the Robin Hood, the Coinbase, uh even you can go to the Tesla or whether it's the the the treasury companies which have also done incredibly well and seen a lot of flows and we are seeing so many more treasury companies coming every day not just Bitcoin, Ethereum and Salana and even more likely to come as more and more of these protocol founders are trying to create these treasury companies in order to create demand for their tokens through the public markets. So there is just this total shift in which market is

being played in between. What are your thoughts on Robin Hood's announcement yesterday and their their their path forward and what their vision is? Look, I'm an early not an early holder. I'm I bought Robin Hood between 20 and 30 $38. Like my my last purchase was $38 in this April dip. Um I've always been bullish Robin Hood because I've always been Well done. High five. High five. Yeah, I'm I'm bullish. I'm bullish any token. I think what Wall Street have realized is that they want exposure to crypto and that the way for them to get exposure to crypto is to go via listed stocks that they actually understand. And so the beneficiaries of that are Circle, which we saw was a absolute frenzy, Robin

Hood, and Coinbase. So then what are there are there any altcoins that are that are worth buying right now that you see potential in? So it depends how you see the world and the way I see the world is if everything is going onto chain if everything's going onto chain you have to you have to you have to have a blockchain thesis. So let me tell you what my blockchain thesis is. So the way I see it is crypto in itself is a very very very risky asset class. It's not an asset class that is easy to make money in anymore. And so you have to have very good concentrated bets. And to have good concentrated bets, you have to have a real thesis. My thesis is like multiffold. And the first

part of my thesis is let's go back to to core of what blockchain actually is. Blockchain is the creation of digital value or the migration of traditional value onto the onto chain. And if that's the case, what do you do with value? Well, you trade it or you send it. That's pretty much what you do. You trade it or you send it. So, if that's the theory, then what you want to do is you want to make sure that you own the place where they create the digital value, which is the layer ones. And you want to create you want to make sure that you own the trading layer above where people are going to trade this value that they created. And in that hierarchy, what you know is the more leverage, the higher profit that these these these these platforms actually

land up making. And so my investment thesis is have 80% or 90% of your of your investable portfolio. Have it in the in the L1s, Salana, Ethereum, uh I mean if you if you want to invest in in that and then and obviously Bitcoin and then the balance invest in all the exchanges, anything that's trading and specifically the higher the leverage of trading, the better, right? So that's where you want to where you want to concentrate all your bets. And then 20% of your investments can be in projects which is things like DeFi projects around lending and borrowing. So for example like you know if you believe in in stocks people are going to use their stocks as collateral so you can invest

in the lending and borrowing platforms. But 80% should be in the layer one and and should be in the in the trading facilities because no matter which narrative wins, whether it's meme coins, whether it's AI coins, whether it's it's the the two layers that are always going to be the beneficiaries are going to be the chain and the dexes. And with that, by definition, I also mean the the perpetuals dexes. And and it's funny you bring up narratives and we talked earlier about, you know, how difficult this cycle has been. There has not been a consistent narrative. The the last time we had a consistent narrative was AI at the end of last year and that lasted a few months and everyone thought it was going

to be the big hot thing of 2025 and look at AI now. It's there is there is a there is actually a narrative the consistent narrative is institutionalization. The only thing about the institutionalization narrative is that it doesn't benefit most the altcoins. It it benefits a handful of altcoins. It benefits things like syrup or maple finance or or whatever you want to call it. Uh it benefits things like uh I don't know like like these niche niche niche def um uh maker what's it they call it sky now that sky so it benefits things like sky but no you're right there hasn't been a sustained narrative where we could have a lot of fun meme coins are dead AI agents are dead for the greater part of it isn't really good except for like five things five D5 protocols which are actually moving and

so it's frustrating and actually to be honest what makes it even more frustrating is that the flow of money is flowing out of crypto into stocks. Right now, it's much much much more fun to be in stocks. It's a I love that you brought up uh Syrup and Sky. Those are uh two tokens that we've written lots about and that we've been bullish on for a while. So, we'll link to our reports in the show notes if you guys want to learn more about why we like both of those tokens. Uh I want to talk you mentioned you posted recently on uh on Twitter that you are uh you see all-time highs hitting in July. Do you did you mean Bitcoin when you wrote this? What did you mean? I'll say alltime highs is like I'm like which which what alltime high?

What? So definitely Bitcoin. I think I think July is going to be a good month for Bitcoin. I think uh there's no reason in my opinion why Bitcoin hasn't broken its alltime high. Gold's at all time highs. Silver's at all time highs. S&P's at alltime highs. Um, I think we're going to get a rate cut. I I'm hopeful we may get a rate cut in July, even though I know the market's not giving us that. The market's saying we'll get the first rate cut in September. I think the one thing that's that's putting the market off is this. Because Trump has been so vocal about Pal reducing rates, I think if Pal reduces rates, then he could be seen to becoming to be scared of the threats that Trump is making against him, right?

And so I think like the best strategy for Trump is just shut the [ __ ] up and let Pal read the inflation numbers. And if the inflation numbers are close to 2%. There's no reason why Pal shouldn't cut interest rates, right? And so like I think I I get that Trump's irritated. I think that Trump that that Pal must that that that he must just shut the [ __ ] up. Just shut up. Just honestly shut up and just just let You think he's capable of that? No. No. I think No, he's not. And I think Elon's also not. And that's why him and Elon are having a public spat now again. They fought about the same thing 50 times already. Yeah. Yeah. It's I mean it is two guys who just love the spotlight and can't can't avoid it and can't help themselves. I I want to chat

quickly about uh this the setup that I see and then get your thoughts on this because Yeah, go for it. I I think your take is very interesting that we could see a rate cut in July because as you said the market's not pricing in. market saying about 20% likelihood that we get a rate cut, 80% we don't. Uh, and what I see is I see I see July 9th tariff deadline date as a major macro milestone. I think we could cruise through that. I think it's very obvious to me that the Fed is waiting to see the impact of tariffs because they don't know, right? And they're worried, hey, could cause inflation. We don't know what's going to happen here. But if we can get through July 9th, if that doesn't cause any major market meltdown,

then I think that I think you could be right. I think the Fed could be lined up. It's also very clear that inside the Fed there is debate right now of whether they should or shouldn't do a rate cut. And so there is a a split happening. Plus, you also we got to remember drone pal's done next year. And so there is people vying for that job. They want that job. I actually want to show you I actually want to show you a chart. I just have to find it. Um. Mhm. Yeah. Go ahead. And what they know is that if if they appease to Trump, if they push for the rate cut now and they show Trump they're on his side, they're more likely to possibly get that job. So you have you have real real action happening behind the scenes that I think you could

lead to you to what you're saying being right that we could see that rate cut early. That's this is what the market's pricing in for when Pal leaves. So that like they're pricing in massive rate cuts when PAL actually leaves and that's like March 25 March and June 2026. They're really pricing in like big rate cuts when PAL leaves. So So yeah, I mean I think it's I think it's it's that's what the market's pricing in at the moment. Yeah. Uh okay, I want to uh actually before before I I shift to a couple of more fun questions before we do um I got I always love to ask what's what's the most recent trade you made?

Um, I bought a little bit of Ethereum actually, funny enough. And the reason why I bought Ethereum was, look, I'm not an ETH bull. I'm much more of a Salana bull. Why? Because I think Salana just wins on all metrics. But, you know, you also can't forget or you can't ignore what Wall Street are doing. And Wall Street are going all in on ETH. Like, Robin Hood built their L2 on ETH. Coinbase built their L2 on ETH. I know why they're doing it. They're doing it because you don't need to build an L2 on Salana because Salana is just so good and so fast. And if you build an L2 on ETH, then um if if you land up building an L2 on ETH, then it's much more customizable, right? So, so like you they building these these L2s. You've

also got like Tom Lee who went all in on ETH yesterday. Now, I'm I don't think that Tom Lee is like the be all and end all or or whatever else, but but I do think that you you have to pay attention to the narrative. I also think that just in general, if you look at where DeFi is, DeFi is primarily right now on ETH. Even though I had I had zero ETH earlier this year. Not zero, but but close to zero. And now I have and now I've got ETH back in my portfolio. I love it. You are the uh you're the first person in a while to say that they bought ETH on the show. So that's uh that's exciting to hear because uh ETH has just been yeah consistently down bad, but there's been a a good momentum happening there and a lot of shift

happening. So it's been it's it's definitely exciting to see and you nailed it. Wall Street is betting on ETH, right? There's so much building happening on ETH. And the the the economics of building an L2 are very favorable to these companies that are looking to gain profit and revenue off of their L2. So there's there's a lot of opportunity there. Okay. You do one single sequencer like Coinbase on base. You got a se single sequencer. You charge all the sequencing fees. It's a gold mine. It's an absolute gold mine. Mhm. Um Okay. Okay, I want to shift to ask more of a um a a personal story from your past is um you you lost a lot of money on Luna and when you lose a lot of

money I think you learn a lot. Now obviously Luna was a um a black swan event that was difficult. Nobody could have predicted that in that moment. Um and a lot of people lost a lot of money. uh tell us about the story of what happened and what lessons you learned from it. So Luna actually wasn't a black swan event. It was and you said it wasn't it was a black swan. It wasn't expected by anyone. It was expected by a lot of people. The only thing is that we didn't want to listen to those people. And the reason why we didn't want to listen to those people is because we were crypto bros and Luna was the new money. Algorithmic stable coins were the new money. Many people told us that there's a flaw in the algorithm, but we chose to ignore the fact that that there

was a flaw in the algorithm. So, you know, over 50% of my portfolio was in was in one token and we absolutely destroyed the whole portfolio. And then the problem with the other half of the portfolio is that the other half of the portfolio was all went down because remember docoin was selling Bitcoin and that knocked the Bitcoin price which knocked the ETH price and the whole that's when the whole deleveraging actually happened. Now look, I'm glad to say that I bounced back to higher than I was uh in the lunar times. And I think it taught me like many many many things. I think the first thing is um that number one, no matter how much you believe in a token, no matter how much you believe in Bitcoin or ETH or Salana or Hyperlid or whatever you believe in, don't put too much of your portfolio

into one bet because no matter how much conviction you you've got on that bet, it can fail. And when it does fail, it can wipe you out. So today, no matter how much conviction I have in Salana, I bought some ETH, I've got some Bitcoin, I've got Hyperlquid, I've got I've got I've got BNB, I've got a whole lot of other tokens, right? And so that's the first lesson that I learned is no matter how how much I believe in something, always apply diversified portfolio. Um, number two, the second thing that I learned is that actually the most important people in life are the haters. The most important people in life are are people that tell you that something's wrong. Because the the the followers and the fans and the people that have share the same thesis as you, all the Salana bros and whatever else,

they already they are sharing something that you already know. Right? The the the fans the fans are are the the haters are the ones that are showing you a blind spot. Now, if I go through my my WhatsApps and my messages and my and my Twitter messages before, a lot of people warned me that Luna wasn't a very good bet and it wasn't a very stable algorithm and and etc etc. But I chose to ignore it, right? And so now my whole attitude has changed. Now when someone points out a defect, I really really really consider uh the defect, right? I really really really consider consider the defect and whether and whether it can actually have that, right? So yeah, so that's that's the second thing that I learned. The other thing that I learned

is that um when you when you are rich and when you are successful, you can easily become complacent. And complacency means that, you know, you don't really readjust your portfolio because you don't need to because you're so rich and blah blah blah blah blah. And what I learned when when I got knocked up is it's actually kind of fun to rebuild. I don't I don't know how to explain it to I know it sounds like like maybe like a little bit sadistic like what's you want to like you want to get knocked down so that you can build yourself back up again. Um and the way the way I see it is um if you've built a house and the house is built on shaky foundations and then the house gets knocked down by a by a flood or

hurricane and then like you're not you're not exactly um like you didn't you didn't plan for the house to get knocked down etc. and then the house gets knocked down and you have to rebuild it and then you build an amazing house with amazing foundations like an amazing strong portfolio and an amazing strong business. You're you feel much safer and much more confident in two things. One is you feel much safer and much more confident in the house because it's much it's got better diversification, better walls, etc., etc. And then the other thing that you feel sa safer in is in your ability to rebuild. Like, so like what it taught me was it kind of it taught me that no matter what happens, I'll actually be okay because I

can just rebuild. Like I've got the ability to just rebuild. And like that's an like it's it's not nice to go through, but when you do go through something that's really that bad and then you rebuild, it just gives you this like amazing confidence that like [ __ ] like I was knocked down 3 years ago to a point where I thought I was KO'ed and here I am back on my feet and actually I'm more energized and I've got a very strong house with a very strong foundation which I didn't have before. I lived in a house before, but it was a house that was built on very bad foundations. And then, you know, the the big bad wolf came and he said huff and puff and he blew my house down and it actually blew down. Now I'm in a house that's made of bricks. And no, no big

bad wolf can come now, bro. Mhm. Mhm. What I really like about that is that so many people get wrecked at some point in in crypto in investing. Even if you're not in crypto, in investing, whether whatever asset that might be in, whatever market class that might be in, everybody's going to go through cycles. Everyone's going to make mistakes. You'd be you'd be lying to yourself if you said, "Hey, I'm perfect and I'm never going to make a mistake. My house is never going to have flaws in it, right? There will always be flaws." And so what I like about your perspective is that if you're patient and you stick at it, you can come back. And I always say this to so many listeners is like do not give up when you are down bad. Because those are

the moments when you need to lock in, when you need to put in more effort, when you need to take a deep breath and say, "Hey, I can do this. I can I can come out of this hole." But you just need to be consistent. Yeah, I was there. I I was there. I remember I was speaking to one of my business friends, mentors, one of my good friends, and I and said to him, you know, I spent since 2016 building this amazing crypto portfolio. Built it for like 5 years, worked my ass off, like, you know, like building that my portfolio was hard. It was taking risks. It was going to conferences. It was it was hustling my way into ICOs. It was hustling my way into Idos. It was traveling the world and looking for investments. It was

riding out like massive massive massive storms. It wasn't easy to build that portfolio. It was I hustled like a mofo to build that portfolio and then in like 48 hours the whole portfolio went like gone. Right. So like I I I remember I was speaking to my one of my business mentors and I said to him, I just don't have the energy to start again. I just don't have it. I just I don't have the the the the I don't know if it's energy or the the drive or the fire was knocked out. It's literally like I got punched in the face and I just couldn't get up again. And then okay, then I got up again. And once I got up again, I thought, okay, I've got a decision to make now. Either I'm going to lie down flat and I'm out or

I'm going to build back like a mofo. And I decided to choose the latter. And I went all in more focused be I called it beast mode. I was in beast mode. I was in absolute absolute absolute beast mode. and I carried on building in beast mode and I'm still in beast mode. I'm in I mean I'm in beast beast beast mode at the moment. I love to hear it man. It's a it's an incredible story and really inspirational for for so many of us to to learn from uh because uh yeah investing isn't easy and so when you have these moments uh don't don't give up and persevere because if you do you will come out the other side stronger.

Uh I want to talk about one more topic before we let you go which I think is an important topic that you have a lot of insight on that I don't think our audience truly understands and that is the game that Koss are playing and the way that Koss partner with protocols the way that they get allocated tokens and a lot of re retail people don't understand this and it can lead to a lot of bad decisions because you can trust a KO trust their trust their their info but not do your own research. What explain to us how Koss make money with protocols, the partnerships that they do and this game that they're playing so that retail and our listeners can make sure that they don't fall into this

trap. So I'm going to like you talk about general KL. Let's understand what a K is, right? So a key a KL is a key opinion leader. A key opinion leader is someone who has influence. What what do we define as influence? Influence is defined as as two metrics. attention and credibility. So if you have a high attention and a high credibility, you have a high level of influence. If you have high attention but low credibility, aka like a guy like Pit Boy, he had zero influence when he was still in the game. He had zero influence because he had a lot of attention on him but no one would take anything that he said any credibly. So as a K if you want to survive for multiple cycles and by the way K is used

as a very bad term. Most the VC funds are also KL's cuz when when Multicoin Capital tell you that they're investing in a project then they are a key opinion leader and you think wow that's a good project right if you if if Galaxy Digital tells you they're investing in a in a in a project then they are uh they are are effectively a K. So K is not key opinion leader like like you know key opinion leaders on Twitter. It's anyone that has high attention and high credibility. Once you have high attention, high credibility, you got to decide what do you want to do with that. So option number one is you can do things that in continue to increase your credibility or you can pull the cord and you can commit suicide and that is use your attention

and credibility to guide attention to somewhere where it shouldn't be where you land up making money and no one else lands up making money and then what'll land up happening is you're going to land up losing your influence. So let's just say that anybody here in the media and anybody here in our shoes is here to try and increase their influence, increase the number of people watching them and increase the credibility that they have in everything that they say and in the decisions that they make and where they where they channel that that that that attention to. Okay, now let's go bring it back to the K game that that that gets played. So being a key opinion leader is a business. It's a business like our business is audience. It's attention.

It's attention. And then what we do with their attention. Now sometimes what we do with attention is we allow sponsors to pay us so that we can we can disclose their product. We can we can we can spread information about their product. The first thing is I think the big problem in the industry is that a lot of people don't disclose who they're in bed with and who they're not in bed with. And I think that that's one way to absolutely destroy your credibility. We have a uh in our code of ethics, you have to disclose if you're involved or partnered with a token in any way. So, if you're if you're sponsored, if you got paid by the token, uh if you get or or any project, if you get paid by the token, you have to disclose it because then you're not leading your people down

a garden path. They know that that that you're getting paid. So, what typically happens in the industry, in the industry, protocols usually come to key opinion leaders and they say, "Well, let's maybe go to the other side of it." The other side of it is there's projects There's thousands and thousands and thousands of projects and the problem is that these projects need to differentiate themselves in the market. So you may have a project that has the best technology in the market, but if you can't get users and if you can't get attention to that project and if you can't get investors into that project, the project's pretty much going to die. And so the one tool that projects have started to use is they're starting to use influence or key opinion leaders to actually publicize their projects. And the tool that they use is they give the

key opinion leaders the ability to invest in the protocol at a at a lower price providing that they're locked up. So a good example is you could say that today I'm I'm just using a random project and please uh I'm not saying that in in any way that we're affiliated or we have a a deal with these guys. But if I look at SUI today, SUI is trading at $2.70. The SUI team could come to Akia Pinita and say, "Look, we'll sell you $100,000 of our token at instead of $270, we'll sell it to you at $2 or $180, but you're going to be locked up for 6 months or 12 months. And we're giving you this opportunity to buy in so that you are incentivized to talk about our protocol." So, the question is, is

that ethical? I think it's great. I think it's very, very, very good if an influencer is willing to put his money where his mouth is. and the influencer is willing to disclose that he got this deal because that's the big the big thing. So like let's again let's go back to and I'm using a SUI example but there's no ODC OTC that I'm that I'm doing with SUI or anything like that. If SUI came to me and said to me look we want you to buy into SUI at a at a at a at a lower price because you're a K. Great. I I would probably do it. Why? because I actually believe in what the protocol is doing and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is and I am getting a discount by virtue of the fact that I've worked so hard to build an

audience and I'm willing to put my own money into the protocol and I'm going to tell my audience that I've done that providing that I'm transparent with my audience that there is a partnership and that I have been able to get favorable terms. I think that's the best deal in the world for everyone. The protocol gets exposure. we get a good deal to monetize our influence and the users know exactly that we're in this deal and they can follow us if they want to follow us. where it goes pear-shaped is where people don't disclose and then then it becomes a dump fest because then you're you're shilling it to your followers and then when you get your token unlocks you you land up starting to dump it and actually what we did was we knew who influencers were in OTC's

and we would correlate that we have a system that tells us when they tweet uh about certain tokens and we would correlate them to the dates of the token unlocks and what we'd see is that just before the token unlocks the influencers will actually start chilling it and that's where the whole thing goes pear-shaped but I think look I think if you have influence and you like Ral Paul great example right we know we all know he's an ambassador for Sooi and I think I don't know what the deal is whether he was given tokens or whatever but he's an ambassador for Sui great partnership they leveraging his influence he's an investor in Sui both want people to succeed and he's now getting his followers into Sui not because he's paid to but because he actually wants the protocol to succeed and he thinks it

If he does that to a token that he doesn't believe in, he's going to burn his his credibility. And in the formula of influence equals attention times credibility, he's going to lose his influence. And that's really pretty much all he has is his influence. And so it's a game that the influences basically have to play. It's uh it is the key here is disclosures as you said. Yes. Without disclosures and without transparency is where the issues come. If you're an investor, how do you protect yourself against this risk? You, you know, you're listening to podcasts, you're on Twitter, right? Constantly, you are seeing Koss, influencers kill projects, and you don't necessarily

know all the time whether they're being paid to do that, whether they have tokens, whether they're even an investor in that. You know, love to all to all influencers and all creators. It's a tough job and it's a lot of work, but a lot of us do not disclose on every post everywhere everywhere we are, even though a lot of them mean well. So, if you're an investor, how do you protect yourself? Pick your fighter. Simple. Find the people that you like and find the people that you trust and get your information from them and that's it. So, like, you know, like um again, it's about attention times credibility. And you need to you need to make sure that the people that you're listening to you believe are credible. I really like this. Pick your fighter. Pick your fighter and stick stick with your

fighter. And you can have more than one fighter. Like don't actually you should have more than one. Don't just listen to one media outlet. Listen to many. Do your research. But pick the ones that you trust and stick with them because it is it is very the the mistake I think a lot of people make is all of these platforms that feed us content are going to do an incredible job at feeding you the next thing that you want to listen to with the best thumbnail and the best headline. And that's not always from somebody you know or somebody you trust. And you can stumble into it and they can present it in a very compelling way. But if you don't know them and you don't trust them, really really think twice, right? Do not just listen to the next YouTube video or the next podcast or the

next tweet or the next tweet that you see that is from somebody you do not know. If you want to listen to them, get to know them a little bit first and then take their opinion. Ran, thanks so much for your honesty and transparency and for breaking it down with us. We need more uh leaders and more media personnel in the space who see it that way. And for everybody listening, just, you know, slow down, look for disclosures, and make sure you trust whoever you're listening to because it's risky and there's always going to be some people that are looking to grift and get an opportunity and take advantage of that. Not everybody, but there will be some. So, be careful out there. Jay, the biggest problem that people make in crypto is they come in here and they come to win the race in the first

innings. And and and again, I'm going to bring you back to the story of the tortoise and the hair. 2017, I was the hair. every ICO, chase the ICO, sell your Bitcoin, go into ICOs. 2021, I was the hair. 2024 25 I'm the tortoise, bro. I see all these shiny objects and I and as much as they tempting, I'm staying in my lane, bro. It's one step at a time. One step, one step, one step, one step, right? And I know that I know and it kills me to see my friends making a thousand X's on meme coins, but I know they're going to give it all back, bro. It just at the end of the game, they're going to give it all back. And that's the biggest thing I can give to your to your viewers here is um don't come here to win the race in the first innings.

Be smart, take your time, have a thesis, trade with your thesis, and stick to your thesis. Don't get distracted by the shiny objects. That's the biggest thing. Yeah. Have a thesis and stick to it. Have a plan and stick to it. That is the best advice of anything in life, not just investing, anything you do in life. Have a plan, see it through, be patient, go all the way, lock in. Ran, absolute pleasure to get you on the show today. Thanks so much for your time. Cool, brother. Thank you very much for yours. Cheers, man. Before we wrap up, I got to remind you as always that none of today was financial advice. I am not your investment adviser. Ran is not your investment advisor. You should always do your own research and you should always think before you invest because as we said today that investing is difficult

and there is risks at every corner. So take a deep breath, take your time, everybody. If you need help with your investments, if you need help with navigating these markets, which are different than any cycle before, make sure you subscribe to the Milk Road newsletter. It's free every day, five minutes per day in your inbox with some humor, with some laughs in there. Thanks so much for joining us again today, folks. Have a wicked awesome day. We'll see you back again tomorrow. If y'all are making swaps or trades right now, highly recommend you check out Milkroad Swap. This is a DEX that we built in partnership with Cow Protocol. Why do we build it? not to make money, just honestly so we could have a place to do our swaps for the lowest fees that we could find. This is the fees on Ethereum, Arbitum, and Bass are only.15%

fees. Uh this is a huge difference from uh other centralized exchanges that charge half a percent or even up to 1.2% fees on their swaps. Also, you can swap on Salana all at swap.mmillgro.com. Check it out today. you won't be upset and you can join me in my favorite place to make swaps on chain. As always, if you liked today's episode, please hit subscribe and make sure you follow us so you don't miss out on the next one. There's also a link in the description to our free 5minute daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you while making you laugh. And if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game, we're going to also leave a link for

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