threadguy on Crypto's Social Trading War - The Chopping Block

Transcript

In a way, you get to cut the for the social part because you cut the noise. You get exactly what you want. I'm just here to trade. I'm not here to discuss decentralization. I'm not here to discuss crypto ideals. I just want raw P&L. This is where I'm going. And so, I think that social I think the social graph is very sticky. I really do. >> I think you just indirectly called us hunks, not a dividend. >> It's a tale of two. >> Now, your losses are on someone else's balance sheet. >> Generally speaking, airdrops are kind of pointless anyways. unnamed trading firms who were very involved. >> Eat is the ultimate defi protocols are the antidote to this problem.

>> Hello everybody, welcome to chopping block. Every couple weeks the four of us get together and give the industry insiders perspective on the crypto topics of the day. So quick intro got the gig brain and grand puba at gauntlet. >> Yo, >> next we got Robert the cryptoconur and zar of superstate. >> Good afternoon everybody. Joining us today, we've got special guest thread guy, Titan of the Trenches. >> I was looking forward to that, man. Excited to be here. >> Okay, I'm glad to have you. And I'm Steve, the head hype man at Dragonfly. We're early stage investors in crypto. Want to cave that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life advice. Please see chopping blocks at XYZ for more disclosures. So, Thread Guy, you are in a new era. It feels like you're in your purple era. You've got a

suit on. Tell tell us about this new look that you've got going on and like the kind of new era of the Thread Guy media empire. >> I mean, we're doing market open streams now. I'll tell you what, after 1010, I looked around and thought to myself, what am I going to do with my life? I'm looking at open [laughter] interest, there's none of it. I'm looking at volume, there's none of it. I'm looking at pump fund revenue. It's down 90%. And then I look over my shoulder and I see gold and I see silver trading like memes. I see the AI trade going crazy and I'm just like, man, what if we start trading some of these assets over here?

And so since 1010 basically it was like a crypto only portfolio, cryptoonly stream and obviously the AI trade and the stock trade has been nuts. And so I'm doing market open now. It's like crypto only to we just trade. And the thing that I've learned, go ahead. >> You're doing collared shirts now. Also, >> WELL, LIKE IF WE DO market open, >> we're playing with the big boys, you know. >> I I want to feel inclusive to our new uh stock traders turned uh crypto curious stream viewers. So, >> and that's what you wear every day because I've I've I've seen a lot of your clips and you're always wearing you're always kind of suited up.

>> Well, I usually have a jacket on, too, but I fig I go casual for like Wednesday casual. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, we I mean the only person who wears color shirt on here is Robert. So you you are you are hitting the vibe of our stream. So for for those of you who don't know because I I should preface we have a lot of regulators and lawyers and people like that who listen to our show. So Thread Guy is he's like he's like the Gen Z whisperer. He has one of the largest streams. He has a huge following. He's a big uh trading and markets influencer within crypto. And as he mentioned, obviously his the the purview of his stream has expanded where the crypto kids are now trading a lot more than just crypto. You know, you you went viral very recently for for a a

clip that I think was just maybe yesterday or the day before, >> just two days ago, >> where you said two days ago. Yes. >> Where you said that crypto OGs wouldn't last today because back in the day they were, you know, everything went up. There were altcoin seasons where alts just went up for no reason. you can make money buying just all sorts of garbage and uh you were basically the way you put it you're day trading against plumbers and today it it ain't like that streets are a lot meaner you know talk talk about this take because I think a lot of people were insensed at your description of how easy it was back in the day because of course there I was around back in the day there were a lot of people who lost money back in the day too >> also is an OG am I an OG is Tarun an OG

like what is it >> or are we plumbers >> are we plumbers Okay, I'll give you two takes. The first thing I'll say to round out the intro is that I think this is going to be the right of passage for most crypto traders with things like hyperlquid and equity perks and starting to happen where you realize, wow, I'm just good at this game. Nebius can move 25% in a day. We can trade other things as well. And so, I think it's actually a really cool full circle moment that's happening with crypto right now. And shout out to Hyperlid on that and shout out to my stream on that. Okay, second take. So I look, I made this take and I'll tell you what triggered it and to preface on my experience as well. I

showed up in 2020 for Topshot. So my first cycle was like the end of DeFi summer, which I basically missed and then I was NFT mania, FTX collapse, bare market, memecoin mania, AI coin mania, then now wherever we are right now. And so [laughter] >> and sorry real quick before you got into Top Shots, what were you doing before that? weird internet hustles. So, I was flipping sports cards. I was botting sneakers. I was flipping >> Okay. Okay. >> Supreme. Like, >> I kind of missed the drop shipping era, but the whole reselling like 15-year-old kids making money on the internet. I was like in those groups. There was this interaction that you guys might have missed. I don't know how onchain you are with some of these memes, but there was this guy, not a call out, but he just

sparked this clip, the Flowhorse. Okay. and he's this like OG 2015 Bitcoin Chad type of character and he made a FOMO account and somebody air dropped him 70% of a memecoin called like the froor and he was on Twitter and he was sort of just like what does this mean? What if I burn it? I'll never sell. And he's just getting in this interaction. The meme is like ripping. It's going crazy. He's up, you know, all this money on fees. He has like $2 million in his wallet. And then finally, he's like, "H, I've gone too far. [ __ ] this. I'm never going to talk about it again." Deleted the tweets. And then that was the end of the story. And

I was just looking at how trading in crypto used to be. And that if you were to join some memecoin trading live stream in 2026 and you were to watch how these low cap meme traders operate. I don't know if you've ever really seen what this looks like, but you have meme scope on one frame of your screen and there's like a hundred tokens a minute. And then on the other side you have like the Twitter tracker and that's just going every Elon tweet, every Sam Alman tweet, every CZ tweet, every Brian Armstrong tweet that's going crazy. Then you have the wallet trackers and there's like a million pings every second and it's turned into this like insanely sophisticated process to trade on chain. It looks like Fortnite. It looks like if you see a pro

Fortnite player and they're building and they're quick scoping and they're they're farm. It's like this crazy sort of it's it's a video game. And the take that I made, it's like a a classic NBA take, but I said 2017 there was like I don't know 100 things to buy max, 50 things to buy, and ETH ICO was up, I don't know, 50,000%, Bitcoin went up only, all these assets went up only, and I was basically I said it was much easier to trade in 2017. Now, people were fairly outraged by that, and I want to get your guys' takes on this because you were there and I wasn't. But the thing that I've come around to is I think that every era is just going to say the past era was easier with ex like

hindsight experience and new tooling. I look at 2024 knowing what I know now and I was like yeah that was the easiest memecoin cycle ever. 2024 you looked at what NFTts were in 2021 and it's like all right board apes were worth $500,000 a pop after an $80 mint in like six months. Those were plumbers. And I think there will be this sort of incremental hindsight look back. But that was the take. That's how I got there. And I think the game, especially at the lowest level on chain, has taken on a life of its own. I'm sure we're going to talk about the social trading stuff where it is uber competitive, but you really have an opportunity to like make a name for yourself and blow up as a trader.

>> So, Robert, what do you what do you say the back in the day? Was it was it easier? Was it the same? How's the game changed? I think to me back in the day I watched people starting in like 2011, 2012, 2013 in crypto. I watched all the people lose everything on Mount Gox, right? I watched people lose everything on BitMX when it was early. There's always been a wild media to crypto, right? I don't think it's really changed. I just think the tools have changed. Like people had to jump through crazy hoops early on to get, you know, stuff that seemed to only go up. But when I entered crypto in like 2017 full-time, we'd already been through a cycle where the entire coin market cap

top 100 list was basically dead. Like I remember like looking at like the feather coins and the pure coins and the name coins and the all of these things. By the time I got there in 2017, we'd already been through this like some people make a ton of money, a lot of people get wrecked on all sorts of nonsense like thing. I've never seen it as like OG verse plumber. I've always seen it as it's a fastmoving, highly dynamic ecosystem of new assets, growing assets, dying assets, and everything in between. Yeah. Like certain assets you could have just like done nothing with and like enjoyed the ride and been like, "Oh, Bitcoin goes up from like $10 to $60,000. How hard is that?" But for the

most part, people have always had to navigate new tools, new platforms, new coins, new chains, new wallets, all types of surface areas of risk. You know, back in the day, people were getting all their money stolen from paper wallets that had exploits. Like, it's been a non-stop challenge from 2011 to present. I've never seen it as like, oh, the game has gotten easier, the game has gotten harder. It's just evolved. >> I think that's true. I think, you know, Robert's saying it's true, but I I think I have a more simple answer, which is there were no [ __ ] stable coins before. So, like, yeah, on paper, you're sitting on this thing that had like a huge gain, but there was literally zero liquidity. Every centralized exchange existed to rug you where they're like,

"Our daily limit is withdraw $10,000, and then when you hit withdraw $9,999, our daily limit is $1,000. Please try again." It was like there were true like I think you had more counterparty risk from scammer getting scammed by the venue than anywhere near what you do now. And you also have way less USD risk in the sense that like your stable coin works like you you don't get rugged on your stable coin which is I so obviously >> coin was the stable coin back then. >> No stable coin is insane. >> Right. Right. You're getting rugged on that. you had to do quanto per like you didn't put up USDC to do the perp you put up Bitcoin or you and you're trusting the oracle and like most of these exchanges Oracle in the beginning

was themselves there was lots of I mean I I you were probably like very young when the Arthur Hayes is liquidating me memes existed but like there was a there was a time where everyone would just like be like BitMEX exists just to liquidate its users and like they're front running all their users purpose like the counterparty risk was the thing people were really upset about and I think the weird thing is the 20 on the centralized exchange side I guess like the FTX stuff really kind of definitely clear that up a little bit but the stable coin liquidity I think is the main thing right like you don't have to worry about exiting and you have offramps you didn't need your offramp to be Chinese tether trader 25 that only

let you message them on Skype between zero and 100 GMT Just saying I those are kind of I like I think there was a lot more risk that in the in the like IRL world risk versus onchain risk whereas now you're taking away more like counter trading risk versus counterparty risk. That's like how I >> By the way, the first time I ever experienced something like this was NBA Top Shot and it's like I'm up $100,000 the first time in my life. >> Flo stopped letting people withdraw. >> The withdrawal limit is like $1,000 a day. I'm like [laughter] guys. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It used to all be like that because there were no stable coins and the exchanges themselves didn't really have on-ramps. They had like a couple random bank accounts. Like the [ __ ] that FTX turned out FTX had at the

end where it was like, "Oh, we just have this one master account." Some of these exchanges were that for much longer than you expect if you look at their history and like survival boils down to like stable coins grew. If they didn't grow as the trading pair, I think it would have been it would have been very tough. like so so you're taking all this FX risk whereas now I feel like you're just taking like social media risk which is a very val valid thing right it's like if you don't understand the game then but I think it's just different it's just different >> I I think that's a that's very well stated because you remember the you know the the the infamous FTX Korean wan trade right and like people always wonder like okay why why is this the

quoteunquote kimchi trade why can that make money and the answer is because it's impossible to close the ARB because like actually that money is sitting there and nobody can pick it up because nobody has the bank accounts. Nobody's willing to take the risk of like one leg gets closed and your money's locked up in Korea for the next like year and a half as you sue them to try to get it back. That's why it looks so easy is that you can't see all of the like, you know, the traps the booby traps that are around every single corner that like killed a bunch of people that you never hear about. And so now is has the game gotten harder in the sense of like have markets gotten more efficient? Yes, absolutely. There's way smarter people trading today. There's way more bots.

There's LLMs now, you know, like so there's an obvious sense in which like, you know, I think about I I I've never been much of a trader, but I think about this for poker. I used to play poker professionally. Poker is way harder now than it was at the time that I was playing because I was playing against plumbers, you know. I was playing against like doctors and and lawyers. You know, I want to play Exactly. I want to play some cards on the internet. >> I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure you were mainly playing against rich Chinese people who love playing poker at high >> eventually. Eventually [laughter] eventually um you you work your way up to the rich Chinese people, but uh yeah, today it's just not it's just not like that. And like the markets have markets always become more efficient.

>> Today the only plumber is Drake. You just have to hope that you get matched with Drake, >> I guess. So yeah, >> because I feel like Drake Jake Drake's live streams, that guy loses money playing poker and like just loves losing money. I mean, he's obviously being paid by stake to do it. So I'm sure he's like positive if you include the incentive someone else's money, >> but he just loses like horribly. He's the plumber. >> In reference to poker getting solved, is that something that can ever reverse it reverse itself? Like does the pendulum ever shift on that or do you just need a new game? >> New game. >> You need a new game. >> Like hold them just hold is online hold is just fried for the next >> online hold is fried. I think the the reality is that it moves to private

games and so the private games can be online where it's like okay trusted people who you know we coordinate through some kind of thing and we go into a private poker room but the the the way it used to be of like there's just this global commons that we all play together like now you know I I quit poker before Libertus which was the first neural netbased bot that beat the best humans in heads up poker at the time that I quit poker people used to say that AI would never be as good as humans like people thought oh it's a game of imperfect information, chess and go and all these things are so much easier. Poker's just like fundamentally got this human something or other, you know, it's got this juniqua and the answer is like nope. Totally wrong. LM can do that too or not LM but you know

neural nets. >> The thing though is the venues still make money which is interesting. >> Oh. Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. >> If anything, the venues make more money than they did before. >> Is that true? >> I don't know the inflation adjustment. That would be surpris That doesn't sound right to me. This is why I'm long pump fun by the way. >> Yeah. Well, okay. Well, let's let's let's bring it back to entre trading. That's a good uh that's a good segue. So, one of the big stories lately has been this resurgence in memecoin trading driven in large part by FOMO. So, FOMO, for those of you who don't know, it's a social trading app lives, you know, lives on the app store primarily mobile users and um it allows you to follow other traders. It's a it's a super social experience. and uh but but most

of what people are trading on FOMO is memecoins largely on Salana and on Robin Hood where a lot of the memecoin activity is congregating now their one of their biggest competitors is pumpf fun of course is the OG you can trade pumpf fun launched memecoins on fomo but pump has their own mobile app and they're now starting to fight back to try to get some of that mobile market share back from FOMO so this has led to a little bit of a ground war between FOMO and pumpf fun in that pump. Fund is now starting to sign traders and influencers in exclusive deals. And I think what you can see is that there's some negative sentiment against the way that Pump is doing this because a lot of the people that Pump isn't treating and

saying, "Hey, we'd love to sign you to trade exclusively on our platform and, you know, talk about social trading on Pump. A lot of these people are like posting that they're getting uh, you know, Pump is offering me, you know, 20K or whatever to go and trade exclusively on their platform. This is [ __ ] This sucks. You know, I can't believe they're doing this." maybe a little bit of engagement farming, but also a little bit of a, you know, we're we're now starting to see them like sponsorships or like signing teams or exclusive deals uh that are that are getting formed in these trench wars. And um it seems to be a resurgence at a time when otherwise markets are pretty weak. It feels like there's not, you know, we're definitely not in the 2025 or 2024 type memecoin energy. And yet,

>> also also per volume are coming back to life. Hype volume has been going down too, right? At around the same time this flipped like it feels like >> retail activity is pretty low but we see that the the trenches seem to be pulling ahead for some some reason that seems otherwise inexplicable. So thread guy tell us how how you see the current conflict and and the war going on between FOMO and pumped up fun. I mean, I basically think every exchange is going to go really hard at this social trading platform app, if you will. Like, it, you know, it's really not that different from what Bass tried to do with Jesse Paul. Like, that I think when it's all said and done, we're going to look back and say, damn, they were so close. Wrong time, maybe wrong people.

They were >> two millennial. >> They were so We talked about this month, six months ago. >> It's going to look very similar to what they tried to do, but >> FOMO has been very dominant. Pump's making a big run at it. I think Phantom has ton of money in the platform. I think everyone's going to go at this really hard. And >> I mean, even unis swap, right? Like I was actually surprised like they were they used to be like, "We'll never do this." And >> unis swap's mobile app. >> UniS swap they're endorsing means like >> they launched a launchpad >> and Binance is teasing I think a social trading app. And I think if you're not trading on chain daily, you don't realize Pump Fund's making $2 million a day right now. Like today, they made $2 million yesterday, right? And so I think

that there is just this meta shift happening where I've been saying this take for a long time and it was kind of a joke in 2023 and it's really played out that like traders are the new celebrities, right? Like the cycle's not over till Anom is married to a Kardashian and like you know traders are the biggest things in the world, right? [laughter] >> Wait, sorry. And what we're starting to see, I think, is that like at least in my time in crypto, the influencers and the people that dominated the discourse on Twitter were the founders and they were like the technical thinkers, right?

Like if you if you had a technical take on blockspace debate or you know L2 scaling or something like this, you dominated the discussion. I think post circa 2024, at least in my bubble, it's really shifted towards the traders dominate a lot of the discussion. You look at the influence of someone like Anom, I'll mention him again. And so I think that these social apps proliferate that on 100x scale, right? Because you go on a FOMO and you're a complete nobody. You have no followers on Twitter. It's really hard to break into the zeitgeist in 2026. You go on FOMO and you turn $1,000 into $500,000. And in a day, in a week, in a month, however long that trade takes, you'll have 50,000 followers on FOMO, right? And you

can see these 50,000 wallets. How much money do they have? What do they hold? What do they buy? And so you could, I mean, literally put together some form of calculation of how much financial capital do you have behind you? And so I have this there's this example. There was this famous trade in maybe November, December of 2025. There's this guy Remis and Remis bought this coin called White Whale. This is some real >> Remember the White Whale? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And White Whale goes to goes to 100 mil or something like this. Remis buys $500 worth of this coin at like 2030K. Like real trenches [ __ ] $500 worth of this coin. At top unrealized P&L, it's worth $1.2 $2 million in public for the world

to see. No fake P&L, no fake screenshot. And in a instant, Remis has like 60,000 followers on one of these social trading apps, right? And so I think that this concept is only going to get bigger. And I think we're going to enter the death of like soft power amongst the influencers, right? Cuz as we go further down this line of these cycles, I think people really want to know who's making money. And if you could prove that you're verifiably making money, you dominate more of the discourse, the discussion, and you therefore take over more influence. And so the last thing I'll say on this rant is this progression quietly happened in 2024, late 23, early 24, where everyone started trading on Telegram bots. It was

like Uniot, it was early Bonkbot, it was it was like Banana Gun, all these early Telegram trading bots. It unlocked a lot of liquidity into memes. And what happened is a lot of that trading discussion moved off of Twitter and it moved into these Telegram groups, these FNFS, right? You you and your basically your homies trading chat. Some of them took it very seriously, some of them more casual. And there was all these traders that would spawn with million-dollar P&Ls. And these guys have like a couple thousand followers on Twitter. Who is this? It's like, well, he he's a trader. He's only on Telegram.

Of course, he's only on Telegram. And so I think that was like a test pump of crypto influence and trading influence happening off Twitter. And I think potentially as we go further down this [snorts] evolution, this cycle, it's going to be the real pump of like the traders that move money and move markets are just not the OG crypto influencer crowd that's funny or that [ __ ] posts. It's like who makes real money, who has the biggest P&Ls, and you could verify it on chain. And so I think there's been really progression.

>> You know, you were talking about the OGs. This used to be a big thing of the OGs of like the leaderboard on BitMX and then it was the leaderboard on FTX. It's weird actually. Binance was not like a leaderboard driven growth story, but I I just like everyone was constantly posting like their screenshot of like I'm number three on BitMX, I'm number three on Binance. >> You you remember this, right? Like there was this era of like three arrows entire growth story was like purely based on the fact that they were like number one on FTX and BitMX for like two or three years.

>> That's awesome, right? >> So it's actually very similar. It's just like kind of a different form factor, >> right? There have been leaderboards that led to major crypto celebrity in ways that were much more provable than influencers who are like I just talk a good Twitter game. I mean the other part of it of course is that if you are running any kind of complicated strategy which people used to not really run very complicated strategies. If you're running complicated strategies then your P&L on any one venue is just not reflective of your overall book right because you might be short on one exchange long on the other one and like okay like what what what exactly like how much money did you make? You really can't tell anymore just because like the the funds that are operating today are are doing complex you know long short

books and they're doing carry trades and so on. Whereas if you're trading memecoins, you can just look at the P&L, you know, like there's no complicated strategies in memecoins. It's like you buy the right thing, you make the 100x or you don't. So there's a there's a simplicity that's much more like what it was like in early crypto. >> I think other markets, Tradfi is sort of converging on this as well. I look around at like maybe this is too niche but like the bubble boys of the world RGC some of these guys that have nailed this AI trade and I think the classic example is like Michael Bur who every day stock market goes up and we're we're tweeting Michael Buried stock market goes down and it's like Michael Bur is a legend and you look at the Michael Bur story and I think it's a tale of the

glory for one of these monster trades is that 20 years later and arguably not a single correct call since and he has like 350,000 subscribers on the substack, right? Michael Bur is is a a finance legend forever. You look at a flood in the type of outcome he had on hyperlquid and he could never make a correct call for the rest of his time and he will have unbelievable amounts of financial capital that follow behind him. And so I think for a lot of these these guys that are, you know, this younger generation that's coming up, what's the easiest what is the easiest way for me to make $100,000 trading? It's maybe zero day options the way these AI stocks are moving right now or it's trading on

chain, right? And if you show up on chain on one of these apps and you flip a couple thousand dollars into a hundred, all of the sudden you you're like a somebody now. And so I think onchain has solidified itself as a venue for like a nobody to become a somebody. And Pump Fund's ability to continuously make a million dollars a day post1010 is like mesmerizing to me. If there was ever a time for us to say the memecoin experiment has failed, we are done. It was October 11th, 2025, right? I mean that was the day to be like, okay guys, pack this up. It's done. And so one of the things I've been saying for a while is that I think the right tail of memecoins just having a foundational

niche in finance is super underpriced. It them just existing and just maybe it's it's small, maybe it'll get bigger as liquidity throws flows through the system, but I think that they're longstanding is something that not a lot of people have taken seriously enough and it's starting to manifest itself again. like FOMO revenue. They're making four four $500,000 a day. Pump Funds making $2 million a day. Like these are I mean they're up there with the prediction markets, right? These are are crazy numbers. Some of these uh these trading platforms are are putting up. You see what Robin Hood is doing with Robin Hood social. They're trying to do the same thing, right? They're have traders can post a thesis what they're in P&L cards. Like we're definitely moving towards a this isn't a new phenomena, but everybody posts a P&L

card for everything because the upside is so glorious. Well, it's interesting because the idea of social trading, extremely old idea. A cajillion founders have taken a shot at this. And the answer was always in the past that like, well, the social trading platform is like the thing you're trading on plus Twitter. It's not the app. You're not living in the app. You trade in the app and you talk about it on Twitter or your Telegram chat or wherever it is, right? The social thing happens somewhere else. What seems to be unique is that FOMO has kind of nailed this of actually getting people in the app and having the app be this closed loop and this unique follower graph that got big enough got to scale that it's it's really held on to something. I'm curious how you take two questions I have for you guy. One, what do you think

explains the fact that as far as I know the memecoin market cap like the entire memecoin complex has not rebounded that much, right? The overall growth in memecoin value hasn't increased very much, but the amount of trading has actually inflected dramatically over the last few weeks. What do you think explains that? And do you think like that's a regime change or is that just like Robin Hood got everybody riled up? And then second is how do you how do you think about what FOMO is doing versus what Pump Fund is doing in this rivalry? >> I'll answer the second part first is I think that it's ultimately going to come down to who can win the social graph.

You know, I I think the reason like I was a huge Farcaster fan back in the day. I loved Farcaster. I thought it was an awesome idea. I thought Dan May was a genius and I loved what they were trying to do. And ultimately the reason Farcaster lost, there's a plethora of reasons, but I think if you could distill it down to one reason, it's that when something crazy happens in crypto, Kobe's first post is on Twitter, not Farcaster. So, how could you win? Everyone goes there first. Farcaster is an afterthought. And you only have Vitalic. It's sort of you [snorts] need 51%, right? We've seen a um >> Mixer bought Ninja when he was at the peak of his Fortnite career and you know he brought over a massive audience but 51% was still on Twitch and they just tipped the boat over. And I think this

was like the forecaster problem. And so I think ultimately it's going to come down to there's going to be there's a finite number of really good traders. You want to know what they're trading exactly when they're trading it and you want to follow it. That will be your first click. And so I think this is going to be a forever battle of signing traders, who can get who. It's going to be NBA free agency probably in perpetuity now that this is a thing. I mean, you saw Khi Poly Market. Probably the best example is the online casinos. What's the difference between Stake and Rainbet and Rubet and Robbit? Well, one of them has Drake, one of them has Aiden Ross, and whoever has a bigger bigger audience kind of tips it. The tech is the same, the games are the same, the EV is the exact same. And so I think

there's going to be this like forever battle for who can win the social graph [snorts] game which I think is going to be I think it's going to be really sticky. >> And and you think the edge is that you see the trade in real time on FOMO, people are talking about it afterwards on Twitter. So that's like the forecaster graph. You hear it second on Twitter, first on FOMO. >> I think very much like this like whichever, you know, mobile trading app wins that that's what they're winning. Twitter is late, super late to the onchain stuff. Now the philosophical discussions and you know what the bigger sort of broader meta topics discussions they still happen on Twitter of course but I think 2024 was the first time where it was like if there was a new coin and I'm thinking to myself what is

what is goat my first app is telegram 100% first app is telegram you're going there first checking the chats what are they saying then you go over to Twitter and you know get into the unk sort of discussion and so I think it definitely is going to rival Twitter Because in a way, you get to cut the for the social part because you cut the noise. You get exactly what you want. I'm just here to trade. I'm not here to discuss decentralization. I'm not here to discuss crypto ideals. I just want raw P&L. This is where I'm going. And so, I think that social I think the social graph is very sticky. I I I I really do.

>> I think you just indirectly called us punks. >> I [laughter] was going to say I was going to go direct, but I didn't do it. >> I mean, yeah. It's all good. It's all good. We >> It's okay. Robert Robert does it for you. >> I'm an hunk. Yeah. Yeah. It's all good. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, talk to me about the the the memecoin market cap, right? Like why do you think trading volume is inflecting while market caps are are are actually um pretty stagnant? >> I would kind of like to hear your take on this. The answer is I don't know exactly. I think that we maybe sort of found [snorts] a how bad can it get in terms of volume floor and sat there for a couple months. I think what got me back on I'll tell you what got me back

on chain was in the same week I think the first week of July Robin Hood launches and there's the cash cap thing it goes to I don't know 200 mil in a couple days and Vlad endorsement I'm like okay this is interesting right there's some friction here Vlad's staking some reputation this isn't super easily vampable this is interesting enough to click and then the second one was Ansom right after goes to 400 mil couple days later another another one where it's like Okay, say what you want about creator tokens and how this has played out. Zora, friend, things like this but >> you've been you've been on record as being very anti creator coins.

>> I have, but the Anom one is a unique one. I could get into the psych like I guess a quick take on why the Anom one is unique. >> You actually should cuz I have no clue what the difference is personally. So here's what I'll say about why I think Cash Cat is interesting, why Anom is interesting is like we live in an era postp pump fund where what it takes to deploy is zero zero dollar zero time. Like I mean you DeFi legends here know better than me, but even in 2021 to launch a memecoin, it's like you got to get the smart contract out. You got to see liquidity. It was like it wasn't a thing where you could just snap your fingers.

>> It's true. It's true. that I remember the Yam deployment contract spent $10,000. >> And so what this creates is this environment of vamp culture, right? Vamping liquidity. And so if you know Elon makes a tweet about a dog, in one second there's like 30 coins, right? One of them wins and it's at 1 mil, it's at 2 mil, it's at 5 mil. If an Elon dog coin goes to 5 mil and somebody sees this and they're like, "You know what? I'm gonna relaunch this exact coin, but I have a K who will tweet about it. I have a capital D instead of a lowercase D and my picture is better and we can get this thing to 500K onetenth of the market cap. I'm going to make like $15,000 and it cost

me nothing. If it goes to zero, it goes to zero. I don't care. I'm going to bundle it. I can make $15,000 in a snap. And so it's created this culture where it costs nothing to deploy. So everybody deploys. And then the rhetoric on Twitter is we need to start holding again. The hold times on these coins are too low. That's why the trenches onchain is dead. And it's like blaming the player, not the game. It's wrong. And so where I think this transitions is like, okay, in a world where there's zero friction to deploy, maybe the tokens that have friction do really well that you can't just vamp. Like for example, let's take Hyperlquid. Obviously, it's not a memecoin, but you could copy paste. Why didn't why isn't why isn't Phoenix on Salana as big as Hyperlid?

Well, all the biggest traders are on Hyperlid. They have the volume. They have the open interest. They have the liquidity. They have they have the network effect. Hyperlid is sticky. What they have underlying is sticky. Hyperlid therefore can't just be vamped by like somebody deploying a copy paste fork of the code. I look at the Anomcoin, right? It's a creator token d. But if Anomcoin goes to $50 million market cap, you can't just like deploy a second Ansom and vamp it. It's like no no no he's staked his reputation his trust he's earned within the community over like I don't know 10 years to build this token put his likeness behind it you can't [snorts] vamp it with other Anom token and you also can't really vamp it with thread guy token because Anom is bigger and so there's some friction to deploy

this coin you could even look at um I look at FWA I think is kind of an interesting asset on ETH it's one of these gotcha platforms you could deposit [snorts] NFTts you could back them with ETH it's like a two-way gota sort of gambling NFT mechanism. It's very interesting. You could copy paste the code. I don't really think it's that complicated, but you can't copy paste the like 50,000 NFTts and I don't know $10 million of value within this ecosystem. And so where I think onchain is going to head is people just got so sick of playing the vamp no friction to deploy that I don't know if it's the timing if it's AI getting really good if

it's Robin Hood but there just started to be a little flurry of experimentation again with little DeFi experiments like FWA or like someone like Anom or Vlad back in cash and I have some level of optimism that this will proliferate with traders realizing how much they can make and how popular they can get with developers realizing okay if I build FWA Adam they've made like $10 million right I have a insane economic outcome the traders get really popular and [snorts] DeFi is relatively hardened at this point and Fable is really [ __ ] good and so I don't know I'm optimistic that there can be some sort of compounding

effect here where we see a little mini onchain renaissance that doesn't look like what 2024 pump fund casino look like because like we talked about with plumbers the new game just can't be the old game again and so I would be curious what you think why people are still trading this this stuff and if I sound like a lunatic >> I well I'll give my take u I don't know I don't know if I I have a a more pessimistic take than Tun is going to have I I think the answer I mean so clearly the approximate cause is Robin Hood, right? Like this happened after Robin Hood came to town and all of a sudden, what do you know? FOMO is pumping and pumped. Fund is pumping and suddenly the the trenches are alive again. even though it doesn't really seem like there's new money. And that's

that's I think the the clearest signal of what's going on is that I think this is actually us or I should say the trenches trying to frontr run the signal of new demand that they think is coming in is like basically okay the Robin Hood crew is going to come in and they're going to buy our bags. They're going to come in. They're going to buy meme coins. They're going to buy cash. They're going to buy all this stuff. And and I think actually what's happening is that very little of that is taking place there. I think there's actually very little new money that has come in through almost zero. Yeah.

>> I think it's almost all cryptonative money. Uh but I think it's people pulling some of the money they had offmarket into the market. So you know they had they were chasing the tray. They were in metals or oil or whatever and they were like oh [ __ ] all these normies are going to come in on Robin Hood and they're going to buy a bunch of stuff. let's let's get back in and like buy whatever the new asset is. And so I think like a lot of the money that's chasing now Cashcat, a lot of the money that's chasing Anom, it's almost like front running the demand that people think is going to come because oh, you know, Vlad's a big dude, Robin Hood's got big distribution. And I think if that demand doesn't materialize over the next 3 to six months, I think you're

going to see this pancake again because at the end of the day, like the, you know, the Memecoin game, a lot of people get paid along the way, right? the guys, the vamps are getting paid along the way. And so for the vamps to get paid along the way and for other people to also be making money, you need new capital to be coming in top of funnel. And if there is no new capital coming in, eventually the merrygoround stops and everybody gets a little bit sick of just going in circles. >> Yeah, I only have two. I I agree with that mainly. I think the AI parts of the AI trade that blew up in Korea probably meant a lot of people like had capital that they pulled out from that and the timing of when like you saw the memecoin volumes go up and like the end of the

Cosby blow up was like quite >> you think you think it's Koreans depositing on >> No, I think it's like people who were in that trade wrote it up maybe wrote it down a little bit but got out and then they're like I don't am I going to go back into those equities? am I going to take this thing? Because like they may have got down got out at like 20% down. It went down like 50%. So it's like >> they're like, "Okay, I'm going to go chase something new." And I think the second thing is I do buy this like AI thing of like there was a while at the end of the last memecoin trade where like one of the reasons I think all these like AI bot tokens which were basically memecoins because they have nothing to do with the strategy that the

AI like AIXBT type stuff was that most people were like there too many meme coins. I don't know how to invest in them. I don't know how to buy them. I I just would rather like invest in a single thing that buys the meme coins for me. And I think now >> Wait, do you think people want to do that? >> I mean, I think that was the narrative those things were selling. I'm not saying that that that the AIXBT era that was like the you read the docs, that's what they were doing. >> Well, no, but it's not you you wouldn't give money to AXPT, right? Exp would make trading calls and you would like, you know, >> No, no, but there were some of that there were some of them that were do the >> There were definitely some like Yeah, that we will trade meme coins for you.

But I feel like >> I think the Eliza thing, but when it was AI6Z, that was what they said they were going to do, right? Like that was like >> so my my point is like there was this this this thing of like the complexity of managing this token portfolio got too high but now it's like >> especially if it's like low value tokens like doing it agentically is totally reasonable and you don't need to think about like the 500 shitcoins you have and I think that that actually does change how easy it is to manage these things. I think that explains your thing of like why there's not one kind of liquidity sync, but actually it's just like people competing on all of them because like now they don't have to think as much about all the management, but >> they just write a couple.

>> Wait, hold on. Are are you claiming that people are using AI agents to manage their memecoin trading portfolios? >> Thread guy, tell me is that there's no way that's happening. That is >> people gabble. People experiment here and there. >> People are experimenting. >> There's probably been a couple thousand dollars put behind that. I I don't think much. >> Okay. >> Not now. Are you giving it to >> clicking buttons? >> Are you giving it to trade your to trade your stocks? No way. >> Yeah. But the point is the meme the memecoin feels valueless [laughter] >> fundamentally.

>> No, no, no. Okay. This is totally this is totally not happening. And I I think a big part of the reason why this is not happening is like look, there are some people in memecoins who have alpha and are actually making money. We know by looking at the stats that like 90% of people in meme coins are losing money on average, right? They are the people going to the casino pulling the slot machine. Nobody pays an AI agent to pull the slot machine for them, right? You go there to do it yourself. You don't be like, "Hey buddy, go to the casino for me and like play slots all day." Nobody would do that.

>> Okay. Okay. Ank >> Yeah. I mean, maybe maybe maybe they're just not able to be exploited by humans and only an AI can find a way to profitably make money in a memecoin. >> Here's one one more thing I'll say with a with a [laughter] question. >> One more thing I'll say with a question. I'm curious your guys' take on this is like um I'm not really as excited about pure memecoin as I am this idea that we get some sort of onchain experimentation resurgence. Maybe it's a little bit of of DeFi and it's super gimmicky but people are trying new stuff again and there's all of these memes paired with

tokenized stocks and I'm curious what you think about that. like it's gimmicky. Coins have been paired with Bitcoin and other assets forever, but I for whatever reason there are new things being attempted on chain and I think we basically went through a year where there was not a single nobody tried a single new thing. There was no friend tech. There was no anything for like 12 months. And so there are a from zero to a few things you realize like, oh [ __ ] this is still a really exciting place to trade when there are. But yeah, what do you think about the the meme stock? Maybe Robert, I'm kind of curious what you think.

>> I think it's early. I mean, I think there's a lot of potential there, right? Like if I'm making a call it a DeFi protocol or some new meme coin token that's valueless or whatever having it reference external value like from outside of the crypto bubble is interesting right whether it's like paired as an LP position or whether like you use the nonzero sum growth of some company outside of our space to drive some onchain behavior is interesting.

We've seen tons of experimentation of people making I mean all sorts of stuff around like the preferred stock of strategy right and like hacking that into new like coin >> not sure any of those are exactly uh standing >> no I'm not saying they are but it goes to the point of like interesting experimentation right how can we take the cash flows of a company outside of the ecosystem and bring it in and repackage it in some way and how can we try some experiments there right super fascinating, right? I think there'll be more and more and more of this, right? Coins, however you want to define them, are simply a way of reframing financial exposure. And it

could be from something offchain, it could be from things onchain, it could be governance, it could be cryptonative, it could be like inflation, it could be all of these different things. But being able to slice and dice the rest of the real world onchain in new ways is awesome, right? And whether you think it's going to come from the equity space or from the commodity space, right? Like I see you guys did Athena years ago. That's in some ways taking something, you know, sort of offchain like basis has always been around offchain too. There's a million ways to take the value that flows through our world and put it somehow into a coin, right? A coin is just a [snorts] product wrapper around anything you want it to be around. It can be valueless or it can be full of off-chain value and anything

between. So, I love it. I think the more experimentation the better. I think we're going to see a lot more of it happening over the next two years because people are now like light bulbing like, "Oh, I can take financial products offchain and bring them on in new ways." I think they're going to interact with perks in crazy ways. I think perhaps are going to interact with offchain in crazy ways. I think all of the above and so I think we're still really early and it's going to be great. >> Okay, here's here's my take is I think you always see people trying to take like A and B and mash them together and see what happens, you know? So I remember people used to be really excited that like you could take unis swap LP positions and make them into NFTts and borrow against them. And of

course like you know you technically can but that was not a meaningful market. That was not like a big that was there was just it was it's never that simple of just like mash two things together and hope you create a new interesting baby. Most of the time it takes some fundamental new capability to create something that really starts a new cycle or gets people really animated because something new is happening now that wasn't possible before. I suspect that very likely whatever is that onchain renaissance that's going to happen like the stuff that already exists I think is going to continue growing. Stable coins are going to keep growing. DeFi is going to keep growing you know onchain trading and hyperlquid and derivatives and tokenized stocks. All that stuff is going to keep growing and it's going to keep growing in a way that maybe feels

almost pedestrian to us is that like okay the numbers go up on a chart. It's not explosive. Nobody's confused about what's happening. It's not like oh my god I can't believe tokenized stocks grew again. And so it is going to feel a little bit boring relative to the kind of inflections that we've seen in the past within crypto. I suspect that the big inflection that we're going to see that is going to reanimate onchain markets is a capabilities jump that will probably come from AI. And I think that capabilities job probably looks like AIS are doing things. If you remember the first time we saw AI doing things was kind of AXPT where like oh an AI is now playing the role of a crypto analyst and that was so exciting to people. People lost their [ __ ] minds that there was a chatbot doing what humans used to do

on Twitter. But right now there is really there's you know AI is not doing like we just talked about you know are they trading memecoins? No. Largely no. They're not very interesting. There will come a point when AIs are making the memecoins and trading the memecoins. There will come a time when AIs are making DeFi protocols and governing them and like that is going to be really weird and it's going to get people really excited. It's something fundamentally new is happening that we have never seen before. We don't know how to think about it. What is the TAM for AI agents that are making protocols and using the blockchain for what it was intended to be used for in a way that humans either one never thought to, never wanted to, or just at a scale that humans never did? That will eventually

happen. And I think like right now it's it's sort of hard to imagine how people react to that right now. But I think you will see people lose their [ __ ] minds when they see something like that happen. In the same way, you know, if you remember um uh uh what was uh Conway, the Conway was this uh thing on chain uh it was it was announced, it must have been must have been like 6 months ago, nine months ago of this guy was creating a protocol that was going to allow you to pay for AI agents that owned themselves and could use USDC to buy their own compute and to keep themselves alive.

>> And it was such a crazy idea. You know, the entire internet got lit up with this idea that like AI agents without owners that are just self-replicating droids that exist in cyerspace. That's going to be a thing. >> Olaf has been shilling that exact idea for like >> for 10 years. 10 years. >> Totally. Totally. >> I think I think I think to AI people what you'd be saying is I want RSI for money, not just RSI for intelligence. >> Right. Right. You should be clear to the AI safety people this is horrifying. This is like this is like the [laughter] the open AI escape on steroids permanently. You know, it's like swarms that exist on chain that are just self-replicating and never go away. But

like that will happen with probability one with enough time. It you know blockchain was designed that whoever is there cannot get uprooted or pushed away or like deleted from the blockchain. >> You can't turn off the Bitcoin wallet of an agent. You could turn off its Visa credit card acceptance capabilities. >> Right. Right. And that's the thing. We're going to watch this. You know, we're going to be like kind of powerless to do anything about it. It'll be like, "Okay, what do we do? There's a new DeFi protocol. It's bigger than all the human ones. It's bigger than a there's a trading protocol. It's bigger than Hyperlid. And agents use it and there's no UI >> or agents. Agents [laughter] made it.

>> Agents made it. That's the thing. Agents made it. And agents are using it. There's no UI because they don't give a [ __ ] about humans. and it's just out there and you can buy their token if you want that like that like I think that's going to happen. I don't know if it's 2 years from now, 3 years from now, who knows, but that's going to happen and that's going to be like one of these things that people start rethinking what crypto is in the same way your imagination about crypto opened up in 2021, 2022. You're just like maybe co has changed the whole world and everything is never going to be the same and crypto is a big part of that story.

And now people are kind of like ah is that really true? It's kind of a wrapper for existing assets and blah blah blah. I think you will have another mental shift when that happens. >> You know what? I I love it. I think it's going to happen. The question is for the VCs on this call, do you think the AIS are going to without any capital money, >> bootstrap a new system? Or do you think at some point way down the line, you're going to get like an email from an AI agent that says, >> "I will absolutely fund an AI agent. I'm so ready to do that.

>> I am autonomous. I need >> I think I I want proof of not human from them though because I've definitely gotten emails that are like I'm an AI agent looking to raise funding for my company. Like you're bullshitting. [laughter] >> I have already. Well, but like they it's cuz they have their like Hermes agent pinging you, right? But >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. >> They I mean there there probably will be some proof of inference thing where like look I ship I ship you like my you know my my Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Prove your last legit. Prove random logic. Yeah, I I think that that's definitely going to happen.

>> I mean, you know what the quickest way is for an agent to bootstrap capital is? >> Launch of meme coins. >> Meme coins. Meme. >> Something on chain. I didn't say I think [laughter] it I think it I remember how much money goat had in the wallet. >> This is why I'm saying too. >> Yeah. >> Well, I didn't say it was good. I said the mechanism to raise was interesting. I I do kind of agree that the meme coins is actually going to be the first place that you see a lot of like agents farming humans out of their stable coins >> and then like that that is their capital base, >> right?

>> I'm going to listen to a transcript of this podcast and that will make it into the next pre-training and then you know >> I don't even think they're scam basilisk kind of thing. >> It's going to be so much worse than that. It's going to be so much worse. They're going to scam grandmas out of their like retirement money. They're not going to >> They already do that. That's kind of boring. That's going to be That's going to be lower value than the Memecoin stuff. I think the Memecoin stuff is going to be higher. >> That's true. To to guys point, it's like 15k a pop if you can. Uh take off. >> Take the FOMO plus pump revenue. We're like annualizing like 300 400 mil.

>> Imagine that. >> GP GPUs they rent pretty you know it's it's a lot cheaper than a human rent. So that's like year you can get 15k. >> Oh yeah. But the the difference is the difference is you're getting guaranteed non-scarcity is the hard part with the GPU. >> Right. Right. Well, you know, but they're but they're they're going to be living on, you know, a cost GPUs or or uh you know, bouncing around from like what's >> Yeah. >> You know, I I I think we got a long way for that. That part actually is the hard part to me.

>> We do. We do. >> I don't know. I threat thread guy. What's your What's your dystopian AI future? Maybe utopian. It could be utopian. >> How about I've sort of just >> I've sort of just accepted I'm going to trade it and then however it plays out [laughter] hopefully I'm upper K, you know? >> I'm kind of gunning for upper K. I love that. >> Wow. I've never heard that. [laughter] >> So hilarious. >> I mean, you guys got your eyes on it, too, you know? I mean, that that's where we're headed.

>> I know. I know. But but I love that the upper K is like the inverse of the um the uh the the what's the what's the the lower K >> for those who are missing the reference. It's like the K-shaped economy, right? Where some people are doing well, some people are doing poorly upper >> permanent underclass is the lower K. What's the upper K? Is there like a >> aristocracy? I don't know. >> Yeah, >> it's got it's got to have some name. >> Upper East. >> So, okay. Sorry, guy. We're we're we're coming up on time, but I I want to ask cuz you know a lot of times on the show we talk about Gen Z. We talk about you know what the new generation of crypto is like. Um obviously we're we're anks.

We don't really follow exactly what's going on in that world. One of the things that's very clear is that for the newer generation there is this ethos of you know people call it like hyper gambling or just much much higher uh rates of gambling, degeneracy, risk-taking than we ever saw for millennials. How do you think about this and how does it how does it fit into what you see among your peers and your worldview about how you think the world is going to change how finance is going to change over the next you know 10 20 years >> you know I think my broadest view like my most confident view is just going to be the rise proliferation of active investing where a lot of people do not feel comfortable especially the you know

more sophisticated ones do not feel comfortable I'm not really trying to push this but they don't feel comfortable able of their outcome on by the S&P in and chill and a lot of people I think we're going to you already see it with Robin Hood number of accounts funded percentage of options that are like zero day percentage of trading volume that is like individual stocks like I think this is going to be a trend meta trend that goes up and to the right where people sort of take their finances into their own hands and try to actively create their own outcome and I think the second order effects that are going like trickle down and it's going to lead to per volume and it's going to lead to onchain volume and it's going to lead to

like you know these crazy moves in like a SanDisk or a micron you know it's like um it was always like crypto is going to be tradfi but then now everything's just crypto it's like the crypto you know the costification of the world or the cryptoication of the world it's like skyinx is up >> costby as a verb wow I didn't expect that >> skinix is up a thousand% in the year then it's down 50% % in in a couple days. Like I think I think this is a trend that I don't know if it's starting >> but Gen Alpha's coming, right? Do you think this is a pendulum and like okay maybe the next generation they're doing a little bit better, they have better economic prospects and they will be more riskaverse than Gen Z or do you think like permanent change there's something

about the world or something about like the social contract that's just not going back to the way it was regardless of material conditions? I think it's a permanent change. And I think one of the underlying is the increase in tooling and your ability to get online and start trading. Like when I was 16, you couldn't really get online and start trading. You would like flip sneakers, right? You would flip sneakers, you would do whatever internet hustle you could do. I think the upper stakes for the internet hustles that are now accessible are it's just the biggest game in the world. You could just get on chain, you could get on Hyperlquid, you can you can get a Phantom wallet and you can get on Poly Market and you can just play. I think I don't look at it doomer.

I look at it pretty optimistically. But I think that every generation that comes after mine is just going to be comfortable with risk, comfortable with these assets. Everyone you see on the internet either has a gambling deal or a trading deal or is posting a P&L. It's just it's just where you know Trump is selling a paid group and he's tweeting buy ticker PLT, [laughter] right? It sort of integrated itself into culture like trading. It's like, you know, the the the S&P price. It sort of integrated itself into culture. >> Although I I will tell you one thing. Go >> ahead.

>> Which is the '9s to 2006 was all about the the same thing, right? Like everyone was active investing and then financial crisis happened and then everyone shifted. >> Do you think that this one was where we're at now was like bigger than 2006? The rise social media. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think it's definitely bigger, but I don't think it's like dollar-wise relative to income bigger. So there's sort of like you have to normalize either by income, market cap, concentration, some one of those, but and so like that's where it's not one to one, but it it it's definitely bigger in some ways now, but it's also just because like they're more there's so many passive vehicles that it's like the difference between active and passive has also been blurred by the

fact that there's 5 million ETFs for like similar exposures and stuff like that, right? Also, the costification. Actually, another really funny funny version of this story for like where the memecoin volume's coming from. And this is a joke, but it would be hilarious if this was had any truth. But yeah, this is fiction. But but the Korean government is mandating that you take a class now to buy 2x or higher lever ETFs. >> This is like the Matt Lavine joke about >> No, no, it was a joke, but it's now real apparently. Like it is actually the policy is like you can't you can't buy 2x levered ETFs or 2x or higher without taking this gangom certification.

>> It's like joke. >> This is why this is why crypto they're going to go back to crypto. >> And I'll also say I'm curious your take. I I recognize I live in a little bit of a bubble, right? My brain has been sort of perma fried over five years of doing this all the time. But I do observe the behavior and you know my my my little cousins and they're, you know, what is Frank DGO trading on chain? And maybe this is because they're one level removed from me and that's just they're in they're in the game, right? Like if your dad's a sports better, you're probably sweating some sports bets. But I think there's a activist investing societal trend. And I think as you see more and more influence on the internet

be directed by the people that have really big P&Ls, it is sort of an aspirational objective to hit a big trade in public for the world to see. It's easier rise than doing dances on TikTok. >> I don't know if it's easier, but uh it's certainly accessible for more direct a lot more people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say I I think you I I agree with you that there's a kind of um I I'd put it less like normal celebrity and more like an athlete in that like okay, you're getting you're getting measured on do you win games, do you score points, and if you if you do, you get on the scoreboard as opposed to like are you funny, are you do you have that, you know, just something that that people uh find appealing to watch. I I think

you're definitely right that look this is really deep in the water supply now and it's it it doesn't feel like it's just Gen Z. It also feels like Gen Alpha that is is turned on to this. That said, I also agree with Tarun that these things I think are cyclical but the cycles are long and um you know really this >> you just need a financial crisis. You need like a real crash and then it flipped like I think that's >> I mean we co was a crash you know well I think like clearly the retail phenomenon in the US started after co That's true. That's true. But the the co again I think the the active versus passive statistic has been manipulated by the number of ETFs now >> in a lot of ways. Like those people are kind of active. They're not really it's

not like the the traditional like I just bought spy type ETF. >> Right. Right. Right. And it's very clear. I mean you hear this from from traditional managers like oh fundamentals don't matter anymore and it's all momentum and another way of saying that like there's a lot >> we started we started by talking about Bur. >> We started by talking about Bur. Right. >> Exactly. Exactly. And so like the it does feel like this stuff is yeah it feels like it's pretty deep in society. That that also said like it is also very male. >> And so if you're if you're thinking about okay what what is this doing to this generation? I think it's largely a male phenomena. I hear this from all the young dudes who I know that all of their friends are also doing this.

>> Laboo. Leubu is is is a gender ignorant gambling phenomena. >> That is true. There are Yeah, there are gotcha mechanics I think are becoming broader. >> I have a I have a John Weang article to show you about the female gambling future epidemic and it's about Laboo mystery boxes. It's pretty good. >> Okay. Okay. I will I will check that out. That's a interesting note to end on, but I think we we got to we got to call it. We're on time. Thread Guy, thanks for coming on. Where can people find you? >> Twitter, not threadguy with two T's, but I am actually Threadguy.

Twitch.tv/threadguy. YouTube Thread Guy everywhere. >> FOMO. You You should have started with FOMO. You told us that's where everyone is. [laughter] >> I'm everywhere. You could find me everywhere. >> Phantom username at Threadguy as well. Shout out to Phantom. And um I show you guys on the stream all the time. I think it's the best podcast in crypto. You guys are awesome. Um [clears throat] >> I I mean it when I say I was really looking forward to my intro. I was practicing Hive, the the head hype man of Dragonfly. I'm running around [laughter] the house screaming it. The head >> head of dragonfly. So uh you guys are awesome, man. I'm pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

>> Well, we love you. Thank you for coming on and sharing your wisdom. That's it for this week. Be back next time. See you everyone. [music] [music]