The Rollup TV: Tuesday, August 19th

Transcript

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat.

Heat. [Music] Heat. Hey [Applause] [Music] [ __ ]

[Music] Welcome back to the rollup TV, Rob. Nice shirt. >> Wrecked. We're wrecked. >> Nice shirt. >> 120 all the way down to 113. But you know what my shirt says? >> The rollup is what mine says, brother. >> Mine says, "Fear nothing." Not even bare markets. Not even a red shirt.

Definitely not a bare market. >> All right, it's August 19th, guys. Welcome back to the Rope TV. We have some sick guests. Luke Cannon, early hyperlquid trader. We've got the new head of security ties, Graham, good friend of ours, and Chainlink God, help us understand why Link is going to the moon. Um, Rob, have you seen those Gmonad cards on Twitter today? >> I got one. Shout out to our friends over at Monad. Uh, pretty cool AI generated picture. I like it. >> Do you think it's good marketing? Do you think it's cringe? I've seen like multiple different takes.

>> Um Keone tagged 5,000 people in a single tweet thread. Uh I think that is definitely going to kickstart the algorithm a little bit. It almost reminded me of your project lists >> where you had put a ton of projects into one tweet and then all the projects engage, all of the people engage. I liked it. Um I like the picture of it. I like the card. It was It felt uh >> It felt pretty pretty. >> Couple people said it's cringe. Couple people said it's cool. I thought it was cool. Uh >> I thought so, too. I mean, it would be cooler if they just ship mainet, but if you're going to do something aside from, you know, ship tech, might as well ship a little ship a little digital card.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was cool. Um and then markets, dude. Um Yeah. I mean, I think we're getting ready for a bounce. I mean, look, it looks pretty bad out there, though. Um, I would like to cover a couple things before we get our first guest up here. >> Okay. >> Um, things that I think are particularly bullish. U, maybe I'm wrong, but maybe um, >> but maybe the market's wrong. >> What you got?

>> Um, well, I I don't see them on our little headline sheet. Someone must have taken them off. But Wyoming launched a stable coin, which is pretty insane that a state, like a public government, state official is launching a stable coin. >> Yeah. >> Um I think this is going to be this is the first of probably 50. There's going to be a stable coin for every state. Um and they're backing this uh according to the Genius Act, it's going to be 2% over collateralized, and they're backing it with cash and short-term T bills. All of this is going on chain. They listed the chains that it's going on. It's going on ETH Salana Polygon Avalanche Arbitum, and Optimism, I believe. And so

I would imagine that as we start to migrate commerce and the existing financial system onto blockchain rails, this is going to start using up block space. This is going to start using the blockchains and it's going to provide significant demand for blockspace. They're going to be paying fees on these chains. Maybe they hold cash and they're just going to convert that to ETH at the time and they're going to sell ETH or excuse me, they're gonna but but effectively that's still a net buy on ETH when they have to pay gas fees. Any gas fee, right, is going to have to be paid in ETH if it occurs on Ethereum or L2.

>> They're launching just like a US dollar stable coin but for the state of Wyoming for transacting in Wyoming. >> That's correct. It's called Frontier. The ticker is >> it's Yep. the Frontier stable coin. Uh, tickers FR NT. >> Dude, I feel like that's so dumb. Like, I don't get why people use non USUSD tickers. Like, I feel like it just like it like Fracks changed theirs from Fracks to FRXUSD. Like, I feel like I feel like it should always have USD in it basically.

>> Yeah. Like W and each state has their own state code. Florida's FL. Wyoming I think would probably be YW. Why not? >> WY. Yeah. W USD. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wy USD would make a ton more sense. >> Well, that's cool. I think the other thing that you wanted to cover was the Micro Strategy news with regards to uh allowing them to basically do ATMs like at the money uh investments under 2.5x MNAV. Um maybe you can walk us through that.

>> So ATMs are when they issue more equity. Um people don't like that if you're an existing holder because it dilutes you. You think about this simple supply and demand. Uh you own a share of the company and they issue more shares. All of a sudden your shares become less uh because you have less of the total supply. The reason that they do this is when the MNAV which is the marginal difference between the net asset value of their holdings and their market cap of their stock that is MNAV. when that difference becomes so great, it shows that this stock is pretty much overbought relative to their net asset holdings.

>> Yeah. >> And so then they're like, "Okay, well, we can dilute some of the some of the holders and bring this MNAV kind of back back to reality." >> Um, and so that this was the the plan all along. Um, they would issue this these these shares once MNAV got to be got to be so great. uh people that are holding and investors in Micro Strategy are now calling Sailor out a little bit. They're not too happy with it because he's now looking at issuing these shares. >> MNAV doesn't really have to be that high anymore. Even an MNAV under two and a halfx, he's looking at issuing more shares. So, this is effectively more aggressive and more dilutive to existing shareholders. The argument for this is

that if they issue more shares, they're able to buy more Bitcoin. And so, yeah, you dilute your holdings of this company a little bit, but you're able to get more Bitcoin. And so, is a smaller percentage of more Bitcoin more or less valuable than a greater percentage of a smaller amount of Bitcoin? This is kind of the math that they're doing. And almost think about this like there's some some peg or some equilibrium between the micro strategy market cap and the underlying Bitcoin holdings. >> Interesting. So So are they going to be able to now go buy more Bitcoin? Is that the goal?

>> Yeah. So they'll they'll start to issue more shares. >> Um and there's some nuances between common stock and preferred stock. Some of them have uh voting uh power. Some of them have uh dividends. And so without getting into too much of that nuance it, they're going to go buy uh more Bitcoin. They're going to issue more shares. They're gonna they're going to raise more cash. They're going to go buy more Bitcoin. Um and they're going to do this while their NAV isn't as as high. And so the the theory is that this could start to uh infringe upon a discount. There's a lot of mixed opinions on whether this is good for Micro Strategy, good for the space, good for Bitcoin.

>> Um ultimately, it's more leverage. And so I think this is indicative of like okay well as we get deeper and deeper into this into this meta this d meta the thing is only one directional. It it can only get t like this leverage loop only gets wound tighter and tighter and tighter and so that's we're going further and further into that direction. >> Somebody said the other day I think it was like Sisphus or something was like these DATs are like uh Tradfi doing Olympus D. that's how far on the risk curve that they are. But I but I think that like Micro Strategy is different than the other ones in that >> um there's like there's way more um there's way more leverage in Micro

Strategy than there is in these other debts in that um Micro Strategy is actually issuing these convertible notes debt to to buy a lot of uh you know Bitcoin and others. But I think some of the Ethereum DATs are less aggressively levered, uh, is my understanding. >> Um, I believe Block Works has a pretty good chart on this. Um, not sure we're going to be able to pull it up, but maybe we can just take a look at it. Um, because I believe they list kind of the the right way to think about like are these things levered aggressively or more conservatively is if we look at their their MNAV. Um,

>> yeah, I saw that it was actually coming down uh across the board, a lot of them. >> Um, so I'm not sure exactly uh but I know that I saw uh that basically some of the Ethereum ones and others were uh kind of coming down into a better uh kind of like like in between 1.2 to 0.9 or something. Uh I'm Blockworks has had some of the best data on this. So shout out to them for that. Um and yeah, it's just an interesting dynamic. We're gonna have Practic on I think later on in this week for a short segment about this um and others. But I

think we got Luke getting set up in the back. Um so we're going to get him up. Luke was one of the early Hyperlid adopters. I think he's going to come on talk a lot about what he's been building or what what he's been seeing uh there as well, his experience on Hyperlid and more. So, it's definitely going to be a Hyperlid bull bull thesis. Um I think that's a good place to start actually. Uh so, we had Flood on at one point talking about hype. I think I think that's a good place to start as well. So, Luke's in the back um and ready to come on. So, let's get him up. And uh yeah, Luke, welcome to the show, man. I appreciate you uh hopping on. Let's talk Hyperlquid, man. How are you?

>> I'm doing well. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Robbie and Andy. >> Uh yeah. >> Yeah, man. You you're one of the early adopters. Um maybe tell us your Hyperlid story for those of you who don't know. Luke, how did you become such a hyperlquid bull? What is your story of getting uh you know into the ecosystem? How did you find the platform? you know, what's your experience been? >> Yeah. Well, I think like a lot of people, it started as just another platform that I was farming back in 2023.

So, there were a bunch of new perexes at the time, farming APO and Drift and Zeta and Hyperliquid. Um, I think one of the features that got a lot of early users, uh, including myself, was they're really quick to new to list these new like esoteric per. Uh, so they had like a friend index that I specifically started trading and um, yeah, so it was part of the airrop rotation. Um, but I actually have to credit a bunch of other people in the community who I would say really got me excited about the bigger vision and seeing that it was more than just some other perks to farm. Um, so shout out uh Krypto Adair who was kind of the

first person to publish this like $800 per point thesis. Uh, and he was the one who basically really made me go all in and start taking it seriously. Uh, so that was around like December 2023 and let's see that that was that was basically when like the first point season announced. They had sort of like an alpha before that. Um, and then from then on out there was a pretty pretty big community of just people going hard on it who saw the vision which Jeff was building. And you know since since then it's been from the regular purpose season uh to spot season to now maybe some sort of hypervm farming season or just forming hypervium protocols.

>> Um but yeah it's been really fun being a part of the journey along the way. Obviously come a long way and uh it's also a lot more fun I think to be part of a community where the metrics are just going up and up every week. Uh that's that's definitely it's made crypto fun again I think for myself and for a lot of other people in the community. >> Absolutely. Yeah. The the up into the right technology is a lot of fun to use. Um but not only in terms of price but also in terms of protocol like the me the mechanics of it have just been able to create these network effects these wealth effects and these network effects go hand in hand. And I'm curious, you know, being an early adopter, you kind

of you were in there. You saw the value proposition before the up and to the right caused a little bit more popularity and momentum and and kind of the in the onslaught of people coming into the platform. And so when it when it comes to sort of like I don't want to say picking winners, but some picking something early that you think has staying value or staying power, what what was something that stuck out to you about Hyperliquid that differentiated it and it and you said to yourself, "Oh, okay. This is something that no one else really has. They're going to stick around. There's other people that want this." What What stuck out to you early on?

>> Yeah, I mean, it's a bit cliche, but I think it honestly really is the team. Um, so you know, a lot of people they were doing research and adjust background. They figure out who he is and they're like, "Oh, okay. This is a guy who like has a quantitative background. He trades. He's now building a platform for traders. Okay, that's obviously interesting." Um, and then I think you look at how the team conducts themselves throughout. So this was a team that basically never hyped up anything before it got launched, right?

It was always under promise, overd delivered. They'll surprise you, drop some huge announcement on a Tuesday. Uh if there's any sort of hiccup or downtime, users are all getting refunded uh with super generous like, you know, terms and and prices used for these refunds. Uh you can just really tell it was a team that that just put users first the entire way. And I I think that was also what a lot of people were looking for in FTX. And then that, you know, did not come to fruit. Uh, and so I think that of course probably also guided part of Jeff's vision like an exchange for traders built by traders.

>> Yeah. Dude, did you hold all your airdrop or did you sell some of it or like what was the story? >> Yeah. >> Was it a huge airdrop? >> It it it was pretty sizable. Um, so yeah, >> reasonably sized house. >> Um, yeah. And and you're still holding it all? >> I'm still holding. I've bought more. Um Wow. My my only regret is basically not liquidating other assets fast enough to buy a TGE. >> Like I was like, "Oh, I'll have a week or a few days for, you know, sell pressure to kind of take care of stuff." But no, the the next day I was scrambling to liquidate and, you know, bought 2x where I originally was to put more in. Yeah,

>> dude. I remember being in Hong Kong the night before the token launched and just like being around with some some big liquid funds and the guys talking about how if it launches between like two to three dollars, they're going to just be aping clips into it, like talking like million-dollar clips, you know, eight figure clips and and uh you know, the airdrop came and then just that first morning was just trying to shove shove shove as much as possible. ended up getting a ended up getting like a $2,250 $3 entry all bought all the way up and um that's kind of our story on on our side. But all right, let's flip to the >> Luke. What what what's the forward looking analysis now? Like that that's kind of what happened. Called it early

like 80 120 like >> now it's top 15. >> Yeah. >> Where where do we go from here? You're still holding. Why? >> Yeah. Well, I think you look at the other places where you could allocate and it's just really hard to find something that looks better than hype. Um, like no, no other coin is putting 97% of their revenue into the token. No other protocol is growing this fast at this scale. Uh, I don't think any other protocol has really developed like a cult that's this strong this cycle. Um there it just it just doesn't seem like there's really better options. Um I some

of the specific things to be excited about like I think HIPP 3 is obviously one that a bunch of people are talking about basically enables anyone to launch their own perpetuals markets built on top of the hyperlquid infrastructure. Uh so right now all the part markets right are managed by the team. Um they choose to list you know bonk or useless coin or whatever the latest droner is. Uh but hip 3 would basically have these this cadence of auctions where anyone can put up one million hype uh to have their own market running on the hyperlquid infra.

Um, and so it's a new primitive that I think a lot we don't I mean to be honest even myself I don't think any of us really know what this will enable. Um there's a few teams that are building on, you know, like, oh, this is going to allow tokenized uh stock perpetuals or uh interest rate markets or T bills. Um or there's a team doing preipo stock trading, right? Um but but I but I think but but I think it's more than that. Uh like these are we're just here we're just talking about uh you know various new markets we could create. I think the real innovation is actually the incentives. Um, crypto is very PVP, right? So, every exchange, every deck,

they're all competing with each other. What I think what Hyperlid is trying to do is basically set up a model where it makes more sense to build on top of each other because they've got the liquidity, they've got the infrastructure. If overnight you can set up a market that is now suddenly competitive with Binance and Vbit on liquidity and fees, like why wouldn't you? why would you go try and build your own? Um, and so, you know, we've seen and and this is not just with perks, right? This is also on the spot side. So, we've seen Phantom integrate builder codes. They're now at like a two to three million uh monthly runway in in fees, which is substantial even for a

company that's already doing, you know, over 200 million of revenue a year. Um, and then I think like in I saw Infinex integrated Hyperlquid purpose this morning. Uh, I believe has talked about it. >> Yeah. >> It's just one of those things. It's like if you're a wallet or you're any app that's got some distribution to users, >> Hyperliquid is going to be the best way to monetize because of liquidity and the infra and the fees that can offer you. >> So Luke, I got to ask you, a lot of people have been bearish on Hyper EVM.

They're saying it's slow. there's not much going on. Uh there's people that are uh complaining about it compared to core. The other way around it is people are saying that this kind of design with this core product and then a separate uh kind of chain if if you will for the EVM is like the future of of how some of these kind of like app specific versus general purpose environments are going to kind of interact. Also people are saying that that this is one of the best uh place to be basically points farming airdrop farming for hyperlquid airdrop number two if it's coming as well as just the protocols on hypervm uh where do you see the most opportunity on hypervm now for people who are active on chain what are you doing on hypervm you know

is it going to be one of the best places to to get uh points for airdrop 2 for hyperlid you know do you know anything that you can share or just kind of what's your takes on some of the best protocols on uh Hyper EVM that you think will be uh good, you know, for retroactively rewarding its early users. >> Yeah. Well, first I'll address the point about Hyper Core versus HyperVM. I think the priority has been and will continue to be for the foreseeable future on Hyper Core, right? Like obviously Hyperlid, the Hyperlid team, they care about the performance of that exchange. they're not going to do something that's going to compromise that performance. Uh, and so every

development, everything that happens, it goes at a very slow cadence right now because you can't mess up the the latency of the the core exchange. Um, that being said, I think there's a ton of room to improve the throughput of Hyper EBM and the team knows that like, you know, overnight they can increase the gas limit 10x. Um, obviously that's not still not like a high throughput chain, but that there's there's tons of small changes like this that they can do. Um, it's just it's in a beta stage and that's how the team has kind of done all of their product rollouts, right?

Like there was an extended alpha and beta period for the exchange back in 2023. Um, even you know the spot roll out. Um, all of that stuff took time and at the beginning there aren't that many people using them and they're not like marketing or promoting this super heavily. Um, they're very thoughtful with how they roll stuff out. Um, that being said, I do think hyper EVM is a really exciting part of Hyperlquid because if you think about the value prop of an exchange like Binance or whatever and then you combine that with the value prop of a completely general generalized smart contract chain, the possibilities of what you can do are

just endless. Um and in fact one of these features that might be enabled would be something like like coin merchant right so right now USDC is the sole collateral for purpose on hyperlquid obviously on binance you know you can use coins as collateral and traders on hyperlquid would like that too um well there's a world where hyperlquid doesn't actually have to ship it natively but it could be happening in the back end through an integration with hypervm right you send your USBC to Hyper EDM. You deposit it on hyper lend you or well sorry rather you send your BTC to hyperium deposit on hyper lend borrow USDC that goes back to the

hyperlquid and now you're you know trading on 20x leverage with USDC but it's collateralized by your BTC right it's a bit of a complicated flow but you could easily envision a world where this is all abstracted away and just happening in one click on the main front end uh and I what the hyperlquid team like would like about this approach assuming they go this way. Again, I don't have any inside info on this. Um, but it really would create like a fair market I think for all these lending protocols and their interest rates to be competing with each other, right? Um, rather than, you know, the team having to enshrine something or uh, you know, set interest rates in some

way or right. So I think in in a lot of things the team has done they're thinking about how they can create a fair platform that doesn't like king make a particular team right so anyone come in deploy their own market deploy their own coin uh you know etc um and then and then yeah so more about kind of the specific stuff that I'm excited about on hypervm >> it's such a wild wild west right now so I think if you're willing to put in the research and have a thesis on where you think the hypervm is going, what's going to be important in that ecosystem.

There's a ton of inefficiencies you can find. So, I think most people right now are trying to farm everything. They're trying to farm the indexes, every single lending market, every LST provider. Um, and to be honest, I don't really know which are going to win. Um, but I think a lot of these themes reward you for being early and taking risks. So, you know, like Hyperbe is one example. They're distributing these hearts every week to different activities or vaults you deposit and kinetic as well, right? They're distributing points for their LST.

And a lot of their points are basically going to their new launches. So, if you're someone who's very nimble, you've got your capital stack and you can quickly rotate between all these new launches. I think that's probably like the highest ROI to just be stacking these points. Um, I'm at a point where I'm not quite so active, so I've got a bunch of kind of passive fararmms and some trading stacks and stuff. Um, but yeah, I think it's kind of like a choose your own experience. Um, and honestly, probably a lot of the biggest teams haven't even deployed yet. Like that that's really how early we are. HIPP3 is on test net. You can see a few teams that are experimenting there, but none of this is live on mainet. So, we really have no clue how this is going to play out and uh who the winners are going to

be. Yeah. >> And Luke, would you say right now is the best opportunity to get exposure to the second wave of the Hyperlid airdrop? Go, you know, there's hearts that are up. There's points programs that are going on for each of these, you know, these particular projects and they may have their own tokens eventually, too. But, you know, there's potential for double dipping here with these applications as well as the underlying hyperlquid uh second wave. >> Totally. And there's also a bunch of ways that you can do it that are delta neutral. So, HyperVm right now has some of the highest stable coin yields simply because there's so much borrowing demand. Uh, you know, you can take USDT, Bridget, it is now USDT0,

but then you can lend that on Felix or Hyperlend or Hyperfi. Uh, you can deposit that into a Hyperbe vault where they've got these strategies. Um but yeah, so I mean like mid mid- teen percent much higher if you're willing to like get a little DJ or explore. Um there's also delta neutral strategies you could do in hype. Um you know, you could short short the perpetual or um or borrow hype against some LSD and loop that. Um there's there's really it's it's exciting. Um, I know there's a bunch of group group chats that are always, you know, trying to figure out where the points are going each week.

Uh, and to be honest, I'm not as clued in in some of those, but if you're willing to grind, I think there really is a lot of alpha there. >> Yeah. Luke, what um what's your endofear price targets or kind of range and what's your like multi-year thought with regards to where this thing could go? >> Yeah, I mean, timing is the hard part for me. Like I I I really truly do not think that we've seen anything near euphoria on hyperlquid yet. Like we we really haven't, right? The price action I think has been pretty measured. Uh it's been a reflection of the valuations that people are putting on it and the flows, but we really haven't seen anything resembling euphoria. So I I think that's going to come at some

point. I think the case is just simply the fundamentals are just too strong for that not to happen. Um, I think something in say the like 70 to $120 range is totally reasonable and probably not even Euphoria depending on kind of the PA to get there. Um, but yeah, I mean it's it's a fun it's a fun space. I would expect people to check out Hip 3 in particular. >> Yeah. >> Um, >> and yeah, there's a bunch of people ask me about Hip 3 and the truth is >> I want to talk about that, Luke. So, you're uh a guy Max responded to your tweet today about uh kind of what to talk about, and he wrote a tweet that says, "Hip 3 allows market deployers to

keep 50% of hyperlquid trading fees in addition to layering on further ones for large market makers. Deployment of their own Bitcoin, ETH, Soul, etc. per is an opportunity to achieve negative fees on their strategies. Hyperlid is probably unrecognizable in a year." and he requested that you speak about the in incentive structure which points to a complete explosion of independent perp markets on top of hyper core. Um I think you alluded to this a bit earlier but maybe you could just like further uh uh hammer in what exactly Max's point is here.

>> Yeah. So shout out Max. So he's involved with Kinetic and Felix. He's one of the more connected people in the ecosystem and honestly, yeah, I don't think the ecosystem would be where it is without him today. Uh, and he's also been helping out with Hyperion, which is one of the, uh, treasury post for Hype. Um, but yeah, it's what I learned too before which is that crypto is inherently very PVP, but because Hyperlid makes it so easy to spin up a market that is competitive with Binance and BIT, it just it aligns incentives in a way that no other protocol really has before. Um, so every hit free market that you spin

up, you're entitled to 50% of the trading fees from that market. So imagine you spin up, you know, the BTC USDT market, right? Um, and that's doing a billion in volume a day. And you can so you would be you would automatically be earning 50% of all of the base trading fees on that market. And then you can in addition specify an additional fee on top that you wanted to collect. Uh, this could be via builder codes, so on your own front end if that's where you're hosting the market.

Um, but it's it's just it's just a dynamic that I don't really think exists everywhere exists any anywhere else. And it also, as I said, is the case for spot markets. So, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Hyperunit, uh, but they're the protocol that that is bridging, you know, native BTC and native ETH and Soul and Fcoin to Hyperlid. Um they are also currently earning 50% of all trading fees on those spot markets. Um and so that's you know actually I don't know what the total is now but it's I think it's easily seven figures. Um and you know we're we're at the very early start of this volumes are continually ramping up. So I I they're I mean they're the

consensus like top pick to be the largest hyperb protocol uh simply because of all of that b capture that they have at that that layer. Um there's another dynamic which is that yesterday uh hyperlquid introduced the first spot market that was not quoted in USDC. So, it was a hype USDT spot market. Um, and this is something we've been wanting for a while. As you know, we move away from USDT USDT. Um, I think eventually we'll probably see hype denominated pairs or people will denominate their own pairs in some other one of their own assets.

Um but again that just like expands the landscape of these markets and the opportunity for deployers to capture these trading fees. Um and the other 50% of fees in all of these markets still acrue to the hype token, right? So it's basically expanding the pie. Uh it's not dilution. You're incentivizing every single app, wallet, uh exchange in the whole industry to integrate Hyperlid. >> Yeah. Yeah, Luke, I mean, uh, I think you said it well. We had Flood on some months ago talking about the thesis as well. And I think that this HIPP3 and builder codes, it takes this entire idea from another per stex to like the the

underpinning like the the liquidity underpinning for uh you know any distribution channel like Phantom uh as as well as any kind of market making firm any other uh exchange even you know like I think he said that like there's a world where um some of the largest centralized exchanges just end up providing per frontends for their users, but they all trade directly on Hyperlquid uh in the future. So, uh look, as as investors, we are excited as as uh you know, shareholders, token holders, we're bullish as well. Um and stoked to have you on to kind of give us a refresher. Appreciate it. And yeah, man, we'd be sick to get you on in a

couple months. See if we're trading around that $100 range. see if HIP is through and uh what some of the numbers Phantom and some of these other chains or some of these other platforms are putting up as a result of builder codes, man. So, uh stoked on this for you and congrats on the big win too, man. >> Appreciate it. Maybe by then we'll be talking about HIP for so more bullish than the last. >> Yeah, man. >> Exciting. >> Thanks for watching. Speak to you soon, man. Cheers to you. >> Thanks for having me. >> Peace, buddy. The Hyperlquid bull thesis is on. The update is in. Rob, what's your thoughts on on the update?

>> And it Hyperlid is clearly evolving every once in a while. And I think it's important as an investor to to con consistently kind of check ourselves. >> And so it was a no-brainer when it first launched. Um, and now looking at it, you know, it's top 15 market cap. It's up there with some of the biggest L1s. It's like, okay, well, where do we go from here? Is there an outperformance thesis? And I think when you look at it, because Hyperlid is a purpose-built uh L1, consider it an app chain, right? Part of that app chain thesis.

>> Yeah. >> It now has the infrastructure, the capital infrastructure, meaning the liquidity to go and start spinning off new projects. And I think that is exactly what we're going to start to see with HIT 3, with builder codes. It already did the hard part. Like the hard part of building a successful application is already done. Now it can go and it can do the experimentation that all the other L1s started with. And so they're going to go and they're going to start building out all these other apps. There's going to be, you know, different flywheels, different incentive mechanisms back to the hype token. And I think we're going to start to see the hyperlquid app chain turn into the fullyfledged L1 that is going to provide capital infrastructure for many of the

distribution channels that that we just talked about with Luke. >> Yeah, man. Yeah, Luke definitely hit a hit a seven fig airdrop into an eight fig bag. So, shout out to Luke, man. What a Chad. Um, all right, we got Graham coming up. >> Yeah, Graham will be up here in a moment. I'm curious what you think about the second wave. How relative to the first wave, do you think it's going to be just as big, if not bigger? And >> um I don't know, but I should have asked him about the unlocks coming up. I don't know about the airdrop. It's It's hard to tell if if it'll even happen. Um we'll see, right? So yeah, I mean, I should have asked about the unlocks, though, because those are coming up in November, and there's been no there's been no updates about it. So,

>> oh well, we'll ask him in the DMs. All right, we got Graham coming up, new head of ecosystem at Securitize talking RWA's talking tokenization, talking uh his new position. Um and so yeah, Graeme is a good friend of ours and um yeah, stoked on him for this new role talking about what Securize is doing in the space, the rise of RWAs and more. Graham's in um Graham, good to see you, man. This time virtual, previously in the flesh.

Yeah, that is water in the background. I'm in Hawaii. I've been here for a couple weeks. I got a couple more weeks left before KBW and all that jazz. So, just uh had to get out of the city, bro. It was sucking my soul. The city was sucking my soul. Three months. That's all it took. I mean, it was trying to jam everything in into one, you know. So, talk us through some of your free agency process. Uh, Graham. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. Give us one sec, guys. Uh, I think Graham's audio is going to get fixed.

Oh, no. I was right. I think we're good. Should be all right. our technical director >> behind the scenes is the best in the business. So, he's going to get us taken care of. >> Yeah, I can I can hear you just fine. Uh but just to preface >> Yeah. Uh Marcel, just flip it back to Rob and I.

Um, but Rob, I I want to talk to Graham first about uh what it's like to be a free agent in crypto. Um, so he recently uh recently dropped out of uh of I think he was working with Omni. they had a a really good run and then kind of went into the free agency pool. >> Um, and so like I don't know, I've never been in that position in crypto. >> So I just curious as to like what that process is like, how that's going. Then obviously, uh, securitize, head of ecosystem is a big role.

>> Um, and obviously going on >> think about securitizes ecosystem, >> right? That's an ecosystem that's made up of Black Rockck and, you know, some of the larger traditional financial institutions that are now coming into crypto. >> Um, >> I didn't see them mentioned on Wyoming's stable coin launch, but >> yeah. Do we have Graham? >> I think we do. >> I think we're bring All right, Graeme. Um, I think you're in now. >> You hear me? >> Yes, sir. >> We got you. >> Okay, there we go.

>> So, yeah, man. Tell us about what it's like being a free agent in crypto. Uh, so obviously we were hanging out with the uh with your previous gig with Omni and then um you know you kind of uh had a couple weeks there trying to you know figure out what's next etc. What is it like being a free agent in crypto? Why did you choose securityize? Um yeah how was that? >> Yeah I mean I think um in in short it's it was stressful to be honest. It's funny like I I I think that right now there's just so much opportunity in the space. I'm not somebody who like I'm moving around right now. I have a really hard time sitting still. And so I think you know I did do this to myself which

thank God I just like forced myself to get off socials like get off X like all of that. Just like put that away because I mean if you're in this constant stream of just like seeing stuff on the timeline all the time like you're like oh man I'm just missing out. And so I think there was uh there was an element to that that was kind of pushing me to like all right I got to get back in the game. Got to figure out what I'm going to do. Um but I mean I would say also like what's cool is there's so many so many new and exciting things going on and I think that's the I mean that's what drew me to the space to begin with is that there's just so much opportunity. Um and so yeah I mean I had a lot of great conversations with folks.

I used uh you know the few months I had off to catch up with some old pals. um you know meet up with people that I trust and like in the space, some adviserss, mentors, all that good stuff. And also just like did a lot of reading, a lot of research trying to figure out, you know, where this space is going. Um and yeah, I guess I can kind of, you know, get back to get get to the question of why securitize. Um, but just like based on all these different conversations that I've been having, I really feel like we're at this convergence, this point where Trafi crypto, it's coming together, right? And I feel like this has been happening for a long time and some people are bashing it, but this is what we've always wanted in this space is like we're just being

embraced and accepted by the masses, right? And so for me it's like all right what are the opportunities that give me uh that the exposure to being at that apex right where we have like people that have that are regulatory compliant friendly right they've been working with the big institutions they've been pushing the needle they've been you at the forefront of this of this narrative of these these products putting things on chain right doing it the right way um but also understand things from the crypto side and I think you take a look at you know where crypto is today you look at you know the US being I I think the center I mean not biased but the center of of where crypto is right now especially New York um and who's been you know further along in terms of working with folks in Washington and um

just like I said being regulatory compliant and it was it was a no-brainer when this opportunity came across my desk. So in short that's that's why I chose Securitize. >> It's awesome. And so, you know, you got there recently. Give us an idea of what Securitize's ecosystem is up until, you know, when you arrived. And then obviously you have big plans. Securitize has big plans already. Very ambitious. >> Give us a sense of where this ecosystem is headed. >> Yeah. I mean, I think what's what's been really cool is I mean, we work with everybody. Like I've I've just kind of I've noticed I mean, I've been on the job I think this is my what sixth or seventh day. And so I mean it's been getting added to a ton of chats, having a ton of conversations with existing partners, potential new partners. I mean

what's really cool is that security has such a great brand with institutions and funds and banks and suits people in Tradfi, right? And so it's this this brand of trust and compliance and you know doing things the right way, right? And so we have a lot of happy partners, a lot of people that we're working closely with um because they see the the progress that we've been making in putting, you know, real world assets on chain. Um and so I think like what's been really sweet is getting to getting thrown into some of these conversations. A lot of people I've been fortunate to have met through my time at Omni or SE or just being in the space, right? So what's fun is kind of picking up the conversation with uh some of these folks. I mean I was having fun with Moro

today. of talking with folks at Avalanche. Like these are these are people that I've known for a while and getting to, you know, cook with them again is is super super exciting. So uh I mean the great thing is like we have several of these chain partners, tons of protocol partners um today and I think really our focus is you know on the issuer side figuring out all right what are the types of assets that we want to we want to you know work with issuers to put on to put on chain to tokenize and then also figuring out the dream of distributing these assets right so how do we get them deeply embedded in DeFi how do we get people excited about them how do we provide them with new opportunities uh what's the the persona the profile the person that's going to be investing investing in these um and

that's I mean that's my dayto-day uh and that's what really excites me and I think it it's fun to have the power of a bigger established firm that has a lot of trust in the space and figuring out all right how do we bring that to the masses how do we you know go nuts on CT uh without pushing the boundary too much which we know is always fun but you know it's uh it's been a fun a fun experience last couple days so >> so all right Graham so I'm looking to get into RWAS into tokenization. You know, I've I've heard about it. I'm I'm crypto curious maybe. Um, you know, for for these types of people looking to kind of track and understand what secured size is doing, how to kind of

analyze this this this entire industry of RWAS, like where do I start? You know, how do I evaluate which RWAs to invest in? Uh, you know, if I'm an issuer, how do I choose which to bring to market? Where do I go to find information? How do I evaluate this market kind of either from like a framework perspective, a data perspective? Where am I going to kind of get my feet wet right now? >> Great question, Andy. I'm so glad you asked it. Go to uh go to go to rwa.xyz. Uh no, but seriously, I've known Adam and Charlie over there for for years.

These guys are great. They've been working on this for a long time. Uh tons of opportunities to track, you know, the goings and the comingings of the space, the overall market. Um, you know, I've just really admired the work they've done. It's collected a ton of data. It's all there for the taking. Have a look. Uh, it's it's been super helpful for me personally. Um, and you can see, I mean, you can see who's the who the leaders are in terms of token tokenizing assets in the space. Um, it is us. I'm a little biased. Uh, but you know, it is it is a great tool. Like I said, known it for a long time and go check them out. It's rwa.x.

>> Yeah, I've been doing I've been posting quite a bit of data from them. Um, I think we're actually going to get like a we're going to get a new sick layout like Bloomberg kind of style with like different charts and like on on the screen. I think that we're we're going to use their API and uh >> No, I think you I think you should. It's a great product. >> Yeah, it's pretty sick. Um, cool. >> Graeme, I'm I'm curious because I'm looking at rwa.xyz now and I see the split of RWA that make up the industry, right? And so, um, we've got several billion here, upwards between 20 and 25 billion, uh, in RWAs.

Over half of that, over 15 billion is in private credit. And then you've got about 7.3 billion US Treasury debt, probably, you know, shortdated T bills all the way up to longdated treasuries. And then just about two billion in commodities. The private credit market is something that I've heard a lot about, but it kind of feels like it's flying underneath the radar now. I'm curious when it comes to secure ties, is there a particular sector that you guys are focused on or do you guys do all of it? What are some of those sectors that that you're most excited about? >> I mean, yeah, we do we do a bunch of stuff, right? I mean, we've had uh as you know, we have um you know, we have private credit, we have T-Bill products as well. We work with some of the leaders in the space. We work with Ban,

probably familiar with Vill, Biddle, etc. on that end. Um the short answer is like we're we're open to to anything that we think is interesting. Um we're having a ton of conversations with issuers with you know companies people know right about some of this stuff which is super exciting. But you know I think for me something that one of the things that really drew me to securitize is just the opportunity to tokenize equity. I think that's that's where we're headed with this. I think if you think about the the advantages whether composability or settlement or transferability speed with which you can transact like all of these inherent advantages it's a it's a no-brainer. Um and I think we're we're moving toward 247 markets. We already see that in crypto. I think it's inevitable it's going to happen for equities as well. Um and really what I'm excited about is

like I mean we're we're doing this without without rappers. And I think that's what really makes us different is that with us, you know, you're able to tap into actual trad. wrapping these assets, there's always risk of DPEGs and stuff like that, right? There's just inherent security risks with these uh these things. And so for me, I think, you know, when you look at really bridging the gap between traditional finance and crypto, like this is we're at the center of it. And we've been working at this for for a long time and you know, admire the folks at the firm, Carlos, Michael, folks who've been really paving the way to make this happen for years. It's finally coming to to a head. Yeah, we had we had your uh boss man Shauna Shine on the show a couple months back. I was in

Sweden actually. It was [ __ ] sweating bullets. It was like 900 PM, no AC, but we were talking about this real versus kind of wrapped asset idea. Um and it seems like securityize is very very hard set on wanting to optimize for real assets over this these kind of rap formats. Um and and and from what I came to understand was and as you said it's really just about like a safety kind of concern as well as a security concern like is there is is there a like a succinct way that you can explain why securitized real assets are superior to you know other form of wrapped assets like just like is there a way for you know smooth brainers to understand this?

Uh is there an analogy? I'll be the I'll be the smooth brainer because I I wasn't unfortunately not on that that one with uh with Mr. Shauna. Um and so yeah I am curious why is it that wrapped ass wrapped RWAS what what's so wrong about those >> whenever I mean whenever you wrap an asset you don't necessarily have direct access to the underlying right so when that happens like something can go wrong you can have an oracle manipulation you can have some some sort of manipulation that takes place and we've I mean if we many of us have been crypto long enough we've had this sort of thing happen sucks right but there's no recourse there and so uh if if you do actually have uh ties to the underlying you you do have that that security blanket

versus just you know some wrapped assets tied to an oracle price feed it's etc. Right. So there's there's some opportunities there um on the security side for sure. >> And so does it mean that the the RWAS that are uh in securitiz are these deposited into some smart contract? Are they redeemable? Is that what gives us kind of more direct asset rather than wrapping or what what's the mechanism that is more direct when it comes to the the bridge between traditional finance which is typically offchain, right? Like do you still have to build that bridge between offchain and onchain? How do you build a more direct one without wrapping?

>> Yeah, I mean I think for us it's uh you know there's there's a ton of different advantages, right? It's instant settlement. It's uh you know instead of dealing with like T plus2 Well, I guess like relative to the I guess when it comes to the rapper side of things that's not the most relevant, but um there's I think with rappers it's it's not necessarily access to the asset that investors think they're getting. um substantially more counterparty risk because of these you know these additional third parties and whatnot right so I think what we're seeing with these these X stocks these SPVS I mean they're pretending to be real stocks um but you know for us what we're building these are blockchain native securities we're doing this in a regulatory

compliant fashion we're the only player in the space doing that today got a long ways to go but you know making a ton of progress on that front >> Graham so we we recently saw circle announce ARC their own L1 one and Stripe announced it. Um, and these two took different paths compared to Robin Hood which launched their A or announced an Ethereum L2. Um, the Ethereum community was really really pissed I think at the whole like L1 and like there's this question like why do we need more L1's etc. Um, do you have a take on on L1 L2? Do you have a take on why on um you know what these institutions want if you're you know when speaking to them when

they're looking to come into the space like obviously they want some sort of control of their of their chain or of their environment but like what is your take on Stripe's decision versus Robin Hood's decision does it matter are we just overinflating the the importance of like these decisions and and kind of undermining the bigger picture here which is just that these guys are coming to play onchain, you know, what's your take on these recent announcements? >> I mean, I think the long and short of it is that it's early. Um, it's it's super early. They're figuring it out, right? I think what's I mean, if you asked me like two, three, four years ago if I thought these guys were going to be jumping in the space, I thought you were crazy. Um, so I think that we got to celebrate the progress. I think it's

it's too early to tell uh what the long-term impact of this is going to be, but um all the chatter around it I think is awesome. I know people like talk about oh another L1, another L2, whatever, like as if it's, you know, a bad thing. Like we should be happy. They're massive companies that are adopting our technology. Like we should be patting ourselves on the back if anything for it. So I think it's like I said, too early to tell, but overall really really incredible signal. I think um you know the work that the work that they're they're doing is is really just you know making a bigger pie for all of us. So super excited for it.

>> The joke for a while there was that uh Ethereum was an L2 on top of Tether and and USDC and now we're really going to find out like they're going to go split off. They're going to do native issuance on their own chains and then we're going to find interoperable connections between these different chains. And so we'll we'll start to see okay well if you go to RWA.xyz XYZ Ethereum currently has by far I think they have7 billion dollars of RWAS on their chain. How much of that is going to move to maybe the Stripe or the ARC chain, right? Um >> yeah.

>> Uh we're we're going to find out. Um Grim, I had a more general ecosystem question because you know you were at you at some more cryptonative institutions. obviously secure ties very cryptonative but has very strong ties to major financial institutions. Does your BD ecosystem sales mind did it did you kind of have to do a paradigm shift when you're going from more cryptonative sort of conversations to more traditional ones? How how did that mentality evolve? Yeah, I mean I think it's uh it's just an important BD sales skill o overall, but uh you got to know know the people that you're talking to and working with.

And so I think it's it's about reading the room. I think uh I've been fortunate to have quite a bit of extensive just on the ground crypto native, if you want to call it that, relationship experience, right? So I think sometimes uh there's a lot of value in that because I feel like it's it's it's quite quite rare. It's a very specific niche type of industry and you know relationship skill to have >> proof of being bro. But you have to figure out like how to navigate navigate navigate that and you know push limits in a healthy way but also you know understand the the limits and parameters uh of you know of the job that you have right and so I think you know my whole goal with with joining

security is I wanted to be a part of the you know bringing crypto to the next to to the next phase which I really believe is this regulatory compliant um you this way of doing things right so again I feel like I do come from a bit more on the wild west end of the crypto land spectrum, but uh I think figuring out um you know how to how to leverage that and the lessons learned from it um apply those to to you know talk with the right partners and just understand the context is is the key there.

>> One one more question for you. Earlier we we were talking about this new uh stable coin out of Wyoming, right? first public uh stable coin issued, you know, by a state. I think this trend is going to continue and and they're launching it on Ethereum. They're launching it on Ethereum L2s, right? And so theoretically, if there's more stable coin activity, you know, they'll have to pay ETH gas fees, that could that could add to uh the utilization of ETH. I'm I'm curious. Do you think, you know, as we kind of get more and more utilization of ETH, are there going to be a lot of kind of trades back and forth, a lot of very high chain activity, gas fees go way up, or do you think it might trend more like Bitcoin, right? Less currency,

more store of value. We're going to put a lot of RWAs, a lot of uh treasuries, a lot of assets on chain, but we're not going to move them around too much. And these treasury companies like the Sharpling Gaming, the Tom Lee, Bitmine, they're really accumulating, gathering up all this ETH in order to have a share of the network so that they can be the decision makers when it comes to network upgrades and and that sort of thing. Do you think ETH takes more of this store value path or or this techn like high utilization technology path?

>> Yeah, I mean I think it kind of I kind of view him as as one and the same. I mean, maybe I'm not fully understanding the question, but I think like I don't know what what we're seeing now in terms of the appetite for these these products and where things are going. I think it's I see it as both. I I don't think you I don't think you necessarily have to choose one or the other. Um, but I I do think what has been cool is seeing just like the the opportunities in that in that ecosystem specifically with the more traditional finance that's coming on chain and and just you know being being excited about ETH. I mean we've all been excited about ETH. I think the last like few months it's been cool to see that long last >> finally your bags

>> take it long enough. Um, but yeah, I mean I think it's I think there's like I mean to go back to the the arc stripe question too. It's just like it's too early to tell. I think you know this has really been accelerating over the last several months and so I don't know ask me in a few more months a year and then I'll be able to give you a better answer. One one last one for you Graham if you could choose one person entity group etc to pitch what you guys are doing at securityize 2, who would you choose and what would your pitch be? I would get I would choose every chain, every protocol, and every asset issuer.

No, but seriously, if you want to like in a pipe dream world, like I'd love to go to I'd love to go to uh Tim Cook at Apple and be like, "Hey, we'll put Apple on chain. We'll do it in a regulatory compliant manner. >> Uh SEC regulator, we're working with all the all the right people." And um you know, it really is the future. I think it's it's where this industry is headed. I think there's tons of opportunity and um that's uh yeah that'd be my my dream my dream >> facing regime here. You know I'd like to see you on more podcasts on more streams and doing conferences and and things. I think it uh I think you've got the vibe for it. So thanks for coming on, bro.

And uh we'll see you we'll see you again in a couple months maybe and uh get another update. >> Sounds good, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for going easy on me. Six days on the job. >> Yeah, exactly. Yeah, man. All right, take take it easy, brother. >> Man, the tokenization space is just going to keep growing. That is for sure. >> Oh, yeah. >> Um >> Oh, yeah. >> You know, you could tell Graham was like a bit like uh he's new to the job. He's kind of like short answers. He's got he's got some stuff to say. Doesn't want to like doesn't, you know, doesn't know what he you know, maybe what he can or can't say, but he's got, you know, I think he's excited. He's got the right energy. I think he's got the right mindset. Uh so I'm stoked on it. Um, and

you know, I'm looking forward to to seeing how they grow. And yeah, I mean, uh, those guys are those guys are definitely leading the way, uh, in the tokenization world. And it it just further validates how I kind of think that we we want to take, uh, where we're going with the roll up more in this kind of >> uh, more more in that type of space. It that is just where all the real things are happening. But at the same time, like talking to Luke about hyper EVM air airdrop farming is still super super lit. Honestly, it's like super it's exciting. It's new. It's it's fresh.

It's it's like onchain native. So some sort of balance of the two is the is the sweet spot. >> I think so too. And I think hyperlquid and some of these early opportunities are effectively the prop capital world of onchain finance. So you have like greater institutional capital and those are going to be RWAS, T bills. It it really depends on where you fall on the risk curve. And I think I think we're, you know, we're here to cross that chasm between the right side of the risk curve, the left side of the risk curve. Um we're going to have segments that appeal to both sides of the risk curve. Yeah. From my perspective, I think, you know, there's going to be a little bit of something for everyone um here on the rollup. So

I'm I'm very very excited. I think next up we've got the one >> chining God only be funny. Dude, I've been tweeting about XRP versus chain link as a war and it's been going super super viral. >> Why are you so Before we get Zack up here, why are you so bullish on >> I don't know. I barely have any chain link. We're definitely not paid Kos. I just I just I just like it, man. I just like stirring the XRP pot, you know? It's just hilarious. Like because if we asked you back in 2021, you or 20 even 2017, you weren't a link marine back then, were you? But >> I bought chain link at like less than a dollar in 2018 or 2019 and then rode it up to 40 or 50 and then made a nice move

and fortunately haven't really bought much back because I kind of considered it to be that was the trade. But you know, there's always a trade after the trade and so uh we we'll we'll we'll get Zack up here. I think he's in the back. Let's get him up. Um, and let's talk all things Chainlink. Uh, we had Zach on, I don't know, maybe like three or four months ago, Zach. So, good to have you back. It seems like a lot has changed. Uh, but also probably a lot has stayed the same. So, good to see you. >> Okay, it's the number go up technology that that has changed. That is the huge kicker here.

change that are getting a lot of people excited, I would say. >> All right, we're going to talk Link Reserve. We're going to talk uh Swift, their upcoming conference. We're going to talk um the the uh just latest in the institutional race. But I got to start XRP Army versus Chain Link Marines. Zack, I've been putting out these tweets that have been saying that this is a battle that Link's going to flip XRP. They've been going viral. you've been f fired up on them. Um maybe give us your side of the story, man. How did this beef start? It's got been going on for years. You're talking about NDAs that that these guys have been, you know, hush- hushing breadcrumbs trying to put together the best rumors possible on the XRP army side, but you seem to be, you

know, very sure that Chainlink is the one that is actually kind of making this happen. You know what, you know, how did this start? give us the story here and and give us your side of the story. >> Yeah, I mean this debate goes back to at least from what I remember 2019. So like kind of early days when I really got into crypto Twitter. But it what it comes down to ultimately is just who is the best position to benefit from the institutional adoption of blockchains for at least you know since Ripple was a thing that was always XRP's narrative. You know XRP would be the one to benefit. They're the ones working with the banks. You know there's all these NDAs. It's all hidden behind the scenes, but when it happens, oh, you better be ready. It's going to happen. I've been hearing that like stories along those

lines for at least seven years personally that like the, you know, banks are right around the corner. They're just about adopted. And like that whole time, these past seven years, Chainlink has actually been working with institutions. And not in like a there's a PDF from 10 years ago that mentions chain link or you know, it's all NDA so I can't talk about it, but it's like Swift comes out and says, "Hey, we're using Chainlink for this." JB Morgan comes out and says, "Hey, we're using Chainlink for this." and UBS and SBI and like all these entities have said very publicly like how they're using the chain tech stack and then at the same time I see like the overall narrative specifically with like kind of normie investors is still like oh XRP is going to be the winner. So to me there's this huge disconnect between what the

narrative has been for like 10 years which is like oh XRP is going to win all the banks to what I actually see in reality which is that XRP's kind of core product just has not seen meaningful traction with institutions whereas what I see with Chainlink is the exact opposite. I see a meaningful growing acceleration in usage. So it's just these kind of massive disconnect and then you know along the way you have these fun debates about uh people thinking XRP is cheaper than link because the price is lower because they don't understand market cap and all those fun Twitter Twitter debates but ultimately just comes down to like if institutions come on chain which is exactly what we're seeing now like it's pretty evident who's going to benefit.

think I think Chandlink is just the clear winner in that regard. >> To to be fair, the the lawsuit against XRP must have slowed them down significant and probably stopped them in their tracks, right? So, do do you think that, you know, they're way behind now? Uh, a lot of these other, you know, chain link was able to go and and acquire all these relationships. Do they have any sort of momentum now that that lawsuit has been has been uh, you know, put to rest? Are are you starting to see more signs of life? Um they're still light years behind some of the relationships that you guys have have gotten, but are are you are you thinking about them as a competitor? How do you

see similar projects in the space, other oracles, other other teams like this? >> Yeah. So, I wouldn't discount that like the lawsuit, you know, it didn't help them at all. I'll say at this point they can no longer use that as a shield or an excuse for whether or not used, right? But the US regulators during the previous administration went went against a lot of projects. They went hard against Ethereum and Ethereum has come out even stronger. Like they were growing in adoption during that time. So I can't say that's you can't really pin it on that reason alone in my opinion. But like from a technology perspective, Chainlink and XRP are two very different things. Like XRP is a blockchain.

They're about crossber payments and this XRP bridge currency. Chainlink is much more about connectivity. You know what what what do tokenized assets need? What do smart contract applications need? You know, they need data and they need crosschain and privacy and compliance and all these services that chain link provides. So really from like a technical perspective, they're actually very complimentary. Ripple uses chain links data feeds for their stable coin. Their RLUSD stable coin that's why it's listed on a because they have a chain link price feed. So like from a technical perspective, they are complimentary in that regard. But in my mind, when I think about, you know, how the landscape's going to evolve is that there's going to be thousands of blockchains and there's going to be even more tokenized assets and digital assets that institutions want to trade. In order for the XRP thesis to really play

out as they think it will, institutions either need to adopt the XRP ledger as their blockchain, which is that's a pretty big bet that they're not going to go with any other blockchain or use their own ledger, or they're going to use XRP as like this bridge asset in their digital asset transactions, which I personally just have not seen that traction take off. Whereas, when I look at chain link, the thesis I see is more are institutions going to adopt blockchains if yes, they're going to need chain link services. It does not matter if it's Ethereum or Salana or you know Kexis by JP Morgan some permission chain they're going to need data crosschain compliance connection to Swift all this and regardless of what asset they want to use in those uh transactions whether it's stable coins or CBDC's or tokenized funds or or like

Bitcoin or something you're still going to need chain link services if you want a lending market you need to price the collateral if you want per you need to be able to price those trades like the no matter what kind of asset or blockchain that's being used in an institutional context text, you're still going to need chain link, whereas XRP is a much more specific bet that they're going to adopt their tech stack and their ledger and their asset, which I just find that to be personally unlikely and just much more riskier of a play. So, when I look at like other players in the space, like there's specific entities and they do price feeds and there's entities and they do crosschain or they do compliance, they typically do one of those things. Chainlink's the only one that I've seen that is doing all of these different verticals all

within one platform. So I don't see any one for one competitor to chain link. Basically anything in the space can work with chain link which is why you know there's thousands of integrations and users of chain link but I assume at some point there'll be a competitor in the same way that you know Google and Microsoft compete because they both have this giant tech platform that spans the entire web 2. I we'll see something like that in web 3. >> Yeah. Um, I guess last thing on this kind of topic is clearly XRP and ADA Cardano have done something right with the way that they've built this fervorous community of people who I mean, as politely as possible, know so little about how crypto actually works,

yet are so vocally loud and excited about the fact that these specific companies or projects are the future of the entire space. Um whereas it seems like chain link maybe has really attracted a strong you know core marine community with regards to uh these like kind of crypto hardcore believers from Reddit from 4chan early early adopters but maybe like struggle to have a mainstream normie retail like message like do you think that there's something that like are you guys working on something that is appealing like like basically what I'm getting at is you know there's there's a very left curve like oh like XRP is going to be used by the banks bullish like and some for some

reason that has perforated and proliferated so much um of that of that kind of population but it seems like chain link maybe hasn't gotten that population so excited about chain link you know is is there anything is there a reason why is something that you guys are are like are have thought about from your messaging um or or does that really just not even matter and like what actually matters is the people that you guys are working with and um you know trying to actually get those people involved. >> I think I think you're spot on in the perspective that Ripple, Cardano, and a few other coins have just perfected this retail or normie persona to retail investor. Like that pipeline, you know, your your Uber driver, your barber or >> always going to talk about XRP first.

Like I have to give them credit on that that whatever they did, if they did anything, it worked very well. I would say the core difference is that XRP has had the thesis of banks plus blockchains for 10 years. So they've been very consistent on that story and they've just existed for a long time. And what I've kind of seen looking at, you know, where do normies kind of get their information? Well, they get it from Facebook and they get it from Tik Tok and these places. And so when I look at it, I just see the most insane misinformation and just grand conspiracies about, you know, Black Rockck's going to buy 7 trillion of XRP or, you know, all all these BIS is secretly adopting XRP in their private ledger. Not saying everyone in the community, you know, believes that or anything, but I just see that so

commonly across the place. And I think the Chandler community has always taken kind of a nobullshit approach where like they are not uh uncomfortable grilling the team if they think something's not correct. Like they will do that. And I think a lot of other communities don't have that energy. They'll just eat up whatever story that they're served on a platter by the social media algorithm. So I think there's kind of just at least from the roots of the community, they just took two very different paths. But I will say there's been a lot of work of kind of simplifying what the chain link message is over time. And it's it's a difficult task because chain link just does so much. You know, you have a data story, but you also have a crosschain story.

You have an institutional bank story and you have this compliance story and this privacy story. Like how do you create one story that kind of wraps everything up together? I don't think there's like going to be one perfect answer for that, but I think as more and more institutions like start using chain link and you know the economics continue to prove the story kind of creates itself within the community. I found that the best narratives and the best stories don't don't come from teams. They come from the community themselves because they're able to find what's sticking, you know, these memes propagate over time and then the team can kind of lean on those stories. So, I've seen that play out a little bit in Chainlink as well. And I think in general as Chandlink goes down more of this unified platform approach, then you could just

say, "Oh, it's a decentralized AWS like is a developer platform. You go build applications there." And as more as the building blocks are put there, then that's more intuitive. But yeah, it's also a question of like who's your audience? Is your audience retail investors or is your audience the banks and web3 developers? Because right, those are going to be two very different stories. You got to talk to both, but you know, there's some projects that only talk to retail and they don't really have much of a developer community as a result. And I think that's >> I think that's short-sighted of them. >> Yeah. >> You're you you pretty clearly articulated chain links audience, right? And and there's a quite quite a few of them. telling a a unified story maybe may be difficult but you've identified Swift, Mastercard, JP Morgan, UBS, Bank of New York, Melon City, Franklin

Templeton, Fidelity, like there's all of these names and that's according to your tweet that you posted a few days ago. These are all using Chain Link uh or excuse me, you know, the global financial system is adopting Link. That's just to name a few. And so, you know, these these institutions are part of Chainlink's audience. you're going you're talking to them or the chain link team is talking to them. Uh other teams are targeting retail or or you know normies and you're talking to the banks. What is it that when you tell them it makes them want to work with you? Like what is it that you're saying in these conversations when they hear it they're like okay yes we we'd like to adopt Link. We're going to choose you as an institutional partner. Whether it's blockchain services or it's data

services. You're you're going into these these conversations. You guys are saying things and they like what they're hearing. what what is it that you're saying? >> Yeah. So, I'm not in those conversations personally, but I've talked to the people who, you know, talk talk with those clients and really just comes down to like are you solving their core requirements because there's a lot of projects, a lot of crypto projects in general are looking for a problem to solve. They've come up with a great technology and now they're just trying to figure out like who wants to use this thing and for what use case. So, for Chandlick, it's really the reverse. It's talking to the client going, "Okay, you want to do a tokenized fund. What do you need to make that possible?" Oh, you need net asset value data. Okay, well let's go build that solution for that.

Oh, you need the ability to bridge your token from your private ledger to Ethereum or something. Okay, well let's use CCIP for that. So it's very like problem solutionoriented where I think a lot of projects and a lot of a lot of companies in the space, they just either they don't have the connections to get the user requirements or they just are so honed in on building really cool interesting tech that they don't really stop to think about, okay, does this actually meet the institutional requirements? Because there's a lot of products in crypto that that really don't just yet. So once you have those solutions, what Chinlink's been moving more and more towards is okay, how can you use the Chainlink platform, the tech stack in a self-s served manner because historically it's been okay, Chainlink Labs is going to go build something for you, but you know that takes time and

you have to deal with the team. is the platform is more self-s served an institution go okay I just saw that JP Morgan is using chainlink for crosschain settlement I want to do that and if they can come into the chain link platform and just use it in the same way they use AWS they just plug the things together they don't actually ever have to deal with the team or talk to the team if they don't want to they certainly can you know there's you know get support and 247 uh on call support and all that but you know I I think that's kind of the goal is how can you actually solve the problems that they have with real products and how can you reduce the friction by enabling them to even have to talk to a human and just go out and build things because institutions are

very similar in web 3 devs in that regard where they just want to build stuff. They want to solve problems. They want to get users. They want to generate revenue. Like it at the end of the day, the goals of Trafy are not really that different than crypto in terms of building apps and getting users and making money. It's >> just, you know, they are more regulated and they're in a different uh use case vertical. But that that's kind of always the way that I've seen Chainlink approach things. and and in general like you know from a just from like a marketing perspective there'll be certain projects that will they'll talk about the token price and they'll go on TV with a t-shirt of their ticker logo on it and talk how well the to coin's going to do like I cannot personally ever see Sergey doing anything like that

that's not the way >> wearing a flannel dude >> or a suit he's wearing a suit sometimes >> or a suit exactly um Zach so let's talk about that then the the uh Link Reserve now is is coming out and I I've been I've been, you know, kind of writing about this in the last couple months. Like, guys, it's not 2020 anymore. Like, there are so many crypto tokens now with so many different narratives and ideas that like you need to give somebody a damn good reason to buy your token. Like, it is no longer like, oh, like we're all just going to go up and it's going to be great and we're all going to go down. Like sure, maybe we get some period of like whatever alt season or altcoin outperformance, but like really there are there are now and I think

hyperlquid as well as the new Trump administration both kind of push this agenda like further than you know any previous event where one you can redirect uh value back to token holders with the administration, less risk, less regulatory scrutiny. Um, and then two, Hyperlquid came out and said like, "Look guys, we're just going to take all of our revenue and just buy that token back and if you're not going to do something similar, then why would I buy your token? I'm just going to buy Hype." And so maybe there's other factors, but you know, when it comes to my mind, I I get to, you know, the point of where we're at now, which is like, give me a damn good reason to buy your asset and invest. Otherwise, I'm just providing exit liquidity for insiders. I think that's a lot of like the mindset people

have now with Chain Link. Um, you guys have rolled out this link reserve. There's been all sorts of just commentary about it. So, I think I want to just give you the chance to clear the air here. What is the purpose of the link reserve? How does it work? Um, who is in charge? And, you know, what does this actually look like from a practical like protocol mechanical like engineering perspective uh in in terms of how chain link ends up, you know, getting linked to buy and hold in the reserve. Um, you know, just kind of clear the air here. There's a lot of misinformation going around.

>> Yeah, I'm happy to. So, the Chainlink reserve, which was announced a few weeks ago, is a strategic onchain reserve of link tokens that is funded by both onchain revenue generated by the usage of chainlink services as well as off-chain revenue generated via these enterprise deals and the integration of chain link on various blockchains. So, the reserve itself is technically an an extension of something that was released earlier this year called payment abstraction. which is infrastructure that chain link created to reduce payment friction. What that enables is that a user can come to the chainlink platform and pay in their preferred form of payment uh for fees the chain link service fees. So you can come in and you can pay with crypto native assets like

ETH and USDC or other crypto assets and you can come and you can pay in off-chain fiat like a bank wire transfer. And what payment abstraction does is it takes those assets on chain if they're not already converts them into link using a decentralized exchange which initially is unis swap and then it transfers those assets to those destinations of one of which is now the reserve and the reserve is really designed for the long term. So this is like a many many year development. This is not like a short-term scheme and it's really designed to support the network's long-term sustainability. So the link token is a cap supply token. a billion coins. Eventually, all will be circulating in the market, but there's still the need to be able to grow and expand the network and create useful services and grow revenue. And, you know, having a strategic financial

reserve of assets to deploy is very valuable if you want to keep growing your project even once everything's circulating. So, you know, now that chain link is revenue generating, you know, chain link noted that uh chainlink has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue historically. Now it's in a position where it can start uh deploying that historical revenue into the link token and store this into this strategic reserve where it's not going to be touched for multiple years that they confirmed. So it's really just about driving long-term growth and sustainability as well as answering the question of you know chainlink is working with swift or JP Morgan or some bank some entity and they're paying for chain link services in dollars offchain because for whatever legal business reasons they can't pay with

cryptocurrency. There's plenty of businesses like that, you know, should should chain link say like, "No, you can't pay us in that. We're not going to take your money." Like, of course not. They're going to take the money and then put it back into the system. So, by putting that revenue on chain and converting into link, it's directly connecting this huge pot of enterprise revenue that Chainlink is generating and continuing to grow and directly connects that back to the token, which then fuels the systems long-term growth and sustainability. So, it's really creating a unification between all these different sources of revenue, which as far as I'm aware, and I'm happy to be corrected, like this is the first time that a project has brought off-chain enterprise revenue onchain and converted it and put it back into its own native token. Like there's hyperlquid with their buyback system, which was

fantastic to see, but it's all onchain. So, you can you can see all the flows. But when you're signing a legal contract with a bank because they need someone to sign a contract with because that's how they do business deals, then there you have to be able to connect that back to the token. And I think that this uh chain link reserve which is effectively a buyback program is a very clear answer of how does that revenue connect back to the token support the network sustainability and grow the network economically. So it's kind of a unification and what I've seen is that people have been very bullish on chain link from like a technology perspective and an adoption perspective but they never saw the connection of how that ties back to the blink token. And I think with the reserve, it provides a very clear answer of how you as a token

holder are contributing to the system and and benefit in addition to staking. And I think that's kind of unlocked a whole lot of bullishness. I kind of see it as like Chandlink's been throwing these timber logs on a pile for years and they just struck the match and threw it on the pile and then like now we're seeing the fire really growing and I think the match was struck people just couldn't make the connection. >> Well, because everyone knew that you guys were like a good project, right? Everyone knew that you guys had these enterprise deals and that it's expensive to use chain link. Like word on the street is that chain link's expensive. Like [ __ ] like we should use a different oracle provider, right? Or stuff like this. But um now you can actually take that revenue and bring it directly onchain and and use it to be

buying link which um it kind of completes the arc for those who have believed for a long time. So, so Zack in Intuition says that this is a this is a one-way street. Like what what you're saying here is that uh there's going to be deals that are made, teams are going to pay with dollars offchain, fiat into bank accounts. That money is going to be moved onchain. It's going to be used to buy Link. Link is a fixed supply asset. There's only there's a finite supply. And we're just going to store this link away. We're just going to put it into the reserve and we're not going to touch it for years. I mean like maybe this is public info, maybe it's not. Like is there any math as far as like how much

revenue chain link is generating? How much would you expect to go into this reserve on a recurring basis? And then like my intuition says this is going to fill up relatively quickly like link is just going to get sucked out of the market and stored into this reserve and then what you know. >> So I would note that the reserve is one destination where revenue goes. There's also nodes in the network need to be able to be paid because they need to keep you know the lights running and there's also staking which is a third component that's a portion of revenue we'll be going to as well but yeah ultimately what I see the initial reserve announcement um they've put in $1 million a week for the past two weeks so it's it's just begun so based on market price I think

it's about 2.5 2.4 4 million currently. I think that creating the reserve was really just a confirmation that hey the token is actually a core part of the system that when chain link gets adopted in the future and you know more and more banks and institutions come on chain you can understand how that connects back to the blink token because there's a lot of projects in the space where they generate revenue and then they just keep it for themselves and then they kind of just let the token go by the wayside and pretend like it doesn't exist or you know you know get give little cherries or something like they they there's it's a very common dynamic where you have projects who issue equity and and tokens and then they have preferential treatment to the equity holders over the token holders. Like it's a very real

dynamic in the space and I think what Chainlink is basically saying is like hey there's there's none of those games here. The token is the core economic asset of this network. Uh so I think really the long-term potential is you know when institutions come on chain they start tokenizing assets because we're really just have just begun. like we see some T bills, see some private uh credit coming on chain, but it's it's pretty minuscule. And then we have the SEC chairman coming out saying, "Hey, tokenize everything. We're going to bring the whole on the stock market on chain." And they have Larry Fin saying the same thing. And you have all these guys top level either government or institutional leadership saying tokenization is the way forward and RDBA TVL is like a few billion currently. So for me, the whole market is really just begun. like projecting is very difficult

to tell at this stage because we just have seen such a small segment actually come in at this J at this stage and you know chain link the platforms continue to grow as well like a big source of monetization is you know deploying chain link services on blockchains but in the future that may switch more towards enterprise deals with institutions you know they're deploying a large fund and they need all these services so it's like there's going to be a lot of moving pieces but personally I'm very very bullish on the ability of chainling to generate re >> yeah that and that that I think that's The conclusion to draw is that we listed off several financial institutions that are using chain link or adopting chain link one somewhere way one way or another. That's the demand side and what you're talking about all this this

reserve filling up is the only I think the only conclusion to draw is that there's this supply side crisis at works. >> You sound so bullish, man. >> I just don't know how you sound like an Ethereum allude. It just I'm curious to see like at the other end of this once you know this supply starts to get sucked out of the out of the open market like then what how like what is going like what is the plan with all of this link in this reserve you know once it starts to fill up. I'm just curious.

>> I mean ultimately the long-term goal is that the reserve is able to grow faster than its withdrawn fund. like if Janlink is really successful like they're going to want to be able to tap into it and deploy new Oracle networks and be able to use those resources. But if more revenue comes in than you're tapping from, I mean that's just, you know, like you said, a massive supply sink. So I think that that is like the best case scenario where revenue and adoption just goes exponential and we just see this growing black hole of link being stored in this reserve that just doesn't need to be tapped because it's better suited to sit in the reserve than be deployed. Yeah, Zach. Uh let's let's shift gears into the upcoming Swift conference. Um I think it's about a month and a half out.

Uh what is the plan for Chainlink there? Uh who's going? Um what is the expectations? Is there anything that you can share? Is there any expected announcements, things that you've heard? What is the usual kind of setup for the Swift conference that Chainlink uh kind of participates in? Yeah, I can't speak to specifics to to this year's, but historically what we've seen, and just so people know, Cyos is Swift's annual financial conference. They've been doing that for many years. Uh Sergey was there like in 2016, and then now for the past, I want to say three years, Chainlink has been uh there every single Cypos, giving a talk, connecting with institutions, having a booth, like it's it's a good area to connect with a lot of institutions and and drop news related

to institutions because you'll get the most amount of attention from that relevant audience. So, I would probably expect Sergey to give a talk. Uh, maybe something about Swift. I don't want to like speculate. I can't really say to be honest what's going to happen at Cybos this year, but historically because Swift and Chainlink have been working together for so many years and they've entered pre-production on the ability for Swift member banks to connect to blockchains through Chainlink architecture. That's what they've been working on for a few years. Um, they're very, very tight partners. Uh, so I can't say, you know, specifically what's going to be announced this year. I don't know. Uh but usually uh that's always really good connections for Chandler to make there and kind of make a big splash with with the institutions all being in one place in what time.

>> Yeah. And uh a little plug for SmartCon as well coming up in November. >> Will you be there, Zach? >> Yes, I will be there. It'll be in New York. Everyone listening should come. It should be a fun time. Sergey of course will be there and you know every year there's always good announcements at SmartCon. So either virtually but in person, you know, if you can make it that'd be fantastic. Very exciting. >> Yeah, Rob, that's about all that I have. I think we're coming up on time. Uh, anything else for Zach? >> Zack, this has been great. Um, I think I fully understand the thesis on both the protocol side as well as the token side and you guys have been able to leverage these conferences. I guess my my only other question is what other conferences

do you recommend? like this this one that you know you you mentioned has a ton of you know opportunistic institutional connections at at play. Is there any other ones that you've you've found successful when it comes to making some more of these institutional connections yourself or anyone else on the team you know that you've heard? >> Yeah, last year I would say Singapore fintech week was a good one. That's where we drop news about how we're working with UBS, SBI as well, Swift naturally on tokenized funds as well as the ability for tokenized funds like the subscription and the redemptions to the fund to be settled using traditional Swift fiat payments while the fund is actually tokenized on chain. So as an institution, I can buy and sell tokenized funds while using my

traditional payment rail. So that was received very well at that conference. So like you have like this whole segment of like crypto conferences and then you have like the whole these institutional conferences and I think like we're seeing a little bit of bleeding between the two but then you know chain link is as always the bridge between those two different worlds. So uh towards the end of the year we always see like a bunch of financial conferences pop up that good good news usually drops. >> Beautiful. >> All right, Zach, thanks for your time man. Uh best of luck uh in the XRP versus link wars on Twitter. Enjoy the bullishness on the timeline. I'm sure it's fun. And uh we'll we'll we'll catch you soon. We'll see you at SmartCon probably.

>> Fantastic. Great talking to you guys. >> You too. >> Thanks, Zach. >> All righty, guys. That about wraps us up for the day. Uh pretty good stream. Uh fun stream. Uh different perspectives. Scram, Luke, Zach. Um yeah, Rob, any closing thoughts? >> I think I'm a link. >> Yeah, thing looks good. I mean, it's been it's it's been moving. You know, it's funny is like one of my be like best friends from uh Brazil that I would spend some time with down there, he's been holding since uh 10 uh 10 cents >> and uh has just been holding fully and so he's he's pretty bowled up now.

I I think I if if I'm a link marine and we're bold up on link, this challenges some of our general cycle thoughts and and ideas and thesis because, you know, if you think about the regression here where we go Bitcoin to ETH to large caps, it means that, you know, we haven't quite entered the large cap season yet. We definitely have >> with something's up like 100% in the last uh couple couple uh like I don't even know. It's up uh it was at >> it was at like $12 and now it's at like 25. So that's 100% >> $11 on June 21st, >> right?

>> 23. So that's 100 that's 100%. But I mean maybe this time maybe everything is just muted with more money coming into the system. We have less volatility. But I'm going to echo what Luke said about hyperle. It just doesn't feel like euphoria yet. >> Yeah. Yeah. Do you what do what do you think? >> I mean, it's just going to take one pump and then we we'll be there, I think. >> Yeah, that sounds about right. Things change quick. >> All right, guys. Thanks for thanks for joining in. Uh we'll see you guys tomorrow. And uh fun stream. Looking forward to it. Thanks, guys.

>> See you tomorrow. Cheers. >> All righty. Peace. >> Shout out Marcelo. Shout out Leo. Shout out Nero. Shout out all the whole the whole team behind the scenes. You guys are the You guys are rock stars. >> Yes, sir. Thanks guys.