$TRUMP Takeaways | Empire Crossover Livestream

Transcript

the fact that the the president of the of the United States the most important country in the world has done this is just unprecedented and and I I think like the world will never be the same because of it at least in my opinion this is unquestionably bullish for crypto um and a massive inflection point in the industry um I do think there's a legitimate view on this as well which is you know or there's a question that we should be asking is should a president be allowed to do this the Trump coin is much bigger than just a meme it's a global Trump crypto Army and three we think this was the biggest crypto onboarding event of all time and we think we're just getting started all right we got 450 people in

here we got people are piling in um I think we should jump in I think we should start with uh just what in the world so thanks everyone for joining um we just like there's so much that happened this weekend was probably the craziest weekend I have ever seen in crypto um maybe there's a few other ones that go down that you know suu remembers but this is insane weekend um so yeah we just want to give our take on the on the weekend and like just thoughts on what this means for crypto the US um different chains um but maybe I'd start by giving just an overview of what happened if you guys were maybe living under a rock and and missed this so I think I would start actually on on Tuesday so I was going into a meeting

actually with Mike and got a call uh from somebody associated with the now president we're recording this on Monday at 8:00 pm and they said we we have a really high-profile token launch um we a really high profile token launch happening either this week or next can you connect us with a custodian we're doing this in the right way um we you know we're and I said what's who's the token for what is it and they said we can't tell you any details and so I connected them to the CEO of one of the big custodians and um and that was basically it that that was all that was really all that happened on Tuesday fast forward to uh Friday night there was a crypto ball both Mike and I I think and Santiago none of us could make it there

but it seemed like it was a lot of Industry insiders were there a lot of big investors a lot of Executives were there it's kind of Who's Who of the industry everyone's hanging out at this crypto ball you're seeing all these pictures on Twitter and at 9:45 Friday night when everyone's at this crypto ball Trump sends a tweet out and he just tweets he goes my new official Trump meme is here it's time to celebrate everything we stand for winning join my very special Trump Community get your Trump now go to get Trump memes.com have fun that was at 9:44 p.m so the thing starts ripping right that people go to bed I think it's at like 10 12 14 mli uh billion uh fastest fastest coin ever to

to get that high January 18th coin just keeps full sending right we get to like 70 billion F fdv 7 5 billion FTV I'm sending Tweets out saying that you know Emperor is creating new coins this thing's going crazy right so January 19th everyone's still watching this thing and it's it's still going up actually and then at 4:42 PM Eastern Melania launches right Melania sends out a tweet I should have had this pulled up before but uh I know I know Mike did not enjoy this one but he he can talk about that in a second it says the official Melania meme is live you can buy Melania now on.com and she sends the address and that was just that's when like I feel

like everything got catastrophic on the Chain right that the Twitter broke down salana went crazy you couldn't send a transaction on salana for a couple hours Phantom wasn't updating um it yeah it got nuts and then things kept going right World Liberty did a token sale sold out they started staking like 15 million of eth I think and then he started having other things like the ethereum foundation is was all this other side stuff with the ethereum foundation and all the while right I'm scrolling through Twitter earlier today Mark cubin is talking about launching a meme coin so anyways that's my like summary but I i' just be curious STI and Mike like what were you guys doing this weekend and like were you uh were you were you all in and playing this or were

you just kind of watching from afar like yeah Santi maybe would just love to hear your take um so I was actually flying um while I was uh while this came out and I saw the Tweet almost immediately and I was like really my first reaction was he must have gotten hacked and and now they there's actually leaked messages of a screenshot of someone dming Elon elon's like I don't know he was like the shrug Emoji I mean it just felt like surreal and this was mind you in the last podcast we were talking about like people were like is is the Trump Administration really going to fall like you know follow through with his crypto plans and I'm like my immediate reaction was it must be a scam so I waited for like five minutes pinged

a few people I was like all right I'm going to just like just buy some uh Ju Ju Ju Just for the for the sake of it uh you know and by the way folks if you're G to ever punt something like this do it with a fresh wallet that doesn't have a like a lot of capital because if for whatever reason malicious contract or whatever just but for safety reasons I'm just going to as an aside and and then like things really escalated and then after that it's like I first saw it it was like a under a buck so I bought some then at four bucks I really kind of loaded up uh after after a while but and then like and then I went to the gym I landed like did went to the gym and I was like if this truly is like I think

at that point like a couple of hours have gone past I was waiting for Trump to like just dismissed that I was like all right at that point if you're going to be the president like you have the entire Comm team I mean how many people does comp Trump have in comms like hundreds of people yeah I I had the same thing it took me two hours someone on our team messaged it to me being like oh I think this is what your conversation with Trump's team was about on Tuesday and I said oh yeah I guess so and it didn't register in my head right it took me two hours oh my God this is the this is the thing I'll give him an hour or two if he doesn't discredit or take down the post it must be legit but it felt so

surreal I mean I I tweeted like i' I've seen crazy stuff in this industry nothing like this and then after that I'm like I'm doing the math right how big this is getting so I I basically swapped my entire mem portfolio into this all It One Sweep I was like okay this like we've just never had this type of stuff like it's just um but yeah thankfully I was in the in the in this part of the world because all our European brothers were fast asleep um and also your point like I don't know why he launched it at that time like everyone in cryp like a lot of people in crypto were at this ball like they all sort of missed it right yeah yeah anyways I also I was I picked like

the worst weekend of all time to just be completely unplugged in the cat skills uh so I missed this entire thing but I yeah just like had heard from Mike all weekend I was like Mike are you watching this he's like I was like no I'm not yeah just tough but let's like Ju Just to put some numbers on it when I say it's the wildest thing ever seen like your point okay this thing is now it went from basically zero to um like s to 20 billion in the first 24 hours um and then it went and then it went parabolic from there it just went to like from there the next day it was at 60 then 70 then 75 that's 75 billion

doll yeah and then that huge Wick candle is when Melania um so like one question I have like I didn't really understood like we we we should talk about like obviously salana and how they performed because it's important to know for people that don't really know it so it was deployed as a salana on salana and I mean it just executed flawlessly I mean obviously the entire like jeto you know merch of the world all of them were like on calleded and up until melania's launch salana performed exceptionally well I mean it just handled the amount of transactions it was we should pull up the stats I before getting into salana they're like okay let's talk I want to talk about what

this actually means for crypto and then should this uh should this actually happen like how do we feel about the president launching a meme coin and like how do we feel about this from like the US perspective and then from the crypto perspective so um Mike maybe I'd be Cur so Mike you tweeted we as an industry have spent a lot of time building for a future where the US cracks down on crypto we haven't spent spent much time wondering what would happen if the US embraced crypto that is the most important question to ask great now I'd love to get your framework for just like how you're thinking about this from the um I I guess take it from either either angle the the US perspective or from the crypto

perspective um I think well I agree with uh Santiago I think this is the craziest thing I've seen uh since the time that I've been operating in crypto and I view it as a major inflection point probably in the uh in the entire history of the industry when we look back on this and yeah I think that a lot of the assumptions and Frameworks that we have built around crypto whether consciously or not come from Bitcoin and some of the very early ethos around Bitcoin and the vision and the types of people that were building there and all the ideology that that comes along with that which in a lot of ways is great but I I think that Bitcoin has always taken a little bit of an adversarial stance toward government although that's changed a little bit since the ETFs but you know it was basically built

and the uh the whole design and architecture of that coin was designed in such a way that uh it would be resilient if a large government specifically the us because the stated goal of Bitcoin is to be the global Reserve currency uh we're to crack down on it um and I think that that has uh poured it over um especially to ethereum um as a community and you know you kind of talk a lot about this this meme of being World War II resistant um but I think some of the other chains are probably not designed in a way that they're even really trying necessarily to be World War I resistant and I think one of one of the reasons at least I've been so supportive of just multiple different chains is I think you should run every experiment in crypto and prepare for every different

eventuality why or possibility right like why would you not do that um and I think probably some discount rate has historically always been applied to coins because there was always the possibility that the US or some big government could come in and just outlaw this right like people talk about uh you know the the US government outlawing Golds for a number of years starting back in the 1930s and I think you probably have to just lift that discount rate uh or whatever discount rate you're applying uh to coins kind of today uh based on this because I I think a president launching a mcoin basically means that they're not going to Outlaw this stuff um at least at any point in the future um and so yeah I just think it's a massive step chain and we probably

have to question some of the core assumptions that we even built into designing uh l1s um and and ask ourselves what would this industry uh look like if the US just did a full-throated acceptance of crypto yeah and I think that's probably decently likely over the course of the next at least four years Santi what's your framework for you you said this you said um I've seen Wild Things in this industry this is the wildest by far still processing dot dot dot what is your framework for how this moment in time and this this event impacts just yeah just your your mental model for this industry for the next couple of years it's unlike anything we've seen primarily if you scroll up um the amount

of like it really shows what we internally in crypto know but the world just now saw it at at center stage at the weekend before he was you know before the inauguration and showing that the capital formation that happened in in such short order um truly just shows the power of crypto like moveing money moving at the speed of light without restrictions without markets being closed that's just that I think like we we've seen it in in in many ways in crypto but like that I think just puts it front and center for every major country company celebrity that is thinking about any sort of

raise um it sets a tone in the stage for what this Administration believes and will do with crypto um I think the I'm still trying to think about the second third order effects of that but you know you obviously are wondering who who will launch coins next from major celebrities are we going to have a world where you know every major NFL player sports athlete has a coin like we we've teased at this there's been early iterations in crypto celebrity coins but I think that the fact that the the president of the of the United States most important country in the world has done this and it you know it's just unprecedented and and I I think like the world will never be the same because of it um certainly

not certainly not crypto and so um who knows I mean obviously we can talk about these scenarios where this coin doesn't behave well you know it's it's obviously down a lot since the peak it's down 50% what does that actually do is this become like a you know we've talked about political coins in the Pod before right like Trump and Bowden and some of these coins but um yeah I just I just think this because it was an official coin um and Melania 2o it just it sets a tone for what I think will be far crazier than what we saw in 2017 with Ico Capital formation because now you're going to see it with companies like what now now think about like what's the role

of capital markets in the traditional context when you have salana dexes processing like temp close to like 40 billion in volume like the NASDAQ does 100 yeah yeah I I mean think crazy that that okay let's talk about what this did for tokens right because one of the biggest as soon as I saw this one of my first thoughts was boom everyone in the world can go launch a token there is no there's no longer a risk of launching a token think like contrast that with two years ago where if you lived in the United States you could not launch a token now everybody in the world can go launch a token and so I think we'll very quickly go from yeah you had to maybe live in Dubai or Singapore to launch a

token to okay crypto companies who have a chain can launch a token to I mean Santi we talked about this I think on the last Roundup or two roundups ago it's like you're G to start seeing you know folks with no chain you don't need to like just anybody's going to start launching tokens right and it's going to start competing with public markets uh Jeff Jeff Dorman was talking about this Trump token just signaled to every company municipality University and brand that crypto can now be used as capital formation and customer bootstrapping mechanism New York City will have a token Harvard will have a token Netflix will have a token um Mike I'm curious to get your take on this um yeah I think that's I think

that's pretty likely um I mean I think I don't know I I agree with it something that Santi said uh resonated and this is what I was trying to figure out or just think through on the way home is I think that um crypto is showing how how much legs it has in terms of being just a new Capital Market and I mean one thing that's been interesting going through this cycle or basically the last two years of a bull market is you've seen much less traditional VC uh and like the US IPO Market is still pretty cold in general there's much less VC being deployed in general but most of successful exits that have happened in crypto have been through tokens and so you know one way that you could just look at uh tokens and kind of these L1

platforms um which like most of the fees that are being generated on l1s come from uh Dex volumes is just alternative Capital Market venues and like Santi said salana competed with or was in spitting distance of the NASDAQ for the last two days which is truly bananas and I think if you just see like try to think how that plays out over 10 year time Horizon you have way you're Global from day one um you have far less friction in terms of issuing assets and there's going to be an enormous amount of capital that pours into these things and so I think it's pretty affirming in general of um you know I think crypto when it when it first started you had kind of these big ideas and you're starting to see some of those really

play out like there was originally the money alternative store value use case for l1s which I think is largely right and then there's this thing that we've always known which is decentralized Finance Global Capital markets and I think that honestly this token is probably a big affirmation more along the the second lines there um that's kind of the way that I think about it so and I think you'll see a lot of experimentation I don't know if a New York City token makes sense or if a Harvard I I assume there's probably going to be a lot of new tokens launched that don't immediately make sense but maybe we actually do um uh you know experiment with new ways of capital formation that do end up looking obvious in hindsight but I think we're going to end up getting a lot more tokens after this basically yeah

Santi how does this change your mental model of the fouryear cycle are we is it is it a fouryear cycle like does it have to be no nothing I mean does okay I here's what I was thinking about on the on the drive home today is yeah so I think my mental model was at some point in 2025 will top right I've kind of had these like four stages of the market maybe we're in stage three right now maybe entering stage four and you top some somewhere between like the summer and the fall or something like that that was kind of my mental model and now it's like on one hand you could say okay this is clear stage four topof the market Behavior this is what you start to look for the other hand it's

like hey something we've never had a pro crypto president launching a meme coin the cycle the four-year Cycle's off and this thing goes crazy uh yeah like yes like I there's like two ideas in my brain one is we've never had a better setup for this industry the other one is it's an M2 trade like like again like you have to always think about the downside like the upside case you don't need anyone to convince you of how powerful this technology will be in the next 10 years how it will transform Finance Capital formation payments you go down the list on and on and on like we we shouldn't entertain that scenario doesn't compress it does it accelerate it absolutely there's so many people on the sidelines that now

are no longer going to be in the sidelines it's it's akin to Paul Jones what he did for hedge fund managers to buy Bitcoin now the president has done it in a way where sovereigns are now like you're entering the game theory of sovere thinking about buying um and holding crypto assets through this strategic Bitcoin Reserve may include other assets but um but still you know you have to be mindful of you know you know treasur you know I'm not a macro expert but I am mindful of I I don't believe that if we if inflation gets out of hand and and treasuries are over 5% I think broadly markets will not you know will not perform well and I don't think

crypto behaves any different at that point it's very correlated on the downside and the the other element that I should probably highlight is like you know there's gravity to things right you can't have an asset go from you know zero to 70 billion like naturally they're you know you see this type of behavior you're seeing in the chart uh does this mean this coin's dead no does it mean that it should have been worth 70 billion in the first place no I don't know I have no idea um but I do think that um like there's two components one like there's been more um dispersion in crypto returns this cycle and I've always felt that as this space continues

to grow both in Market size and just real adoption there will be less of a correlation intra industry correlation uh primarily tied to bitcoin but you're seeing it right like if you're if you're a if you're a fund and you weren't in select assets meaning Bitcoin salana memes and a handful of like AI stuff recently which by the way the last two categories very few funds were were allocated to you wouldn't have performed well like eth is still at 33 what is it it's like the stable coin of the of the cycle it's like maker an ether just sitting there right um and and so I I think um yeah all this to say is

like you know is it a four-year cycle maybe are we going to top in 2025 maybe but like ethereum hasn't moved much like does it mean that it's going to Rally from here I don't I don't necessarily believe it so I just think that there is uh there's a pretty big ShakeOut happening and and I felt this for the last two years which is when I updated my thesis and basically sold all my eth for soul was like I do think that crypto for the last 10 years has been storytelling like putting Bitcoin aside it's been storytelling and actually Bitcoin has been also storytelling with like austr like whatever the mechanism is there but like in a world where you start seeing usage and traction the distinction between Have and Have knots becomes incredibly clear like and so the thesis is like can

you have projects that over the next five four or five years continue to really outperform because again Solana is sitting at let's just run the math purely on salana ethereum salana is what a you know over a third like almost converging on 40% of eth's market cap like it's 15 over what 400 yeah like actually on a fully deled basis that's different math right but anyways like Solana is a a third of ethereum's Market cup yet you look at what just transpired over this weekend and you have to wonder like is one should a ethereum be worth that or should salana be worth that that's a

whole separate conversation that we should have not necessarily for the purpos of this pod but like what I'm trying to say is like even if you believe that we top in 2025 like I I still think that like I I I feel fairly comfortable running a trade where like I don't need to believe that every government starts buying Bitcoin to just assume that Solana converges on ethereum Purely on what is happening right now and has been happening for the last year it's just a mispriced asset uh and like that there's already that Capital that sits in crypto yeah I as we run into the what I think is probably we're already like halfway through the cycle I think I want to be focusing on

things that have a lot of liquidity because if I want to exit I want the exit to be really big on the way out so that excludes a lot of stuff pretty much every non- major me you know crypto asset nfts all that stuff is like kind of not something that I want to allocate to but the other one is um I'm thinking a lot about just I don't I don't necessarily assume the flows will enter the space although I do think that there's a high probability that they will because we you know we just had the election in November and institutions take at least a quarter or two to allocate so anyways a bit of a ramble but I don't know man it's it's uh it's an M2 trade but also over the next 5 10

years I think this is like pretty generational kind of entry points what do you guys think about um so I saw that there were an anecdotally a bunch of just Normy friends of mine reached out about this and I saw that the Google trends for how to buy crypto and Bitcoin and salana and obviously trumpcoin pumped um so I'm curious what perspectives like how do you think this was received by kind of the rest of the world or just the average person in general I was I mean I I was with friends this weekend and they I think there was a um that's the right way to put it they were very disheartened I would say at

the returns that you know there's the meme of like me showing up at work on Monday or on on on Tuesday morning like you know doing my discounted cash flow and like you know having grinded away in investment banking for seven years while this like idiot online you know just just made you know generational wealth like that Meme I saw in real time this weekend I would say my friends were very disheartened and none of them work in crypto actually one of them Works in crypto but um but it did get that once Trump happened they said what's the next one and when Melania launched they all wanted to put money into Melania um so that's I like I do think it ends up I do

think it's I do think this is a net positive from like a user onboarding perspective I mean what's the what's the app that they use moonshot right moonshot moonshot on boarded like 400,000 400,000 right they won yeah yeah now the the other thing is um I mean we should probably talk about like the Nuance here like the allocation and I think there's a lot of misperception around that but but the headline for someone that doesn't want to go in the trenches what oh wow they own 80% of the supply and there was a few like there's just no communication from them like why couldn't you have just come out

and said hey we're going to earmark this for airdrops buying Greenland I don't [ __ ] know but like just communicate something it's why do they need but they but the counters why do they need to they don't the the the mystery the mystery of it was what was so it's not the 80% that tanked the token it was Melania tanked the token I I I I agree with you but but I do think that like there was I I just think like you're the head of state you know I mean like it's it's not uh there is a I appreciate it's a meme but I do think that it it could have been from an execution handling transactions Flawless kind of thing the fact that this didn't

leak flawless I mean crazy meteor like it was just pretty buttoned up but I do think that there perhaps could have been more there definitely could have been more thoughtful around communicating investing like your friends don't understand this you know like normally friends don't understand this like someone you could just imagine the oh 80% which is Friends of you know the 10 people that are best buddies with whoever just made like SE like made like billions and billions of dollars and that's not necessarily true but you have to come out and lead with a narrative uh and then and I think the reaction of the Market's very clear when you I think that perhaps if he had done that in milania launches is maybe this chart

would look would have probably looked different there's all these kind of theories as to why they launch milania that maybe he I think it was you that said maybe he licensed that this to someone else he didn't make as much money and then they wanted to launch milania I was just when you don't communicate transparently it just lends itself to all this chaos and it's the Marcus has been chaotic it still is like shit's all over the place I mean people forget though in the last you know Trump 2016 to 2020 the markets were chaos right he would tweet something and the markets would go Haywire for a day and I think I think VA I think extreme I think we are entering back into a Traders Market probably and I mean I'm not I'm not a Trader you you don't want to give me

money to trade but like if you remember when Trump was President like these twe he would just fire off a tweet and the market would go crazy for a day and we might just be entering back into that regime I'm curious to yeah yeah also uh I mean also keep in mind too that even though this is a president who has embraced crypto in the United States that doesn't mean they have you know a lot of detailed knowledge about how these um you know how to launch a token and how to do it flawlessly Etc like the Melania I mean Jason sounds like you've got more backstory on this than me but feel like the whole Market kind of had the same perception which is you watch the Trump coin and I I think it was everyone kind of saw it as a pretty seminal moment for what it meant for the

industry and acceptance in the United States and got pretty excited about that um but then when milania launched um it just looked a little Bush league and it went from kind of this oh my God thing to wait a second do these people know what they're doing here and it just looked more like a um I the perception with do you think so the industry definitely said I think went from oh Trump's coin Trump might be trying to turn this into currency like this is the craziest thing ever to when Melania launched I think it was oh this is just a a Griff to try to make some money do you think that um the fact that these were launched by two separate teams matters at all that there were two very separate teams uh and one was like very professionally put together and they

used a professional custodian and market makers and uh you know they got listed on coinbase in two days like do you think verse one was which seems like it was maybe just like Baron Trump just fired off melan's token or something like that do you think that matters or not um I don't really think it matters because I think only 2% of people are ever going to do enough digging to figure that out and also it probably just says that there's not as as much communication going on behind the scenes as you'd as you'd ultimately like uh and I don't know it just you know there is an element to this as well which is um you know there's a lot of different conversations around this that are getting uh that are getting combined into one and I think there's a part of this which is at least in my opinion

this is unquestionably bullish for crypto um at a massive inflection point in the industry um I do think there's a legitimate view on this as well which is you know or there's a question that we should be asking is should a president be allowed to do this um you know like historically anyone that's moved into you know any you know sort of public office but definitely the the highest public office and you know the leader of the Free World is you're supposed to be divorced from you know private uh conflicts of interest and uh you know using that office to enrich yourself and um yeah I mean I I def this definitely a lot of people benefited from trumpcoin I think the industry will benefit from trumpcoin but so did Trump himself right and his wife and whoever else ends up

launching a meme coin so I think I don't know we've always thought at least with block Works we've had this um thought that the real asset that we have is trust the audience trust in uh the insights that we put out and whether or not there are conflicts of interest and you know is what we're saying accurate Etc and it takes a long time to build that trust and the United States has a lot of assets going for it we've got the largest economy and Military and Reserve currency and all that stuff but we also have credibility and people you know look at our leaders as uh you know we've solved a lot of those conflict of interest trust credibility things and I think this is at risk of you know eroding that a little bit um if the perception was uh that this was a grift

or for personal enrichment or anything like that but I think that's you know there's a little part of me that feels like that as well but I'm curious what you guys think about that yeah I know I I definitely agree with you um now technically like you launched before I don't know the rules but if you is this why you think they launch right before the inauguration I have no idea yeah I'm not sure but we just need more I mean it's like why has Trump tweeted anything about this no s yeah and I I mean I guess we just agree that that just feels bizarre yeah even if even if you didn't plan to come out saying anything I think the outcome of like you're sitting there

you're like hey M Mr President like that coin that we thought it was just going to be like a little collection cuz he's mind you he's launched nfts right right and there's World Liberty f as well he's got right but World Liberty F my my second thought was like I want to punt World Liberty five by the way and then I looked at the terms I was like uh no uh and then they updated the terms right so anyways like to five billion it was just they updated the price too you know so anyways um shout out to Kai who did a lot of the work there it was just like you got to think like someone would have gone and say hey M I know he's busy running around all these events and whatnot but it's like Mr President like you know

this coin is 70 billion like you know I mean like if you're let me ask you a question you guys are in media if you're the communications director of trump what would you have done said be as explicit as you possibly can here right like I like why not like I would if if I if I had a open canvas you know how I've done it the inverse which is you have to prove you're you're American to buy this thing this is the American coin [ __ ] launch an American chain on Avalanche or whatever yeah you mean like run if you want to run the Playbook run it like and then Warehouse that in the Strategic Reserve like a USA chain and the first

coin will be the my me and my wife's coin Trump Melania who else is going to do this Elon Mr you know Mr Beast like everyone and then then you want to own the industry do it that way like you sort of I'm now thinking you missed a really good shot at doing that now the window is kind of narrowing down because the longer you kind of like remain silent people just start speculating and assuming candidly the worst that it was a Griff that it was a now I'm not saying that maybe they're they'll come out and have like all this very detailed planning on an airdrop and using that Supply

strategically but how many times guys like in crypto you have to respond and and the market shows you that level of Interest like you have to think ahead of that like you have to come out and say something along the line just say something but I think they could have been way more thoughtful more importantly I think they lost a shot here of like dominating this industry one like one kill you know like do the chain do the coin invite others to do it and maybe solve government efficiency that way by financing it on chain like [ __ ] that could have happened that can happen like what's stopping you now you have 70 billion like launch coins for all the agencies all the municipal like just run the whole show you know I mean

so so this is what um I texted their team I said we're recording a podcast tonight is there anything you want me to to mention right is there any info that our listener should know and he actually just responded he said a we had nothing to do with Slash we were not even aware of the Melania one until it came out they weren't they weren't involved right B there's a pump out fun deployer so B like we see this as a movement the Trump coin is much bigger than just a meme it's a global Trump crypto Army and it's just getting started and three we think this was the biggest crypto onboarding event of all

time and we think we're just getting started so I don't know what you want to do with that information but I think that's a kind of interesting text I got a question for you guys what do you think about this American defi American uh chain stuff I I know that it's gotten a little bit of push back on crypto and uh just CT in general but I don't know I'm kind of here for it a little bit and it it's applying a little bit of very traditional business logic to uh an industry which we think of as being very permissionless and Global which is hey uh you know we've tried to push crypto-based companies out of the United States for the last minimum you know three years uh but we haven't really been wildly accepting if crypto

for a long time we've had some of the most stringent regulation in the entire world right if you live in New York like you still can't do [ __ ] because of the bit license um and now it's just saying the opposite of that which is hey we actually want to be the epicenter for crypto in a Global Hub so you know if you come here and you launch your coin here you'll get you know whatever you know some sort of incentives whatever the US can offer so I don't know I it's I I think it actually kind of makes sense right like why would that not be a good idea actually yeah yeah I mean you there there's a very big opportunity to I mean not only for tax revenue but Innovation um I think it's very real

someone asked me the other day we were having a discussion like it it was with in Ryan's um pod it was hi and aichel and myself and we're all wondering like how how how high up the list do crypto rank like on Trump's priorities what do you guys think it I mean it didn't so it didn't get mentioned at the inauguration today that probably tells you something mentioned immigration mentioned crime mentioned parenting mentioned probably 15 other topics didn't mention AI or crypto yeah I would guess you expecting it I was I was expecting it I was expecting a one line about how America should be dominant in crypto and AI yeah if only because of how much

the industry gave to him if only because of that well I think that he so I think cryp uh one of Trump's superpowers is he has an unbelievable ability to read the room at scale um and he has a really good sense of what people want from him um and what's going to resonate with people and I think that's part of how he found product Market fit essentially from a political perspective with crypto and I was listening to a podcast today you know stand with crypto alone mobilized you know 100,000 voters um and that's not a small amount right like it it definitely was super significant on the political stage this year I I I don't know uh the other thing that he does you know for better or worse is he he really does try to deliver on his

promises and if you don't like his promises that's not great but if you believe kind of take him at his word I think that he um you know one way that you could think about it funnily enough uh because he has this massive audience and he's extremely sensitive to catering to that audience is might actually uh give you this as a positive or or a negative but he might fall prey to the sort of audience capture that you sometimes uh like influencers fall prey to when you build up like a Bitcoin specific audience or an e specific audience and he does try to deliver on his word his campaign promises so I is is it top 10 top 20 top five I mean we should see tonight right he's doing the executive

orders tonight yeah oh yeah and like in that some of the executive orders was like freeing Ross or right yeah Trump admin is uploading all the executive orders to the White House website gradually yeah so you'll you'll start to see I think there's like 100 or 200 of these things so the biggest one for crypto is tied to Ross right yeah I mean we haven't even mentioned the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve I would say this moves the odds of a strategic Bitcoin I think it was 30% going into the weekend I don't know what it's at now now it's 50% on PO Market it's 50% okay I was gonna say

there's at least but but we should we should pull it up I think I'm pretty sure I mean things are moving so much so I was gonna say I'd put it at 70% odds maybe 80% odds we get a strategic Bitcoin Reserve it's at 36 it was up up to 48 it's down to 36 I'm putting this thing at like 75% that we get a what what but what's the definition of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve so that's yeah that's where the kicker comes in I I I do think the the US will buy Bitcoin that's what I think what is it going to be a million which lumus recommended um which would give us 5% of the Supply Pro probably not I think that's too much but I think that the there will be a headline probably this year the US is buying Bitcoin I think

then I think that will happen uh I think buying Bitcoin is not enough like I think the whole intend of strategic Bitcoin Reserve is more than just buying it it it's the signaling of like an intent we are accumulating it yeah yeah like very much more different tone and like if you Telegraph that versus like you bought some Bitcoin like maybe it's just the same thing semantics but I don't know um should we talk about anything else around the Trump and Melania coin um I mean obviously we didn't not not for the purposes of this part will cover and then round up like the the whole hats off to salana entire we should talk

Community yeah uh Ju Just to Highlights I mean like you could even pull Merz or or or toi's feed but like 40 what is it 25 27 billion in volume when it launched and then up to 40 just yeah crazy crazy there you go Dan yeah it's been a massive day for uh uh re um so real economic value this is basically uh transaction fees plus me so exclusive of inflation but massive massive day for salana here um and yeah I think the deck volume as well is just um enormous and you know you can see

these spikes I guess one I I'd be curious uh do you guys think that this was a flash in the pan do you it's it's probably going to normalize from here a little bit right these are I mean these numbers are way way way inflated obviously right but do you think it resets to a higher level from here um you know salana ran up it it almost hit 300 I think it went to 295 or something like that and I mean to me that's the market saying that you know salana has won an enormously important use case um which is you know trading activity lives on salana now there was I actually saw so there's there's been a lot of consternation at the ethereum foundation um I don't know if you guys saw vitalik changed his profile picture to M Mady um what did he say the female soy he made a

very weird yeah feminized we soy boy uh uh we not executing a Vibes pivot um to a Bronze Age mentality um but you know he he he discussed that there was an explicit set of goals um and there there are changes that are coming to the ethereum foundation I think people people have been talking about Danny Ryan coming back on who I think was at the EF for five or six years recently departed um and is now talk and then there's another guy I believe Jerome something rather but you know there's talk of of new leadership there and potentially reevaluating what the goals are Etc and I saw Danny Ryan tweeted out um what would you have you know ethereum Foundation researchers do on chain and Kobe I don't know if you can find this

tweet yo but Kobe replied um something to the effect of have them go on l2s and trade like the native uh gas token usdc pair um and try to have them do it profitably and then go on and have them trade some other form of cross pair like a you know Pepe um eth cross pair or something like that and then go do the same thing on salana and his point was uh that you can't actually do that profitably um in size on nl2 because there's just not enough liquidity and it's much easier to do that on salana than any of the l2s today and what users want is to execute profitable trades in size and that's who you should be basically building your blockchains for that was a really interesting uh

perspective and so I don't know I mean I think that Defi and just trading um is emerging as probably the most important use case and is going to drive the majority of rev I don't know on some long time Horizon right it already I mean it's always been like that right right but I I think that I think that one of the differences um at least in the ethereum uh you know approach to building this is that they're going to be all these other things decentralized social media all these other use cases that we need to build for today and um I mean look look no further than bal's blog post and you could understand that he lost I think the plot at some point of just not being practical like he turned a cold shoulder on defi now it's very encouraging what he came out saying

like we're going to re like show some love to Defi and you you know it's it's it's encouraging for sure because yeah enough with the ideology and more practicality then there was an interesting tweet by Jesse from from base he was like hey maybe we should uh you know focus on this these like threeyear timelines and here we go no not that one no not that one he basically was like you know what we discussed when when the road map I think it was Danny Ro who who who actually put forth like uh Justin Drake yeah around like the three or kind of like probably was longer than that it yeah it was through it was a fiveyear road map uh for be five year road map it's just like yeah I

know it's just so does this feel Santi I uh I think I know your take already so I'd probably point this at Mike but I guess I'd ask you too which is does this feel like a bottoming moment for eth I want your take on this ATI too bottoming in sentiment yes bottoming in price no yeah I mean why should a theorem be worth what it is like I mean I don't want to get into broad discussion valuation it's all referential to bitcoin but can someone credi like just I I've struggled to understand why e theum the L1 the token should be worth that much well yeah I mean I think that the like I think the reason why salana did

particularly well is uh it was it was a very visible very Salient example of you know probably the most massive token deployment in the history of crypto you know whether or not you like that the amount of eyeballs and attention that got and it went to salana and it was just a very you know everyone kind of understands some level that that's going to generate an enormous amount of activity and fees that are going to go to salana but you know I mean it just shows momentum right doesn't it I pretty undeniably um but I I don't know I I don't have any poses a so so I want to make a interesting thing like Maddie who said that there are now 18 fire dancer validators running on salana which that is news to me um the reason I bring that up is look ethereum I

sympathize because the moment you decentralize and you have multiple clients it just becomes harder to execute on a road map mhm uh like the transition of proof of stake probably one of the most important coordination like Feats in the history of the like just like that alone is impressive yeah EIP 1559 like it just the more of these projects the longer they exist and decentralize and you have more clients it becomes hard right every other or every other L1 salana Ripple uh you know uh and the list down from there Avalanche like they all have pretty top down organizations that can execute changes um and that matters a lot I mean

they're agile and you know but I I do think uh I don't know Mike or I've always felt that ethereum is in a position where like what would you change like okay extend further the the recommendation that Kobe said fine you have all the researchers go and try the l2s they're going to come back and say this is broken you already knew that so okay they understand that and then like backwards compatibility is an issue like there's only so my lizard brain if someone wants to correct me but I've always felt that you you can't out innovate necessarily or as easily of course you can you can totally try to reor you know

reconstruct it but it's it's hard right there's only there's only so many paths for tracks that you can actually innovate in ethereum because of this concept of backwards compatibility like can you do paralyzation well no right I mean it's like there are limitations of how much you can innovate in the current confines of like what ethereum is and how it was built and I've always felt that if if you were to ask falic today hey would you build a theum in the same way that you built it back in the day or Gavin or whoever be probably not you know definitely not um and and you know tying it all back to what just happened this weekend like I feel that onean chain loyalty is not a thing at all the 400,000 moonshot

new users probably don't know what salana is May you know just don't don't care about that and so we are what is really exciting is man I think we can really just accelerate the adoption of crypto and it's going to become a clear which chains um get the most amount of traction by number of users um there's a very integrated approach with salana has it doesn't mean that other chains can't can do that I just struggle to see it clearly with ethereum I I could see it in other chains like you know Off the Grid an avalanche good example of a game that just is great none of the users actually understand or very few of them even know that they're using crypto right

um so I think there's going to be a pretty big shake out in the top 10 over the next five years I just genuinely believe that's going to be the case yeah you you could scale the L1 I still like the advantage that ethereum has I think is they've still got they do have liquidity users and a and a head start here but it's eroding definitely so um and and I also think that you know the leadership challenge around it's if it's the one thing that I would actually push back on by the way is people uh always pushing back on the EF for dumping their eth um I don't really think it's in the Mandate of the ethereum foundation like take out loans on their ethereum or whatever I don't think that's a massive Market mover so they also are to their

credit moving 50,000 eth to explore and defi I'm not sure what that means exactly yet but they've earmarked an enormous amount to do that so at least they are changing and putting their money where their mouth is ETC but I think you just need strong leadership um you know this this just looks to me like uh I just don't think decentralized leadership is a thing that's Mike do we know exactly where they're spending that2 or 100 million budget annual budget no they this was a thing like last year people were like wait a minute even the strongest M you know supporters of ethereum the the sanos of the world and you know um Anthony see you can see Eric you can see Eric right here who's like

obviously Giga eth they were all super this is when of course the EF sent some coins to Kraken and coinbase and they're like why where are you spending this money where is the this annual report like where's the accountability I'm like and they promis to do that I just I haven't seen it and I asked a few chats over the weekend that and no one seems to know so if there if there are reports I'd love to see them feels like a little bit of an inflated budget for I mean it's just a lot and and when you look you want to bring the best talent I get it but do we know how that compares to like some of the other

projects like how much is salana Avalanche running up in college putting aside like you know block reward like inflation like putting that aside like how much are they spending as an organization I think that's just feels like a lot yeah I it feels like a lot to me too I mean that's a large headline number that that amount of budget they're gonna run out of it in less than four years yeah at current current current prices of course it's just I I you know I can imagine I don't know I mean I I just wasn't privy to these decisions that they are being made I could imagine you know at a very different point of

development in ethereum you know maybe people were very worried about liability maybe there was this very idealistic belief in decentralized leadership and stuff like that but I I just I've never really been a huge believer that you can do that or you need at least someone to very you know Steer the ship um during times of Crisis and the fact that I mean how many different ideas and directions and you see people yelling in a very discordant way about all the stuff that ethereum should do and that's what happens when you don't have a firm hand on the wheel right like you get a million different ideas and it feels disordinate feels very chaotic and I think that's the the challenge right now and uh there there is a road I think there is a path to success here which u i mean look clearly a lot of activities

still happens in ethereum yeah ethereum and the the entire ecosystem like absolutely M I'm not I'm not trying to convey or portray that now the question is now that we have a trump coin or Trump coin on Solana I do think about the fact that um uh Black Rock did not deploy on Solana deployed on like um apos um Avalanche it selected a few chains Solana was absent I think on that and I don't know what what I it was it was a bit interesting now do you think that the that changes if you really want to read too

much into that I I kind of do but like do you feel that because the Trump coin was deployed on salana does that change institutional perception and um inclination to deploy I I think it does I I think a I think it does B the salana ETF is getting more and more likely I'd say and so I'm you know I think once that happens that that'll that'll probably Drive what you're talking about I want to go back actually to to tie this back to to Trump and stuff did you guys see Mark cubin tweeted out about a mem coin yeah there there are two topics I want to get your take on one is kind of like what happens from here the

second is um actually just this line that has become a meme now which is like crime is legal and Mike I saw you tweeted about this I'm curious to get your take on like I mean it's like a funny oneliner right crime is legal but like what do you what do you think about just what like you know is is Mark Cuban about to start launching meme coins and is everyone just launching a token doesn't matter if you have a chain or not like what is your take on what actually happens from here um I I think that there's going to be a lot of experimentation uh this is the best part about crypto and I agree with uh Santi that this is the cycle where you're seeing meaningful dispersion really for the first time and you know I I I was just defending ethereum I like ethereum

and I want it to succeed I think you probably have to look uh you know call spade a spade and say that salana is kind of winning at the current moment right like they've got the momentum behind them that doesn't mean that that's guaranteed to continue to exist like this but you know let's call it spade a spade and nothing is guaranteed here and I think you will see meaningful dispersion that meaningful dispersion continue so you're probably going to get a bunch of new experimentation maybe guys like Mark cubin will say all right I'm gonna launch a mcoin to same 20% float but all the profits for trading on this coin are going to go to the treasury and I'm going to try to make a dent in the you know in the na like the deficit uh may maybe something like that the you're also going to start to see

some experimentation as always happens in crypto in a system of pral Finance which is people pushing the envelope in a less good way which is some of which those ways will be illegal and you know I I don't think that this is a get out of jail free card um I think that you know Gary gendler has resigned you know we're gonna get Paul Atkins in the SEC we're hopefully going to get some sensible legislation maybe the fit bill and the stable coin act but that doesn't mean you can just do illegal things and so we'll probably see some people do some pretty dumb things over the course of the next couple years um I just remind people that crime is not legal uh and not if you do illegal things you will probably get arrested and if you do them on a blockchain you'll definitely

get arrested because it's it's recorded I mean uh even recently there there was an SEC action against helium like two days ago or something the the the these these cases are worked on for a number of years and so long time uh by way someone in the comments I was just actually waking up to the fact that there's a chat here it's Franken dancer not not fire dancer so sorry about that you are correct Mike hi simran or yeah yeah Sim anyways anything else that uh we should cover by the way can some can one of you guys explain World Liberty to me it's like it did a token sale but the tokens aren't transferable there they just

started staking 15 million what either you guys have any info on what world Liberty fi actually is honestly I haven't looked into it too deeply I don't know Santi I know you're were looking at taking a punt on it but I was just looking at it because it was like a one and a half billion and I was like all right if Trump coin's at 70 like this feels somewhat largely mispriced I was like I was thinking about like what other things could be interesting I mean it's got It's got they're sitting on 300 million bit is that Bitcoin eth It's a combination I think they bought uh they've allocated a lot of didn't they buy like equal amounts in in a bunch of protocols h um Adam Bloom okay you you guys have gone very very light on the corruption

conflicts of interest part of the story uh have we I mean I don't know what about it yeah I um I don't I think we covered it like is I mean I said the way that I honestly feel about it which is I think you have to separate a story that's big into multiple different components which is what does this mean for uh us crypto what does this mean for us for at large um and then what is the appropriate way to talk about this stuff uh in in terms of the appropriate way to talk about this stuff it's very difficult to know how this stuff is going to play out um in the long term um I think you have to keep your mind pretty open to experimentation and stuff getting weird and you know there's a I do think that crypto is a really new very fast moving

industry and people that have kneejerk reactions and write things off as stupid ultimately end up looking stupid in the long term themselves more often than not so you know anyone who has you know poo pooed meme coins including myself sometimes during the cycle has been very wrong about it so I don't know I think it's important to keep an open mind about this stuff um in terms of what this means for us crypto I think it's undeniably positive uh I think that I don't know I've never been a huge fan of this very adversarial stance that uh crypto takes towards governments I think governments have to be a part of the story and I think if the US government wants to be a part of the story why would you not why would you not welcome that with open arms and then I think there's a a component of this which is

is this corruption or graft or whatever and to me I think yeah I think there's a little bit of I'm not going to call it open corruption or graph but if this is naked you know personal enrichment then I probably don't think the president of the United States should be able to do that um but you know that's my personal opinion there so a lot of that depends on some of these details that you know Sant you point out he just hasn't don't have details yeah right see like so I guess we're just talking at Adam at this point but like I'm curious to Adam or to anyone who thinks it's extreme there there's a clear argument for this is corruption this is Griff the president shouldn't be launching this if 90% of the proceeds went into helping out LA and the fires is it still grift right if

it there's like $50 billion dollars that was made if it starts to get pay you pay back the national debt or something I'm making this up at this point is that grift right I think there's I think there's too much knowns at this point in my personal opinion look I mean I I think uh uh I'm left a bit shocked of how this all happened I think it felt unorderly yeah uh it felt rushed to your point around just scrambling to find this stuff part of me thinks that they want to do it before the inauguration for reasons that we've covered um I just don't know like I'm not an expert on on on these things but um I still think as

we all here agreeing it is net positive on a number of on a number of vectors um it but it it did feel like I would have done it differently and you guys are in the media business I I think there's a lot that and maybe they'll come out with that so I'm reserving judgment until I think the window of of doing that in a place like crypto and markets it needs to be kind of very proactive you you weren't proactive so you have limited time to go out um it's not all lost I think it's still very I still think it's when I say impactful the most impactful thing I've seen in crypto probably ever I mean it that doesn't mean that all the things are

good or not I mean I'm I'm just objectively saying impact can be both good and bad I think it will take time to understand a lot of the second order effects of of all of this but Santi can I I I know you have to jump in a second but as a closing your closing thought you swept All Your Meme stuff into trumpcoin and I'm guessing you you sold it or maybe you still hold it I don't I don't know what you're doing with it what does this do to it kind of sucked all the liquidity out of the space like all I I did the same right I just swept my my Phantom account and put it in in in Trump and um what does this do for the for like fcoin and whiff and pep I don't

well far farco was like the only thing that probably was I think it was performed fairly well actually well like what it was okay so you got this money in Trump then I'm guessing at some point you do you do you reallocate it to memes like oh no no no I absolutely I think that's that's what I'm think a lot I'm still when I say still Pro I am thinking okay uh memes are not dead you have the president just launched a meme they're definitely not dead um for me the salana trade is very much real and the convergence on ethereum is is probably ated um so yeah I think that liquidity will will rotate back I mean the market really behaved really poorly over the last couple of days and so you have quality assets that you want to play the long game you got pretty good entry

points on really high quality like category industry defining projects were sold heavily to get allocate into this that will rotate back I think one is a trade for me one is a trade the other one's an investment you know what I mean um but um but yeah the fact that they're like Royal Liberty and all these they're using ethereum they're using D5 projects like that's very positive for a space like defi that has been left for dead since I was a peri towards the end um anything else no I mean I think uh yeah I'll be the things that I'm looking out for are where does this like there's a great chart by dbridge I think that processed like 200 billion or 100

billion of flows like of where the capital rotated from a lot of it was obviously the Min salana uh Bridges behav really well and um all the different kind of projects like jeto and stuff like that I mean like it's uh so yeah I think I think it's a very interesting time in the market uh would I would be paying a lot of attention into where that Capital eventually sits and new flows coming in like the ETF this week just the ETF of Bitcoin and ethereum and any obviously executive orders it's just a time that it pays to be paying attention and agile like yeah re underwrite your thesis and and an event like this weekend it

requires like a pretty 180 shift in a lot of things and moving fast um is can pay off sometimes yeah Sant I know you got a jump Mike anything else you want to cover I would just watch Dex volumes as uh a pretty good indicator for successful chains moving forward like just straight up watching watch Dex volumes um and I'd be curious to watch what happens to the Dex volumes on salana over the course of the next week I think it'll be very telling yeah who's the second who's the third most index volumes right now third most what chain with the most deck swaps it's probably a research let's see do you count hyper

liquid for that yeah I guess you would yeah yeah you have to count I think hyper liquid hyper liquid I think could list it fairly quickly uh yeah probably really quick yeah cool all right folks thanks for tuning in first live stream of Empire first live stream I think this went all right I think people tuned in So Adam thank you for uh beef with us in the comments those were actually good questions I appreciate them um this is great thanks everybody enjoy the rest of the night we'll see you this week guys [Music]