Tornado Cash's Victory, PumpFun Content Moderation, and Geopolitical BTC Demand | Roundup

Transcript

one of the reasons why you decentralize and you want to launch governance so quickly is and you know you got to create a forum and you got to create a DA and you got to create a governance token is so that your hands are not on the smart contracts our friends who are founders of these protocols you kind of just live with this fear that your smart contracts will one day be sanctioned and now yeah most of the times people get into this very ideological but pointless discussion around censorship and you know free speech and it's like yeah but what's the point of it you know I mean like there's also a whole component of not doing harm and there was clear motive and like harm attempt to do harm and so yeah you just step in scale is

the blockchain that is Simply Built different other L1 networks have costly transaction fees clunky user experiences and lack true adoption in Ai and onchain gaming explore the gas-free ecosystem at scale. space ecosystem and follow their Journey on X at scale Network that is scale with a K hit the link in the show notes to get started are you a project founder that wants your team to be paid in Stables or even just give your team token grants both of these things can become complete nightmares toku simplifies every part of global token compensation all in 100 countries on one platform reach out to their incredible

team at tok.com or by hitting the link in the description of today's episode hey everyone Jason here for Black Friday only Ledger is offering $70 in Bitcoin if you upgrade to The Ledger Flex you can also save up to 40% on selected Ledger Nano wallets and accessories offer is only valid until December 5th or while supplies last so be sure to hit the link in the description of today's episode so you don't miss out on this really good deal what's up everyone you know like should we have like a a standard opening like welcome back everyone this is the that's what I do and it's lame that's the standard

opening it's like hey everyone welcome back to if you're streaming like you know if you're jumping from like as sometimes I listen like multiple pods like um and you know if you're doing to X speed and if you're not doing to X speed you should really look at yourself in the mirror and question everything about your existence but we need we need some like Mr Beast like come out of the gate winging with some we we just we like smack people with ads right at the beginning that's like the worst intro you could start with yeah yeah we're no longer in a bare Market i' have to say and so I do appreciate we'd have like a lot of ads we love her you know we like our sponsors thank you very much we have a we have a lot of ads um but yeah I

don't know I don't know like do you consider yourself like an Entertainer no not I can never I met the Tony Robbins version of like the Italian version in New York the other day he was running the marathon I'm like I'm like I I'm like I respect but these people like get it's just honestly my respect goes out to these it's a skill that I don't think I have oh it's definitely a skill I mean honestly if you're listening to this podast I really respect because I could we tell people I put you to sleep you know talking about cryp oh yeah I'm I I got a boring like nasally voice here this is a struggle to get through sometimes you eat on the pot was like doing everything wrong but as I tell

people you know as is the criticism with crypto it is with the podcast if you're still here listening honestly respect like you know I mean like everyone says crypto is terrible ux UI it sucks you know I'm like yeah but it's like imagine like if all that goes away like even with all the hurdles we got to two trillion imagine what happens when oh the flow is smooth and buttery and no regulatory constraints like where do you think this is going to go to yeah so it's almost like the um yeah anyway I mean we are uh I think we're now the second biggest crypto pod behind behind bankless I think we have there's a so are we gonna become the the the number one pod when salana flips ethereum or or

how does that work I don't know man eth is up 12% this week don't call it come don't call it come I'm I'm gonna get chewed out so we we we recorded with a vichel and has this week and that that episode drops Tuesday another classic those episodes with those guys are always great and uh the whole time santi's on we're like kind of bantering about meme coins and stuff and Santi drops in the conversation immediately moves to ethereum and uh yeah you know those guys I mean honestly if you um all of the episodes with the be chill and I consider them as a repeat guests people love him but we've done like two or three this year they've changed their tune on salana now yeah that was interesting I mean like if you go back to the episode uh you know I love the

guys you know and I understand you know they're great investors I think but both of them I would I would have considered like Cas like more like very Ecentric very kind of more critical in salana a told not so much and I even debated with him on the breakpoint stage but uh while them both of them change their tune to to be fair like um has he was like a a little bit more of the Solana's like very much meme coin chain which I understand where it's coming from I just yeah um what are we G talk about this week yeah let's talk about um here here are the ideas from this week so first off happy I think we're releasing this on Friday per usual so we will have had

Thanksgiving in the states so Happy Thanksgiving to everybody hope you had a nice time Happy Thanksgiving Happy thanks do you celebrate absolutely it's my favorite holiday you're a you're a Mexican living in Europe and you celebrate things I mean at this point people know where I live I I have a dinner every year out here I saw you post a screenshot of you you running in monac I was like oh all right we're we're going for it now I mean yeah if you're listening here and you're paying attention yeah yeah there's no you're Mexican who lives in Monaco and you celebrate Thanksgiving I I I respect the the dedication yeah I I consider myself American to be honest Americanized even though I don't have a US passport um so do you celebrate with a bunch of Americans

no I I export it I'm like you know because I always tell people that what I love about Thanksgiving is that there's no there's no like there's just a simple tradition of sitting down giving thanks yeah and of course you have to cook or bring something and but it's simple it's like Christmas is like you know Christmas is also nice but the gift stuff Al sometimes gets in the way of understanding like what do you like what's the meaning and purpose and thanks was just so simple um the best tradition that I've uh so I've been invited to a bunch of Thanksgiving dinners when I used to live in the US the best best tradition that I um have adopted my own as well is uh you have to bring a can of cranberry jelly which is

like you know two bucks or it's super cheap and uh you have to open it and like you have to the challenge is can you get it all out in one oh like plop it down plop it down so that the the the the the entire thing comes out in one one form uh so everyone does this no so this this was like a good friend of mine who his dad is an incredibly one of the ogs of private Equity not Blackstone but like SEC close to that but he started from nothing and so classic American story and because the real cranberry sauce is so expensive um they would have to buy the

the fake version and I find that and now that he's super I he's a billionaire or whatever but now now like he keeps that tradition because it's just a reminder of the roots and I was like this is really cool like uh I want to bring it like it's cool it kind of reminds me of uh there's in so one of the Jewish holidays is Passover and you eat like bitter herbs and stuff like that to kind of remind you of uh like the hard times I don't know I I kind of forget what it actually stands for but things do I do it yeah I do it every year I have uh Passover like my my big or our family's big Jewish tradition we have a 45 yanites get together in Cleveland Ohio every year so that is in April that's in April right

yeah if you want to site to see you can see 45 vioes in Cleveland Ohio soup together are they all as tall oh that's great are they all as tall as you yeah they're real they're quite tall I have a I have a second my I think it's my dad's cousin she's like 6'5 my grandma's pretty tall she is six wait maybe 64 she's tall yeah my mom's like 61 but yeah the 65 is something else your mom is 6'1 six six how come how come you you're so you're only like 5'6 or 5' seven why listen uh no I'm six I'm 61 that's on your hinge profile I don't have a hinge profile it's the it's the inflated it's the

inflated all right can we talk about something real crypto we've been bannering here for seven minutes you know okay this is oured transition oh God all right um all right so here's what I want to talk about get I wanted to get your take sorry so pump. fun had the whole video debacle this week we should talk about that micro strategy um basically nothing really changed with micro strategy but Vinnie Lingham came out and said that um micro strategy will ultimately and eventually do more harm to bitcoin than what FTX did so you know there's a lot to talk about micro strategy um there's a massive thing that like did not make the rounds too much on at least my feed on Twitter which was uh tornado cash sanction were ruled unlawful that was a

massive piece of news that I don't think people are talking about enough I would say eth and like Bas is base is really ripping right now and like meme coins moved onto ethereum um yeah and that's basically that's the general stuff got more interest they didn't move to a the they got more interest in the all right all right so before we jump in I have H one piece of two pieces of housekeeping one is um we are hosting the Empire meetup on December 10th at the blockworks office it is together together with um a poker KN that we're hosting so if you're in the Empire Channel we will share some details very soon but it's going to be December 10th at the blockworks office um uh knowing Santiago there's a 50% chance he rugs us but I will at least be

there so I you will have me to hang out with um what's all the hate what's all the hate just spice markets are up it's almost Thanksgiving getting all this hate what have I done wrong with and gentlemen you see how treated just Yano misses me too much I'm no longer in New York and this is I actually just thought I had a couple I had a couple extra espressos this morning so I'm feeling it's separation anxiety I get it so I'll be I'll be back in New York soon man don't worry about it true um all right the other thing is we announced permission list tickets so permission list is June in Brooklyn going to be a banger event um and yeah tickets are gonna be 200 yard Rave type of stuff we literally

booked out like six warehouses it's gonna be a when I think of Brooklyn Warehouse there's only one I don't know if you saw our launch video but it's just like in a warehouse with like no we played it here yeah yeah we did yeah yeah so anyways tickets are 299 bucks we're doing a pre-sale where we're giving allocation to 350 people uh and it's $99 tickets once we hit 350 people it's 299 I will say bonding curve and it's the permission by the time this episode comes out we will probably be over that because yeah we're at 3:41 today so we've got nine left ladies and gentlemen so if there is a you know anyways when

you listen to this I would go check the website maybe there'll still be $99 tickets available that's when again April this is June 26 through 27 20 24th through 26th I think yeah New York in summer I can get around that yeah it's going to be good it's goingon to be good corre okay let's talk about pumped off fun so I was going to share my screen and show some of these videos but I think we'll get uh banned from YouTube if we do this so I'm just gonna talk them through um yeah I'm not gonna actually share these but basically pump. fun launch video streaming to go along with the with some of the tokens so if you could launch a mcoin but also have like a video streaming on the side as well and it got really nasty really quickly so the first

thing that happened was like two weeks ago or a week ago there was a kid 15 years old who publicly was sharing a video of him rugging a coin and it was like kind of funny kind of sad but also kind of funny and then People Pumped the token to like millions and it was like whatever but then what started happening in the past couple days is some really really messed up stuff so one was a developer started shooting a gun um every time his token got bought and it was like okay this could start to get like that feels weird this could start to get out of hand the next one was a developer threatened to to kill a fish with a gun live on a stream so he had like glasses and bandan and stuff and like basically just a goldfish with a

gun pointed at the Goldfish um he's like basically if you don't buy my token I'm gonna kill this goldfish so that was like okay that that feels gnarly then you had this this kid sitting on a toilet where he started shaving his like hair and his eyebrows and he's like it's just going to get worse and worse I'm not leaving this toilet until we hit $50 million market cap uh then we had a guy who locked himself in a box and started treating himself like a pet like asking for food and um stuff like that and then and then it got even wor then it started to get really out of hand you had a a young guy streamed himself burning an Israel flag and doing the Nazi salute um it was like oh and then and then that's when people

realized like okay this is about to get like we they got to make a call on this and then you had someone I think someone actually killed a chicken live on a stream uh and then you had people threatening to like kill their family if the their coin didn't hit this market cap and so basically like the worst of humanity came out really really quickly um and yeah it yeah so so basically there's a debate should they ped it back very quickly they they disabled the feature because yeah so so it took I think a day or two pump. fun killed the live stream um but if I yeah go ahead I was going to say like uh like social media platforms had to have dealt with this before like it's not new they just had to really

scale up the internal team around censorship and like curation and particularly like mitigating this right and I just think that's one of those things where I'm would I be surprised if live stream comes back at some point no I just think it requires a very Hands-On uh like internal processes curation team just bodies looking at this stuff and approving it like YouTube has like you know what I mean like it's not not new it's just yeah when you see it we want open open forums and discussion and but this is the the part that I'm I'm very much like yeah this should be censored so let me try to

summarize I think what your belief might be um or actually I'll turn this into a question should you so blockchains are these like open permissionless infrastructure do teams have an obligation to centralize the front end to moderate well front ends are already inherently centralized right um do you have a do you have a an obligation to moderate content that crosses the line obligation yes I yes yeah very much so yeah this this uh I don't uh yeah do you think otherwise no no I I I do I do but I saw a lot of takes this

week that was like you know they should keep it open keep it up permissionless and I I'm I'm I'm a strong believer that basically the the yeah I think Jason Troy had the best take on this which is like blockchains are open permissionless infrastructure centralized front ends are privatized distribution channels uh not allowing them to censor is actually the censoring like the community not allowing them to censor is actually the censoring um and that's front ends do have an obligation to moderate content um especially when it I mean if it if it deals with killing people um the My from a very high level my decision- making and how I think about these things is is

it causing good or harm to society and I think there are very like binary things some things are grayish but like it's sort of the golden rule in my mind it's like if you're want to do harm to yourself I app I understand that but if you're going to do harm to others and you can debate all day long what that means but I think it's like you when you see it you know it then that's when you clamp down like I have no problem what you believe in what you do privately what but when that starts having an impact on other people then that's when that's when you step in whether you're a government a company and I think it's very clear like it it just

became unequivocally one of those things where yeah this this is this is getting out of hand and you step in and if people by the way people disagree whoever disagrees they can do their own thing and you know like there's places of the web that you know you go to and you kind of see this type of stuff yeah uh but if you have like the distribution piece that you mentioned is so important because when other like you have kind of a responsibility to to censor yeah and take a stand like you know most of the times people get into this very ideological but pointless discussion around censorship and you know free

speech and it's like yeah but what's the point of it you know I mean like there's also a whole component of not doing harm and there was clear motive and like harm attempt to do harm and so yeah you just step in yeah yeah um which which is like interesting when you comp like we should talk about tornado right because this is somewhat tied into the same kind of um well let me get let me get your last there before we go into tornado I I want to pull up one of Mike's tweets um Mike said um something basically something about the top in meme coins hold on he

said whiff retraced it's this was uh on Monday whiff retraced its entire pump after the Robin Hood listing do barely moved after Elon tweeted about it pump. fun looks like they're in pretty serious trouble memes look vulnerable here what are you what do you think about that uh yeah I got also this question by other people other fund managers I don't I don't think memes are going to go away like temporarily are we going to cool off a bit maybe but the I I would take the opposite of that I don't think they're going to go away I think they're going to continue to be important elements of this industry from an onboarding perspective we had a

discussion with aichel Andi yesterday about it too um it's impossible for me to say what memes are going to do in a week as a category or a month or but as a whole I don't think that I will I will continue to believe that they're going to be an important part of this industry and I don't think that interest is going to go away purely because uh just it's not just a meme phenomenon it's also in the stock market like the average holding is down uh people want to like the whole Wall Street phenomenon it's all related to that

it's and so uh temporarily maybe yeah like whiff is W whiff peaked uh you know at four bucks 80 cents it's down to three these things have a lot of volatility like you should expect 50% Vol any given day of for any meme coin it's just that that's the nature of the beast but to make uh overly like to make to to really change your thesis and like extrapolate based on intraday like short-term V I think is pretty noisy and so it it just um it's not how I think you know I mean like you zoom out and you say memes are just still super important and people like them and I don't think that goes away I

think that's more of a generational thing it's not like yeah yeah do do you disagree with that or do you are you no no I think memes continue I think memes continue um I mean it's not like by the way it's not like memes died this week they just the meme attention memes are like the finest most focused thing of how to reflect where attention is in the industry and maybe maybe one day in society but you know at at least for now in the industry and you can see you know the price of soul and BTC were flat on the week the price of eth was up 12% where's the where's the attention right now is on the eth m coins it's not like meme coin side it's like and also uh blonde vers brunette and I didn't pay

attention to this at all but like it it's you know on my timeline blonde verse brunette like it's it seems like the meme coin attention just got sucked out of the blue you know quotes around this the Blue Chip meme coins for the week and yeah what I find U interesting here is that uh there are contingent people within the ethereum community that were so critical of memes now are embracing them because they are now coming to ethereum and so uh it's uh quite just quite interesting right it's like I hate it if it happens elsewhere but if it's going to benefit me I love it and that type of um I guess uh double standards in this industry just uh yeah pay attention to

that I I certainly do it's just really uh funny how all this works let's talk let's talk tornado cach so this week um massive win in the courts so massive massive win I I'm calling this the news of the week that didn't and and it definitely didn't get enough attention uh so the the the fifth circuit held this week that the US Treasury sanctions so obviously the US Treasury had sanctioned tornado cach um the fifth circuit held that the US Treasury sanctions against tornado caches smart contracts are unlawful the tldr is immutable smart contracts just beat the treasury Department in court um the one of the quotes here was we hold that tornado caches immutable smart

contracts the lines of privacy enabling software code are not the property of a foreign National or entity meaning that a they cannot be blocked under ieepa and two or B ofac overstepped its congressionally defined Authority so I thought Paul gruul had a good take on this uh coinbase was was uh deeply involved in this case I I think coinbase might might have funded this case or was really involved I'm not entirely sure but um yeah Paul's summary is these smart contracts must now be removed from the sanctions list and US persons will once again be allowed to use this privacy protecting protocol but another put another way the government's overreach will not stand no one wants criminals to use crypto protocols but

blocking open source technology entirely because a small portion of users are Bad actors is not what Congress authorized these sanctions stretch treasury's Authority beyond recognition and the fist circuit agreed in particular the Court ruled that while treasury has the power to take action against property right so that was one of the I think that was the big thing here is are these smart contracts the propert who are they the property of so the treasury while the treasury has the power to take action against property the open source immutable smart contracts at the core of tornado cash can't be owned by anyone so they're not property subject to sanctions um so if you're looking for some implications of this one tornado cash is legal again I think that is an

implication of this uh two and there's a lot of talk about like sens uh you know some some of the block producers in meev boost relays are you know do some some form of sensorship right now of transactions I I would guess this means they're going to stop censoring transactions um uh and and very importantly for Founders and protocol teams smart contracts with no admin key or rights are not capable of being owned and smart contracts can't be censored sanctioned by the US Treasury so this is this is obviously just a huge win for tornado cash um I also just feel the need to say huge shout out to Preston vanloon and uh yeah Jo Joe Jo Joe vanloon Tyler alme Alex Fischer Kevin

Vitali Nate Welsh uh the whole coinbase team um yeah yeah Paul GRL like just I mean so those were some of the folks I mentioned were the plaintiffs and just yeah the van Lon brothers and like just a big shout out to all them for Having the courage to fight the US Treasury here um yeah I don't think people understand kind of what goes into that and the time and mental energy so yeah big yeah huge win yeah it definitely is and I would agree with you it's what happens now with the some of the developers in tornado that some of are based in Europe and I think they there's a separate proceeding case happening in uh the Netherlands I believe yeah I think so yeah I'd be really that's the next that's a question

in my mind like what what will happen to um these individuals like Roman storm Roman and Alexi Alexi yeah I I mean yeah that that is the next thing that needs to happen is Roman and Alexi need to get freed yeah speaking of Ross um will be my understanding is freed uh in the next 100 days was this an an official thing I believe so um I've seen him tweet about it um he's obviously tweeting directly to he tweeted yeah Trump but like hey U please my pardon but yes that was a tweet Ross tweeted I'm starting to get used to the reality that I could be home in a months

yeah I don't know if it's true but I think he it feels like it's it may happen but I guess you're right I don't think it's confirmed yeah Bitcoin magazine tweeted Ross will be free in less than 60 days so okay yeah there we go that yeah very cool um anyways just massive win in the courts I feel like crypto just keeps winning um Saar had a good tweet uh Saar from abstraction said I don't think people understand how big of a ruling this is the court is saying that smart contracts are not subject to sanctions since they're not owned by anyone the US legal system is finally acknowledging that decentralized Protocols are a new type of infrastructure in the world right so the other reason this is important

outside of tornado cach is if you ever talk to a crypto founder about oh they think about this a lot running a protocol like you know one of the reasons why you decentralize and you want to launch governance so quickly is and you know you got to create a forum and you got to create a dow and you got to create a governance token is so that your hands are not on the smart contracts and so that the smart so the smart what they do is the Smart contracts move into the Dow basically and it was kind of this protective shield and often times it's like a what BVI or Cayman entity um and now like you know folks will probably keep doing that but now you don't have to be so I mean many of I think our friends who are founders of these protocols you kind of

just live with this fear that your smart contracts will one day be sanctioned and now I think yeah this has always been the Prometheus myth you know if you bring fire to humans and how they use it is um can be for good or for bad uh Alfred Noble uh Dynamite you know the internet like technology can be used in different ways um but I don't think that the creators of the technology you know should this is what it goes to the heart of it is it's technology that enables interesting use cases privacy is essential the right to privacy is and so um yeah it's a big ruling um and it's very encouraging I think for Founders

because this had come up time and time again for developers it's like what does that mean for us we're we're trying to go we're trying to build something that we think is going to have a very positive impact but you can never in these systems right if they're permissionless and you know you're just open infrastructure then you know the the the I guess the analogy would be like are you gonna go after the people that invented the Internet because there's a small subset of the you know because the internet allowed for you know some sort of like criminal activity and it's like well no folks Fus go after the criminals right um but open infrastructure you know it's like you build a road and if people like you know are driving cars or you invented the car

and people like are drunk driving does are you going to go after the car manufacturers or the people that like built the highway just feels like an overreach right yeah focus on the drunk driver I'm sorry I just got distracted someone just sent me a Jason calanis uh tweet that he posted did you see this I I saw finally block mert after many ratios oh my God this is Jason posting J oh God guy just keeps taking L's said listen to me crypto [ __ ] I'm one of the top four greatest Angel Investors of all time Rushmore rush Mount Rushmore level don't you dare compare your white paper scams

to the humanity changing startups IB back our failures are hard fought and Lead led by Gladiators not incompetent grifters oh man that is a good copy pasta Rushmore every time someone ask me like Hey how do you describe yourself I'm like I'm at the Mount Rushmore level oh man that's where I aspire to be Rush God give me the confidence to have that uh that uh um yeah oh I I want to get to that level of confidence you know tell people I'm at the mount brushmore level of crypto investing God give me the confidence oh my God that's good scale is the blockchain that is

Simply Built different let's face it other L1 networks have costly transaction fees that increase as the network gets busier scale has solved this problem with a gas-free scalable infrastructure where users never pay gas fees scale was awarded the most active gaming chain in 2023 by coin Gecko and host five of the top 25 games on dap radar you should definitely out scale I was using it the other day it really is incredible to use that's scale spelled with a K hit the link in the show notes or head on over to scale dospace ecosystem to get started today are you a project founder struggling to pay your team in Stables or even just giving them token grants I've seen this issue

firsthand throughout the space traditional payroll or E providers don't support crypto even if you wanted to do it yourself it's really complicated to figure out all the taxs with Holdings report to the IRS or any government and manage local filings toku simplifies every part of global token compensation everything from paying full-time employees in stable coins issuing token grants to your team and investors all in 100 countries on one platform you can plug toku into your existing payroll setup or even choose a fully managed service no guesswork no missed deadlines no complexity reach out to their incredible team at tok.com or by hitting the link in the description deson of today's

episode earlier in today's episode I mentioned Ledger latest products the stacks and flex and I wanted to take a few seconds to tell you more about them for Black Friday only Ledger is offering $70 in Bitcoin if you upgrade to The Ledger Flex you can also save up to 40% on selected Ledger Nano wallets and accessories these wallets are virtually impenetrable to online attacks because they store your private key in a secure offline chip you can manage more than 5,500 tokens and install up to 100 apps offer is only valid until December 5th or while supplies last so be sure to hit the link in the description of today's episode so you don't miss out on this

really good deal all right so um what else happened this week so B Bas is uh Bas is ripping so um oh man we have some interesting data on this actually see if I can pull this up let's see if we can pull up base base onchain activity if you guys want to see the actual data you can go to optimism. blockworks research.com all right so this is some of the weekly these are weekly metrics for base so you can see the transaction count is now up to uh just past 50 million transactions per day um you can look at the sector that is happening it's a lot of has a lot of bots trading meme coins it looks like um wait what's that uh Co-op

transaction fees yeah what's going on yeah Bas did something back in q1 that brought transaction fees down four 4844 yeah but B uh oh God I'm gonna I'm out of my element here well there's there's 4844 obviously but I think base did something else to optimiz transaction nonetheless the transaction fees like T tvl passed three billion for the first time uh oh but by the way uh on base I think uh we covered it in when coinbase released her earnings a couple of weeks ago they talked about aggregate activity going up but fees is coming down because of this change yeah yeah this pretty good

data love me some good data love me some good data transactions sent per day is there anything interesting in here huh okay what value are you carrying value per per wallet or or like the aggregate value per transaction average average value per trans yeah that's a good thing to have I don't see it on here go go up like average transaction fee go go go okay yeah yeah you know what is interesting though is we we keep talking a lot about like comparing ethereum salon and the activity there and you know but what is also I find kind of a little bit overlooked is uh Ripple is uh $44 it's up

27% on the week cardano is up 20% avalanche's up 23% um like Stellar is up 100% these are the top 50 2017 tokens are po yeah yeah polka Dot's up 40% yeah uh like I don't I don't see nearly enough interest or activity just like talking about that but these are like when we talk about meme coins like the the meme coin of the week that goes up from moon to dust or or or dust to Moon kind of thing but the AR flows into the dinosaur coins of like 20 pre like 2017 era like there's a there's a lot of money pumping into these like a lot of

chains that we don't even talk about um and it's pretty uh remarkable and it makes you think about you know um the brand and the lasting brand that these things have um yeah yeah like you know cardano's up 20% cardano's at 35 billion market cap like that's a it's a lot of flows in cardano yeah wellit let me stick on this base I I actually think an under I don't know if your feed is all Salon of things these days I'm giving you [ __ ] but uh a l but I do want to call out like I think Dan Romero like foraster actually has done some very interesting stuff in the last week or two with a combination of like the meme coins and the AI coins and so now if you're on farcaster I actually haven't

used this yet but if you're on foraster you can mention this thing called clanker and you can tell it what you want to launch you type in the ticker the name and the image and it basically launches a token for you so I think this is I think this is a merging is like the pump. fun of ethereum um and so yeah I don't know got I want to give credit where credit is due yeah here here's clanker here's pumped out fun so clanker just passed 100 million mhm yeah embracing pump. fun equivalent you're giving it too much

[ __ ] yes I am of course I am because I didn't have a problem with it like I I at some point I reversed my ideology around mean coins because you know before I was like here we are trying to reinvent the financial rails of the world and we have a meme coin that is worth more than the AR good value of def5 protocols but then like I changed my tune and said look it's important like you know it's an component of crypto I think it's an N positive it's onboarding people it it it uh capturing the imagination of a generation clearly has interest it's capturing attention it's a way to show people that may otherwise not be interested it's a funnel but we had a lot of people in the ethereum community saying oh it's all wrong and salana a [ __ ] coin you know

shitcoin because it's all memes and now you know once money flows into the ethereum like this is what I fundamentally just ideologically don't agree with it's like it's a double standard like I hate it if it doesn't happen in my chain but as soon as it happens in my chain yeah of course great you know and and so like a lot of what made ethereum grade it was a capital formation machine everyone made a lot of money in icos and as soon as other people start making money other Chains It's like you hate on it and you sort of like I'm above that I've graduated that level it's like again never forget your roots always remember where you came from and it's like you know what I mean like it's like I I'm very much against rugging very much

obviously like I have a you know and do I wish that more interest would be in like hardcore tech people that are doing really cool stuff absolutely is are memec coins sucking away energy from that I don't know I think you know it's it's uh it's just the way the world works and if you just have to try harder you know what I mean like if you're building something really cool and you're not getting attention that's your problem that's not the Market's problem you know what I mean like you have to get like you have to appreciate distribution and you have to play that game like you have to get people's attention and if you're not getting it that's your problem that's not anyone else's problem like I realize that I appreciate that in my business and what I do like

if people don't care about what I'm doing it's my problem not their problem and there are obviously certain issues that ethereum has there's some really cool stuff there as there are issues that salana has but like I see a lot of people in the salana ecosystem saying you know even Within salana You could argue projects like can deep in that are really interesting are not getting enough attention because mem coins are getting more attention again it's the it's the Project's problem not the M it's not a mem coin problem the mem coin's just you know it's like when someone rubs you the wrong way you're walking on the street you meet someone and someone rubs you the wrong way it's just a mirror into something that you don't like about your personality I find and this is why you

fight a lot with your parents right who do you fight the most maybe your spouse but like for me it's like my mom because we're so alike and there's just certain parts that I don't like about it and it's it just it makes me it makes it very visible about a part of me that I feel vul vulnerable or don't like or just and so it's just um I'm projecting that onto her it's not her problem and I've stopped trying to change my mom it's like no why am I triggered about something that another person does it's not the other person's problem it's my problem and it's either tapping into triggering a vulnerability and insecurity of mine and so anyways I don't want to make this a psychology podcast but you know what I mean like um

as a Founder I don't think a lot of a lot of other investors have said oh you know it's very discouraging for Founders that want to build something really enduring that you know you have meme coins really sucking all the energy I'm like no man the best Founders I've met don't think like that they're like this is good for the space I'm going to convert that user and I'm going to see him and I'm going to make sure that they understand what I'm building is valuable yeah like I the best Founders think like that yeah the not so best are like oh you know they're going to blame it on someone else why they didn't get enough traction I'm like that's your problem man yeah yeah interesting chat with a Vil and has yesterday I I that was made me think slightly differently about memes it was um you know I think of who

was it I think it was hb's take was like look you guys all wanted gamei you know we all invested a bunch in gamei you wanted games on chain and you got games this is gamified these These are G these are just games and it made me think of two conversations I've had this week one is with a sales guy at blockworks where he's like he's like I don't go to the casino to make money I go to the casino to have fun like I go with my friends to have fun and maybe there's like maybe I'll lose a little money but I'm having a ton of fun it's entertainment value he's like this is the most fun I've had all year I'm in the trenches on on pumped off fun I'm looking at the different images I'm seeing the Social Circles like and he's like and it's

slightly higher EV than casinos like he's like I'm actually making a lot of money doing this and then um then actually Mike I'm GNA blow up Mike's spot Mike texted me this morning he's like he's like telegram's lit so much fun right now I get the memes I'm in a group that captions memes he's just like I'm having a lot of fun doing this and uh and uh yeah yeah yeah there's a really interesting uh so I like sort of the Charlie Monger or Buffett there's a really interesting I think there's an essay where it's either Charlie or Warren Buffett that talks about why they

don't like gaming uh like games as a category and and they sort of talk about like what is the productive value contribution to society and as much as I agree with a lot of their Frameworks and their way of thinking this is where I disagree with the most probably because because it all goes back to like I understand if you don't want to invest in it but I appreciate it you know it's and how who are you to say that that if some if people are having fun and finding utility on it then I think that's again that's you know that's good and um but to have a very rigid moral stance around something that people find and are having

fun uh and calling that a nonproductive sector or cont tion to society I think misses the whole point like life is really short and you know people are lonely and if you're finding fun in these communities and you you understand the game then yeah like do I condone it do I I don't know like you know as long as no harm is being done and the rules are of the game are transparent people know what they're getting into then yeah go for it right you know what I mean like I'm not asking you to invest in it I'm just asking you to like not be like super like rigid about it right like people playing an Xbox or people playing video games do find that a positive or

negative contribution to society or neutral positive what is it positive right yeah you know because if a lot of people may have been depressed or lonely and they start playing Call of Duty and they find friends online and and I think that's positive oh wait but like friends shouldn't be made online you should make them in in real life I'm like who are you to say that you I mean like we go back to these fundamental things if people find Value appreciate that don't I don't know like you may not like Call of Duty but if people like it then I don't know don't like call it the worst thing that don't call it rat poison you know I don't know

man anyways we digress anyways Brazil said uh Brazil is announc Brazil announced that are buying creating a strategic Bitcoin Reserve no really a bill to create a strategic Bitcoin Reserve has introduced been introduced in Brazil right very like this this is the story this is the story of the year that is going is feels like it's an annoying story because it's just like the crazy bitcoiners doing all caps like central banks are buying your Bitcoin but like this is actually the most interesting story is All these central banks I mean all these central banks are actually about to start creating strategic Bitcoin reserves I don't think people

understand this yet and uh like that is my basically what I think is going to happen over the next couple months is I think I think Trump I'm curious to get your take on this Sanu which is um the Trump did Trump is pulled forward growth Trump pulled forward the growth in the cycle so we you know we ripped through 80 the 80s in like a day we went from like 80 to 88k in a day Trump pulled forward a lot of the growth so in the same way that Bitcoin ETFs pulled forward the growth in the beginning of the year you know we ripped from like what 30 or 40 to like 75k in like two or three months I think Trump just did that and I I would I would guess that we I would guess that we consolidate or chop around here for the next couple months

because we just ripped higher for so for like in a very short amount of time because of trump but the thing that could change that the thing that could change that and just get this to be what a Vil talk about on the podcast of this ridiculous parabolic cycle is the US announcing a Bitcoin strategic reserve and I think there's a much higher likelihood that happens than people are accounting for right now I agree with that yeah yeah it's I don't I I sort of of the mind that there hasn't been a better setup for crypto ever and the biggest blocker has been Regulatory geopolitical and it's uh 180 you have governments that have gone from being

uh very anti- crypto to now holding it on their balance sheet uh yeah that's that's a big change and you overlay that with how slow institutions certainly move and how they do calendar re underwriting and planning a lot of it might happen in Q4 and q1 so from a flows perspective you my thesis is you're going to continue to see flows now it might cool down in December you know holidays yada y y December's always historically been a strong month for crypto I think but nonetheless like q1 setup is I feel really strongly about um just because it takes time for these institutions to to adapt and to re

underwrite and to and like to allocate it's not like one day they're they saw Trump win and um you know all these rulings and you know they're certainly reaching out to every single crypto fund again with appetite um and so that's but that takes time to show up in the order books yeah like again it's uh a lot of crypto ogs or people that have been around the cycle is choppiness you grow cynical it's like yeah know you got to remove that and see it for what it is and we'll see how much of that flows through but the I'm paying attention obviously to whoever Trump um like this crypto um committee cryp crypto Zar

crypto zar are in the committee like I don't I haven't seen who's going to rule like who's going to oversee that but there have been certain candidates in there but that's super encouraging yeah crypto's finally just uh in the Innovation bucket not the like uh Enemy of the State bucket yeah um content of the week let's WAP Thanksgiving time baby what is it actually I guess when people are it's going to be Friday when people listen but that's okay hope you guys have had a nice Thanksgiving any content of content of the week what's my favorite Thanksgiving meal stuffing for sure stuffing stuff is it does it taste better the first day or like the next

day like the Friday people later with gravy oh yeah gravy do you watch football yeah play some play some football who's your who's your football is it the Giants I'm a Patriots fan Unfortunately they suck this year were you a Patriots fan because a Brady no I was I was born in Boston I was born in Boston oh that's right yeah yeah yeah my my family would have not liked me if I was not like my my whole family is like Red Socks Celtics Patriots yeah yeah no I I went to school in Boston and I'm only a Celtics fan good SP last 20 years good good folks to root for I went to a Patriots game and it was like the the Golden Era of the Brady and it was it was okay it's just I just yeah no one likes a te when

they win too much you know no I know yeah I mean it was really fun because we were The Underdogs and then we started winning and then people hated the socks um true but a really good show is uh it's called The Comeback on Netflix it's about the Red Sox team um oh it starts in like 2003 ALCS Aaron Boon hits this walk off anyways baseball people will know and then4 they play the Yankees again goes into it's more about the people like the Rivalry the buttoned up Yankees versus like team of Misfits it's a good it's good like Feelgood comeback story but actually the content recommendation I have is uh is Mark andreon on Joe Rogan um which I have not actually listened to yet but I think from seeing a bunch of Clips I think this will be

one of those podcasts holy [ __ ] it's a three-hour podcast okay well I think from what from what friends have said and like what I'm seeing on Twitter like this is one of theep you know how there's like every couple months like a podcast episode that like everyone kind of rallies around and it's kind of almost sometimes becomes a turning point for things I have a feeling this becomes one of those episodes nice yeah that's great very good well um good pod you're cooking yeah or you're just dumping the you're just plopping it on the table well I say You're Gonna fry the fry the turkey my brother I called my brother yesterday what are you doing for Thanksgiving he's like fried deep fried

uh he's like what do you think I was like deep friy he's like of course and my brother lives in my brother lives in Hawaii you know got this little basically lives lives in the jungle he's like I got a big vat and I'm deep frying this thing but first he's like I'm uh what's it called when you based the turkey or you oh Brian he's like I'm Brian in the turkey I was like oh nice what a little salt a little sugar he's like Arizona Iced Tea he's like I watched a guy in Louisiana on YouTube he had gallons of Louis of Arizona IC tea he's like a Brian in my turkey and Arizona Iced Tea 16b turkey I was like Jordan that is disgusting I'mma BR my turkey with Arizona Sweet Tea God

damn great only my brother man I love America um yeah well uh I'm not gonna do turkey I'm gonna probably just you know eat Italian food or something of course I can cook yes what are you talking about my mom taught me to cook I haven't cooked in a while I we cook for you for you will cook for me and my wife is that what you were about to say 100 100% some saiche like you know I used I mean when you live by yeah I Liv by myself for like 15 plus years now you know like you get tired of seamless back in the day or like just

ordering food restaurant food yeah I get tired of it I go to the supermarket I love the supermarket it's the best thing one of the best things one of the Simple Pleasures that I I like like going to the supermarket my mom would always take me it's kind of nice and it all teaches you a lot about the economy too and that's a perfect way to end it because we're getting into boring topics I one more piece of content recommendation which is Russell NE this guy Russell nappier has basically crushed uh uh his economic calls of like the system he's one of those big macro guys on Twitter and stuff and uh there's a new new piece he wrote in American Affairs um called America China and the death of the international monetary nons system and we will link it and it's a

good read I'd recommend people read it so foreign affairs or American Affairs American Affairs read the Foreign Affairs like well I think I think Foreign Affairs is owned by no I think American Affairs is owned by Foreign Affairs right yeah yeah yeah makes sense Foreign Affairs is great I used to I used to want to be a diplomat back in the day I would read Foreign Affairs like religiously highlighted and all this I will be negotiating big deals yeah I will be the guy all right good good app all right lot lot of uh a lot of degenerate we're rambling in the up I hope you guys had a good Thanksgiving Yan know Happy Thanksgiving man I'm thankful for everyone that listens to Empire I'm thankful for having the opportunity to sit in this chair it's been a lot of fun it will continue to be

fun we're going to be here for a while yeah I appreciate thank very much everyone I appreciate you guys see you in New York next week see you in New York the week after the week after Al righty all right cheers everyone thanks everyone take care hey everyone thanks for watching today's episode just wanted to quickly thank today's title sponsor scale scale really is one of the best chain experiences out there today and I've used so many different chains there's a reason they are gaining so much adoption in both gaming and AI use cases hit the link in the show notes to explore the scale ecosystem [Music]