The Rollup TV: DeSci, Ethereum ZK & Stabled Up EP #1

Transcript

Ah, [Applause] [Music] heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Yo, we got the rains in And 25 bips cut.

Let's go. >> Ride them. Ride that money printer. We got the rage. We're cooking. We're riding. >> A tweet. It was like It was like Burr Fiat is hopeless. That's how I feel. >> There's so many great memes. There's AI deep fake content of Jerome Powell saying the most heinous things about your bag. >> Really? Really, >> he loves your bags because he cut interest rates and now he's turning on the money printer and people are there. Now the debate is like, "Okay, well we cut." The debate is whether this was a hawkish cut or a dovish cut. >> Well, yeah. I know. That's what they were saying. They were like, I thought I saw ICO beast put out a tweet about that. Like, you know, all that matters is what's coming in the presser, which I think is starting right now, right?

>> Yeah, it's 2:30. We're live. Uh presser is happening as we speak. Jerome Powell probably just said good afternoon. Um, you already know that there there's going to be a Calier poly market for uh for that >> for exactly what he's saying, what words he's gonna drop. >> If he's gonna say good afternoon is >> well, there is there is a market for it. I think it was 98% yes, he is going to say good afternoon. The last time he didn't say good afternoon, the Dow Jones dropped 800 points. >> Really? >> Yes. So if I look on Koshi right now, there's a number of rate cuts going on um which is exactly three cuts for uh the rest of the year is priced at 64%

which is now way higher way higher than previously in September and two cuts is at 26% which is getting dumped. So because they cut today this market had a big rise uh to to 25 >> or to 64%. So, um, guys, let's definitely make sure that we are watching the amount of cuts because it's probably going to be 75 bips. >> Well, there's no cut or there's no, excuse me, there's no meeting in November. So, we cut today for the September meeting. There's only two meetings left.

>> Yeah. >> Which means that for there to be three cuts, we would have to cut at the remainder of the meetings in 2025. Uh, the the two that are remaining. >> Yeah. which seems which seems reasonably and re like reasonably possible and likely. I would even >> especially since they didn't cut 50 today. I think it is likely and they're just going to slowly walk this down in an attempt to try to do this off landing for the job market and and walk down these interest rates. >> Yeah. >> The reality is we're we're cutting and inflation is higher than the target. So, we have completely completely detached from the 2% inflation. Yeah, we have no that is no longer a priority for the Fed.

>> Not at all. I mean, they've completely just Well, I think they upped it to now like 3% or something. So, I mean, it's JPAL money go bur season. I mean, >> you got money, >> guys. Like, I mean, look, I have over the next however many years, the main thesis is going to be the devaluation of fiat. It's going to be just this consistent consistent change of monetary properties that we have been used to and it's going to keep happening. And so like when you look at the state of affairs, you look at real estate, you look at land, you look at gold, you look at Bitcoin, you look at silver, you look at metals, you look at um you know NFTTS

even in digital art, you look at Ethereum, Salana, other cryptos, you look at everything and and it's very clear that uh that the the investment thesis to have for the next 5 to 10 years is money printer going buy scarce assets hold on to them and just kind of try to have as little cash as you can. But problem with that thesis is that everything's so inflated and that if you have some cash, you're going to want to use that cash to buy things when assets get undervalued, when people freak out, which could easily happen in the next six to nine months. If if we cut a ton more, people are going to lose confidence in the economy. Powell's going to say something that is like on

his way out, try to scare people. I don't know. So, I I'm I'm not saying don't have cash, but I'm just saying that uh the thesis for the last seven years and really since I mean since 2001's um September 11 attacks and then since 2008, since the Iraq war, since all of this, it's always just been print the way out and that's just going to keep happening. Now, we have different wars, we have different scenarios, we've got, you know, all sorts of things. Guys, I don't mean to be a doomer, but I just want to say money printer is going to keep going burr. And my investment thesis is to invest in assets which protect me from the devaluation of global fiat currencies.

We have a great show for you today. We've got Sam from Fracks. We've got our first episode of one of our new shows, Stabled Up, which is pretty ironic given Andy's long rant about inflation and why the US dollar is being inflated away. We launched a stable show to talk to you and bring you the latest and greatest in stable coins. That is super interesting because perhaps there are opportunities to get yield in order to uh overcome this inflationary burden. I saw just this year inflation has lost holders of the US dollar over 10% of purchasing power. So that really puts things in perspective. If you're holding cash in a checking account or a very very low

interestbearing savings account, you lost 10% of your purchasing power. Uh we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about how bringing stable coins onchain and bringing the entire uh financial system onchain is going to empower uh really everyone for higher yields uh and turn assets into productive assets even if you don't want to hold things that might fluctuate in value. We're also going to be talking about DSI. This is an attempt to spread our horizons. You know, we're going much more in this tokenization world, but there is really really interesting things happening at the frontier and the convergence between AI, crypto, blockchain, unlocking some very very

exciting things. We also have an appearance from Ramkumar again at the convergence of AI and crypto. They recently got listed on Upfit, a very popular South Korean exchange. I'll be at KBW speaking with some of the Korean market as well. I'm going to try >> Hell yeah, you will, Bo. We're throwing a party out there. >> The alpha, all the alpha from the Eastern Hemisphere and >> we got a party to you guys. >> September 24th, uh we're we're going to push it tomorrow. If you're watching this, you'll see it. We're we're hosting a party with Magic, with a couple other awesome teams in Korea. Rob will be throwing it down, holding it down. Uh

stream times will be changed a little bit, but we'll we'll kind of get there next week. I believe we have our first guest, Paul, in the back. Uh Paul is the uh CEO of Bio Protocol. Bio is a DI protocol. Token's been absolutely on a tear. Paul said he has some big announcements to talk to us about, some things to address. We wanted to bring him up, get him fired up, get him ready to go. So, we're going to get Paul up uh in a second. And yeah, I mean, he's working on this new concept of bio XP. So, we're going to learn about what that is. Uh we are looking for understanding on his incentives to different platforms. Uh how to how they're

thinking about rewarding community. They're kind of going viral. um they're kind of trying to do different uh uh bio points farming and education and scientific discoveries in the crypto incentive loop. So that is going to be an interesting concept to to watch and play out. Um and yeah, I mean bio's just been on a tear. Like it launched at like 80 cents a while ago and then if I pull it up, >> it went up 6x in the month of August. Yeah.

>> And it peaked and now it's came back down just a little bit which it to about a 3x u but it did go on an insane run uh during the month of August and we're going to hear about what led to this really >> who's buying dude is the real question. >> Uh there's tons of interesting things uh in this world. I actually think that one of the most uh important things that AI is going to do uh along with blockchain and crypto is going to lead to more scientific discoveries. Uh had a podcast with yes no error. These are another guy uh group >> that is building in the um in the decentralized science space. Uh there's some strong overlap today. If you guys

aren't familiar with Bio Protocol, we're going to learn about exactly what they do. Biotech's new financial layer. >> Yep. >> Um, >> dude, you missed Jeremy and Boundless stream. It's pretty sad, man. Those are some bangers. >> Some absolute bangers. I'm not sad at all because ultimately the rollup is on an absolute tear. Um, >> yeah. How is Base Camp, dude? Give us the Man, we haven't heard about it. Give us the base camp reflection uh take. What happened at base camp? You were there for like what, two days? You spent time demoing some of our new stuff. What happened at base camp?

>> Base Camp was a movie. I don't want to share too much right now. Um, let's just say that um public companies that are soon to be listed in the S&P and starting to explore network tokens, they don't they don't hold back. These guys went all out. Um, it was in Stow, Vermont. I had never been to Vermont. It's the maple syrup capital of the world. Um, and it was a super well and very thoughtful, very thoughtfully curated event. Um, they really thought through everything.

I'm talking there was people directing you on where to go. It was really well curated. Um, you weren't bored there. And it wasn't like there was side events galore. There was an agenda. We stuck to it. Yes, we did demo some things. Yes, we will be announcing things this very week and we're going to be uh we're I'm really really excited about it because there was also this backdrop of creator capital markets. Um we're going to be talking more about that soon. Um but uh you know, >> come on, keep going. What was the vibe?

Like what do they think about Pump? You know, you were saying that that that people say that Zora is all right, but Pump's not. What's the vibe? What's going on? like what is their what what was the reaction to launching a token for streamers? >> People are bullish on these the creator coins, but there's no intrinsic value. Like there's no memeability. It is just straight um it's it's an attention market. It's entertainment finance. Uh, I think there are token models that work better depending on what exactly you're trying to accomplish with your creator capital market. We've seen on pump exactly what happens. There's people

that have launched, they're getting mainstream adoption. We're going to start to see some really, really mainstream creators launch their creator coin and that might happen on pump. I've got a thesis on why they're doing that. Obviously, they're making money, but when it comes to the intention behind launching this in the long run, I think there's going to be a shift and uh let's just say it was really really great to catch up with some of the people that are leading this and pioneering this um on the bass ecosystem. I think the Bass token is actually going to be really important as uh as a a way to underpin this this economy because Bass is going all in on uh streamers social. The new

Bass app is integrated with Farcaster. They've got all they've got onboarding figured out. They're passing out USDC. They're getting people onboarded. The thing has hundreds of thousands of users. Coinbase has 100 million. Let's see. I think they're doing 100 million plus in revenue. And I think they've got a million plus in users on the centralized exchange. Dude, all of the just one one more thing that's important here that all of the creator coins that are launched on Zora will h be tradable on the Coinbase uh exchange.

>> Yeah, I saw that. And on all the aer drone pairs as well >> and we will talk more. I don't want to give away too much. >> What about the token? Like what were people saying about the token? Were they like bullish, bearish? Were they saying like token's going to launch soon? Was there any chatter? like when is a token launching? What is the valuation people are saying? Why do they need a token? Like what like he launched a token. What did they like what did he say after that? >> So he didn't launch sorry the terminology that they actually use is that they're starting to explore a token.

>> Okay. >> And even if you you can talk to people all the way through from Jesse to Brian, they don't know when the token's going to launch. Like okay, >> they're literally telling the truth when they say they're starting to explore it. >> They don't know what the governance model is. They don't know what the incentive layer is going to be. They don't know what the airdrop uh distribution is going to look like, but they're starting to explore what that is going to look like. >> People were bullish. People were like, "Yo, this is going to be epic. Like, it's going to be a huge airdrop." Or was it like, "Oh, was it bad vibes or good vibes?" Probably. >> There is no doubt that the base token will be the most valuable Ethereum rollup token. do. There's also no doubt there's going to be an insane amount of

complications between the Coinbase stockholders and the base airdrop and how that all plays out. We're not going to talk about that right now. We've got Paul, the CEO of Bio Protocol in the back. We're going to bring him up and we're going to talk about DI, about Bio XP Liquid Science. We're going to get an update from this guy. We got Paul in the building. Paul, what's going on, man? >> Hey, Andy. Hey, Robbie. Nice to be here. >> Oh, yeah. >> See you, man. Good to see you, man. Bio's been on a tear, man. Man, big big big big quarter for the boys. How are you doing? >> It's been Yeah, it's been on it, too. It's been on a big um big comeback. I'm doing super well. Thanks for asking. Um >> and you jump straight to the Yeah. No, no curiosity how you were doing.

>> Yeah, how the token is doing. >> Paul, give us an introduction, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Guys, uh really good to be here. A big fan of the show. My name is Paul Kohhas, uh CEO and founder at Bio. um also at molecule um helped support pump science early on as well. So kind of like a lot of the foundational uh I think projects that have helped shape the the DI space which has grown a lot over the past years. Um started out my career actually I I spent a ton of time in like uh online biohacking forums as a teenager.

>> Uh so like you know there's all these forums ranging from neutropics to bodybuilding. Um, I got interested in like genetic engineering, psychedelics, like essentially like the rabbit hole that is Reddit, right? But then you have all of these like other more obscure forums. So I was just like jumping in between all of those and then um um studied economics, started trading biotech stocks during my studies. Uh lost about a third of the money that I'd kind of like like pain painstakingly saved as a teenager. And it taught me like a super valuable lesson which is um similar to crypto um biotech is really rife with insider trading like essentially like I was betting on these like super small companies and you don't essentially know you don't have a lot of information about them and then I

learned about Bitcoin in 2014 uh and I had a similar experiences in those online forums because it was like it was like the early the Bitcoin forum then E Trader Ethereum our cryptocurrency right and and just kind of started forming this vision of like hey what if science acted in a similar way. So basically I just got rocket like trading biotech and then discovered bitcoin. I was like wait what if we traded biotech like bitcoin >> and then uh and then worked at consensus um early on as one of their first 100 employees and in 2017 and then left 2018 and published a foundational article which is called token bonding curves for IP. Um any of your viewers can look it up and it essentially describes this like principle. What if we what if we

attached basically what pump fun is doing like what if instead of we we had pump fund for uh like essentially the same defy tokconomic mechanism what if we had that for like scientific ideas but using IP as a real world asset class uh right and uh >> uh doing that super hard so I've been like cracking at this problem for like almost six years uh dies I think has gone through like a lot of different cycles as like many early kind of early crypto areas do. Um like I I don't know if you're familiar with DeFi kind of started in 2016 as like a term, right?

You had Maker Dow, Oasis Dex, the first DEX they built and everyone that was building anything in defi basically had to build everything from scratch. You're like, "Oh, wait. We want to do a DEX. Oh, wait. We need a stable coin. Hey, for a stable coin, we need collateralization." And and I I think DA is currently kind of in that in that phase. And I think we're currently looking at the next kind of the next foundational kind of leg up within that market. Um, but maybe maybe before we go too deep. Uh, >> yeah, before before we go too deep, I I actually really want to get your perspective on this and try to, you know, break out of the echo chamber before we get into the whole cryptoeconomic side of what of what uh, Bio Protocol is doing in your bio in

bioscience. Brian Johnson's going to be at token 2049. is like factor fiction don't die. Is this just a pure marketing play or is it is there actual like biological substance to this campaign and we really have the ability to reverse age not you know age ourselves in a way that is going to prevent death in 20 30 50 years. >> Yeah. I mean, I think rather than looking at the almost like the hard facts first, it it it's valuable when you think about science or progress in general to look at the philosophy like do you believe in progress or do you believe that like things are inevitable, right? If you believe that things are

inevitable, you're probably stuck in like the fiat system, right? And you're kind of like, oh, the government is like controls everything and like like I'm subject to that, right? If you believe in self- sovereignty or like the sovereign individual um then you might believe in Bitcoin, right? And so I think it pays to like think first principles from a similar perspective about like science and longevity. Like do I believe in progress? If I believe in progress, then I might want to believe that dying is inevitable. If I think that dying is bad, it's kind of like believing like is being poor bad?

depends if you like if you like being poor and like like working for like uh a fiat salary. If you like doing that then it's not bad but if you don't then it's kind of bad right and so >> but then to to get to your like leaving philosophy aside to get to your point Robbie there's >> we also love philosophy on this show so feel free to philosophize as much as you like. Well, I I mean I think like the reasons why we do things is like one of the most important things as an entrepreneur, right? It's like like what what you work on matters much more than what like like how hard you work. And and so the first principle, a lot of what I hear is like approach things from first principles thinking, but so let's talk about Brian Johnson. Um I mean uh

what I really like about him is that he has like a no [ __ ] given attitude about uh the almost the shame that comes with talking about optimizing yourself, right? I think a couple years ago it was still much more shameful to like and it was almost shamed by the media to like what you like you're taking some some new tropic that you didn't talk with your doctor about like you should be like and and I think we're moving outside of that into like a much more self- sovereign phase right also with money with investing and so I think longevity and what Brian Johnson is banking on is one trend um an early number that I heard so right first he started doing it out for himself which I think is great and then he was like well I'm generating all of this data to see

if the stuff actually works. Let me share the data with people. And then a good friend of mine actually uh he's also one of the early co-founders of Bio. His name is Vincent Vicer. Um he he's the COO of a decentralized AI startup that we closely work with which is called Prime Prime Intellect decentralized compute. And uh he actually suggested to Brian to like branch out into supplements because there's a lot of people that were wanting to do the same want to have the same stack as Brian did. Mhm. >> And I think in the first six months or so of rolling that out, they made like four or 500 million in revenue. It's not an official number, but like and and uh but Brian stuff is actually really sciencebacked. Um and if I if I think about my personal spending habits, one

of the biggest stuff that I spend on on a month-to-month basis is like supplements. Uh and so is there something to it, Robbie? 150%. Um, I don't think I could be operating at the level that I'm operating at without like the 40 50 like supplements I take every day. And um, uh, and so maybe where's this getting too? I think I think with like science and self-improvement and longevity and biotech, this actually this is an enormous market. What Brian did super well is he but it's a market that's been very opaque, right? And I think this also gets to the heart of DI.

Uh I think we've been like uh we've been taught by the media that we shouldn't take self-control and that we're like like we should go to our doctor to get some pills prescribed and the the whole supplement and self-improvement movement is like a counter to that, right? But our health care system doesn't actually benefit if we like if we get super old and we don't get sick and and in the same way that the Fed and the banks don't benefit if people buy Bitcoin and and so like you can look at it from like a sim similar like anarchist lens. Um, long story short, I think Brian's stuff 150% works. I mean, on many biomarkers, so maybe to your listeners, what is a biomarker? A biomarker is almost like an could be seen as like an API to somewhere some part of your body that

where someone can check how is that part of your body behaving, right? And on many biomarkers, he he has biomarkers like a 16-year-old or like an 18-year-old. And so, like, it's very hard to argue with. Um, I don't know about the like having bonus for like three and a half hours. That's trippy though, man. That is so trippy that that that he has health markers which are tracking him that show his age is that of a teenager based on some vital signs. >> Yeah. >> Wow. >> Yeah. >> Go ahead.

>> Yeah. No, Paul, I was kind of like even expanding this a bit more broadly. um when you're thinking about the actual implementation of DAI, what is your time horizon for for this entire uh idea to kind of go through the implementation phases and maybe like what are the the the implementation phases that would occur on that chronological order. >> That's a that's a that's a great question. Um >> like maybe start with like where where we are now and like Yeah. >> Yeah. I wonder what Satoshi would have would have said if you viewed Austin.

>> Yeah. Right. >> Yeah. Yeah. What is the implementation? Like what is the >> But look, I think ultimately this is about impact right for the end user. >> Something that I'm really like really focused on like teaching our team >> and that I've just come to the conclusion is like always to think of like who's the customer like right and I think we kind of forget this in crypto. The customer is not some developer that is building something on your chain. The customer is like someone who gets a benefit from using it, right? And so who's the customer of DI? The customer of DI are um is humanity in the broadest sense. But really we have to remember that like and we kind of forget this. We have to remember that like uh scientific innovation and progress pretty much drives GDP. Like it drives everything,

right? And we've like we've outsourced the the kind of the decision-making framework for science. And then this was different before the first world war. Before the first world war there was a very open scientific community globally. And then during the war that got almost like government like institutionalized by the government because they were like well we need to keep this [ __ ] secret so we can build the best bombs and kill each other. And then they had Manhattan project so on so forth that was like a pinnacle of like scientific innovation um because they got so much done in such a short time frame. But since then um governments don't first of all they don't operate like that anymore. Well, they still allocate money in a very centralized way, but it's like the the typical overhead from a government. You

pay taxpayer dollars, right? I hope you pay taxes, but anyway, pay taxes. What is this? >> We got that part. Um, you taxpayer dollars, right? roughly 80% there's an 80% overhead or 90% like so of every dollar you pay >> what actually gets to the scientist is typically like 10 cents and the rest kind of like gets lost in this entire like a lot goes to like the universities which are which put it into endowment funds and like like and the really interesting model about DI is I think it's we can almost do onetoone for your dollar right so that's that's a step change but um we've outsourced it to the government the government also runs the

DMV. And so, so you have to imagine the same the same entity that is running the DMV is supposed to be there for like foundational innovation and progress of humanity. >> As a man who went to the DMV on Monday, that is just alarming, >> right? That's super alarming, right? And then also, we know the government is is very easily corruptible through politics, right? And through interest groups. >> Yeah. And uh there there's this like funny not funny there's this conspiracy theory about like the invent people that tried to build and invent electric cars and a lot of them just got killed like randomly in the 80s and 90s and like also like very little government funding into those areas until Elon Musk pulled up. Why is that? Well, because there's an oil lobby that obviously doesn't

[ __ ] want electric vehicles. Like >> very simp. So um uh we've outsourced this fundamental capacity right and and science today actually operates at a global scale right yet the the initial so in in in science you typically the first set is always basic research with basic research you don't really know what you're getting yet right and that's that's all the grants the stuff that's getting funded at universities basic research is typically and and we know for instance that uh so most most nation states states dedicate about five to six% of their GDP to funding scientific research. Five to six% of Singapore's

GDP for instance is less than the current Ethereum uh kind of proof ofstake rewards. So Ethereum already just wiped its proof ofstake rewards would have a higher ability to actually fund scientific research than like major nation states. just as an interesting thought and we know long term that massive Boost Gri sorry by the way I studied economics so that's like high level how I think about stuff and um and but so let's talk about the customer right so it we've so we have this basic research and then it essentially gets snapped up by the private sector it's also the private sector job almost to do that that's how they've designed the system but what it means is a pharma company for instance can buy research out of a university and like develop

that a bit further and then and then and then sell it for hundreds of thousands and essentially price scouts the very people that like funded it which uh essentially means and it means two things. You have this enormously important system for humanity where the the the fundamental users and value creators have been priced out right you have the scientist that is kind of like just to kind of like do your job but also like like science today. So the scientists that we speak to spend about 80% of their time applying for funding and 20% getting the science. Even the area of a scientist that even the areas they work on depends on where there is funding. So like you might be a brilliant like uh I don't know quantum physicist right at like absolute genius

but you're just not going to get funding and so I don't know you pivot to like I don't know ad optimization math I don't like like right because there's more funding there and Facebook is is doing and and so that isn't that's a massive loss right and but further not not just that but the the system how scientific research actually progresses is monopolized in a sense of the current market structure um decides what actually goes to market. And I'll just tell you one one like one anecdote here. We spoke to a really promising researcher from Scripps uh Scripps Institute. um it's a leading kind of biotech research um university in in the US and she had a super promising late stage and so in biotech you typically

have like basic science then you have pre-clinical research which can take up to one or two years that's like um basically what pump science is doing is like anything that essentially takes a first idea or concept gets the stuff synthesized and puts it into like invivo which means invivo means in a life form could be human cells could be flies could be mice and then it goes into humans Right. And and so she she was it was late stage pre-clinical. She had amazing data. It was a non-addictive novel opioid analesic. So something that could replace um like um obviously things like Oxy, but even morpheium or what is it? Um methadone, right? And and so so imagine you went into the US market and you said, "Hey, we have this

novel like pain medication and it can replace everything. you don't overdose anymore and like we can get all these addicts off the streets. Like she would not get funding from anyone. Like no one would touch this, right? Because the VCs that look at this, their LPs are the pharma companies, right? The VCs have to sell it to the pharma companies later. If they know that the pharma companies don't want it, it's just not going to get funded. And the only interest that she got was essentially almost from companies where she realized that they wanted to buy it to bury it. So what often happens the way that IP works is if I have IP rights or a patent around something I get to decide what to do with it right mean meaning that I can patent something a fundamental innovation for humanity and but that

would still need a lot of R&D investment to like make it right and I can put it into a shelf and hide it and even though it's public knowledge I can hide it and because the patent expires no one has any incentive anymore to develop it later on and and so it just the stuff just dies right and and that's actually why uh we We we've seen a massive decline in novel kind of medication coming to market because well like even chemotherapy like there there could be much better alternatives than chem chemo was developed in like 70s and it's like so harmful yet there's a whole industry of providers that make more money that that would kind of like lose their livelihood if something new was developed. And the fundamental reason for that is in the way that like in the way that the government again regulates

what goes onto the market and what doesn't. And so um >> so when it comes to the implementation side of things, it's very hard from a government perspective and to align the incentives. And I mean to summarize this like you know very very poorly, the incentives are stacked up against the medical industry as from from the highest level possible to effectively create better solutions. And I can tell that you've probably done quite a bit of uh good old psyches because these mind thoughts really get triggered on the good old psychedelics. And um it's it's a tough road here.

>> Yeah. I mean what really what what's massively harmful here is for the end consumer, right? For the patient or people that are just trying to get cheap access to medication or or even like improve their lives, right? >> Yeah. >> Uh and and so so like how does the value flow look for DI? Um I I think that's >> yeah like how does bioprotocols essentially I I think you you spent a lot of time thinking about this problem right and and I think is something that is surfacing especially now talked about self- sovereignty and that kind of philosophy basically paid you know this industry is paid to keep us sick they're not paid to come up with cures so I I feel like enter bio protocol right >> yeah yeah yeah let's enter the matrix so

uh so there's two fundamental components there one is moving IP on chain and making it self- sovereign, right? Um, and but for us, I know there's other players trying to do that in different spaces. It's an incredibly hard thing to solve. Um, and for us, we've always believed in like doing it through like use cases. Uh, and um, and then the other component is capital formation. So, you have these two things like IP as an asset class and then capital formation. Um, what can you actually do with with kind of with with scientific IP? uh you can develop products and you can bring those to market and it's a real world asset.

Either you sell it to a pharma company then you're in the old system right to a farmer buyout even for a pre-clinical asset like you can you can sell stuff for like 700 million or up to a billion after like two or three years of developing it. So the upside is enormous. So we we bought like Vitadel bought an asset in 2021 um out of Newcastle University and this is a is a was a kind of a new molecule um that does that activates autophagy in the human body. Autophagy is the process when when healthy cells eat the old cells kind of like fasting go to longevity. And so these drugs mimic the effects of fasting without having to fast and and uh we currently now we're like three years four years into the

research and it's it's extremely promising. It actually it's shown to be two to three to five times potentially better than rapamy which is the closest best thing that we have. Brian Johnson takes rapomy. We bought that research for 200 250K and then we tokenized it. Meaning we when we saw that there was sufficiently good data emerging around it. We um that this is a token hour trades as VA not absolutely not a show um and and al this is public knowledge. Um VAS is in advanced discussion with a major government um in in the Middle East to get a fasttrack clinical trial approval for this acid. they really like it because it it's quite like it's non-toxic so you could take it like a

supplement and the minimum thing is that it could extend life between five up to maybe 15 years uh and Vita owns all the IP right and and so if you get an asset into clinical trials in the biotech world typically that takes 30 40 million normally and if DI is able to do that for about 500k total in funding that like that that that's an insane milestone um we have a whole range of assets like that the thing is then the next thing that you want to do is you want to commercialize it. And so in with this particular government um we like we we've had impress meetings with them like it's and now we're kind now the pro project is at a point where it's being patented. Uh and um we we only have to do one trial because they're like

>> like it's longevity. We don't need to do super long trials within one trial. We could then start offering and selling this in longevity clinics across across the world specifically for us in that jurisdiction. And if if someone told you, hey, I took this thing, it the data shows it extends lifespan by 70 seven to 15 years. I'd be like, hell yeah, like like sign me up. Um and and so so so this this could be this is kind of one life cycle. Now, let's get to the heart of it. Like what is Bio? Uh we're essentially a we're um DI liquidity protocol. So we we were merging DeFi and DI together. One of the earliest things that I realized in kind of building in building in DAI is that um liquidity is like a massive issue. It's very hard and

it's specifically hard in assets where you have to wait for a long time. Um I think the crypto market has changed massively since I entered like market making is incredibly important. Liquidity provisioning is incredibly important and so I figured like let's just do it ourselves. Um in August, Bio Protocol generated about uh and this like generate about 4 million just in LP fees from the different Dows and ecosystems that we operate. And so maybe to kind of the get to the gist of it again, we started out by launching beta which is kind of like the first and like the flagship DAO. VA recently just launched Aubry which became a huge success which is one of our first multi- aent systems. But we started out by building Dows initially. These Dows

develop multiple IP assets like a pharma company would, right? And then the IP assets can be further tokenized. If you're super interested in one asset, you we further tokenize it if the data is good. And through that, the Dow actually gets back liquidity. So you create these micro markets now where traders can bet on individual data outcomes. And um bio through that um and then we launched more of the Dows and then we were like, well, we might as well build liquidity protocol around it and launchpad as Launchpad started getting really big. Uh and we've just kind of released our V2 which also includes u an XP system through this launchpad. Now you can launch multi- aent systems uh that is super sophisticated. So you're kind of like automating scientific discovery. Um

you can launch Dows but we've we've gone less on launching Dows and instead more directly launching scientific assets which are IP. >> Yeah. Paul, just uh just got a couple minutes here and just like one specific question about bioagents. You know, I'm just curious, why do you think bioagents will at all be competitive with the nearly 1 to2 billion dollars of funding for other AI bio stuff that's going to, you know, real San Francisco based researchers and and not, you know, what you could you could consider like these community token chasers. you know, it feels like you're kind of doing uh AI XPTt a year too late here and I'm not really sure what this really does for

science. Paul, I'm gonna end you on this one. You know, can what why do you feel like you have an edge? >> So, so we have an edge because we have an extremely desperate user base which are the scientists, right? like the AXBT uh era might be over for like like airdrop farmers, but like the science and the the problems that we just talked about which are like huge problems, those problems persist. Um, I was at an aging conference in Copenhagen and like people were applauding and cheering for us like for this model. Like funding in biotech is is very dry and in science it's super hard to get despite all of these advances in like robotics and like Tesla's companies like like once you have enough money once you have money you can move things forward very

quickly. And to your question the reason why we're competitive with let's say leading AI startups is because though they operate in a completely different fashion they don't operate like like an open scientific ecosystem. they operate like extremely close source web two companies. What our kind of agent stack really entails. So it's it's a multi- aent system um that at its core has a decentralized knowledge graph and that knowledge graph is populated for instance with all of the scientific papers out of that field. Right? Those papers are currently behind payw wall. You can further populate these knowledge graphs with user contributions. Uh we have a DA launching that essentially analy like multi- aent system launching that analyzes um fecal matter so to like improve your microbiome. So you can now create data points in a knowledge graph

around kind of all of these things and and you can also populate them with public knowledge from the community which a web two company can only do behind closed doors and can also not publish the results. And so the huge like a web 2 AI startup is not focused on actually furthering stuff. They're focused on like creating assets, but it's very hard to then take those to the lab. So, we we built that pa and then they're typically not very close to the end user. And so, because we have a global community of people that actually care about causes, right? Like some of them might just be crypto traders, but increasingly the goal for us is actually to get in like those specific patient communities, the people that care. And so, the big difference is you have something that is quite enduserfacing, but that at its core has deep scientific

capabilities. Um we're actually plugged into the some of the best web 2 AI startups. One of them is Sakana AI. Another one is Future House. Uh I haven't seen anyone in crypto do this. Like essentially our our system has its own kind of has its own custom knowledge base. You can replicate that for any kind of scientific area. Then it plugs into the best scientific AI systems through API calls. Uh and then what you get output and then it can run an X account uh and it can perform onchain actions. And so what you get outputed is like uh kind of a highly complex like you actually with this you actually get to novel scientific discoveries that you wouldn't normally get with chat GBT because chat GBT or even plot don't have access to the same kind of knowledge

base. >> Yeah. >> And I'll end with this last point. Typically when you build an agent you design like an agent prompt in an agent character card. >> The way that our character cards are designed is that they're designed to mimic the exact scientist that they represent. So we could make an Asian character card for Brian Johnson, all of his biases. We would train it on all of his books, all of his papers, and then we could ask that Brian Johnson agent to sub to suggest an even better supplement stack that Brian Johnson hasn't thought of yet. And Ryan Johnson might be like, wait, actually that is pretty smart. Like I could have thought of that. And and so that I think that's where actually these systems can build a huge edge specifically also because they're close to the end user.

>> This is awesome. >> Colas from bioprotocol. We're definitely going to clip that last one. See what the DI haters have to say. See what Terrun has to say. We had a great uh debate back in the day several months back with Benji and some of the others. I'd love to have you on again though, Paul. I feel like we could just I just feel like I learned a lot and this is like a a tangential topic to what we usually are discussing on the show. So, you're welcome back anytime, man. Appreciate it. >> Andy, thanks so much for having me, Bobby. Good to see you. >> Absolutely. Tun actually said that he he you are one of the few founders and projects in the DI space that is doing it the right way. So congrats and uh maybe we'll get you on with Tun.

>> That means a lot. That means a lot. >> Yeah, feelings are mutual, man. We'll get you on again soon. >> Cheers, Paul. >> Cheers. >> Cheers, B. >> All righty, buddy. All right, guys. Up next, we got Ram. Rob, what you got? >> I I mean, I I think you you summed it up really well. It's like I I also learned a lot uh from Paul because this is somewhat of an adjacent topic. I think on the economic side of things, this is an example of blockchain technology making an inefficient market much more efficient typically. And I see I I've seen in the math world like you've heard of the millennium math problems like a million bucks to solve one of eight problems. Math doesn't really get a lot of funding. Like there's financial >> academia in general is just like a

crusade type of >> a very inefficient market. >> Yeah. And so when if you can crowdsource funding for some of these markets, you're going to end up with scientific discoveries that would have otherwise gone undiscovered. >> Yeah. Pair that. >> All right, let's roll into Yep. >> I have two two more quick points. Pair that with the self-s sovereign point that he was making and you end up with communityowned cures and science from the people that are really looking for it and end up funding it. Um the third point um is that of the connection between creator coin markets and actually these >> like scientific creator coin markets.

>> Yeah. >> If you tokenize Brian Johnson like he was saying that you can kind of create like a supplement stack that could you know compose with what he's got going on. If you have a creator coin and you tokenize a creator, you could actually end up if you the the missing piece is like the knowledge base that he was talking about. >> Yes. >> If you gave the creator coin an agent and the agent was trained on all of our pods, all of our conversations, it would have the same knowledge base that we that we have. >> Yes. But a lot of that is behind payw wall as he was saying >> in the scientific community it is. But if we own the agent, then we could give it all access to all of our data. We we are the one that would be gating and

gatekeeping that knowledge and so then it could actually go and create content that could be valuable. >> Yeah. All right guys, we're going to roll into Ram from Open Ledger. They just launched the Open Ledger token. Ram's a friend of the show. He's been on a couple times. Going to roll that into now and see you guys on that and let's go. Uh all right guys, welcome back to the rollup TV. Uh we got Ramkumar fresh following the open ledger launch of the open token for a quick update on AI crypto what open ledger is doing agents some of the updates as you guys have seen we are rolling out a new program on every Thursday AI super cycle with our friends at near trying to get into a lot more of the web 2 San Franciscoesque

community out there which I think Ram has had quite a bit of experience Ram first first and foremost thanks for being here I know it's been a journey for you the last couple months getting to launch. Maybe just give us a quick refresh. What happened in the last couple weeks? How did you guys pull this off? You know, how you feeling? Uh give us the quick and dirty on reflecting on the launch. >> It's been great. So, it's been two years of work for us when we launched Open Ledger. It was just an idea. Now, it's it's a reality, right? We've gone mainet. We've launched the product. Uh we've launched our token as well. I think the the token launch was pretty good. We got into pretty much um every tier one exchanges. Um we've been on the road for almost last 6 months doing road

shows across Asia. Asia is where the liquidity is, right? So >> yeah, it is baby. >> Yeah, been there uh meeting a lot of folks and like I think there's an active community that we've built in Asia as well. So uh feeling good about the launch. There's been a lot of launches coming in. So I'm glad that we we launched at least a week back so that we not being in a crowded place. But um you know, cheers to everyone who's launching. Hopefully everyone gets a good launch and the market does well. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, it's definitely that that TGE type of season right now. Um and yeah, I mean you guys launch at at a pretty healthy valuation, you know, kind of typical couple weeks post uh kind of, you know, flatten

things out a bit and then see where we can go. When it comes to the product side of things, how does this launch help you with the Open Ledger product side of things? what is the current product roadmap looking like? Um yeah, talk to us about that. >> Yeah, so uh you know while launching open token right the biggest thing for us was that uh we want to make sure there is actual usage for the token. Uh so the most important aspect over here is to launch the mainet right uh we don't want to go uh live without a product without people be able to use the token. Uh I I got in the space in 2017, right? So when you know I got in the space because someone paid me bitcoin and and and there was you know there was ICOs launching and pretty much

left and right and people were like scamming and like there's no actual utility and I was like you know if one day actually I launch a product I want to make sure that you know there is an actual utility and people can use it and only then web3 can move away from this um you know it portrayed outside as you know something which is scam it should move away right people like even if like in traditional AI space people do not talk to you seriously If you say that I'm building in the diesel AI space, right? We wanted to we wanted to break that. >> So, and we started that doing that by making sure that we onboard clients, we onboard users to uh before we in test net itself and that's what we did, right? We had close to about 20 projects building on us. We started working with

larger enterprises. We work with Walmart, we work with trust wallet. So, uh it helped build that momentum. It helped build the trust in our product and our product was also shaping up very well. So we went ahead and made sure that okay if the token comes in there's going to be utility within the product. You can use that token to build the AI models. You can pay as a fees. You can use our token as gas fees to contribute data. Uh you can receive open tokens as rewards if your data was used in the model. So all of these three important utilities we wanted to make sure that is live in the product and it was live when we went mainet as well. Today if you go and take a look at open.xyz you can take a look at our product. You can test the live product right now. Uh

you can contribute data. You can train an AI model. Uh you can use open token to pay for training and you can also get rewarded using that. So all of that is live. So that is very important for us. We want to make sure that is there. And so now uh the token is out uh the product is out. We want to make sure that we have people start to experiment, build AI models on us. Uh it's completely permissionless. Anyone can start using this. uh we will also start announcing our partnerships with further other uh enterprises as well. Hopefully I'll I'll be back in the show to talk about that. So we want to showcase to the world what can be done using a decentralized AI platform, right? Uh and we we very seriously took this point that you know data is pretty much been

stolen away from us, right? Like if you take a look at it whatever happened with charge and all that it pretty much was internet data that we consume and contributed on the internet which is taken away from us I I would estimate it close to about $500 billion right let's just assume like you know the value of data on internet is like a trillion dollars that is 50% of that was trained uh to train AI models and that's about $500 billion that's taken away from us and we're not rewarded for that so uh what if we could change this what if we can build in a way where when people are building AI models, you get paid as as you contribute data to it. If let's say Andy knows about web 3, he he knows about marketing in web 3 and he is going to contribute to a model, he needs to be

paid for it, right? How your YouTube gets views and you get paid for it. Very similarly, the AI has to pay for it and that was our intention. Uh we just starting right now and hopefully it becomes much bigger from here. Uh I can't hear you Andy, sorry. So when you were out there in San Francisco um for the last couple months, what was your experience like being more on the decentralized side of things? You said that that you know they maybe didn't take you so seriously. Is is that truly the case? Um you know what do they think about they just think that that it's so small and not important right now or what's their perspective?

So there's this uh I remember this happening right about a year back when I went to this web two event and you know I think it was an event by together AI and uh had bunch of folks were there and we were talking about what we're building and stuff like that and I explained the product there were bunch of report research guys who were writing reports about various projects and I was telling about what you do and they're very quite excited about it right I was saying telling them we're working on data attribution and how we're trying to solve that and stuff like that and he's quite interested and then in the end while I have to explain about how you're going to rewards to people and saying we're going to pay using pay it using crypto right it's going to be on crypto rails everything is going to be onchain

and stuff and he kind of like started um you know moving away and he was like he went to a point where he said okay I don't think we can talk more because I don't want to talk to like um you know crypto projects and like I was like why what's the what's the reason because I I think you guys are scam I like what the [ __ ] dude just just because like you know um there are few projects which actually did that which happens in traditional space as well I'm sure that we've seen all the fallouts that happened in the traditional AI space. We've we've seen what happened in various YC companies that have that was there and various other folks that actually built products which are [ __ ] and then just you know [ __ ] gifted, right? So uh and like and this guy was

didn't care at all because just because you're in crypto he he wanted went ahead and said that. So um that's that was one of most triggering moments for me to make sure that okay we need to build a product which is actually usable and we can showcase to the world what crypto can bring to AI and and that's what we've been taking very seriously in building and over the last few months I would say um the crypto space has got better recognition after all the hype of crypto AI agent and all that has gone. Yes. Yes. >> We we we are seeing uh some real builders building unique stuff um real use cases that are being implemented as well. So I'm I'm glad that all those products are going live. Uh some of them are friends who are building in the

space um if some of them are ecosystem partners. >> Uh we glad that we could launch. We had a good launch. Uh we got recognized by the top tier exchanges. Uh we're glad that we work with um enterprises like you know Walmart and Trust Wallet and many other brands and uh we're glad that we're able to showcase to the world what is possible and uh you know we just starting now right the product is out we want to make sure that people can use our product people can use our token to be accessible um we want to showcase what can be potentially possible and learn from the mistakes if we make and and build something for a long term. So that's that's that's the ultimate goal here. Hopefully um things turn out well.

Uh and market also supports us as well. >> Yeah. Yeah. Most definitely. Um what are the what are the actual interesting categories that you're seeing form post uh the last year's end of last year's AI kind of agent hype right where we had a lot of Twitter bots coming along. Like it do you have any idea what the next breakthrough is going to be for this AI crypto space that is going to capture the attention of people again because it really the agentic stuff really captured people's attention but then it faded because of it's just kind of you know Twitter account. Do do you think that there's going to be or do you know or have a prediction of what that next kind of mega mega idea or breakthrough is

going to be that could capture a lot of uh the crypto community's attention. I think um agent became so popular because people could relate to it. It was like you know you could interact on Twitter or or it it was you know a chatbot that you can have conversations with. Um agents are a form of how AI can uh be realistically interacted by a human right agents will be there forever. It'll be in different shapes of form. um you know some people call Tesla itself to be an agent right because it just actually takes you from a place A to B and then you give it direction. So um what really happens beneath that is what I think is going through a change

right now. Um scale AI got invested close to about $14 billion and the major reason why is because they had the AI talent they had the data to it. I think data I'm going to be biased like and because we are also building the space I think data and model is the biggest narrative right now. That's the biggest need of the R. I think a year back we there was compute but I think we have decent amount of compute right now. Uh there's enough compute at least for training. Um so I don't think that's going to be a larger problem. Um we would I think the biggest uh next source of uh AI is going to be data where people are going to be reaching out for for skill for uh data for from enterprises and stuff like that where you can enable better AI models to be

built. Most of the AI models that you see today are very generic, right? You can ask questions. It'll answer you what it found on the internet. It'll answer you what it understood from the internet, but it's not going to be an expert. It's like an undergrad student, right? Uh AI needs to become an expert. AI needs to become um you know a specialist in a particular subject for it to be used in real world use cases. I guess that's where the word is going for and for that you need data. You need data from people to come forward and contribute that. And the only way people are going to do that is to you figuring out ways to incentivize them and to uh provide them with the platform where they can contribute, know what they're contributing, still own the data and get rewarded for it. And that's what we are

trying to solve as an open edger. What we're trying to solve is pretty much build a trustless platform where anyone across the globe can contribute knowledge and if their knowledge was used in an AI model, they get paid for it, they get rewarded for it. uh that's what we're working towards and um you know I I recently went read a study right uh AI is going to be like a $10 trillion uh value ad by 20 2030 right like if let's say we even crack like 0.1 percentage of that that's a multi-billion dollar opportunity so uh and I'm sure that there's going to be 10 different companies which do this uh we're happy to be one of them and create an impact in the space um and make sure that you know there is there is value coming out from what we can contribute

from the as a web3 company to the AI space. >> Man, I think when you're thinking about the space that's so new and so has so much potential that you know yesterday we all knew that compute demand was going to keep increasing. Today you're saying that this data attribution problem and this data uh kind of like like this adverse selection and where the data comes from or who gets access to which type of organic or inorganic or models which have been used previously or haven't. this is the today's problem or today's situation, today's current idea of, you know, kind of what could be a big uh solution to a problem and then tomorrow's is something different. It's just so rapidly changing that it's hard to it's hard to really catch up. And

then from the personal use when you're using like chatbt5 and some of these other of newer models, you know, it there's agents mode now. So, it's just like quickly quickly evolving um and and really just kind of you know happening and and that that being said there there is a a still a big gap in the market for these kind of AI or oriented uh you know tokens and and blockchains and projects. Um how do you how do you plan to fill this gap with open ledger as we kind of come to a wrap here? what is some of your go to market and some of your uh plan for the chain as well as for filling this this gap of people who want to get involved with AI and crypto.

So I um I I say that right I got in the space because Bitcoin uh I was paid in bitcoin um bitcoin solved the sovereign uh digital money problem right it is one um digital money that kind of solved that uh problem and out of that there are a lot of other players who tried to solve it as well and then there ethereum which came which solved the decentralized finance problem right they made finance to be programmable uh in the form of defi NFTs and stuff like that uh what we are essentially trying to solve is to make sure that um data is programmable and verifiable and um people who contribute this can get rewarded for it. So basically decentralizing intelligence is I think the biggest need of the R because it's

got our growth in the next 10 20 years is going to be measured based on the intelligence that we get and consume. Um so the decentralizing this intelligence making sure that everyone is part of this process everyone gets rewarded as part of this process is very important. If you take a look at it, internet was controlled by a couple of people. We all know this. That's why B3 all came about, but at least it was a two-way street, right? Uh you contribute something to the internet either as a blog or a video. You get users or you get you get paid as views, right? But AI is not like that. Um you just contribute to it because they take your internet data, but you don't get paid for it. I think that has to change, right? Uh we need to decentralize this um aspect of how AI is

being built. uh and everyone needs to access AI right everyone a small developer uh sitting in Africa needs to make sure that he can access a platform get access to data build his own version of AI which he can use in his community so I think that is very important only then you're actually spreading intelligence um as it was intended for and for that you need to provide this resource data which is like a gold mine right you need to provide that resource abundantly it needs to get access to in a most decentralized manner and at a much lower cost. And once you provide that uh people can innovate new stuff. People can actually build something which is cool and they could generate revenue and everyone gets

a piece of that. Every data contributor who contributed to that, who contributed the knowledge gets a piece of that and that's that's what we're trying to do here. Um we are trying to take a different approach from what has been happening in the world over the last 3 4 years. Right? people always hold on to data because that's their uh you know they could they could go ahead and say that I own my data and I'm going to give it to you only if you give me money right but we want to say is that you still own your data but if your data was useful and people had an impact with it then you're going to get paid for it so the the money that you can make with that the amount of value that you can create with that is much higher now it's

sort of like a SAS platform you can contribute data and going to continuously generate revenue for you and these data could go ahead and be used by 10 different model developers and you you probably get paid almost every other month from these model developers, right? The idea behind is to monetize um data and decentralize the access to data. I think that's what web 3 really brings in, right? It um subsidizes access to resources. uh reduce the cost to getting resources because you're decentralizing it and you have you're expanding the access to that and you're also making sure that you know you use contract rails like smart contract rails to prove that okay you own this and if your data was useful you're going to pay for it you're not going to believe in RAM you're going to believe in the code and and also it

expands um you know this reach as well because you're going to use crypto again to pay people someone in Africa can contribute data someone sitting in US can build a model out of uh and it could be consumed by you know users sitting in China right and all of these people are going to get connected because of crypto they're going to get paid using our token so these three are the most important aspects that we're trying to bring to the market um so it's a start uh we already have close to about a million data contributors we have 20 different projects building models on us we have those enterprises I told you that we work with uh the idea is to expand uh and make them much more bigger from what we are today >> Ram Kumar congratulations on the open ledger, token launch, blockchain, more

products, etc. coming soon. Appreciate your your insights on AI, crypto, uh this crossover, and more. It's been a busy couple weeks for you. Busy several months. We appreciate you spending some time here, and uh looking forward to what you guys put together next, man. >> Awesome, Andy. It was nice talking to you and I'm I'm glad that I was able to make the cameo in the the dad discussion. So, >> yes, of course. And see you. Uh, thank you for being a part of our event in Korea in Soul next week. It should be an absolute great time. Uh, we're a lot of stuff is happening behind the scenes.

DJs, desserts, branding, all sorts of fun stuff. So, um, yeah, we're getting pretty excited on it then. >> Awesome. See you guys there, man. Bye. >> All righty, Ram. Alrighty. Good segment there from our buddy Ram. Uh, they just had a successful launch. Up next, we'll have RJ from Aligned CEO over there. And yeah, Rob, I mean, Open Ledger launched at like a billion dollar valuation. Uh, like we we are officially back in the high FTV launch meta. That is that was such a problem back in the day, but is now back on. Just a heads up in case you had noticed that. Opened launched at like a bill five. Balance ZKC launched at like a bill two, Bill three.

succinct launch pretty high. I don't I haven't there's been other token launches recently. There's been so many that I don't really know what to even think. Um but yeah, we're definitely back in that meta. So, it's it's it's happening. >> For better, for worse, right? I mean, there's obviously been benefits, you know, the uh the project. Well, benefits the air those who get the airdrop because they get a a large valuation at airdrop launch and that allows them to have a big big big win. I mean, look, I'm I'm I'm excited about um you know what the crypto AI sector can actually deliver going forward. You know, we have our show with near tomorrow, AI super cycle. Feel like that's going to be

prioritized more around the web 2 AI world. But up next, we've got R.J. from aligned. He is a Buenos Aes Argentinian native who is helping us put on an event this year. We just confirmed it in November in Buenosades. So we're going to talk to him about >> November 8th. >> Yep. We're going to talk to him about what it means to be back home with the Ethereum community in Bonosadis, how he's thinking about that, the future of, you know, Ethereum ZK roadmap. We have an amazing show with Justin Drake on Monday. um and what's cooking at Align.

So, that'll roll into about 4 PM, guys. And then following that, we're going to be straight into our Stabled Up episode one with Sam from Fracks. So much to talk about in the stable coin landscape. Um stoked on that. >> Guys, if you're watching on YouTube, there is a live chat. Throw a like, throw a subscribe. If you're watching on Twitter, there's a little button in the bottom right you can click, scroll the feed, hang out, vibe out, whatever you want to do. I learned that one from fellow streamers myself.

Yeah, we got R.J. in the back. Let's get R.J. up and talk about ZK, talk about R.J., welcome back to the show, friend of the show. How you doing? >> Very good. Thank you guys for having me again. >> What you guys are doing? >> Of course. Good, man. We had to >> we had to break some of the news of um we are slowly putting the pieces together for an event in Argentina, >> but even bigger than that is Ethereum coming home for you. >> Um man, I'm I'm just curious, you know, what does Ethereum's culture developer community coming home to Argentina mean to you? Um you know, Devcon is going to be a big event. It's one of the most important events each year. We had it in Istanbul. We had it in Colombia across the board. Now we're back in Buenosarees

in November this year. What does that mean to you, Lambda Aligned, your friends and peers from Argentina? >> Yeah, for us it's huge. There has been a lot of excitement uh for a couple of years already. I think it in the past it had been tried to bring into Wosarees and there was a lot of lobby from the Argentinian community in social media over the past year to try to get this done and we're super happy that it's happening in in Wosaras very near to our office and for us means a lot because we work uh for Ethereum not only a line building products on top of it uh but also our partners at Lambda Glass there are more than 50 developers that work

for Ethereum core protocol both in the execution client and in the consensus client. So it's a very big deal like many of the developers from our teams uh they see many of us travel a lot but they were never able to see the whole excitement around what they're building uh working and getting close to other people who actually use their software. M >> so I think this is going to be a very special because of that and we also want to to show to the rest of the the teams over the world like hey these are also the people that that are coding every single day to make this happen.

>> Yeah. >> And and that's very special for us. So we're really excited. So you think like some of the Lambda and Align and other kind of developers within this kind of absolutely cracked developer community that you guys have built down there will be excited to see the people in the community and hear from them and talk to them and get feedback and just get that initial experience of like that first conference kind of thing. >> Yeah, exactly. I mean they they have been working a lot for the the past year or even more depending who you speak with, right? and everyone is really excited of working on Ethereum because I think one of our main uh advantages or something that is interesting about most of the developers uh that work with us is we use a lot the

tech of Ethereum like we use stable coins uh we don't have a lot of uh different assets where you can save your money and for us it has a different meaning because you're building the technology that you're actually using and you know it's useful for others. So when you have that level of uh excitement or relationship with you're building that tool and you see other people that care about the same thing, it's a different bonding, right? So that that's pretty special for us. >> Oh yeah. And so you kind of alluded to it in terms of what people are using in uh Argentina right now in Buenos uh and how they're using the Ethereum protocols. Uh there's certainly a lot of adoption there. What can people expect

for someone such as myself? I haven't been to uh your beautiful city or country. So, can you, you know, give me an idea of like what what should I expect when I come down there? Um, you know, how how uh I should essentially like come come to the city and and uh what what are some of the essentials? What do I need to do before I get in there? >> Yeah. So first first you need to come out the come like with less weight because you're 100% going to gain weight wearing bronzer. Like there's no way that's not happening. You're going to eat a lot of meat. So I hope you're not vegan or vegetarian, Rob.

>> No sir, I love my steak. >> So that will happen for sure. And and this this not very well known, but Diego from our team, he's a huge fan of gelato. And I think he's right. We have one of the best gelato in the world. That might be a spicy take because uh >> yeah, I I'm I can fight with an Italian every single day against this. They can win in in pasta, but we are Italians that speak Spanish and we know how to do ice cream and gelato >> and we have meat. So, prepare to eat a lot. Um and the venue luckily is in a very good spot. So, I think uh you will enjoy the area. And for the crypto native people that want to see something maybe different near the venue, you will see a lot of places where you can

exchange USDG for pesos. I think that's an interesting thing to do. It's very simple. Uh most likely you will need to use Tron, not Ethereum. >> But it's something that is kind of interesting because you you see that a different UX >> and then the city is super enjoyable. I think it's it's a great time of the year to go to to Buenosarees and hopefully you will be able to meet in the conference out of developers. Buenosirus is a a very big city and it hosts one of the the biggest universities in Spanish speaking world with a huge engineering university. That's where a lot of our engineers come from. So I think we will see a lot of young people as well very excited. Uh I think that's going to be

very unique. >> Yeah, definitely. And I mean, I remember on on Florida Avenue or Florida Street, there's a lot of Comio Comio for Bitcoin, for USD, CAD, all sorts of of um exchange rates uh happening there and exchanges happening. When it comes to actually adoption of crypto thus far in Argentina, I know you're not there now, but you've, you know, spent quite a bit of time there. What is your what is the actual adoption of crypto in Argentina today?

So in Argentina it's very hard to get an actual good estimate of percentages and users because similar to in other countries the main use of it is escaping the the financial system that is broken. So most of the people that use crypto in Argentina it has been at the very early stages people in Argentina that escape capital controls by via Bitcoin mining. That was the first wave of crypto people. That's why a lot of very big whales in Bitcoin are Argentinian. They use cheap electricity.

And then the second ways were more people who uh wanted to use stable coins to get money from their jobs they did abroad and they needed a way to to bring money in a in a cheap and effortless manner. And today that's still something they they're using because even some things got a little more relaxed. Argentinians do not trust institutions. Usually we have a very big history of why you shouldn't trust them in Argentina in particular. So these tools are still being used widely adopted and uh it's a second kind of market. It's not easy to do numbers or data around this when it's a market that lives outside of the main system. But it's

very widely used especially from young people that work as designers, engineers, uh or anything that you can do online that you can work abroad. And then you have some people that in Argentina you have a lot of savings uh system mechanisms or a very financial or very robust financial system. So the ways you can invest is in the local market that is not that big and you don't have a lot of tools. Uh it has become very popular car trading because of the central bank policies but that usually doesn't have a very long time span. And then you have Bitcoin and Ethereum like there are not many things you can do or access. So is used also as a mechanism for savings,

>> man. So, I was down there with my dad like three years ago and we were just talking about the the other day like, you know, having the smart Argentinians saved in USD and stable coins in USDC cuz we had, you know, we had Jeremy on last we had Jeremy on yesterday, the CEO of Circle and then he was like the the really smart ones did Bitcoin and then the exponentially intelligent ones saved all their money in ETH. And it's just a it's a funny uh you know understanding when I was there in in um January I believe of or sorry it was April of 2023 and it was about 400 to1 and by the end of 2024 it was 1,200 to1 and it was an insane transition in terms of the uh the

amount of of basically devaluation happened in such a small period of time. People in crypto forget that this is a lot of the situations that crypto's OG return of fundamentals thesis was about. These things are unsexy. These things are not that cool. Crossber payments, remittances, uh, storing value. These things aren't that sexy. They're certainly not like DSI, but they do have a really, really strong use case. So, zooming into the ZK work that Ethereum is doing and Alliance's doing. Um, we had Justin Drake on the show just two days ago talking about Ethereum's ZK roadmap really about a lot of the work that is going into it for privacy and for institutional adoption. And so I'm I'm

just curious from your perspective, you know, what is your take on Ethereum's L1's progress thus far with this new administration or this new kind of regime, let's call it, within the the Ethereum Foundation. you know, do you believe that Ethereum's progress and roadmap is trending in the right direction with regards to ZK on the L1? Um, and how do you feel about the actual progress that's been made so far? >> We're extremely excited. I think things are super positive. Of course you can go into details and find very small differences or say okay I would like this to go faster but I think things change a lot since Justin's Drake uh announcement of the new road map that

was last Devcon in Thailand. Um I think that's one of the pivotal moments and then we had of course of a lot of public discussions around the the new change of administration but we are extremely excited. Um we're actually trying to help more in the core of the the Ethereum as well using some of our knowledge in in knowledge especially Mao and Diego. Um and we believe we're on the right track. We are extremely bullish on everything that Ethereum is doing long term like in the short term these small changes that are important of increasing the gas limit uh the blob count everything is showing that hey we know that we need to scale the L1 but if you look at what we are going to build around Ethereum the next

five years I don't think there's any any project in the world as ambitious as Ethereum like one of the reasons why we like building on Ethereum is because we know everyone involved in in it treats it as one of the most important things. And you need that in a very crazy world and when technology is changing so fast and where things are getting extremely multipolar uh in a in a very big world and you need things like quantum postquantum security. You need CK for everything that now the the technology is way more mature. uh you need multiproving uh you need all of these technologies and privacy because they know that we have a lot of responsibility everything is upgrading

to Ethereum therefore you need to be responsible for making the best infrastructure you can and I don't think any other L1 is taking that responsibility as Ethereum and we are super excited about that. Yeah, I mean I I think you know Justin mentioned this new found focus on privacy as well as just the broader snarkification of the L1. You know, that was part of a of a celebration for for boundless mainet, which we we actually talked about how the Ethereum Foundation has kind of opened arms to different ZK builders now and hasn't been so like everything needs to happen internally from grants, but rather like why don't we just take the technology of some of the best builders, specifically on the ZKVM side of things,

excuse me, and in and you know, pick have a multiVM setup to start and then eventually, you know, single on one. And so that that was an interesting take was that that's how Ethereum Foundation is thinking about ZK and ZKVMs and and I thought that was I thought that was a a unique perspective to understand how they want to actually adopt some technology from the best builders in the space especially you know for example folks like yourself with Lambda and Aligned. >> Yeah. And I think we we don't appreciate yet the amount of knowledge the ecosystem has like we should be very proud that the level of technical people we have in cryptography around Ethereum especially in Bruce >> recently Mao went to to a Google CK

event they host in San Francisco >> and most of like 80 or 90% of the people that knew mo most about the the technology are people that are working around Ethereum on Google today is deciding to use CK more they're using it for some of their identities protocol and the people they consult is just in great h of course people from from Starware a lot of people that are formal cryptographers and build all of this technology may not work on Ethereum itself but the people who are implementing it and pushing the boundaries are on Ethereum so the ecosystem is doing a great job on maturing a technology that is going to be widely adopted everywhere on the

and we should feel proud of it like the big web two companies are going to to use our technology and they're using or changing things from other teams in order to adapt to their use cases. Um so I think we as a group right as an ecosystem we should be very proud of it and it shows that we have very capable people and we will be able to solve many of the problems that we have uh in our road map. Yeah, >> this the idea that the casino funds a research lab because like it's crazy to think that this the state of DeFi and a lot of these c internet capital markets is going going nuts and getting a lot of adoption and that's generating so much revenue for these protocols and it

allows the cryptographers to do their work. Like that's how it gets funding. Earlier we were talking about scientific discoveries. It's a really inefficient market. They don't get a lot of funding. Yeah, >> ZK could have been discovered. It could have been practitioned and and you know supported for such a long time earlier, but it just didn't have the funding until we put it into a blockchain architecture. And now look, I mean there's properties of ZKTLS that are linking these web two applications together in ways that they they were never able to do before. So, I I I think it's incredible to see um the adoption of ZK and you guys are doing a great job pioneering this. Um I'm curious when you guys are thinking about, you know,

obviously working with Ethereum, you're very Ethereum aligned. Name is literally aligned. That's the name of the company. But do you how do you think about working with some of these other you know, all L1s are kind of the rage once again. How do you think about ZK contributions when they might be to maybe another L1 or a big web 2 company like like Google even you know maybe Justin Drake is thinking about this too are is this aligned because ultimately you're you're supporting this industry you're supporting cryptography ZK is one of the leading cryptographic primitives is that the ideology that we should be is that how we should think about this even if it happens away from Ethereum >> yeah I think That's exact way we should

think about it. Um the main reason is because there's some fragmentation that is inedible and what you want is some of the core technology that Ethereum is pushing can help other places and that will also benefit Ethereum because in the end if some of this fragmentation isn't inevitable what you want is these blockchains to be connected and one of the things that you can use you can do with CK is actually uh solve certain parts or make more robust the interperability protocols right so I think that's important for Ethereum as as well and in the end not I truly believe the main protocol as a backbone for for the next internet is Ethereum but in many for many other applications it might be other ones that already are

very pretty big I don't think Solan is going anywhere I just don't think Solana is going to be the main place globally because we live in a very big world and you need neutrality for example I I don't think Solana as a brand in itself is as neutral as Ethereum and if you're running a country, you care about those things. And I think we're going to a place where countries care a lot about infrastructure they're going to use. So if that's the case and you have certain islands that are outside, the global the global economy will run on them. So you still care about the other economies being able to be interconnected with you and be as safe because if you are going to do commerce between them, right? M >> as if countries the better the more

robust easier a country or the the more similar rules you share is easier for those countries to exchange value right >> definitely is >> I think that's that's important >> I think and it's showing itself already in a a smaller way through institutions and through their desire to come on chain and use Ethereum they've also adopted multi-chain strategy so they're certainly thinking in that way but ultimately I think some of the larger players have recognized the value of Ethereum's uh kind of credible neutral stack which brings me to the question of where aligned is in development. I would love to just get a better understanding from you today of the current road mapaps and what is going on behind the scenes at aligned. You guys have been building uh for quite a while and I think you're you know you're getting

ready to to come out with product lines potentially token mainets etc. Um what is the the you know catch us up on aligned and what are you looking forward to? Yeah. So I think last time we came here and and we went to your podcast guys, we were talking specifically about one product that is a CK verification layer. The the problem we saw in the market is CK was getting really fast. It was for us it was obvious that it was going to be the main solution for scalability and for other parts uh of solving crypto. So we built an infrastructure to solve the bottleneck that is actually verifying the Bruce because generating the Bruce is getting extremely cheap. Um and you

will have we saw that there will be a multi- CKVM world where different teams will build different with different trade-offs. But after that what we realized is we starting seeing a lot of adoption on Ethereum from people that are not cryptonative. And with these people I mean businesses, private and public institutions and they were reaching out to us because we we have been here for a long time building a lot of critical infrastructure not only for Align but for other teams as well uh especially from Lambda class and what we notice is okay we believe Ethereum is going to be dimming place for people to build financial systems and many other critical components of society and

people are demanding access to Ethereum. So we say okay how can we help them build on top of Ethereum? We have a line that we know is going to be useful for for verifying a lot of proofs but what was lacking is a stack an L2 stack solution that can actually be launched in one click that is designed for the best features of Ethereum because people are demanding Ethereum. They're not demanding a particular execution environment of a rollup. What they want is the 247 infrastructure. They want the liquidity and they want the security.

The security gives you with a normal rollup but the 247 infrastructure and the the liquidity you don't get it with the rollups are actually in the market. So we decided to build in partnership with lambda class an stack solution using etherx that is execution client built by lambda class in rust in order to launch a base rollup using ck because we know c is the right technology just from scratch everything vertically integrated. Why? Because there was no stack in the market that can actually do that. If you look take a look at most of the L2 solutions when they on board someone they if it's big enough they will custom made or help them use their technology because they're huge. For example, Romy Hood if

they are middle or lower tier they send it to a ro as a service. The problem is if you try to use these stacks, you can't do you can't have a DevOps or a CTO launch it in 15 minutes or 10. So what we're building is the stack that actually allows this because everyone is going to demand Ethereum and you will not be able to have a team that can scale and on board everyone. You need a technology that helps it. And the technology is building a good LS stack solution that is decentralized that is basic that uses base sequencing for decentralization and also for interoperability.

People want the billions of dollars of Ethereum that that liquidity matters and we want to offer a product that can offer the best features of Ethereum. >> Yeah. Arjun, let me ask why what does Ethrex enable for you when it comes to this stack? Why do you need to use Erex? Yeah. So, EtherX is both an execution client as and also an L2. >> Okay. >> So, the reason why we use it is uh first because it's designed with some core values that we believe in like it's going to be minimal. Uh it's going is written in Rust to be performant and we know that a lot of code in crypto is very bloated.

>> Yeah. and without of technical debt and we needed something that is designed just for the purpose of what we need and especially knowing that certain technologies are ready. >> Yeah, >> Ether is designed in a way that is going to be more efficient to prove with a CKVM. It still needs time to get to be the most uh performant in terms of a CKVM proving. But we know that we the only thing we need with a CKVM is just to run an execution client in Rust. But you need to build it from scratch with that purpose.

>> Yeah. >> And and today you didn't we didn't have that in the market. >> Today's the second f the second most performant execution uh client for for Ethereum and it's going to be on track to be the fastest one and it's going to use every single it's going to be easy to launch and to to integrate with every single CKVM in the market. So we don't care which team wins in the CKVM war. We are going to use all of them >> and we need multiprover because we are bringing clients. We we we had a podcast with you guys in in K with one of our clients that is Diego from Sorra. They have millions of users.

>> They care a lot about security. I cannot use just one VM. I need to use multiple of them. >> So we need to think from do everything from scratch. >> Yeah. For anyone who missed that podcast, it was great. I mean we, you know, we were talking to someone who's a government official in Buenoseris, uh, I think it was the chief innovation officer and implemented this digital identity solution. So on the ground in BA when we're there for this conference coming up in November, will we see people using this? Is this how people are going to get into our event, prove that they're over 21? What what is kind of the common place practices with this tool? A and, you know, just kind of wrap this up.

>> Yeah. So for for Dcoin D connect in particular, I believe the first original protocol that he built for Quark ID, you actually could use it when you were buying the ticket to get a discount proving that you're a cit a citizen from the city of Forosirus. >> That would give them a discount on the on the DevCon ticket. >> Yeah, I think it was a discount or they got a free ticket. I don't remember the exact exact requirement, but that protocol is the first version they built. And what he's building now is a startup that is helping build the technology so multiple uh cities and governments can do what he did in Bonosares, right?

>> And and that is working already with the driver licenses for example. So if you see someone from the city of Buonos with their application, they might have credentials from the city of Buenosarees, they're using already that very first protocol. >> Very cool. >> And yeah, >> very very cool. Um, do you do you think that any any of the Buenosides officials or companies teams in Argentina, are you going to be building technology chains for them? Who is your target market for this new product? >> So, our target market is private and public institutions because those were the first people that reach out to us like they needed something like this because they couldn't find it. Um, and yes, we're working with in this case

with a company from Latin America, but we're also working with European and American companies and other uh partners that we have that are also reaching to the governmental and public institution level because they need like an enterprise or institutional stack for Ethereum. Um, and yes, we will have to to work more uh in particular with Sorra to to help their stack be widely used. is already in test net uh working and hopefully we'll be able to announce uh bigger news around it and then in Europe we're working with a fintech company for example they're building a new protocol called loom finance they used to work only with web two companies in like uh f like trfy world where they doing revenue

based uh financing and they are bringing their product their protocol directly to crypto using our technology and apparently with lambda to build the full product and >> wow that's awesome. So, it's a very yeah, very diverse set of clients. So, >> you guys are doing Yeah, you guys are Yeah, this is going to be a a surprise, a sleeper winner here. So, R.J., um, look forward to seeing you in Bonosirus. Uh, I think you you'll see Rob in Korea. Um, appreciate your time. looking forward to to doing that event. And you know, as soon as you guys get a good client and, you know, got get something confirmed, start building it out, get it launched. Let's get you guys back on, bring them on, talk about this the uh,

you know, what you guys are building, why why blockchain, why aligned, etc. So, look forward to having you on again, man. >> Perfect. Yeah. Thank you guys for always being able us to give us a space to talk. So, I will see you later. >> Yeah. excited for for the new direction. I think that you guys made the right choice. So, >> thank you. >> RJ, >> see you soon. >> Speak soon. >> All right, guys. Thank you. >> All right, little uh little little breakeroo here before we got the stabled up episode one. That was R.J. from Aligned. He is ready to go and sell to institutions.

They're going to be selling public permission blockchains, permissionless chains, public chains, private chains, etc. Uh they will be launching them using on the on Ethereum using ZKVMs with EtherX's stack base roll design. So definitely interesting. And uh yeah, we're going to roll into stabled up now. >> Yeah, man. Let's do it. I'm stoked. There's a ton happening stable coins uh of the stable up show is coming right up. Sweet. So, [Music] >> all righty. All righty, guys. We're >> going to join us in a moment.

>> Welcome to episode one of Stabled Up, presented by no other than Fracks. We've got Sam in the house. Here he is. What up, man? GM. >> What's up, guys? GM uh or GN from wherever everyone's been watching from. >> Yeah, man sir. Sam, it looks like a new background for you. It also looks like a new background for our show because we are uh producing the first episode of Stabled Up. Um thanks for all of your help supporting us. Uh you've educated us and our audience about stable coins for a very long time and now it it seems like all that education is paying off because stable coins are all the rage.

um what is your view on like this moment right now in stable coins and we'll we'll get into kind of the vision for the show and and all the exciting things happening. >> Yeah, for sure. Uh first of all, uh it's uh our our pleasure uh obviously love love the show and love it even more now that we're uh doing it together. And um I think like we're at a really interesting economic time and time uh in in the industry for stable coins. I think you guys probably just saw um the the Fed uh announced rate cuts, right?

Um what what is this? Is this the first rate cut in like uh years or something? Right. >> It's been Yeah, it's been a while. >> Yeah. With like projected uh 50 bips potentially and and in the next, right? So, I think we're at probably the most interesting juncture where stable coins are the hottest technology in in the entire world other than maybe AI, right? These are the two uh things that have the largest mind share and the economic winds are literally about to change right and um it'll be interesting to know what is the main like meta how will stable coins compete in a uh lowering rate environment um and what will be the main GTM strategies that'll be really

successful in the next 12 months. >> Yeah, the the these are the important questions to ask. Um, so as we uh as we kind of embark on this journey to really look and uh and continue to educate ourselves as well as the audience on the path to $3 trillion in stable coins, this has been the benchmark set by uh Scott Bessett, the Treasury Secretary. Um there's been a lot of patterns, there's been a lot of launches and uh I think I think we ought to get into it. Uh we've got USDH, USA. Uh in addition to all the things that you guys have been making waves when it comes to fracket. Um I want to get your take on the USDH saga. We saw I mean Andy spoke

to Jeremy yesterday. We had uh USDC go native. You guys put in a proposal. Native markets ended up winning the proposal. So generally how was the experience going through this this Dow governance process? It was pretty controversial. It was a great marketing for Hyperlid. I want to I want to get a sense of your experience and then we'll we'll get a sense maybe what this means for Hyperlid and USDH. >> Yeah, for sure. So, f first of all um yeah, obviously the the FRA proposal didn't win. We were in the in the top five uh final running which was great.

Um we obviously worked really hard to put it together on the fly which I think uh excuse me everyone did. Um uh and so I think like it it was very interesting because there there's two main takeaways for it from us. First uh this is probably going to be uh not the last time an ecosystem uh asks for a uh public proposals for issuance of essentially a quasi uh quasi official or unofficial. I know people have said it's just like a ticker and stuff but but the obviously the shelling point around this makes it not just a ticker. um you know I have a ticker I can sell you as well right but that it doesn't do that right but um I think the important thing from

this is this is the opening of like the floodgates right obviously hyperlquid was um the biggest platform I don't think there's that many um bigger than it but we're already actually um talking to a few other both chains that have not yet launched uh for issuance um I obviously can't reveal their names but uh also other platforms that aren't chains but have wide distribution. And so um actually before the hyperlquid vote even ended um there were uh so many that that hit us up but then two of them were very very far along uh with and one of them is about to be a done deal um thankfully. So I I think you guys will

see that and I think from a factual perspective this will happen a lot obviously like Fraal win bunch of them Athena did uh Mega ETH right the um mega USD uh there there will be there will be a lot of these and I think the most important thing to take away from this is that the issuers that are the best brands the most reliable that have the best infrastructure uh they will be the ones that uh benefit from this and are able to work with large distribution ecosystems and everything. And uh I guess the second thing is that um I'm very excited to see how uh Native Markets does uh and and how the whole thing goes in terms of um the plans that

they have. You know, we we'd love to work with them um at FRA in terms of the the DeFi integrations. FRAUSD, like I said on on the show here and also on space, we're coming to Hyperlquid anyway. um in fact we're like building out our infrastructure to do that. So um that's not going to change. We're we're very close to actually finishing that that uh build out as well. So there's definitely a lot of opportunities there. Um I think since Native Markets was uh such a native team uh on on Hyperlid, they had a lot of community uh recognition and and buyin. So I'm interested to see if there is a lot of um you know extension of like hand to

build with you know new teams uh cuz like one one thing about the whole saga was like okay the this the native market team knows the hyperlquid uh you know ecosystem better than everyone else. Fine, great, fantastic. Uh I I accept that. We I think everyone uh you know, Athena, Maker, Sky, you know, Paxos, they probably would agree with that, right? But I think there's a lot of things that that uh we know in terms of like DeFi, flywheels, the the ability to actually build liquidity in all this area that is very complimentary. So um we'd love to have that conversation and see where uh they think that, you know, FRA and probably others can can fill out. So, um, but other than that, we're

already doing our own, uh, issuance partnerships that I think we'll announce very soon. So, we're excited about that. >> Very cool. Very exciting. And Sam, just kind of on the on the US note, one last thing for you and then I really want to talk a lot about FRA, FRANET, what your vision is, how you guys are are planning this out. There was um, USAT came out as well. So, Tether came out and announced that they're going to have this USA token. USAT. It is their their domestic US stable coin. Uh Bo Hind is going to be leading this charge here. Um I'm I'm sure you've met Bo at some point in your runins in DC or in Las Vegas or

wherever. Um and you're also, you know, been working closely with the stable team, uh which is a a basically a a blockchain for tether. What is the what is the status of USAT? Why is this you know let's just start there. What what is USAT? Why is it important? And then I think like the the real question is like is this thing going to eat circles lunch or not? >> Yeah, that's a good question. So I I was actually in in New York uh on the launch uh like last week on on Friday. Uh I was with um Paulo Bo and uh the Caner guys.

There's a a lot of um others there uh that that were invited. Anchorage obviously this issued through um Anchorage Bank and uh I think this kind of basically solidifies my thinking of everyone that is like a major like player in the stable coin space, they will have to issue a genius compatible stable coin, right? they they will have to actually uh do because the the market is a 20 trillion dollar market and to just be entirely absent from it is is is not an option, right? And so um I'm interested to see how the GTM is. I I'll be honest that there wasn't that much in the in the presentation uh given in

terms of GTM. It was basically uh the the announcement and everything and I think that it'll move fast. I think the first issuance um when I when I asked uh Paulo and and some of the Anchorage guys is like slated for sometime in November or December. Obviously the these are tentative. I'm I'm not in any way affiliated. So um but that's pretty fast, right? That that is a um very big turnaround if that's going to be the timeline that they hit. Um, I think where these stable coins fall in line with each other is going to be the most important because I was just thinking earlier today if rates go to zero or or near zero like some some insignificant amount, right? Um, the entire underlying

economics of how stable coin issuers make money will will change, right? And so how that affects GTM, the ability to share yield when there is no yield, right? Um, who benefits the most? Will will it be Athena that benefits the most because assuming rates go to zero? Uh, probably there's a glorious bull market. Uh, I but that's not also a given, right? You can have stagflation, right? So like the the just examining all the possible scenarios, right? The the worst scenario for example for Athena would be zero rates but no bull market like super stagflation. Uh then that would be utter disaster, right? like like the carry uh yield is is is very low, but then

everyone's like, "Holy [ __ ] what's going on?" But then the T- bill rates are also very low. So, it's like hopefully that doesn't happen, right? But we're going through all of the the different uh things, right? It could be the glorious super cycle uh this time of stable coins, right? Low rates, all risk assets are are rising. Uh everyone is rich. What was that New York Times article in the the ICO? Everyone is getting rich and and you're not, right? Like it could be that that that would be great. So I think uh everyone's uh stable coins will grow because the because the purchasing power of the dollar goes down, right? So you need more stable coin supply to actually trade against all of these uh risk assets that are increasing in value. So everyone will get like all-time highs or growth and and get crazy P& multiples.

Um or there could be some mixture of you know in between these things and it's it's hard to know right. And so the I think the best uh outlook is which stable coin issuers or projects are best positioned no matter which of these situations happen, right? Because we we don't we don't know which one of these situations will happen, right? And so for example with uh FRAUSD, it's a genius compatible stable coin. We're building a full integrated uh stack with Fraxnet that has payments, that has virtual cards, that has uh other integrations with onetoone mint and redeems with with banks, virtual bank accounts and wires. All of this stuff

that makes it extremely useful as money regardless of what the uh interest rate is, right? We do have a uh reward program, but then we also assume that these rates go to zero, right? T bill rates zero. So the the rewards there are like zero. We also have uh one of the best DeFi uh yield systems too when you can stake your FRAXUSD in in the SF FRXUSD both earn benchmark yields including uh carry trade strategies CDPs right the the the classic benchmark stuff right like maker DAO frack Athena we have that uh as well if if things go in that direction then the last thing is if it's a more infrastructure uh provided thing where you have to issue

for partners, right, that have distribution. We're in that game and uh making deep progress, right? So, it's ma mainly like where are all of these things uh growing in what categories and what verticals and which projects are going in all of these and having success. So, for example, um I don't think as far as I know like state uh circle has an issuance platform, right? It is just USDC. Um but we know Athena does, right? They they were another uh proposal. Um we know Agora does, right?

They have an issuance platform. So they are also uh live players in that area. And um we we know that Tether doesn't do uh yield share in any way case or form, right? So I was actually talking to Paulo about this. He he was like, I would love for uh rates to go to zero because it would crush any uh competition or talking points against Tether. It would just be a total uh domination, right, of of the field by by Tether. Um that's that's one way to think about it. I'm I'm not sure if uh I think he's right. Obviously, they would benefit in a lot of ways, right? But who knows, right? Like maybe maybe it's zero rates and stackflation, then um then

what happens? So, I think we'll we'll have to see. Uh we'll have to get Arthur Hayes on, right? Uh >> we will definitely will. >> He talks about yield curve control. >> Tell me uh Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tim, tell me how um uh you're different from Athena's design or other yield balance stable coins like obviously uh you know, Superstate is is a big part of of the F FRXUSD design. Uh what is the state of or or kind of what is the >> Yeah. How is FRAUSD going to be different in an environment where each of these, you know, scenarios play out?

>> Yeah. So, my my view and and and theory on market structure is there's basically two uh types of stable coins. There's the regulated genius basically riskless as much as possible economically. uh digital dollar that is a payment method, a settlement uh me you know currency and it it is actually things that you know you can borrow right you can lend this this asset and then there's uh DeFi unregulated permissionless yield bearing stable coins things like uh SF FRxUSD or SUSD or SUSDS right um and these are the only two things that that if you fast forward

time actually will exist all other things will uh go not go to zero but their their market share will drop as a function of these two types of stable coin assets genius yield bearing defy stablecoin and lo and behold that's what we have genius and and and uh yield bearing uh benchmark strategies the these are uh the benchmark strategies for SFRXUSD is our system which FRA invented and we're we're famous for when you have this underlying backing right you programmatically push the protocol and liquidity to the um most blue chip but best yield adjusted uh risk adjusted yield venues right like a oiler fra uh curve carry trade um you know all of

this stuff right and um the thing is there's this kind of interesting weird middle ground where uh like for example USDS or USDE right where it doesn't bear yield obviously there there's there's token rewards for these right but it doesn't bear yield and like like natively and it's not regulated, right? Like like literally legally banks or institutions and things like like credit cards like Visaet like these things they can't use it as as settlement media. It's not like they don't uh even if they wanted to they they they can't literally and it bears the risk of the underlying balance sheet, right? Um I think these will over time go to not zero but lose

market share to the the the genius compliant payment stable coins and >> spicy. >> Yeah. and and and but credit to Athena that the reason they have USDTB right and they're uh issuing it with Anchorage to make it genius compliant I think uh guy and the team who are absolutely brilliant um they they know this or I think I I think he would agree with certain parts of this I think they obviously have a slightly different strategy but the point is they clearly see this delineation right and and and they clearly see the fact that uh they're the market leader in yield bearing stable coins like basically most of the the TVL and in DeFi a pendle Athena is like the the commanding thing

of yields like kind of how FRA curve convex was in the in the DeFi good old days before right and so what my view is is that >> okay that was curve convex fra last cycle a pendle Athena this cycle what is the thing here what is the 2026 uh thing here can uh frack with SFRXUSD, the yield bearing system, and then also its uh genius compliant fraud, can we uh leapfrog back into being the commander of the the entire uh infrastructure?

Clearly, >> it's it's not the same thing every cycle by by the sheer fact that the the DeFi cycle was frag curve, convex, now it's Pendle, a Athena. Um, and I don't think it'll be the same uh next cycle, you know, whether it starts early 2026 or or or now, right? Or or mid. Um, I think that the the the main meta is changing and um I'm really excited to uh make sure that FRA is at the forefront of it this cycle. >> Yeah. And see if Tether is prepared for this with USAT, USDT, but one is going to be genius compliant, one won't be.

Um, you know, I suppose same with FRA. And then when you kind of uh zoom that out even towards uh the bigger problem at hand here Sam is I saw a tweet it was like the new L1 fragmentation is stable coin fragmentation >> right >> and and so I'm curious how you think about that at scale right so let's say you know obviously all all these you some of these stable coins will be used for domestic use and then international use is that just the right way to to think about how it's going to be like uh separated or how do you kind of view the actual usage of you know the genius compliant and the more yield bearing versions within the US outside the US and then how do you kind of see that fragmentation situation happening?

>> Yeah. So I think there will be a short list of real money uh genius compliance stable coins and what I mean by that is there will be a short list of stable coins. Hopefully FRAUSD is one of them. That's what we're trying to do. uh where and and probably it's going to be USAT given tether's reach but they are widely accepted as as money across wide swaths of payments uh services institutions banks like Visaet Mastercard settlement network they'll they'll settle in these things the way they currently actually do with USDC um and then those will have onetoone liquidity against a wide set of

branded uh stable coins. You could think of them like Walmart USD, Starbucks USD, you know, I don't know, um uh whatever is is like the the longer tail of these things where you're not obviously going to buy something at Costco with Starbucks USD because it's not in Costco's interest, for example, as like a big wholesaler to accept that. So there there's no even reason or integration or communication between these these two distribution channels really, right? And so what these branded stable coins and the longtail will be is they're more similar to tokenized gift cards, right? They're just a new architecture. They're just a new structure, right? And and so the they they'll be better than gift cards.

They'll be composable, right? You could kind of like do stuff with them or swap between them. But what people will really hold as real money in between spending between all of these different places is the short list of genius compliance stable coins that are liquid that are money that are useful in both decentralized and traditional finance and there won't be that many of them and and those will be in the next uh 5 years as as you guys said with the three trillion you know estimate from uh Secretary Besson those will be those few will be what the three trillion is mostly composed of right it'll be like 80% of the money uh genius compliant stable coins and then the rest of the 20% will be the genius gift cards

essentially is uh is the way that I like to think about it and so how uh each of these money like stable coins solves the fragmentation problem make sure that they're onetoone accepted everywhere so like for example with FRAUSD one of the things we're focusing on right now is making sure as many of these new uh visa the card products, other card products. We're talking to um a few issuers that I I can't say today, but we're talking to all of these payment systems so that they have full usage and settlement of of FRAUSD, so it's as good as money. The way that USDC right now is in like Rain Cards and Ether and Pay uh and all of these places. And the second part is

making sure banks uh actually accept the these short list, right? Banks aren't going to be like we accept 580, right? they're they're not going to be a genius compliant like come deposit your uh Starbucks USD, Walmart USD, you know, uh etc. there, right? There's going to be like five, right? And we want to make sure that we are uh one of those because everywhere else accepts it and so the marginal utility of the next place that accepts it is even higher for them and for us and then you get this network effect that's very sticky, >> right? And there yeah that Lindy effect will continue to grow as the adoption for those the ones that have a seat at the table that are classified as money like you're saying uh is going to

proliferate as the network effects expand. And so you're starting to kind of place your bets on both personal but also FRA. You you're an adviser to stable. They're plugged into USDT. Obviously FRA has its own FRA USD uh stablecoin product. describe how these things work together given that you're kind of the shelling point between the two. What would you say is the composability layer for Tether and FRAUSD to work together? And then generally the infrastructure that is underpinning both of these stable coins. What is the composability between the two?

>> Yeah, that that's a good question. So there's there's a few things I'm not allowed to say uh because of what the the stable team won't let me say, but uh they're they're very bullish. They'll be announced in like >> I was going to say that sounds bullish, Sam. >> Uh pre-eposit campaigns and stuff, but I I can't I'll get in trouble with saying it. But um >> we'll have we'll have you back on. We'll make the announcement then. We won't we won't give away all the alpha. >> Oh yeah, definitely. Like uh I'll I'll come back. I think um Matt, who's the the CEO of Stable, he he should uh come on and uh it it'll be really fun. But the the the actual like answer and on like a high level is there's certain things that that like Tether does it at

size that zero other entities in in crypto do. They have 500 million users worldwide across completely different geographies. And uh that is just so powerful because if you think about like the onboarding problem, right? Like there there's always this thing of like oh how do we get people to exchange their cash for whatever? It's like okay there's actually if you use a blockchain that has tether as gas you don't need to onboard 500 million people they're already onboarded so like you can actually uh directly interact with them and then uh tether it's it's in tether's interest to promote that chain to its 500 million users of uh of tether across the entire world right ladam middle east

Asia and so the the idea is that if you can have infrastructure for those 500 million and growing people, then you can build the other things like deep liquidity on this chain, DeFi, uh other yield bearing stable coin options, right? All of these things that we've always assumed is is positive sum and we've we've seen that the more liquidity there is between these like stable coins, the more places you can lend them, loop them, the the larger the piece of the pie becomes for everyone, right? And so Tether is basically this huge huge onboarding uh like cheat code, right? And every single day, Paulo actually shared this in New York, every

single day about 300,000 uh new uh Tether users is expend like they they obviously estimated because these aren't all civil, right? But but around 300,000 uh new users of Tether is uh is onboarded across the world. That's absolutely insane, right? like that that is uh it's >> it's in I don't even I don't even know uh like if Binance or any I don't think they even have that that level of reach right and so um this is like a pretty big hack right like for onboarding and and getting exposure to uh new users especially users that genuinely are using like crypto like stable coins

rather than looking for like airdrops or or yield and these And so the the the synergy here is who's going to be leading the DeFi on stable? Who's going to be doing that kind of stuff? And then all of the new people that are going to be using this chain will then uh have a gateway to the onchain world uh in the the stable ecosystem. And so we're um super excited to make sure that FRA is one of the all stars there. And hopefully in a few weeks we can um announce it in in a in a very uh big manner without me getting in trouble.

>> Yeah, definitely. Sam, um you know, one thing that stuck out to me in the way that you're thinking about this design is first of all, you you're you're not trashing any competitors. You're being very real, objective, straight up and you're building fracknet in such a way if I understand correctly which you know I think our audience really would appreciate an explanation here as to the thinking in such a way that you can benefit as a network as a fraud the asset pending uh you know some some execution things you can benefit from the growth of tether you can benefit from the growth of these kind of as you said uh like a Starbucks you know loyalty uh credit type of uh stable

coin. You can you can you can kind of be a place where a lot of these different assets coalesce and still bring a lot of value directly to FRXUSD as well as the FRA network. So, I think you're being very cognizant in the way that you're seeing this play out and and the reality of and when I asked Jeremy from Circle about this yesterday, his response was just that look man, you can use u Google Chrome on Apple now. You can use Apple TV on your Samsung TV. These technologies are just going to be, you know, mish mash coexisting across all different forms of smart wallets, smart TVs, smart refrigerators, phones, iPads, computers, etc. Right. And it's going to

be this in this very diverse ecosystem as some other technologies are. And so I think it's helpful to understand your your vision that you've laid out for the types of stable coins, how you see them growing, what the next kind of idea is as we've just discussed. So I think it's a good time to kind of understand why you feel fra is well positioned to dominate in this world, right? So why is the FRANET's design specifically meant for this vision that you're seeing play out and how do you kind of view yourself and FRA kind of capitalizing on this uh you know next couple years with with this design?

>> Yeah, for sure. So that that's actually I loved what you said Jeremy said and I'll I'll weigh in on that too. So FraNet is basically a a fintech app uh just oneliner and it's supposed to just replace ever needing a bank account ever again. Obviously you can have a bank account but what it is is that you can make make wires you can spend um fraud in uh Visa cards virtual cards. You'll get virtual uh bank accounts for wires uh that people won't even know that they're sending it to your fra account, right? It'll be a it'll be a virtual account with a um bank routing number and and an account. You'll be able to mint and redeem FRAUSD by all major stable coins onetoone like USDC, PYUSD, USDT, uh Stripes, USDB, right? Um and

then more, right? And then if we issue your stable coin, uh your your stable coin will be there too. So literally everything I'm talking about, uh you immediately get um all of those benefits. your stable coin will be spendable in cards. They'll be able to you'll your users can sign up for virtual accounts. They'll be able to uh mint and burn them on 20 plus chains that were uh already on, right? All of the the plethora soon hyperlquid uh as we said and so it's a very very powerful way of moving cash around and uh like you said abstracting it out. These are just technologies, right? You can mint it on uh hyperlquid and move it to base and or or to Solana and then or you can burn it for USDC or for wire or this and

then or or load it into a Visa card. And then there's um obviously the uh reward streaming uh aspect of it, whatever the risk-free rate happens to be whe whether it's one, four, whatever, five. when you're doing all these things um this actually gets streamed to uh your fraal chain fraet account. So you basically get a savings account on on our fraal chain uh and then everything that you hold on all the different chains you just get streamed the risk-free yield. to you basically get a savings account on our Fraal chain. And so um that's basically if you think of it it's like a super app right and uh and there's obviously um an SDK and API so you can actually uh hook this into whatever app

that you're building whether it's onchain or offchain if you want to redeem fraud accepted onetoone um make sure that if you hold it in like a Dow treasury you're getting the uh risk-free yield streaming or any of these things right and so it basically brings all of the utility uh that you can think about um to FRAUSD and any any stable coin that we do issue, right? If if we do issue like you you'll be literally in the same um fraction infrastructure. And that's obviously really needed because otherwise this is just like uh you know the this the stable coin will be like those tokenized gift cards, right?

There's only a very narrow certain sense that you can you use them. And so, um, in terms of the, you know, positive sum view that I've always evangelized and everything, um, I'm really happy to see actually Jeremy said it even better than me. Uh, I love the way that he said it where, you know, you can you can use, uh, Apple TV streaming on your Samsung or LG TV. You can, you know, use Google Chrome on your Mac, which is what I'm currently doing right now. And um the that's a very good point because >> like look Arc is gonna Circle is going to launch ARC right and they're also on base right does that mean that uh you know Circle and and and Coinbase have

beef? That would be absolutely crazy to think that that that they do. They obviously get value out of working together and increasing each other's uh value market cap and and the ability for them to solve people's problems, right? in their own ecosystem. And so, uh, I've never believed in the negative some way. If if both sides agree on it, right? So, like I'm I'm not I I >> the three tree three, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's like if if the other side doesn't want to do like like this in positive sum, right? If they don't want to do integrations or or like onetoone redeems or what whatever their infrastructure stack is, right? like if if LG bans like the Apple streaming like

you know app or something right if if like the Apple um breaks compatibility with Google Chrome that's not positive sum right so it's like it's not like it's always uh you know happy you know hugs and and stuff like that but until there is good integration at at all times there's always a path that maximizes value for users and both sides um and I always search for that uh from the very beginning now What's interesting is there is going to be uh tussles and and things where >> I mean there is for sure. I mean stable and plasma do not like each other. That is a fact. Plasma thinks stable is just like the copycat. Stable's like we're going to do what you can do better like that. Like like that is already going to

happen. >> Yeah. I uh I'm uh >> you don't have to comment on that, but I'm just I'm just saying that it's going to happen or it is happening. >> Yeah. more insane backstory than whatever uh each of them say publicly. But I'll definitely get in trouble for for that. >> We're not going to talk about that. But competition's real. That's the reality where it's a big market that we're going for. It is a blue ocean. It is a new market. It is and the US is all in on it. So there there's a lot at stake and when it's high stakes, it's competition. How do you kind of think about that? Yeah, I I think like first of all a lot of things in the US like like like like banks or entities or even startups and stuff, they they actually aren't exactly sure where they're which area they're

even competing in currently, right? Like there everyone's kind of trying to figure it out, so to speak, right? And there's there's a lot of opportunity to uh create like like value like issue someone stable coin so then they can go do what what they do better than you do right uh they can go do the thing that is their strength and they can use your infrastructure for what's uh what what you're good at right like the stuff that we've built for fornet and interconnected all these features that's not easy to build that that's actually the reason it's it's taking so long is like if someone else had that we would just using it ourselves, right? We would just actually be uh using that as as like a uh a white label solution or

something, right? It's it's very very difficult to build because it takes a lot of uh technology that's like integrated like crosschain messaging, banking layer, card spending layer, uh all of these relationships between different issuers. So you can mint and redeem between them at a onetoone or allow people to connect their bank account and and burn FRAUSD for a wire backwards etc. And so the the the thing is there's so many layers to it that yeah uh the opportunities are are basically wide open but in the next one year in the next 12 months I think what'll happen is like as battle lines are sort of drawn a little bit right like

tempo versus arc versus stable or plasma or or whatever um then we'll know which area they're all competing uh against each other. I don't think it's very clear right now. Right now, it's not like like a very clear map. >> Yeah, it's it it's too general to really get a nuance view on where each of these companies has an edge. >> And none of them are launched yet, too, Robert. Right. They're just all all in, you know, pre-made as far as the chains go, >> right? The issuers obviously are launching stable coins left and right.

What we what we haven't seen so much is the Walmart stable coin, the Amazon stable coin. And something you were talking about earlier is like look fraet kind of removes the need for a bank. You can still have a bank if you want when we don't need one. Well, these banks aren't just going to go quietly into the night. They're going to try to fight and compete as well. And so what's now in this new economy, what's their edge, right? Like they didn't want some aspect of genius to offer yield and and there was kind of going back and forth on the genius act. And so I'm curious on a certain level all these stable chains and stable coin companies are working together and then you have because they're all the new guard and you have the old guard which is all these banks

and then on another level there's kind of the infighting that happens. This happens at DeFi at large and and across several sectors in the industry. And so do you do you sort of and maybe this gets into the composability maybe you can't talk about it so much but how do you view the competitive landscape is it similar or different the one that's kind of internal to the stable coin and the stable chain industry and then external when you look at the traditional bank banking competitive landscape how how do you are these kind of the same or do do you view them differently?

>> Uh that's a good question. So, you know what's actually would be really funny is that uh if this the yield clause you brought up like that's the thing that's like the tip of the spear for like attacking like like genius uh stable coins. It would be so funny if like yields went to zero so they don't even have that as like a as a as a way to fight them and then they still get crushed by by stable coins. Um I I think there's a good chance that that that'll happen. It's like >> I think that that answers your question, Rob. There it is. Doesn't have to say anything else. That's it. That's the tank. D5 for the win.

>> Yeah. Well, I I think I think that's exactly >> it also crushes it also crushes the stable coins that are not positioned to capitalize on a low rate environment. So then you sort of have this other dimension of competitive competition where it's companies whether they're traditional banks or they're new neo banks in DeFi that are positioned for a high rate environment and then ones that are positioned for a low rate environment. They might be traditional or or part of this modern era. >> Yeah. Well, if if you think of if you think of like genius like fiat coins, they can't do anything with the they can't massively hypothecate the the underlying. So, they're going to have to find uh other revenue streams, right?

Like mint and redeem fees or or like control the settlement, right? Whether it's their own chain or like cut deals with uh specific other chains or payment providers. And I think like the the important thing is if you don't have moneyiness, right? Like if if you if you literally do not have moneyiness where people actually come in and out of this and use it for real economic activity uh during low rates, you can't even monetize your distribution because you don't get anything from from treasury bill income, right? So like it's actually um it's it's actually good for the issuance business like like FRA or Agora or things cuz we can issue we already have the infrastructure and even

if it doesn't make a lot of money for for the for the brand like during the low rate environment they have it so that they can continue to use it. It's not a song cost. Like imagine if you had to actually do all of these things uh in R&D versus just literally letting us do it with a push of a button, right? So it actually makes issuance as like a a service um much more veable because it's like you you can literally outsource it to people that know what they're doing and then um figure out the right way to monetize it because you can't monetize it with with T bills or or hypothecation, right? And so um I think the other question is what is the actual macroeconomics going to be? Is it stagflation or is it uh is

it glorious super cycle? Because both banks and DeFi have very different uh like modus operandi of like what they do in that those kind of uh economic times, right? Like if it's super cycle, everyone pack into like SRAXUSD or Athena SUSD and and just just print, right? like the the the yields on those yield bearing stable coins will be like 20 30% or I think Athena hit like what 38 or 9% I think at its highest like uh epoch rate is absolutely insane right but what if that's not the case what if the case is that the like economic activity slows down I think that's actually literally what Jerome Powell

was quoted as saying today right the economy has slowed down that's just code like different way of saying stackflation right and So if that's the case, if the Athena or the ESRXUSD yield is like 3%. Right, and then the Treasury yield is like 1% or 0.5%. What do you do with your your dollar capital? And then also what what exactly is the are the stable coins that benefit the most in that situation? I I'm I'm interested. Well, hopefully we don't find out because I don't want there to be stackflation, but if that happens, I'm interested to see how it pans out.

Yeah, Sam, I think I have a a really kind of more a question that's more on the philosophy side to to wrap us here. Uh come to a close. No, no rush. I don't know your schedule, but what you're saying here is describing where we're at and what feels like we're, you know, each year passes, we get closer and closer to uh this like fiat experiment that the Bitcoiners will tell you was, you know, doomed to fail from the beginning. feels like we just get closer and closer to uh you know this this kind of experiment going wrong in some way and I'm not going to be a doomer here but the reason why I bring up this context is because I think it's important to understand from the highest level in the US government that they are trying to prevent the stagflation

scenario deep depression collapse etc at all costs and by doing so there are they are looking at all of their options And in one of their, you know, the in one of their hands of cards, aces of spades, we're looking at stable coins. And they see stable coins as a way to extend the US dollar's regime globally, to extend the demand for the USD globally, to create the digital dollar, to fight CBDC's as well. And so when we're thinking about stable coins right now in this macro sense, we're looking at them from a purely economics perspective. I'm curious what your take is on the more geopolitical power perspective that

stable coins are playing right now. It feels like a small amount, but I could really see this being a big part of the US's economic plan with regards to the deficit with regards to uh you know kind of just generally extending their power. Again, very broad here, but what is your take on the more geopolitical power that stable coins have in today's world? Yeah, I I actually think about this a lot because I I try to be like way forwardlooking and I think that there's a few different schools of thought, right? I think Arthur Hayes is like the yield curve control like like era is coming because they need to uh the the US government needs to be able to borrow

at like 0%, right? And and the the the uh current payment interest on on the massive debt is way way too much. So, they need to figure out some funny way. I love his writing with all the jokes, but like basically some funny way of like moving jiggling the Microsoft Excel sheet around where like they're basically paying deacto nothing, right? On on like they they basically um wreck bond holders, right? The other way is this, in my opinion at least, this stable coin uh maximalist view where if you actually think about who holds like currently who holds treasuries the most in the world, they're they're sovereigns, right? It's like it's Japan, it's it's China, it's uh European countries. And for the first time, very

large stable coin issuers like Tether hold very very very large amount of treasury bills that are essentially decentralized and and tokenized among all of uh USDT's holders, right? like they're basically when you hold USDT you're basically holding uh treasuries without the yield but your ability to zap them to any computer and anything in the entire world as a form of payment right and um I think that that is where they're getting their strategy is if they can actually decentralize and distribute the holdings of treasuries right to pretty much everyone on on earth their ability to borrow is is much cheaper right like if you actually I I

think uh Paulo said this or or someone I don't quote me on it but he that someone said specifically if you go around to every single country in the world and you actually ask them without any repercussion in your laws or something would you rather hold the the dollar or the national currency of of your country I think everyone would would pick the the dollar almost everyone I don't know maybe Switzerland they this currency is super strong but um everyone would pick the dollar right and how do you actually execute on that, right? There there's the the the fact that if this is a true like statistic, right, assuming it is, how do you get the dollar in every single person's hand? Because that would really really really help uh borrowing

costs for the the US. Obviously, it would be bad for other national currencies as they get displaced. So, there's going to be push back, right? There's going to be central banks that try to limit the amount of USD stable coin holdings like stable coin capital controls. uh it'll be even more impossible to do those compared to even the current like analog traffic capital controls. Um and and so especially with like decentralization uh privacy preserving transactions in in some of these blockchains, right? Um and so it's it's not going to be possible to fight it, but they they will uh fight it the other countries. And so if the strategy is not yield curve control or maybe it's a combination of both but if

the strategy is the stable coin maximization of uh the entire world the USD stable coin uh maximization then the treasuries become very cheap for the US to issue and so they need to tap into that and I think obviously the current administration believes that um I hope that uh whoever whether it's this administration another Republican or Democrat or whatever administration is that they also realize how powerful uh of a strategy this is. If we can do it as as the United States of America, it'll actually cement US financial and geopolitical dominance for at least another 50 to 100 years uh

unquestionably if it can be executed properly. Sam Casmin Frack OG DeFi Curve Convex Fracks we got double, we got dual wielded stable coins coming, Robbie, we've got genius compliant, we've got yield bearing, we've got Sam in the house with Paulo and Bohind just absolutely just grinding behind the scenes to bring crypto to the mainstream. Stable coins have done such a great job of changing the perception of our space. Um, there's a lot of interest. This is going to be one of the best stable coin shows, if not the best in the space. Stable Dash is interested. This is going up on their on their site. We're already collaborating there. They're going to push more. This is going to be a hot spot for really

really important conversations over the next 6 to 12 months as this space evolves and longer. Sam, we're stoked to have you on to kick us off. As you can see, we're still putting the nuts and bolts together, but the, you know, the foundation is here. This was a great kickoff conversation and we are really looking forward to executing on this show being a part of this stable coin growth with Fracks with our other investments in the space venture and liquid and uh man I mean what a time to be alive first rate cut is on. We'll see how the market reacts and there's just going to be a lot of moving parts and pieces and you know no one better than yourself to navigate predict and see the vision here. So we appreciate your time today Sam. Uh, it's been a three-hour

stream for me. I'm starving. Probably need to, you know, stand up, get some blood flow. So, I'm gonna let you go. Rob, as always, been great. And yeah, guys. Thanks, man. >> Thanks. Congrats on the show, guys. And see you soon. >> All righty, Sam. >> Thanks, Sam. >> Peace. All righty, Rob. What a first stream. Get gets gets you fired up. You're on two hours of sleep from base camp. >> I'm on I'm on three hours of stream. That was an amazing first show for Stabled Up. I mean, this is amazing. The Polygon show was great yesterday, too, on uh payments. Money moves fast. That one's gonna keep doing well. And then tomorrow, we're going to roll out AI Super Cycle. So, we're literally going to just be getting some really big minds

from RWA tokenization, the best of the best of stable coins and this kind of era, and then the best of the best in AI. I mean, how can you fade this? I mean, if you're still watching this right now, we we have a massive uh prediction markets partner announcement coming out soon as well. I mean, the boys are absolutely firing. Welcome back, Rob. Thank you for being here. I gotta go. I'm dying. Said all this energy, I I'm just I'm ready to fade out of here. So, thank you for watching, guys. That's my closing thoughts. We'll see you next time. Fade out.