Recapping 2023

Transcript

not only do I have an answer for you but I'm following through on our bet which is you didn't shave wow breakout star of the year are the balds Jeremy air Brian Armstrong merch and celus on the policy front phenomenal job by the balds and uh I have followed through and I have shaved my head as you can see in this picture all right everyone so on Empire you obviously know that we talk a lot about the institutions coming into crypto and that is why we are super excited to share that we are hosting the digital assets Summit we posted this since 2019 it's coming up in London March 18th to 20th don't miss your chance to get ahead

of the curve you can get 20% off with code Empire 20 we'll see you in London what's up man we're back oh we're back we're live I hit that recording we live oh wow sneaky uh hello everyone it's been I'm my brain's frying in all Sooners I you know it's like it's a holidays I get it but it's like it is busy it is I'm I'm excited about this pod too you know I think it uh you know predictions are always really hard but I think it's really exciting a I'm excited too before we jump in dude I thought you were gonna shave your beard I did I did I did but we haven't recorded in two weeks and like you bailed on me and like look at

this look at my all right so look at my nasty beard I uh I was like santi's gonna shave his beard one of us we can't be a beardless podcast over here so I was like yeah yeah you look at you know this the stash is coming out dude it's disgusting I uh I face word it's disgusting yeah I got I gotta shave it you either have to like power through the next few weeks or shave it and we're going shave right after this so well was like I had like a full week where I knew I was like not going to see anyone or do anything critical publicly so I was like all right this is when I shave and I hadn't shaved in literally 12 years it was yeah little baby face

Santi I probably lost six years you know I I that was a consensus uh when people like yeah um you wna okay so here's my kind of vision for this app um there's like I think we should do this in two parts so we've got these questions like you know breakout star of the Year best founder you met all year breakout company crypto product of the Year business of the Year worst investment of the year that's kind of like segment number one that's the first bucket um so we'll do that then we can take a quick breather and then we can go into predictions for the year I think we each have five to 10ish predictions we can bounce off each others I have not seen yours You' have not seen mine so yeah

does that sound good to you sounds good yeah all right man I I'm more excited about like talking about about how wrong I was on so many things you know which is always good to keep us a bit grounded oh you want to review our 2023 predictions well we don't have to go through all of them but I think like I I at least for me the biggest Miss was like it was not on my bingo card that the markets would rally and perform the way that they they have this year like the NASDAQ had its strongest of the year like I was sitting there in March and I'm like or March or April and

like the NASDAQ was like having its strongest like year-to dat performance I'm like you would have asked me that like that was an I would have described an incredibly low probability of that happening like you were coming into 2023 with this idea of like rate hacks were there inflation was still very much there we like anyways I was very much CAU off guard and yeah it makes you wonder right because you're entering 2024 with a lot I think the consensus is risk on right that you know the FED has finally like tipped its hand it's saying that it's going to you know lower rates and so crypto markets react very quickly to that right and the same that they reacted very quickly in November of 2021 where like there was intimation of like

inflation problem and rate hikes like the crypto markets took up beating before traditional markets and so you wonder now uh is the consensus now is risk on how is 2024 going to shape up is it going to be the inverse of what happened in 2023 or is it just going to be a fantastic boom yeah um so anyway that's what's on my head right now so looking back at our 20 let's actually start there that's interesting looking back at our 2023 predictions I've got some of these pulled up I actually think six years of making these predictions these were the best predictions we've ever made or that I've ever made personally and I think it's probably easier to make predictions in a bare Market that makes me think than in a bull market in a bull market humans are so bad about thinking exponential that

like things can get so far out ahead of what you were able to predict and what you're able to comprehend in a bare Market these are actually some pretty good so let me walk you through some of these so I said first one was talking about fat wallets I said the growth of self- custody and fat wallets metamask has never faced real competition that's going to change this year um and I think that did change right like things like Phantom and other you know um other other yeah wallets I think probably Phantom's the main one but other wallets did pretty well coinbase wallet has grown I think pretty substantially this year so that was the first one second one was a I said a tier one defi app builds its own chain and dydx you could say d i mean dydx would be this

one in my mind DX make maker a playing with idea look I think this is gonna continue to be a trend where every major D5 protocol at some point was and and even an L2 like what's stopping arbitrum from like doing its own1 well then that gets in the question what's the real difference between L2 and L1 my friend but uh all right here let let me run you through a couple more of these the kings of trading and nfts lose market share so this was a two-part I said Unis swap is going to pass coinbase and volume that very much did not happen but I said Unis swap is going to drastically fall uh excuse me open C is going to drastically fall in market share um and that has definitely happened which is going to get into one of the breakout I in our

next section breakout companies of the year um I said punks flip Apes remember those conversations we were talking about apes all the time and punks yeah my I was very much of the mind that there was no enduring value to board apes and and and punks wood both took a hitting a hit but for a while there I was pretty wrong like I think Bard Apes like took longer to come back to gravity and like Earth and I think uh but the flipping has very much happened and oh here here's what I got wrong I said nft industry goes through major growth and changes like defi in 2019 we move past the the jpeg era of nfts did not happen still very much in the jpeg era very much I think salana survives there you

go that one did not I said salana survives eth Nar narrative is reinforced um with the merge ZK EVMS and L2 adoption everybody loves l2s but problems with l2s start to arise yeah um the last one I said was Dows put leaders in place didn't happen you see like the synthetics Council but like that's not like a new thing necessarily I think so no no no yeah uh trying to pull up mine I don't have yours but no no no I'm uh I'm trying what was this June April this yeah yeah no no no I'm going

through it I said Gary Gensler out as secc J that was a an optimistic uh prediction that did not happen I said complete Bitcoin minor uh capitulation I honestly have not followed the miners closely enough but I think the Min capitulated but now they're doing pretty well I think so yeah I mean it all follows the price to large extent um yeah um very good all right you want to get into this year's uh 23 review let me hit you with the first question 20 23 crypto product of the year salana I I calling that as a product

because most people wrote it off um and and I think it is a product in the whole conversation around integrated versus modular um and I think people are appreciating the components of salana as a very unique architecture relative to other competing l1s and I think most of crypto whether it's because it's tired or doesn't do enough work likes to bucket things in a very simplistic way through analogies or through comparisons but I think um as a product I think salana is very unique there's no surprise I I um you know I people might be looking at my public statements about Solana as something that has just come as of recent but you

know my history of Sal goes back years like I did that deal Pari early on I've been on Judge I've been KNN them for a lot a long time and you know I will say the things that changed for me was just going deeper and deeper and understanding more of the mechanics there was a big aha moment that I faced that I had not too long ago because it was really just going deeper into what are the biggest criticisms of this network and then inverting and saying can they be fixed are they big enough are they real criticisms and so anyways that to me was a big inflection point um in my understanding of the network so I think for me at least um I see it like every other blockchain L1 it is a product I think

salana actually sees themselves as a product and understands what exactly they're trying to build and who they're trying to sell it to and to me that was a big realization because a lot of the criticisms around the higher Hardware requirements I think require you to believe that it is a product and there is someone out there willing to pay for a higher Hardware requirement because if you're building decentralized uh synchronized Global state that is competing against NASDAQ or NY then yeah someone will pay for that it is hugely hugely valuable for any that comes from finance and other places right so anyways I think best product of the Year best product of the Year salana mine was uh two-parter friendtech and privy so I uh in my mind friendtech almost kicked

off the bull market frenzy fch was the moment where it was like okay this Market doesn't seem like it's back like now I think you can very definitively say we are back in a bull market friendtech if you look back I think will be seen as like this kicked off that bull maybe it wasn't maybe it didn't kick off the bull market but maybe this was the signal that we were back in the bull market this frenzy of and you know trading and buying and selling your friend I know you didn't I don't think you ever joined friendtech but I think friendch was the first time we were like okay uh decentral is it decentralized social is it consumer like that got a lot of people excited after this kind of 12 month lull and the secondary product I would say there is the app I think

that enabled it which was privy so privy brings this kind of like web 2 caliber ux to crypto products and um I think people saw it for the first time with friend Tech I'm not an investor or anything I have no skin in the game here but I think it's going to be a really powerful product to onboard this next caliber of folks and we we just started to see what was possible with with friendch there so that would be my product of the year in 23 yep which one we go into next how about uh how about best founder of the year what do you think I will say first off I'm trying to not say the obvious ones so the best

founder in my mind you know I think would would be probably Brian Armstrong but I'm trying to not pick on the Brian Armstrongs of the world and the toes and Salas of the world um I would say I'm gonna pick a weird one here which is Luca Nets of Pudgies we had him on yeah we if you look at what Pudgies have been able to actually accomplish I think in the bare Market people wrote nfts off is dead people said there's no you know any anyone who tries to offer utility that's a Fool's game they have grown they have 10 billion views on gify one million followers on Instagram they launched in 2,000 Walmarts they did they're the top topping the charts on Amazon they're

selling out Collectibles they went up to 10 eth or 12 12 eth um they launched the you know Lil Pudgies cross chain thing um and they launched their own they're launching their own game that seems to be basically almost built so prev seems a very small amount of capital mind you so certainly routed up to Yuka yeah I'm giving it to I'm giving it to Luca of Pudgies I like that uh I'll pick the obvious and people that think at this point is going to say like it's totally sponsored by the salana foundation or whatnot but totally for me because that to me was instrumental and really um you know appreciating everything that he has done and I've always liked him observing him through this difficult

time um how he publicly behaves himself how he is very grounded very focused on the product and the end goal for salana delivering the best consumer experience but also I mean my God I mean it it Sana hitting its lowest point and then over this 12 month period having this kind of like a Phoenix Rising From the Ashes starts from the top and I think the amount of leadership and like grit Integrity like just commitment that it takes to turn it around of course it was not just him but uh I think speaking to so many of different Salon based projects that I'm an investor in they all look up to him I mean it is highly

influential yeah and I think consume that vitalic wields a lot of power within the ethereum community as you know um it totally is just uh yeah Rose to the occasion and uh is really like uh you know steered the ship to where it is today so it has to be him for me yeah totally I think the job of an L one founder is to basically Inspire and set the set the vision and Inspire other Founders to come in and build and to he's done that better than anyone else all right breakout star of the year uh you go for it I'm cheating I'm always not only not only do I have an

answer for you but I'm following through on our bet which is you didn't shave wow breakout star of the year are the balds Jeremy air Brian Armstrong merch and celus on the policy front phenomenal job the balds and uh I have followed through and I have shaved my head as you can see in this picture oh God you're cheating breakout stars is that like a does it have to be a single person or can it be a I guess for you was this a the bals yeah uh I think um I think coinbase for me I would agree there like it has been

it continues to be even more so now the most important company um you know we've look crypto's always had this regulatory wall of worry the the the Crackdown intensified and look some of it is difficult because there there is a lot of you know there is stuff that needs to be cracked down on but a policy like that like the I guess like it required someone to push back right and say Hey listen like um what they've done in fighting against and Def St staking their ground I think has been really uh instrumental for the industry and I've always had faith in the court systems

but like actually seeing it I think they continue to they're still fighting right and to me it requires well resource capitalized company not only that but they launch Bas and I think they very much focused on like like being that onboarding safe experience for so many people and I'm really excited about that I think Bas as we think about like huge catalysts base is going to be one from an onboarding perspective and so it is actually really impressive when you think about like innovators dilemma a company that is willing to reinvent and sell for the greater good of an industry and I just think it's going to be a case study not just within crypto but just in general of a company that was very much focused on making sure that this industry succeeds even if it comes at

the expense of certain Revenue lines yeah I mean I would say circle's in that same boat right Circle remember when Circle owned what poniac they had one of the biggest OTC desks in crypto they had the retail app uh you know in 2017 I was buying more crypto through Circle mobile app than I was through coinbase they were one of coinbase's biggest competitors and Jeremy basically shut that all down just to go all in on usdc and I have I have a feeling you know Circle ends up iping I don't know if it's 24 2024 or 2025 but that seems like a company W to a successful Jeremy they've also done a lot of regulatory kind of lobbying work since as far as I can remember but like Jared a highly successful founder before crypto didn't have to do this yeah and

he's he's he's choosing to do hard things because yeah they matter and I think that's very impressive all right the bald caps got to come off that was my uh bald bald uh breakout stars of the year with the balds um there we go all right man breakout company of the year I'm gonna give this to uh two companies in salana one is uh one is tensor and one is J so if you look at uh I mean the success of we'll start with tenser tenser if you look at the metric started the year with there were kind of four salana nft exchanges there was magic Eden had about I think it about 80% of the market share there was uh ha Swap and coral Cube and tensor if I remember correctly and it was basically magic

Eden at 80% the other two at 5% tensor had maybe 2% I want to say at the beginning of the year they have overtaken magic Eden and have just come to basically dominate not only I think the first thing was dominating the salana nft ecosystem and now I mean like they're in the conversation when you bring up it's you know openc blur tensor like they're in the conversation and I'm I I love the two Founders like they are just they epitomize like young Scrappy Hustlers uh you know keep it very lean we had one of them on um on you know we had actually both them on on Empire and like uh they refused to get a new new

headphones because they're like we're not out of the you know they they refused to buy newer headphones like a hundred bucks to get new headphones and I don't know I just respect that level of scrappiness it reminds us reminds me a lot of block works the early days of block works so yeah tensor would be one of the breakout companies of the year the other would be goo um Lucas and the jeto team are just like they are at the backbone of how all transactions happen in salana they are like about as close to the metal as you can get in salana um and not only that I think they had a very important like emotional moment almost for Salon ecosystem with their airdrop so many people made so much money they basically were able to pull forward uh and and and increase the acceleration of the salon ecosystem both

with from a capital perspective and I think there were this like Beacon of Hope for a lot of other Salon Founders saying oh my God we we can do this too whether you're tensor whether you're Jupiter um you know we can launch a token it can be successful we can you can do this um even with a young small Scrappy team and I think U so yeah I would give it to both tensor jeto here well I mean I did have the tensor guys um I interviewed them um a couple weeks ago incredible story people should go listen from that episode I would agree with that at risk of not of being called two biased in salana I I'll give a throw out a few candidates one is I think thematically this modular movement is incredibly impactful uh I think every

technological Revolution goes to this un bunding and rebundling phase um and the ability to kind of that unlock I think Celestia was instrumental in that there's others of course but I would think I I very much believe modularity is is a very important theme um to give more flexibility into how you kind of dissect the different um pieces of of what a blockchain does execution data availability consensus and settlement and I think that is a is very much a big unlock and thematically we continue be really strong Trend so probably that um the other one is uh Bon uh when you think about how that has been

instrumental uh for it's like uh rallying really I mean it was it was so impactful for developers that received this airdrop that were in this developer D of salana it was probably what kept them alive it is the most integrated coin in salana and you know people can laugh off memes but I think um the more you uh the more you live and breathe crypto the more you appreciate that so you know whether again break rout whether you agree then or not I don't really care um I think I'm thinking about impact like the impact as I think about breakthrough that's what I care about and I think it is we can argue all you want about memes and how serious they are or not but I don't think you can win the argument saying that Bon

didn't have an impact on salana and taking it to where it is now like rallying it so be remiss not to mention that uh I was going to say another uh again Jupiter for me was uh I think a breakout company why because no surprise I live in breathe defi I've been interacting with it since the early days I gotta say the product is phenomenal it is a delight and I think you the more you talk about like when you onboard people the real every time you go to these holiday events which are like painful right oh you're in crypto okay well tell me tell me a crypto company that is actually fun and easy to use you know

it's always like it has been a very difficult question to actually like answer is that is that how most people talk you know it's like you know a cars of the world you know like it's like it looks some of it is right Jupiter provides very delightful experience like the the the the like being able to DCA like setting limits and it's just a delight yeah it's great like look whether you want to accept it or not the biggest kind of use case now is swap like like defi is like the ability to swap and trade and it is the primary kind of use of blockchains right now uh and collecting but there's still like tensor is very much like a financial product right yeah so Jupiter

just has made that delightful it's it's really nice yeah and it really makes you appreciate uh when you have the ability to do things in a very lowcost manner it unlocks nonlinear consumer demand like it's just like yeah then yeah I'm going to swap a lot of these things like the frequency just goes up orders magnitude so I think they built a phenomenal product I really enjoyed it and you know it's not an endorsement but it is one of those where think about it put it this way when we think about breakout companies or just things that are you really like is what are going to be those two or three companies apps that you point to normies

to use probably tensor probably Jupiter yeah I agree yeah I agree um yeah I I tweeted out I you know early November I think it was um just how impressed I was by Jupiter and that was kind of like one of the wake up like aha moments I had um yeah so absolutely um all right I got some more personal questions we haven't talked about these I'm not sure if you're uh open to answering or what you're not but uh best yeah exactly put it on put the put the shield on best personal investment of the year I sized up salana aggressively I

called it out in this pot at eight and I was very much uh just you could do it in size um so of course I'm biased um but I don't even think salana hit eight I thought i' bought him at like 12 no was it was like close to 8 I think and it was around that time I publicly s in this pot and it was like um so but I do a lot of private Investments so maybe I'll highlight things that I'm excited about um there's so many the problem is any answer I give I'm GNA get [ __ ] for like for some of the

others um but I've been paying more attention into public stuff I think I recently did a deal um that I tweeted about like I didn't specifically mention this company but let's put it this way there are I'll give a cop answer but like think about all the companies that raise a lot of money before the the end of the last cycle um you talked to them they're like are you getting any love from your investors no none of them have talked to us um they've continued to build through the bear they're building useful interesting products and categories that get a lot of attention but for whatever

reason the company companies and I've met a few are just not getting any love and it reminds me so much of last cycle where I met like the OG defi people right synthetics had raised a huge Ico through Haven rebranded no one was paying attention land no one was paying attention but when you see Founders that it has been difficult 12 months continue to build continue to ship to me it's like would I rather invest in a private deal Venture deal where the founder is probably opportunistic you're going to continue to see from now on forward you're gonna you're GNA see so many new people come to the space they want to raise for AI for whatever use case right do you understand if that team is

going to build through difficult times probably not but what I like about these companies that have shipped and maybe have a token is if they haven't given up and they're well resourced like that's the kind of founder and you have that like it's meaningfully derris so yeah this company in particular like is building really interesting products in the cosmos ecosystem and implementing IBC you know which I think is very underrated it's probably one of the most underrated underappreciated pieces of tech but I think it's going to be hugely impactful in multi- chain world so I'm really excited uh to see that and yeah I I won't name I mean I can name the company but um yeah I recently did that deal and uh I'm you know working with

the team very closely who who is it can you Picasso Picasso the composable finance team um yeah that's funny man it's funny watching you get all uh just there's a lot of [ __ ] being thrown around Twitter right now like you don't share you don't share your you don't share the investment like people are like oh you're hiding something you share it people are like you're Shing your bags you're shelling your bags there's no there's no way to win here so it really is difficult because I come from a world of like you know I don't like look none of it is financial advice not you know and people in crypto are very you and just generally like I I just don't feel necessarily comfortable because you have two minutes to describe something

and but yeah like uh yeah it always is kind of uneasy all right everyone so we talk a lot about the institutions coming into crypto on Empire Santi and I are both headed out to London March 18th to 20th for blockworks is 8th ever digital asset Summit D this is an Institutional buttoned up conference that we've hosted since 2019 I like to joke that it is probably the last remaining kind of suit and tie event in crypto people are still wearing suit and tie it's pretty funny you'll actually hear from a lot of the largest institutions in the world coming from Standard Charter FIS JP Morgan framework folks coming out winter mute vanc Goldman Sachs there are a couple couple big themes of this conference one

Bitcoin catalysts the having and the spot ETF two A View From the buy side three rwa tokenization and stable coins four Global regulatory Frameworks five institutional infrastructure including Banking and payments and six the macro case for crypto if you have anything to do with the institutional side of crypto you have to be there zti and I got you back we hooked you up with a 20% off code it is Empire 20 there is a little competition and running internally at block works to see who can drive the most number of tickets so help Santi and I out register with our code and you get 20% off that is Empire 20 all right so what about uh all right so that's the best what about the worst

investment of the Year real estate real estate 100% it's a [ __ ] scam industry the friction cost of coming in and out um you I would argue you rarely rarely like okay so you can do a leverage and all this stuff but like man was I constantly reminded of why we do crypto because I am I so I have this very little patience for when I see friction when there's redundancy like when I ask when I go to a doctor and they ask you to F form again or like real estate like it is a scam industry there's all these people that extract fees for no good reason

and it was just I I it's a it's a scam really uh they of course they got there was a major lawsuit this year of all the realtors that were like uh extracting so many fees like it's just the it's one of those Industries coincidentally when I was looking at traditional enterprise software investing like there's this company a real page and they were trying to like shake up and modernize real estate industry but it is just it is politics it's messy like zoning and development and it is like yeah it's it's one of those Industries where it's slowly like Finance resisted the the modernization thing and a lot of it is because it's heavily regulated and I'm just a big believer in deregulation and

let markets settle um anyways it was a very bad experience because were you were you doing were you doing direct were you investing alongside developers were you investing in real estate funds person I I've done I've done uh sponsor deals for a long time um but no personally like I bought property and like it's just unclear to me were these mult like multif family like what what types of single family like single family yeah I know it's uh very extractive industry I don't think you outperform um there's a whole host of ongoing fixed costs um I don't think it's a very viable business model candid not just because of high rate environment I just think like it became more and more

popular in a low interest rate environment you're basically doing a carry trade um right where you you're borrowing very cheap and then you kind of like you know you're renting it out or whatever and but it is is probably my worst investment like not just this year it's just in general because not because I lost money because um of the opportunity cost and the time that I it's really when I when I think about as I was going through this exercise there have been companies in crypto that I've lost more money on but the time element time for me is the most expensive thing and I invested a lot of time even though I yeah it was just draining um I will

probably not ever do it again will you still stay allocated to real estate funds no no I love crypto and I I'm just constantly reminded that this is my Edge and this is where I want to play and I'm very willing to stomach volatility I think there's ways to go around that and Hedge but I yeah I'm just going to I'm I'm by the way I put in way more risk I took money outside of real estate put it way back more into crypto and I'm very comfortable with that yeah just just that's where I play that's what I like and that's what I'm you know I'm not gonna pretend to anything else yeah all right my worst investment of the Year personal investment was um I have a

worst Angel investment I I mean on the angel side a lot of Angel deals shut down mid this year the really some of the really early ones early stage ones shut down or a couple pivoted to AI um in in the middle of the AI hype cycle like pivoted AI I was like all right um but a couple of them you know shut down a couple of them returned you know 20 cents on the dollar 30 cents on the dollar so that was on the angel side um it's it's it was actually pretty remarkable to see the variance in how different Founders handled it some handled it very professionally I have no I have no hard feelings against someone who returns Capital like that is a very courageous thing to do in my mind um and some more people should do it by the way

yeah and I like to the people who return to Capital I was like I was like I will back you hands down next time you do it like just because of how respectful and uh over communicative they were and then there were some folks who basically just ghosted I was like I know you shut down but like come on buddy I'm still tracking down like three companies at I'm like guys I know you closing down like where is the capital yeah I don't care if it's two cents I don't care if it's 99 Cents it's out of principle just do it yeah um worst personal Investments of the year were probably the um the D5 Majors I you know I bought some some uni some Lio earlier this year um and they just haven't done anything so just just a Fool's trade at this

point H yeah well you know what could be a Fool's trade one year it could be a fantastic trade the next so yeah so all right um uh most what do you want to do most exciting founder that you met sector that you're most um let's do sector to watch in crypto cool sector to watch what do you got um two one of them probably is alt l1s um and I know it's tiring but like it's uh I think it's going to be important to like pay attention to different designs um you know this is apos suie say

also salana like I think yeah I think the the tricky part of that is that every cycle there's a bit of fatigue I think people constantly dismiss them um there's uh I would encourage people to go listen to um Jordan uh was the frictionless capital Logan the frictionless capital guys I think they have very very good um content and also appreciation for these next call it next gen l1s um my thesis and I tweeted about this not too long ago is that this cycle will con we'll see a growing divide of the halves and the have knots in terms

of where you start seeing usage at scale and you're certainly seeing it in Sana but I think it doesn't stop there and so the question to me is that's the most important thing of course if you don't compromise security and of course there's L Lindy in some of these networks but I think this cycle we want as I fast forward like two three years it will be a time where finally we start seeing more scale and more mainstream adoption across varying degrees of use cases not just collecting not just you know nfts and financialization of such uh but more so just real use cases and more users coming on and I think it will be I think

that alone will shake up the composition of of Mind share and and look I don't want to say this in terms of like I'm not being um dismissive of ethereum I think I stand to lose a lot if ethereum doesn't do well uh but I think it's something to pay attention to yeah but I think it's you could be lazy about it and I think most people are being lazy about it um and the other one is probably deep in uh I also had deepin yeah yeah I think deepin is there's a it's pretty exciting it's a lot of things I mean it's been around for such a long time file coin you know live Pier like these things existed for such a long time what

is different now perhaps is just starting to see other kind of more exciting things as well like um you know related to AI like decentralized compute uh you know the renders and the cautious of the world and the tensors or whatever but it also is like helium and hi mapper and all these things like crypto I think is very interesting from a coordination to solve coordination problems and when you solve coordination problems it allows you to revisit certain business models like I I remember passing on healing the first round the multi-coin guy shared it with me and I said now this has been tried before in web to and boy was I wrong like you know what I mean like I think the some of these ideas that have been

tried in the past are worth revisiting and can actually work with incentives and it can fix the inertia to bootstrap networks and I think we're in this state where people being very critical of incentives that they're not sustainable because most teams don't get them right but incentives are instrumental to to anything not just in crypto and I think crypto that's the glue of tokens are the glue to help in coordinate more efficiently and deep in is kind of prime for that so yeah I think it's a really exciting sector yeah so I I I put two sectors I said reaking which I can talk more about in the predictions part of this episode and then deepin so I said uh uh deep deep in

kind of breaks down into two buckets right there's like physical infrastructure and digital infrastructure so the digital is kind of what has been around for a little while like file storage and you know decentralized vpns general purpose stuff machine learning aosh things like that and then there's the physical infrastructure side which helium was the kind of first movie here then there's hive mapper but there's you know 5G iot Wi-Fi there's some cool geospatial stuff going on so yeah both the physical infra and the digital infra side of deepin I would say we can get into it it's my first prediction is like this kind of eth is money idea and this eth is money narrative is going to start to go away as people realize the best thing right now that eth has is is yield um and like that's that's what's gonna that's what's

going to come back however um are you worried about security re hypo app of security okay yeah so I mean my fir actually hold on before before we get into this like I wna I want to kind of cut this episode in two I want to do the slow slow slow slow Santi slow so all right we're gonna we're gonna do we're gonna do reaking in a sec we will I promise you guys we will get into that but we're gonna end this episode with the most overhyped sector of 2024 then we will cut it and in the next episode we are doing our predictions for 2024 so I will ask you most overhype sector of 2024 what do you think coming in this like in oh great question I don't

know I'm gonna I will throw one at you which is rwas I think rwas was a total bare Market narrative um wait but you said 2024 I thought you one most overhyped of 2023 like coming into 2023 and like what what is the most overhyped thing right now and I think it's I think it's RW I think that rwa are uh they're great like I love the um uh centrifuge guys and uh got dinner with Lesner the other night and was talking about superstate which I think is really cool that he's working on and but I just think rwas are like such a be like boring bare Market thing that kind of like everyone talks about in the bare market and then in the bull market not

many people are going to pay attention to it so yeah I'm gonna pick AI mind you I think the things that are most hyped Aro have the most amount of opportunity but it is understanding and dissecting the real versus the non-real I think there's an incredible amount of hype in in in in AI right now um uh benter rash like all these and a lot of like I've seen like 30 decks in the last two weeks of like the same type of business modeling in AI um is it real I think it is I just recorded a podcast with Daniel from modulus which back and Casey who like studied AI before it was school and you

know is is a fantastic investor and she really has a good eye for what is real and what is not so um I won't like go too much into it but people should go listen to that episode because I wanted to record that to really like parse through what is real what are the products um and so and it's just in general AI I mean it's of course incredibly fascinating uh the thing about technological revolutions I think is the timing of it right we we tend to over what is it the the Fantastic quote from Bill Gates we overestimate what we can do in two years underestimate what we can do in 10 I think that has been true for crypto and I think that will be true for AI where everyone's spending all their Venture basically all the Venture

funding has gone into putting in orders capex for for NVIDIA h100s um but a lot of the pitch Decks that you seen crypto around like uh you know like uh getting access to gpus on the fly is a bit uh bit overdone I think like certainly certainly have no Rhyme or Reason to understand how these things trade yeah all right folks that wraps up part one of the was that part one that was part one okay I hope you I hope you came prepared with your part two yes all right good all right folks we will uh we'll see you in a couple days we will be back see you on the other side uh are we going to be back with you your shaved um head for real and I I'm I'm willing as again I'm

willing to shave my beard all of it God this is just this is like um I'm trying to think of all the crypto companies that like pretend to do something but are not really under the hood like 99% of mullet baby all right all right maybe I'll shave my my beard for the I got sh although to be fair I want to I want to look Wiser from these predictions of course which they won't because I'm terribly wrong in all of it I will look much better for episode number two I promise you that all right folks have a hope you guys hope you all are having a happy holiday and good Christmas if you celebrate and we'll see you on the other

side all right folks thanks for tuning in take care hey everyone thank you so much for watching today's episode really hope you enjoyed it we wanted to take a second to just remind you about our upcoming digital asset Summit in London March 18th to 20th Santi and I got your seats are limited and we hooked you up with a 20% off discount code it is Empire 20 if you heard it earlier in the podcast there's a little competition running at blockworks to see who can drive the most number of tickets so when you register for the digital asset Summit make sure you use our code Empire 20 see you in [Music] London