Revisiting ICO's and Unpacking Why Restaking isn't Leverage | Roundup
16 Feb 2024 · 1:16:05
Empire hosts Jason Yanowitz and Santiago Roel Santos revisit how ICO-era fundraising compares to today's token launches and debate whether restaking should be considered a form of leverage. They also cover the Starkware airdrop controversy, bitcoin's price surge relative to gold, and Santi's early impressions of Farcaster.
Speakers
Topics
Transcript
I said the top 10 to 20 crypto assets will have an ETF in the next three years that was my tweet I stand by that and I think the timing in factors in that there's an election this year that things are slower and perhaps the next Administration is more friendly but we now have Bitcoin ETF we likely may have an ethereum ETF later this year an eth ETF that setup is just uh incredible if you are an Empire listener hopefully you've played around on chain and if you have done that you know that transferring assets across different chains is a pain to put it nicely that is why we are incredibly excited to have the Wormhole Foundation as a partner of the Empire podcast stewards of the Wormhole protocol supporting over 30
different blockchains and six different run times stay tuned later in the show we have a cool thing that you can claim which is a wormhole nft just for Empire listeners this episode is brought to you by PayPal here at Empire you know that Santi and I are really into real world use cases and always on the lookout for for the next killer blockchain app we're excited to share that PayPal has arrived in crypto to unveil a way to seamlessly connect Fiat to digital currencies later in the show you will find out how you can use PUSD to check out at millions of online stores and we're back what's up man hey how's it
going good can't I can't tell I can't tell the mood you're in today I'm in a mood I'm not in a mood I'm just uh you know this is the the the one of the funnest things I do every week so you know nice nice um what's going on how's the week been really good really good cycling it's cold but it's it's good so back home yeah yeah back it's good to be back and just have a routine for once nice nice nice um yeah awesome man well we had a we had a crazy week huh yes it's it's always eventful uh what has been going on
what's on your mind what should we talk about uh I want to talk about a couple things so you've been using forecaster I'd love to get your honest thoughts I joined forcaster I did you joined forcaster we got you so I'd love to hear your thoughts on after having used it for weeks that's one um Market's ripping right bitcoin's above bitcoin's sitting at 52 today eth is sitting 28 um salana 115 right things are things are moving so I'd love to hear your take on the markets um just where we're at I'd love to excuse me I'd love to talk aird drops uh starkware aird drop happened this week um decent bit of like controversy around it in terms of they did this basically thing where they I think they vest started the vest two
years ago and did like a secret unlock um about two years ago people like I don't know some people really liked it some people didn't like it so we should talk aird drops and I think that'll lead into I want to have a conversation with you about like just how the fund funding markets work fundraising markets work in crypto and I don't think a lot of people understand what's happening in the private markets today with these kind of like special rounds Venture funded rounds I want to kind of peel the curtain back on those uh and then I maybe we can get into a conversation about there's a Chris berisi tweet uh talking about reaking as leverage and um yeah maybe we can like open that conversation up and and talk about it yeah sounds great cool we uh I also will just say I heard you guys's feedback
about the um D ads on this episode so I think if our producer gets my message in time we will not have a d ad uh on on this episode we're we're trying to make the ads more interesting ad ads are interesting in crypto because they uh they don't work like traditional web 2 ads um in the sense that like it's very expected to have ads in web to land in crypto people are very adverse to ads so we're we're actually working on some stuff at block Works to try to figure out how we can like make ads more interesting so anyways we hear your feedback on the D ads pulled them from this app going to make them a little more exciting click click the link uh Santi let's start with the market
so uh bitcoin's up 16% week over week eth is up 177% um salana is up 11% Avalanche is up 18% um yeah Market's Market's cruising um we are now sitting at 52 52k up from uh you know the basically three weeks ago Bitcoin was sub 40K Bitcoin was sitting at 39 we're up to 52 um largely I would say driven by people are surprised at the ex at the flows of the ETF um and I think there was a couple weeks ago uh Chris berisi came out and basically said look I think we we chopped for a while uh some some people obviously agreed with him because he's
been so right for a while Ari Paul came out and said um look on on the other side of you know was Arthur Hayes and Chris you said look I'm I'm I'm tentatively on the other side of the sell the news meme I'm betting against Arthur and Chris I don't have much opinion on the macro side view that as kind of a tossup over the next three months but on the crypto idiosyncratic side we see very low leverage uh leverage levels neutral sentiment healthy Market positioning uh and he said I think the pattern matching of the ETF approval to previous events like 2017 Futures listing are actually bad analogies all of those comparable events occurred far later in the bull cycle in context of far greater bullish leverage and hype in my opinion we are in medium-term medium time frame bull Trend prices likely higher in six months so
that was AR's take and it so far Ari seems to be right um and I'd love to get your take in just like in terms of how you're thinking about this market today I've said it a number of times like it's it's really hard to be like you can be right in a week and then wrong in a month time frame uh over long time Horizon bull posting does incredible wond is because Bears eventually get liquidated and die um and so you know it's I agree with the latter part of the sentiment which is yes I don't think this is like Bitcoin at 52 there's nowhere near attention there on bitcoin even though we had the most probably if you were to go back five since I've been in the space if you were to ask me what would have been the
biggest events that would solidify this as a asset class it would be an ETF approval we've had it and it's been largely like a okay event and maybe it's because we talked about it for so long that once it happened it was a bit of a like baby blues kind of situation but inflows continue to be really strong uh we're nowhere near hype and so that's I think really positive open interest leverage in the system doesn't seem to be uh as high as you know in 20 you know defi summer um and so uh I agree with that like I I think I think I think we're in a prolonged bull market you know bull markets also exhibit draw
downs from time to time weak on weeks like you know you study every single cycle you would have had moments in weeks where like the market was down 10% 15% depending on that's for Bitcoin and eth now the beton alt is even higher so it's just important to like back to that in um and so like yeah it's pretty crazy that we have an ETF approval inflows are really strong and we're debating we a bull or bare market like also I just want to point out one thing every time I like try to time these things I just remind myself of how small crypto is and I'll give you an interesting stats here for all the AI folks out there so Nvidia this year is
up 44% year to date they um so this year alone Nvidia has added around 550 billion in Market cap H that's a third of that's a third of all crypto give or take so just you know whether you want to I think it's a useful comparison because crypto is a drop in the bucket uh so like I say this also because I don't think crypto is getting enough attention at all by traditional allocators I from time to time ping some of larger funa funds um and and the institutional allocators at least in the Western
Hemisphere are not touching crypto yet and maybe you're doing that through an ETF like registered investment advisors to some extent but um alternative Investments like money flowing into hedge funds and Venture funds in the space is basically zero so I think that's also a good barometer of where we are in the cycle I think we're early um and it it feels you know putting aside all the micro stuff uh geopolitical stuff election stuff uh you know this is a very small asset class it is a real asset class just got an ETF approval now I think one of the things that I I was thinking about this week is
there's no shot in my mind that we don't have at least five to six to seven ETFs in a two to three year time Horizon five to six for different the top call it I I said the top 10 to 20 crypto assets will have an ETF in the next three years that was my tweet yeah I stand by that and I think the timing factors in that there's an election this year that things are slower and perhaps the next Administration is more friendly but we now have a Bitcoin ETF we likely may have an ethereum ETF later this year an EF that setup is just uh incredible yeah yeah yeah I mean if you I just shed
that chart for anyone who's watching on YouTube but if you if you look at this year Bitcoin flows have uh Bitcoin ETF flows are 4.1 billion gold ETF flows are minus 2.4 billion I was trying to find the exact data some people had minus two some people had actually minus five or six billion it's tough to find the exact number but uh basically it looks like gold ETFs or capital and gold ETFs is now flowing into Bitcoin ETFs and I mean if you zoom out and just think about like the the ETF flows so far are beyond the wildest dreams of of I think Nick said this Nick Carter said this well like beyond the wildest dreams of any of the most bullish analysts if you go back and read the analysts uh predictions on Wall Street from you know November
December and into early January before anything happened what's happened so far is beyond the wildest dreams of any of the most bullish analysts and if you um I know you've talked a lot about like the sales orgs at these places like a lot of the asset managers haven't even activated their sales orgs right like a lot of the these financial institutions like Black Rock hasn't even like turned on their sales org um when they're talking about Bitcoin like it's not like that's been rolled out across the entire company and like has been taken to it's it's it's still very very early days um and yeah it's pretty crazy what do you mean by um what do you mean when you say that the uh LPS the money isn't flowing into the
Venture funds in crypto yet saying when they're a lot of them are raising and they're having a tough time raising yeah yeah and funa funds in the u based in the US uh you know my question to them was like are you getting interest from family offices endowments Pension funds and they're like no not for crypto I think most people are just busy clipping you know Nvidia gains and money market gains um yeah it was interesting also coinbase activity they reported earnings this week the stock kind of has done a since December has kind of went up all the way up to 160 down to 110 and hovered pretty volatile range um you know JP Morgan for instance uh had a
bearish call in the stock they abandoned that um today they're moving to neutral stance um again yeah I think analyst um analyst sentiment towards stock like coinbase is also indicative of like how the markets really think about it um I I think the the reason why they're bearish is not just on crypto alone is the fact that like the ETF now allows people to just go direct and have exposure as opposed to having a proxy exposure through coinbase but nonetheless I mean I just think it's um anecdotally a lot of a lot of banks are not even recommending buying the ETF if they get interest from clients they can purchase on their behalf but they're not
calling they're not picking up the phone and kind of doing a Boiler Room operation of just pitching um at least the larger registered investment advisers wealth managers I don't think many of them are just proactively calling clients about this stuff yet yep and and maybe Hunter from bitwise uh which they just crossed the billion he might have a different opinion on what type of raas and like if you were to Canvas the entire like Wall Street um you know apparatus like who is really actually flowing um driving flows into these vehicles I would argue that it's not the large it's not the JP Morgans of the world yeah if you look at um I think this is a good barometer of uh how how
folks are feeling so so y combinator the big accelerator put out their uh requests for startups I don't know if you can see if if you're watching on YouTube you can see it on my screen and uh they put out a bunch of there's basically 20 requests for startups better Enterprise like better Enterprise SAS glue eliminating middlemen and health healthare a way to end cancer AI to build enterprise software llms for manual back office processes only one out of 20 of these was related to crypto and it's stable coins it's called it's number 15 it's stable coin finance and I did a little command F here for crypto oh did you I did I did there's no there's no mention of crypto in all of
why combinators request for startups so I think that actually is a decent uh barometer for like the sentiment from uh from outside the industry and I I sent this tweet out and I I stand by it I don't think mainstream sentiment picks up until we hit alltime highs right like Bitcoin ripped through 50k first off timeline's pretty quiet Bitcoin ripped through 50k timeline was pretty quiet bless you uh and I got I got zero text I got literally zero text from friends about Bitcoin hitting 50k my guess is it gets crazy once Bitcoin hits it's 65 or 70k because at that point anyone in the world who has ever bought Bitcoin at any
time in their life is now in the money and when you're in the money you look at your account you say oh [ __ ] I'm up a little bit let me start paying attention to this thing again so I think that's when it starts to get crazy yeah definitely yeah we're uh we're definitely entering phase two of the bull market though it's uh it'll be it'll be cool to see um how does this impact how you think about like buying stuff and like allocating to the liquid markets because if you remember our episode six months ago we said look you know there's actually a ton of opportunity in the in the liquid markets and you had actually I know you you do a lot in the private markets you this was maybe six or nine months ago you said actually I'm having a lot of fun like
looking at the public markets and buying things like you know that are that are that I think are really really cheap and completely liquid how does this like numbers are going up prices are getting back to near all-time highs for some things like how does that impact how you actually think about allocating just into the liquid markets yeah um I don't know I haven't really really Revisited my strategy as of late uh I I think probably like I want to skew more liquid um over the next three to six months nine months you want to skew more liquid yeah yeah I'm less certain about how 2025 is going to shape up
um I also think I don't know like funds in the space there's like some overhang where you have high water marks and a lot of them are trying to just like finally are coming up for air I don't know how that plays in I think one of the things that I'm going to be really paying attention to is how these like Stark war is a probably a good example of like pretty old project been in development for a number of years how does that trade trade and how do VCS the larger wallets that are getting uh their allocation how are they behaving are they holding are they selling and I think it just be interesting how that rotation happens
but otherwise I mean I I still mostly do uh early stage and I continue to just recycle money into early stage um I'm of the mind that the the things that I think more about is like categorically uh am I over over or underexposed a particular sector or theme um or ecosystem and that's where I try to pay the most amount of attention um inherently these things have a short duration so I I think of them like while early stage crypto yes is kind of like early stage the duration of it is is is pretty short in the sense that I don't I feel like I don't need to pay as much attention
to there will be a liquidity event most likely where I mean you could have liquidity on on something after three years which is really short for Venture I think but uh I care more about just I think in this business you cannot miss a big a big a new a new trend a new project like if you miss celesa well are you Expos like you have any exposure modularity if you don't have exposure to an ecosystem like salana while are you inie or say or Aptos or whatever like paralyzed um you know chains so I think these are sort of thing like are you underexposed to gaming Overexposed to it is just sort of those are the things that I think more about uh less so you're right there was a time where I
felt that like it's good to monitor private valuations on average like for c for a for B and how much money's flowing into that relative to kind of valuations of of liquid tokens that may be teams that are farther ahead but the token is just like really abandoned right falling off the cliff off the top 100 so that's where I might find Opportunities I was doing a lot of that like over the last six months is there a certain point in the market where you basically just say hands up like prices are too high let me just sit I'm I'm allocated let me just sit right now and I'll I'll wait to allocate in the in in the next Market when the prices go back down yeah there is there is and
sometimes you go to conferences and you see a lot of exuberance and it's like like the SE from The Big Short uh that's when the easy when really easy money starts flowing in I think it gives me this is part of the reason why I don't like to go to conferences because every time I go to them it's uh I I get I get that desire to sell but I shouldn't because you know if if you hold for five 10 years it's like you know it's okay so here's a story for you so I was um I might have told you this already so just stop me if I already told you but I was sitting so this is breakpoint 2021 second week in November and I was at the multicoin party at uh salana breakpoint in November of 2021 which is basically like is that at that
rooftop uh yeah it was at the rooftop yeah yeah I was there uh oh uh realize hello I actually did see you later that night I think at the deli at that oh yeah was the day after yeah yeah ridiculous Deli party but um okay so I'm sitting next to uh Ed Ed monado or monata the found the founder of blockfolio who ended up selling blockfolio to FTX and uh he's just sitting in the back and I go sit next to him I he what's up been a while and uh he goes look at look at this so I mean I don't know if you remember there's that wall of like 20-year-old kids who were all like MIT and Harvard dropouts and all the VCS were like basically walking next to each of them basically talking
to them about their startups and like kids were literally getting funded like on the spot at this multi coin party and Ed goes look at this he goes see all this see all of this see those kids see them getting $50 million preed rounds he goes sell it all sell everything you own and that night was the literal top of the market so yeah yeah um okay let's let's uh let's let's switch gears a little bit so you mentioned um is starkware um so starkware had an airdrop this week STK um uh I would say there was some controversy around so I think they did a a similar like distribution strategy so
was uh I think it was like 12% grants 10% Foundation 8% unallocated 2% donations 9% to the community in rebates 9% in community Provisions 33% to core contributors and 17% to starkware investors so I think you tell me if I'm wrong I think that's relatively similar to how other folks like arbitrum have done it um and anyways they ended up launching on so there's this platform aevo uh that does like pre pre-market basically um uh can can tell you like what the price is and you can kind of trade and go long or short pre uh the token going live it was trading at like Buck 75 which gives it an implied fdv of 17 to 188 billion dollar uh for
reference the FTV of other l2s and I get the whole FTV as a meme whatever but um the the for reference so starkware at 18 billion optimism is 16 billion arbitrum is 20 billion IMX immutable six billion um so it's trading around like in between basically optimism and arbitrum the so I think all of that was fair all of that was fine I think the controversy was that um I should really pull this up so I don't I don't bot this but some something along the lines of they did a secret unlock about two years ago to to uh start basically they they basically distributed the tokens quietly two years
ago so that the vesting period would actually start before um so that uh if you're like an investor or you're an employee you can actually sell instead of like basically getting that token when the token goes live like everybody else then you have to wait a lot of people do four- year vest one year Cliff uh now they can actually sell it much sooner than than other people so I don't know I don't know if you followed this whole thing well I I was following it um also it was hard not to because there was very visceral reactions to it some people seemed to like it other people seem to not like it and the meme of course was like if you got the air drop then you liked it if you didn't then you didn't but so anyways it was it was interesting um I don't know I can't
think of like retroactive aird drops have been a thing but this when you call it secret vesting it may imply that it was like not disclosed to some but to others was um but I it's it's it's interesting I don't know the fdv I think is a little bit out of whack but you know we'll see how let's take a normalized view like over the next 30 days of how this thing trades right but uh yeah why do you think why do you think it's out of whack because someone like I think their I think their tvl is like sub 100 million um is that is that why uh not so much tvl it's just uh what is it 17 billion FTB yeah I guess it's like right in line with an arbitr and optimism trade so right maybe it's not that out of whack
actually yeah um I don't know but congrats to starkware for for getting this they've been on development since I'm actually I've actually gotten to know their team decently well um over the last couple months and I'm a big fan of what they're building and like super sharp de sharp developers um and like what they're doing with Cairo is like a very very difficult thing a lot of developers really like it like basically choosing Cairo I think was this tough as the programming language was like this tough decision that will eventually be rewarded um the but my feedback to the starkware team is uh the air bad aird drops don't actually matter that much people move past them in a week
um and people move on to the next airdrop right remember last week everyone's talking about Dimension now everyone's talking about starkware next week someone's going to be talking about the next thing my feedback to Someone Like A starkware and to teams doing aird drops is there's always going to be people who are angry with you and like these like airdrop farmers and things like that there's always GNA be thousands of those who are mad at you if you let yourself get consumed in the emotion of like dealing with those people uh and you snap back harder than they're kind of coming at you it reflects really really really poorly on your brand and I think starkware got caught up on that I saw some screenshots on Twitter of like some folks on their team like going off on people and it's just a bad look that like then that
actually reflects negatively on your brand for for more than just the week that people are upset about the airdrop so I agree get your thing out there make the announcement write a really good blog post and then shut the hell up for a week is is my feedback yeah yeah it's never easy I think air drops uh you're going to invariably alienate cause some controversy people that didn't you never get a perfect um but so yeah I mean I think as good as any I think in terms of the allocation the way the mechanism and whatnot so I was surprised I thought I was going to get a yes like they they mentioned some ecosystems like immutable that you would have gotten air drop and I checked some wallets and I didn't so it was a bit odd yeah I I I had that
with a I had that with demena because I got some I got some Pudgies and I was I didn't I didn't get anything and I was like what am I maybe the snapshot they yeah it was pre post snapshot I guess maybe yeah I because I origin I think I I actually thought I had some at some point and then I went back and checked and I didn't have so anyways doesn't doesn't matter but um it actually brings up a bigger question of like we we talked about these aird drops last week um and I've been thinking about that conversation a lot I would I would love to just expand on like maybe peel back the curtain a bit on how on what's going on in the in the F in the Venture markets and like how these things are actually happening and I tweeted this
thing out about icos um so what do you think of the the way that the current system so okay so for people who don't know the way that the system is set up today all right so actually six years ago and seven years ago there was these basically the way that ethereum went live was with this was basically with like the first Ico or at least the first popular I think it was actually the first Ico was like a crowd sale and for anyone who was around in 2017 you probably remember these I the Ico Mania basically um and every day there was a new Ico it was essentially like it was essentially like chasing tokens um and like kind of air drop farming like everyone's chasing these icos and there's a new hot Ico and you
would go on um the way I did it was I would like go on my ether wallet You' like go on my ether wallet and then there'd like be an Ico and you'd send some eth in and You' basically cross your fingers and like hope that like something happened on the other side hope that the Ico eventually went live and then you would get those tokens and then you would hope that um you would hope that that basically uh worked out the I icos ended up getting a really really nasty reputation because for I would say two reasons one is uh a lot of the companies and Founders back then came in at the end of 2017 and they were just chasing they they were like they kind of quintessential scammy crypto people and they were like not good Founders a lot of them were pretty damn crazy uh nearly
every single person lost money on icos like it just was not a good system the second reason it got a bad rap is the it was the 2017 version of of Leverage so if we say that Genesis and block those folks kind of Pumped the market higher than it should have been in 2021 uh ico's pumped the market higher than it should have been in in 2017 and the downside of this is that there was this basically Cliff the market fell off a cliff because all the icos had to essentially sell ethereum to keep funding themselves because you would send in your ethereum they would send you the tokens their treasuries there weren't stable coins then really
except maybe like tether and stuff but like they would denominate their treasuries in eth because everyone thought number was continuing to go up so now all these companies were sitting on a big bag of eth and to keep funding themselves they kept selling eth which then caused eth to go down it was this nasty reflexive thing so then what happened is uh all these Venture firms were started so pre 2017 there really weren't many Venture firms it was like maybe panta um who blockchain Capital um there there are a couple Venture firms then there's this huge w W Venture firms that raise money parfi framework you know all all you know all the all the classic ones poly I think actually poly chain maybe was around earlier but all these
all the Venture firms you know electric dragonfly Etc now the way that the Venture World works and like how the fundraising Market works is uh there will be your traditional fundraises where uh you will Le like Venture firm you know leads around or whatever you want to call it um and then in between some of these rounds and especially pre tge pre- token generation event there's a strategic round and that's when the company goes out and says hey look we're raising at a billion dollars from andrees but you influential angel will get you in at 500 million or flip those numbers Hey raising at 100 million we'll give you discount at 50 million and um
basically you know they raise from 50 to 100 angels and it kind of gets the angels on their side and they give them a discount because because maybe the angels are more helpful helpful than the VCS and then when they launch they can say kind of when they do their token generation event all the angels that they wanted to get who are like maybe influential are like on their side uh then the token launches and it's this like Mad Dash for an airdrop and it's like what happened with starkware and what happened with Dimension and it's a total [ __ ] show every single time for one reason or another and the argument that I want to make here is that this system is actually a much worse system than icos and I weren't actually a bad system it was just that the industry was so immature
there were no nfts there was no defi there was like no infrastructure built out that the reason icos didn't work is not because of the structure but because of uh regulatory fear and sub subpar Founders and subpar companies and I'd love to so that's my that's my argument to you and I'd love to hear what you think of it um yeah like this sort of train of thought is very similar to what came has been very vocal about Kane found synthetics they actually raised one of largest iOS it was probably the Ico that haven yeah that was an investor in there um and the question is he was like you know we should go back to icos and I think it's a very interesting train of thought
um you also have people like Kobe trying to like disintermediate like this whole Venture um kind of uh you know PayPal Mafia if you will um the so I don't actually you know icos are very the purest form of a capital Market where you have direct access to people the arguments around not allowing that is that people are not very sophisticated now that's like accreditation rules that are outdated and Antiquated where they're actually based so accreditation rules are actually set for uh administrative and cost burden reasons not so much sophistication do you realize this like
this whole threshold of like are you making over 100 or 150k or whatever it is or join 200 it's more so based on like back in the day it like every time you had a new shareholder like it required like it was expensive to add an incremental um investor now it's like zero right margin cost is zero with technology um I think there was a middle ground where you go back to an Ico and you have um which by the way a lot of I guess the question is as long as icos and as long as in whatever mechanism I say doesn't matter if it's an Ico a venture round as long as there are the proper disclosures the proper information propagated to the same
people like the same information propagated to everyone I think that's you know and and some sort of standard of what is disclosed right I think that's the most important thing that people need to be aware of um and but yeah I mean going era is something that is very interesting actually to like is a venture investor more or less sophisticated than a Community member probably the Community member knows more about the project than the partner at whatever and like allow them to and in private conversations with a lot of Founders
they've been wanting to do this they've been wanting to go direct to the community and because of course they get criticism it's like why are you doing a venture around like we're here in the Discord we're here adding value we're here like contributing and we can't invest and it is a very valid argument um and unfortunately it's been the regulatory risk and or concern and so um the fundamental question is who's getting hurt I think the current model A lot of the retails not participating in the value creation by the way in the same way that they're not participating in traditional Venture right um which is a shame yeah so I don't disagree with you I I would want
to go back to that system because it brings more competition right it levels the bar to maybe also get rid of aird drops altogether like yeah I mean it's like I I think aird drops have peaked in terms of the percentage that is being given to the community if you go to a system where it's a pure Ico you allow people to participate and have skin in the game and that's it like it's it's a more competitive environment and that's a really good thing I think yeah I mean air so aird drops are in so icos are better better in two reasons one is um they there were better incentive
alignment mechanism than air drops aird drops are incentivizing the wrong people airdrops are incentivizing renters not owners and icos incentivized to owners people who actually want to like a stake in that business um and I think basically like they also fixed this I don't know we're back in the like web two era of like Venture firms make the money and then like the you know uh the the community makes like doesn't make the money it's no different than IPOs right it's like I mean you can make obviously money in the in the public markets but like I don't think that was one of the the cool premises of icos is that like anyone could get in at at an early level and right now like you know starkware at 17 billion like I IG layer like what do you think Igan layer launched that I'd say
25 billion minimum probably probably 25 maybe 30 billion um man it's gonna be tough for people to make money on that and uh it would have been cool if there was an Nan layer icoo that like people who are into staking and reaking stuff could could have got in um now there needs to be things right there needs to be like I would say mandatory disclosures um there need there needs to be like there needs to be something um but I don't know this this I this this Market structure of like VC's forcing private deals with discounts and lockups like I V's are not forcing that no one's forcing anything the
market the market regulatory environment is forcing it because there have been investors well not so much investors there have been teams and Founders that have been wanting to go back to this model but they won't like it's just very challenged now I think there's always going to be a opportunity to um like create a gated Ico one interesting mechanism would be with proof of onchain activity and measure of contribution you invite people like think of Lio or IG layer with reaking uh based on your amount of
reaking you have a certain allocation and maybe you can get that as an nft that allocation you can maybe trade that nft to someone else at a premium or a discount if you don't want that allocation or you can't fill that allocation uh and that naturally creates a secondary Market all on chain the problem of course is well I in in order to get to that state there there is still a need I think for private capital or funding of a white paper so to speak and that was Ico you're Point initially around like scams exist I mean it's important to like I think dissect okay like scams exist everywhere it's not that icos promote scams um like ex scams will happen whether
it's an Ico or it's a venture round like there's still scams the Ico mechanism in and of itself does not I think promote a scam I think if anything it creates a more visible environment where like the issue is like there can be some fomo right because you saw a lot of that fomo during the Ico boom right um and in the spur of the moment like it's like no different than farming right or maybe what we're going to have this year reaking chasing of a yield people get really caught up but that happens in every Market that's just like human psychology um in this environment where the Market's open 247 365 you know you see it more visibly um but to say that icos are like track like you know are these facilitators of like crappy teams
raising money like yeah like obviously it happens but it's not the mechanism I think you know um I don't know like I wouldn't I wouldn't be dismissive of an Ico for that particular reason is what I'm trying to say because I think those there will always be those type of opportunist Founders scams whatever um it's just the nature of the the game it happens in crypto it happens in other Industries too right so yeah I just want to point that out because I think that's probably one of the biggest criticisms of icos that I keep hearing on and on and on it's like I don't think that's enough to go back to a model like where it's a bit more where it is more egalitarian where
it is more like perhaps meritocratic based on contributions value made on chain and it's really the same mechanism that teams are are going about to design an airdrive campaign you can use those same parameters for an Ico yeah I guess the count I guess one of the reasons they probably won't come back is uh there's this have you ever looked at the startup fun fundraising platforms like start engine or crowd like you know I guess Kickstarter you could call it this like we funder G uh you're talking about an adverse election problem adverse elction exactly it's like the number one best Founders are going to go
to Pary and framework and tenent and folks like that and poly chain and the tier ones second like the folks who aren't able to make it are going to go to the second class and the third phase are going to go to the Ico platform um is it really I mean like when I see a a company on seed invest or Republic or GoFundMe like what that tells me is you tried to raise money and you got turned away yeah and now you're like well [ __ ] I still need to raise money so let me go like try to do a community fundraise yeah yeah it's never the there are some instance yeah no I agree there are some instances where like you might do both right like it's not um A or B it can be there is going to be this round it's led
by named fund and you reserve an allocation that is an an open mechanism where community members can bid on whatever curve or can just bid on the allocation I think that would be okay so you know who did this was actually Kraken do you remember in 2019 Kraken did a crowd fund they raised 13 so Kraken was Raising at a $4 billion do valuation they raised 13 million I actually think they did the crowdfund to put a price on their Equity but um they raised 13 million from 2,000 investors and they used some crowdfunding platform I don't know I don't know who they used but yeah yeah if you're a consumer business this is also a good mechanism from a goto Market
perspective hey everyone wanted to give a big shout out to today's sponsor Wormhole Foundation stewards of the Wormhole protocol if you are like Santi and I and you play around on chain you know how bad the cross chain experience is today well Wormhole has set out to solve that powering cross chain transfers for over 200 different multi-chain teams including some of the best like Unis Swap and circle so what does that mean for you the Empire listener this opens up a huge number of multi-chain use cases across defi nfts governance oracles and more by supporting over 30 different blockchains and six different run times including SOI salana different
eth l2s ethereum and a whole bunch more that means you have now the most powerful interoperability platform at your fingertips if you're a developer you'll be excited to hear that Wormhole provides an extensive Suite of tools and infrastructure so that you can securely build multi-chain applications but don't just take our word for it obviously Wormhole protocol leads the industry in alltime messages transferred with over 900 million cross chain messages 900 million that is close to a billion and that's a big number of messages as a thank you Wormhole Foundation is dropping exclusive nfts that's right we got some exclusive nfts for Empire listeners hit the link in the description to claim your unique
Wormhole nft today the days of not using crypto for really anything in the real world are over it is time to start using crypto in everyday transactions whether that's shopping online or just buying a bagel on the street we're excited to tell you about PUSD PayPal's entrance into web 3 PayPal is proud to share an open letter to the crypto community that outlines their commitment their road map and their goals in the digital currency space py USD seeks to transform how you interact with your digital assets available today you can send your crypto to your PayPal account swap it for py USD and then use it to check out at millions of stores PayPal invites you all the Empire listeners to be a part of this journey
hit the link in the description of today's episode to read PayPal's open letter to the community it gives you a really good sense of what their vision is take the next step by signing up for a PayPal account today the future of crypto payments starts with PayPal shall we talk reaking do you have thoughts on this I've been giving way too many thoughts here I'd like to hear your thoughts on it first on thoughts yeah yeah yeah I mean so basically uh I'll read this tweet from from bernis he said um he said while we're still relatively early in the cycle sneaky leverage always finds a new form oh there you go he's he says in 2017 it was icos in 2021
it was the lending desks in 2025 it will probably be rampant reaking um so the con so this sparked a whole conversation on Twitter um it my my answer to this is it depends how you re how you Define leverage so the O in my mind the obvious answer is yes this is leverage but there's basically many many types of Leverage um there's like operational leverage and then there's financial leverage right there's like the financial leverage would be borrowing a bunch of assets in order to borrowing a bunch of assets to uh to then like go long like that's like going
levered long basically um and so there's like two two degrees of Leverage I would I would say have to enter the conversation it's like operational leverage and financial leverage then it's like the degree of Leverage that you're taking right so if you or here's here's a question for you if you stake your eth right as a reminder to folks staking is you take your eth you deposit into the staking contract reaking is you take that stake eth and you deposit into a reaking contract do you think that staking is leverage no not in of itself interesting why not just the mechanism of staking does not introduce more leverage what you do
with a staked asset May introduce more leverage but in and of itself staking is does not introduce more leverage right I think yeah so this was okay so I like read all these replies to briski this is why people weren't agreeing on Twitter is because there's a different understanding of Leverage there's folks who think that depositing into a Unis swap LP is leverage there's folks that think staking uh depositing your assets into a staking contract is leverage because you're doing something and you're getting more out with your money basically and people call that leverage I don't I think I would call that operational leverage I don't think it's financial leverage I think that financial leverage is basically like the and the difference here is like is
anything being borrowed so no like in like you're putting in one eth you're getting back one eth and a little bit of yield on top nothing's really getting borrowed uh in financial leverage like you're putting down something and you're getting more back in return and something's actually getting borrowed so I think to your point like reaking is basically it gives you it's a new instrument like a new Financial facilitator for sure it's a facilitator of creating leverage it's a new derivative that can kind of or instrument that can then create leverage that would be my definition of it yes I agree it's uh there's a good FAQ from the Igan ler team they put it out I believe two three weeks ago people should go read that and um I they go
sort of they make this point which is it I layer and of itself does not create their opinion more uh leverage more risk in the system it is but they they do concede that it's these like liquid reaking tokens and what happens at that layer is what um may be a challenge may present um these risks and in some ways like I think that is true but also it begs the question like should you be trying to use right word here should you have an opinion or a policy or risk
framework in place to mitig what the liquid restak token does or does not do and I'm not sure I guess we could maybe discuss that right I don't yeah you're saying different parameters to limit what what the what the restake token can actually do well not so much it what it can or can't do it's more the the amount right like like um like if if you're igen layer and you see the uh liquid reaking protocol come and I'm just um it I'm trying to think of like is
there is there a framework in place that you can Implement that the like if you're igen layer they have this kind of Security Council right of containing the amount of like like reaking on reaking on reaking can you clamp down on that can you like I I mean I'm guessing getting ahead of myself here is like what is the worst that can happen with liquid reaking uh the worst that could happen is there's probably basically like a big slash I think the is that there's a big slashing event right like I think mechanically staking and reaking are the same thing but you now have multiple you've now basically increased the
number of claims on the on the same asset so there therefore you've increased the number of like slashing conditions and and slashing risks on the same asset and I think that's why people would say look maybe it's not leverage but it's increasing risk in one way or another you know it's not it's not like you're taking like a a margin loan or something but it's increasing some sort of risk in the system does that make sense yeah I'm going to be cautious here because I am getting ahead of my skis like I would like to have this discussion with someone at I can later or someone I know we could we should we should bring maybe someone from Igan Le it could be Calin and and someone from the LI liquid reaking token protocols to come in and
discuss this like is this point on Leverage is a good one I think I think that's like less contentious what is more contentious is what is the point of all these liquid reaking tokens and at what point do you stop at what point uh you just assume that people are going to want to chase the highest yielding opportunities at what point do we do we make sure that to use this CST word sneaky at what point do we make sure that leverage does not creep up on the system to a degree where it can have a systemic risk on protocols yeah or ecosystems yeah we've uh we we've pushed the boundary of
uh I think our or at least at least of my basically like I have some opinions but they're not really relevant here I would like the more just have a discussion like a pod in my mind would involve the top three liquid reaking protocols and someone from Igan layer discussing this point exactly because I think is we had it in our predictions that if anything like ethereum um well you remember when we had the igen layer team on they said like initially they're going to have the security Council that is going to like really kind of make sure that the system is operating correctly and like these valid like uh they I think they call it the security Council that is very like human Centric governed um and has uh an opinion on like the security Frameworks
of the system right do you remember that yeah yeah yeah and my criticism back then I think I still hold this view is that like I guess you have to have that but over time like like it doesn't give me much confidence so like the whole point of these systems I think is to be like as uh governance light as possible like ethereum as an L1 does not have any like you know what I mean doesn't have any governance like I think you you coordinating from a shift to Pro a stake was a Herculean effort and that required a whole bunch of coordination but it's a very governance light l2s introduced more governance in the equation um and then protocols on top of
that like def5 protocols and whatnot are like um you know have these governance tokens but as a base protocol I think you don't like you want to really really minimize the amount of governance human like interference or interactions that have and have a say because I think that just degrades the trust guarantees and I think also humans are like time and time again like not really competent to make these decisions so the the my criticism was I think ethereum probably figures out some sort of scalability Ro it is figuring it out live like through modularity and you know parallelization through something like monad and all this you know uh uh stuff like Celestia and whatnot but it
is adding more like uh it is giving up that this on this particular thing that I think is pretty sacr which is government like governance light um and whereas you don't have that like in in other ecosystems like like salana for instance like you want it and so uh yeah it's just is it going to work is it like a a catastrophic thing no but it just introduces a vector that I think should be talked about more um and and ultimately it might be necessary might it's okay but um I personally prefer systems that have as least amount of like human judgment in
there uh because it just makes me uneasy you know what I mean I do I do just but yeah anyways uh that was my rant on on like uh ethereum security like scalability road map but yeah on this like like with reaking stuff I think should have a dedicated pot to talk about this yeah um all right last conversation here you joined farcaster you're one weekend what do you what do you think good and the bad farcaster good stuff good stuff to Dan I gotta say I talked to Dan three years ago or so and he was building this and I've had immense respect for Dan from the sidelines because I know how early he was he was early in coinbase I think he's a very deep thoughtful thinker and
to see someone like take time to really like make a decision of where to build like I think that carries a lot of weight and has a lot of gravity um it's uh it's a seamless platform the so starting from the very beginning I ping you hey how do I set this up you sent me a link you know I went through it I set it up Seamless it was web to experience like there was some things about security and whatever like you can or but it was very much seamless onboarding Char charge you five bucks which which is perfect like how much does Twitter charge you for verification it's like a similar right so is like whatever very easy onboarding so points there here's where I don't things that I
didn't like and I'll go back to things I like but I'm going through sequentially the flow what I didn't like was like it asked me for interest and it was like 10 buckets so I clicked some you know crypto books uh travel whatever um and then I didn't realize this but so I joined and then you know I see the Empire Channel you know I that was my first tweet and then two things one I didn't like that I based on my interest which is pretty cookie cutter list I immediately followed like 70 people or 50 people I'm like no make it optional why is it that like now it's the awkwardness of unfollowing people like I don't want to why are you determining who I should or shouldn't follow maybe
give me a glimpse into the type of content that I'm going to be able to see right when I click into it maybe just show me the the channel also show me how this goddamn thing works like give me a guide of how it should be casting turns out that like you know it is kind of intuitive but like it would be nice to just like have a hears how it works here's the kind of things that you can do here um here's how it's different from X here's how it's very similar to X like here's the type of users like just give me something right it was just like all right like all of a sudden I follow 100 people what I don't know like I actually don't want to follow these people have like I un like 80% of them I'm like I want to consciously follow
people here um so that was a bit like I I I I tweeted this today like casted this today on publicly I like this probably change um so am I using the app constantly no not yet am I cross tweeting like tweeting and casting the same thing I'm running experiments of like where I do the same tweet and cast to see the type of Engagement uh engagement is nowhere near right and I guess like the word engagement is like tricky right because I'm I'm just judging by like number one likes which of course is like you know I have just shy of a thousand followers on on uh farcaster I have uh you know 100x that in on X so I guess the ratio is is is pretty high I'd say but still uh I
don't know I'm still kind of working through it to be honest uh I still don't know what cast are or how to do them or use them Cass you just sent a tweet no no not Cass but like the frames right frames yeah yeah the casts are easy like it's it's I'll say like it's super easy to just the cast right like the same that you tweet it's like super intuitive I guess you can select the channel the question is if I select the Empire channel is that GNA also go on like other I guess no right like if you're not in the Empire Channel you're you may or may not see it probably not you will still see it you will still see it I think the forecaster team is thinking about something where like you could tweet out or you could cast in a in a
channel and no one else would see it or you can cast in a Channel and everyone else sees it but right now when you like tag the channel Empire so by the way if people don't know there's a on warp cast there's a channel for Empire there's like 250 people in it all listeners of the Pod and people hang out and ask questions and talk about the podcast yeah so good talk the largest channel no we're definitely not the largest channel we're the biggest channel on all of warcast we're not the number one no I mean seriously yeah know as much as I want to believe that like no we have uh and Bas has 100,000 people so that's pretty impressive actually bass has 100,000 yeah I had a cool I had a cool warp cast moment foraster moment this
week so uh it actually the best offchain excuse me best onchain to offchain experience I ever had have ever had and it was inside of a frame and I think anyone who wants to peek into the future of consumer in the future of consumer crypto should literally go do this right now so I was scrolling on warcast and I see a Penny frame from uh this guy Garrett uh who works at coindesk actually great guy and he's been like basically pump like uh he's been like uh sharing all the best frames that he can see he's a good follow on warcast so basically scrolling I see Garrett Shar this Frame It says mint a penny and the flow basically went like this so you click mint a penny inside of your frame it just a big picture of a penny click
mint a penny the frame so then I minted that nft of the penny the frame then automatically trans position to say get a hat because it recognized that I had this nft in my wallet so anyone who didn't have the nft in their wallet it says get a penny anyone who has the nft that frame now says get a hat so then I click get a hat it then opens up a a coin based shopping page with a picture of a $30 like really nice like high quality $30 hat and then the page automatically read that the get a penny nft was in my wallet so the $30 hat on on this like normal page not turned into a dollar uh into a 1-cent hat and then
so then I clicked I clicked check out and then it was one click check out with Shopify and it was done and this was all on mobile all in like 30 to 60 seconds click mint a penny frame turns into get a hat click get a hat opens up a coinbase page $30 hat becomes a one-cent page one click check out with Shopify Hat's gonna be at my house in a couple days you gota wear the hat I'll wear the hat I'll wear the hat yeah withi hat with hat I am now with hat with hat that was pretty interesting that's really I mean yeah this is a really good observation like people that are on the sidelines thinking that it is crypto is still very cumbersome challenge ux um it is they're in for a surprise yeah a real
surprise like it is seamless I've always felt that payments subcriptions um with stable coins is is the way of the future like nfts subscriptions like at Le you this the amount of um Dropout the amount of like loss revenue from uh e-commerce is astounding because credit cards fail or or like subscription renewals is a huge problem for not just retail but enterprise software companies like because the credit card expired the payment had a false negative all these like crazy stupid things that should have been figured out by now guess what you don't have that problem with crypto and you can make micro payments like it's just uh streaming payments saer is a really good protocol like it's just a
yeah like we're uh you're right it it does this type of flow is something that perhaps we should really encourage people to use more and more to Showcase to normal people in their day-to-day interactions of what is possible with crypto right like like like it would be nice to see a video of like here's how you check out in normal web to here's how you check out with crypto who's faster yeah um yeah we so we have a monthly all hands with block works that that Mike and I lead and I think we have like 60 people up the company maybe 65 now at blockworks and we just have everyone get on once a month we share like basically how did the last month go what's Happ what are the goals for the next month and like
what are the big initiatives at the company and like what do we thinking and then there's like a AMA section and stuff like that and we had did we did a whole section on forecaster and we basically said like look as a as as a company it's not just Mike and I like as a company we're pushing into farcaster and uh We've got like a forecaster Channel now and people are we're like we're we're pushing on it so yeah it's I think anytime you do something like this it's uh you will never be successful with a new thing if you just have asset so like my idea around forecaster is like let's go all in for 90 days and let's wake up maybe you know four and a half months and we'll wake up at the end of June at the end of Q2 and basically
say do we keep going or do we stop was it worth it or not worth it so yeah I think it has a those type of bets are are really interesting from when founders do that because it could it could have a pretty asymmetric payoff and the downside fairly limited I mean like this was the other idea is like if you we have yet to actually get on Tik Tok as a business I we have like a couple videos because the uh and we should probably be on Tik Tok but to go create like Tik toks and a channel like you can't just repost somewhere like it literally takes a different type of person to go build a Tik Tok um but warp cast is really easy to just like we can take the team who runs on Twitter and now that Twitter team it's very easy for
them to get up on up run it's called cross indication of channels yeah yeah so nice good man well something to obviously report back on um and uh keep tracking but yeah really shout out to Dan I mean he's really good stuff what he's built and we need more of those we need more consumer uh applications um and I think we're entering that phase I think that is the most exciting way going back to circling this podcast is really about this discussion around like who [ __ ] cares if who's right around a couple weeks if we're in a bull or bear market like again the real fundamental question is do you believe this is a lasting
technology and if you do you kind of invert then does your timing matter no because you're never going to get it right because humans can't predict this stuff and markets are completely irrational and so you can't do it to think that you can is just a foolish ER you're going to be right today Chris is going to be wrong quote unquote today he may be right you know in a month from now who cares right like at the end of the day more focus should be on paying attention to what is really happening on the ground level you're trying out fast foraster like compare that to your experience in 2017 when you're funding that Ico crypto's not perfect but like do you see a window towards this completely re like completely changing the fabric of
e-commerce and subscriptions and customer Acquisitions and retention and what like yeah I do like stable coins have you used it not just like pontificate have you actually used stable coins like okay like have you tried Phantom have you tried Jupiter have you like looked at an nft and what people really like you know I get like that maybe gaming is a little bit more like like Bare Bones still but like every different kind of vertical is in different places but in the aggregate like I I that's what I care most about right because that's how I think of my allocations in verticals is like I do I cannot afford to miss out on a huge
vertical and social is one where I've like probably kind of been a little bit wary of like I obiously have an investment in lens um I'm I'm not an investor and forecaster but you know seeing this type of stuff is really encouraging actually yeah uh the question is are they going to like are they will they be able to scale um but it's also really kind of crazy right like you look at these like examples that are made like Harvard Business School case studies Vitamin Water coconut water all this crap it literally was like Rihanna and 50 Cent got behind this crap and like it went yeah 50 let's go you know what I mean like 50 c would have been G bankrupt had he not done this deal and then Rihanna's a
billionaire because she like got like a huge Equity stick and coconut water or something like this um yeah it's uh the the the the thing is is like what is really encouraging is um the Creator economy to you know use a cliche kind of overuse VC term at this point uh is very real Tik Tok these phenomenons like the the individual power of not just celebrities but genuine people that like are content creators is is huge what is probably missing is how these creators uh monetize and I think crypto is that place where more and more creators are going to naturally gravitate to through nfts through whatnot and because it is just a better system I think um you're
still going to have platforms you're still going to have you know um like Tik Tok of course that are more centralized and whatnot but when you compare the the the economic argument for a Creator is going to probably be stronger joining a web 3 protocol that distributes a far greater share um so my guess my last question for you is when when will we see most most of foraster users which has gone parabolic I think didn't it cross like over 100 thousand or so well there's 100,000 followers of just the base Channel yeah but I think it's over 100,000 mostly crypto native mostly mostly historically ethereum Centric but when do you think we're
going to see like major mainstream I don't want to say like a Taylor Swift but like you know um uh like a Mr Beast or whatever on farter this cycle you think yeah is that going to be a bullish or like is that going to be top it'll be in the it'll mark it'll Mark the top or something and then like okay yeah I think at some point in 2025 like I think dozens if I think many many many celebrities end up getting on farcaster in maybe 10 to 20% chance second half or end of 2024 but definitely in 2025 I mean I don't know what you're like it it also depends on how you think about the cych imagine if
Trump goes on farcaster I if I'm Dan I would be like focused on like capturing this election like if you have like because obviously Trump got banned from Twitter I mean I think that will happen in this cycle like I think you'll be listen like I don't know if you ever listen to Lex fredman podcast like I think crypto people will end up getting on as crypto gets intertwined and Bitcoin gets intertwined with like more and more of society and like the market ends up ripping and bull market and stuff like that like those celebrities will get on farcaster like crypto crypto celebrities like the big Founders and investors will get on Lex Freedman and get on 60 minutes and we'll get called to talk in front of Congress and things
like like it'll it all just get intertwined so yeah yeah yeah absolutely well we'll see I'm gonna continue to use it so thank you for uh this activation energy that is so necessary so you I will always credit you for onboarding meet a forecaster oh go ahead go ahead is there an nft that like can track who on board so who think you're with your ref link you can trace right they know that I think you can trace who has signed up you send me a link and it had a unique URL to it so I think you can TR by default yeah yeah nice yeah good stuff we haven't done this in a while any uh content movies books that you're
listening to sound interesting lately I have not opened a book in three weeks and that's how I know that market it's exactly right I was gonna say that it's crazy like I you know the podcast in the bare Market that I that I was listening to like I started listening to like non- crypto podcasts a little more in the bar Market just by the end of the bear like I just like audio books I was reading a little more like I was listening to like just I don't know back listening like invest like the best or Allin or my first million or like these other podcasts um now I'm like like hear stories of people how they almost went bankrupt like you and crypto and then they come back in full raging Force like and give you some yeah we've been there yeah that's right so yeah exactly I'm
like oh my God like he he was almost bankrupt too yeah I I can make guys you almost almost bankrupt twice like so like if you round tripped if you've roundt tripped your crypto gains like hold on hold on we'll make exactly so but dude I wake up Wednesday morning and I'm like let's [ __ ] go I get to listen to zerx research podcast like all right Friday morning or like Saturday like I get to listen to Bel curve uh Tuesday like new episode of B curve like so I'm uh I think one of our first conversations that I had with you and especially when I was looking at the investment was like you're right like now I you rotate from hopefully you're listening to Empire and then you can go to light speed and then go to bell curve and then come back to Empire like it's a
full week and then we have the convo now with Ryan and uh Tommy like I think our initial Vision was like becoming your everything uh if you want to like we want to own the we want to own the we want to own the entire information stack for once you are crypto native basically like we will let other people the coin desks or coin telegraphs of the world like play with the onboard people into crypto whatever our Theory though is that like you only spend a little bit of time on that layer of the stack and eventually you get pulled into crypto or you leave and we care about the people who are who are here to stay we care we care about the as Ryan from Bank list would say like the settlers like we care about the
crypto Natives and if you want news we've got news for you if you want a daily podcast or daily newsletter we've got that for you if you want more Niche shows more technical shows we've got that for you if you want to come to conferences we've got that for you um we're launching permission list three in two weeks uh with over 50 plus speakers um we're excited about that like yeah we and then we've got the research and data platform now where we're launching a full like we literally rebuilt this thing based on customer feedback from the last uh 21 months uh We've rebuilt the entire platform uh especially the front end and we're launching that at in about a month so yeah like we we want to own the whole stack this is an ad without being an
ad we want to do an ad without being an ad all I could ask you is go buy a ticket to D use code Empire 10 not I'm gon I think there's an event for Empire listeners and Community oh my God thank you I was on Sunday no no the re the reason I'm how is it that I like know you know bring dude I literally forgot three times in a row uh to to bring this up we have actually you share the details well like I'm cautiously goingon to share them because I'm still figing out my travel but there is an event the the conference starts Monday the 18th right or something yeah 18th or the through the 21st or so it's like Monday through Wednesday or Thursday and there's a meetup on Sunday before the
conference starts uh for Empire and B curb list on the margin so it's going to be Mike myself yuso like Empire and on the margin listeners can come the only way you can get in is if you have a Das ticket but yeah if you're in London you're going to D and you're listener of the show come hang out beers on beers on block Works nice pints you mean pints cheeky pints yeah it's also Sunday roast day yeah I gotta get a little Sunday roast you gotta get on the program program yeah all right Lads um anyways yeah always good to come on the Pod uh thanks everyone for listening we will record uh we got a good lineup we regulatory pod
coming tomorrow I recorded that with Rebecca and we have we have a CEO of marathon Holdings actually dropping on Tuesday Fred teal public company I think it might be our first public company guest uh we had first Bitcoin mining episode we've done in almost two years it was I would really recommend listening to this episode we never talk about mining but like very good overview of yeah very relevant too because we hav an yeah so we got some Banger episodes coming on thanks for listening as always hopefully see you guys in London in like three to four weeks and uh we'll see you next week keep the Hat on folks with hat with hat cheers hey everyone Thanks for tuning in to today's episode don't forget to claim
your free Wormhole nft exclusive to Empire listeners hit the link in the description of today's episode and fill out the form to claim your unique Wormhole n [Music] today