Trump's Win, Portfolio Positioning, and Crypto's Return to the US | Roundup

Transcript

what happens when you let Founders and entrepreneurs operate to the full extent of what they think that they can do um and you know on the founder side of things like we've all been kind of handicapped by what by what we can do in this industry and I think that's a like the that kind of power is about to get Unleashed this can actually be way bigger than 10 trillion or way bigger than digital like a gold market cap yeah how much value do you think could settle on the [ __ ] internet how big do you think that is you I mean like that's not trillion it's hard to hate to break it it's way way bigger than that 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. spacecosmos hey everyone excited to share with you that Kronos ZK evm has launched its Pioneer program offering early adopters a chance to earn not only loyalty points but also potentially win part of a $30,000 ZK cro giveaway if you're interested in being an early adopter visit zk. kronos.com or expensive l2s is just not going to

unlock the next generation of applications super containers offers dedicated customizable app spaces running on supra's 500 ktps layer one blockchain giving you complete control over gas tokens and fees get notified when super containers are ready for Builders at super.com containers 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 there's a reason why Ledger is trusted to secure more than 20% of the world's crypto assets today check out their newest devices The Ledger stacks and The Ledger Flex featuring the world world's first secure touch screens take your security seriously hit the link in the show notes of today's episode to check out their latest devices trust me you won't regret it what's up God feels good Trump wins and you go to Hawaii huh or am I not supposed to we can actually wrap this too late for that I am I I am in still in America the land of the Brave the home of the free

or what is it the home home of the free that land of the Brave close yeah close God feels good oh the probability of me moving back just goes up like through the roof I love this country wow we got a new s today man what a what a crazy week huh I mean first off first off How is how's the marathon I got to do the I got to do the friendly no no none of this is about me like the marathon was an afterthought I'm like I it didn't even I wasn't even thinking about the marathon I was thinking about the fond I'm thinking about about like the election but honestly like what a great week I mean I've been sleeping so much better you are before this recording this she said I woke up at 5: in the morning blasting

EDM of ichi music I mean I I got to think that most people in the industry are feeling a combination of euphoria and such a relief because I mean it's when you think and look back yeah it's it's it just it's been tough it's been really tough to like feel like you're you know you don't feel comfortable telling people about the space uh it feels like dirty to say that you're in crypto forget about the bare Market it just feel now it's like god it feels great to have someone that actually believes in this and I don't know it was a landslide win so let's should we just unpack the

election yeah yeah let's let's unpack it and and I would focus on yeah yeah yeah let's unpack it i' I'd be curious to get your general takes well I was going to lean on you because you're the political expert I mean look we we I just finished our monthly kickoff and what we said to the what Mike and I said to the company is um you know there's there's two ways to talk about this election there is uh the societal uh element of Republicans vers Democrats and Trump vers Harris and the societal impact and um the economy and taxes and abortion and immigration and um you know I don't think that stuff really should should enter into the workplace um I think companies are

better when they're focused on their mission and their Vision um and making an impact on the world through those things and so I you know we at on on the kickoff we said look I I think it's important right now to have there there are a lot of people who are really happy there are a lot of people who are really upset and it's important to have empathy for for both sides that being said the there's another way to talk about this which is just from the light of the impact on the industry and the impact on I mean we we had our it was our all hands so the impact on the company and it was I mean it's about as good as it can get I will say so I mean it's only been 20 less than you know it's been 36 hours since the election and what

Bitcoin shot up 7% overnight it was actually interesting it wasn't even overnight it was when the market started to realize that Trump was going to win which the AL Market went from when the AL poly Market it almost was a direct movement with the odds of Po Market going from like high 50s all the way to 69 or 60 and then 70 like you could just the market was just moving in line with that so so it was really interesting so I'm I'm from California I'm from San Francisco so I've got a group chat with my high school friends who are all pretty liberal then I've got then I was watching MSNBC and like flipping between CNN MSNBC and fox and just seeing how the different channels were covering it then Twitter and then poly market and these things

you know you would think that these things would all be kind of in line or kind of similar with maybe a lag but the market realized basically poly market and the market moved to Trump like a solid two to three hours before media did and before you know my my group chat from home with you know fairly liberal um friends Mo moved to that conclusion and so yeah I mean look the the market is the Market's telling us what it thinks it's Bitcoin went up 7% all-time high coinbase shot up like 20% um I hope you I hope you bought that coinbase when when we had uh when we had breakfast um and yeah you saw me confirm the trade on the phone I yeah you're right um but I

mean like zooming out for a second we have operated in an industry where for the first decade of the industry it wasn't partisan nor bipartisan it wasn't like people didn't like us or liked us nobody cared about us so first 10 years of the industry nobody really cared about us but the last several years we've operated as in an industry where people didn't like us right whether it was this recent Administration but even people forget when in Trump in 2016 to 2020 he didn't like crypto either so for the last you know eight years we've we've we've tried to build this industry with a with a political um you know Administration and House and Senate and and and kind of the

that side of things uh you know just not liking us just making it much harder to build and to invest in this industry and so I think what what's going to be really interesting to see and really fun to see is like what happens when you let Founders and entrepreneurs operate to the full extent of what they think that they can do um and you know on the founder side of things like we've all been kind of handicapped by what by what we can do in this industry and I think that's a like the that kind of power is about to get Unleashed absolutely I mean there's a couple things to unpack Brian Armstrong had a great treat uh great tweet says welcome to the new members of America's most Pro crypto Congress ever 219 plus pro crypto candidates and Counting have

now been elected to the house and the Senate tonight the crypto voter has spoken decisively across party lines and in key races across the country Americans disproportionately care about crypto and want clear rules for the road of the road for digital assets we look forward to working with the new Congress to deliver it um This was um a day ago so you know the full tally was not counted but nonetheless it is now up to over 25050 folks and yes which to me that that candly is probably more impactful um from a leg because when I think about to your point around what's been handicapping the industries we don't have clear rules and regulations and so uh a lot of resources have been focused

on trying to get that uh every team that I've invested in spends at least 10 cents on every dollar that they raise on sort of legal advice and uh forget about the things that they haven't done or the you know the design space that hasn't been explored because there's just things that we haven't not because we we don't have the imagination to innovate but it's just you just don't know you just don't go there um and so I think it's uh it's going to be really exciting to see that um of course now uh it puts a lot of emphasis on delivering and executing at at the project level you know I think that's another point that I wanted to make it's great you know it might take a little bit of time but if you're a Founder in this space then

accelerate right now it's fully on you to to to build to execute and I think that's really liberating um but um yeah the other thing I want to point out is um uh poly Market uh um amazing what they've done um I think uh I had the privilege of meeting Shane very early on in his journey invested when I was a Pari uh parfi has become one of his key Partners but it's just been amazing to see how poly Market has become the news and that was a thesis back then you know the prediction markets you know surface the truth and are highest higher signals when you put money on the line um and it was very interesting to see I mean I think uh they had a great tweet to the

effect of Corp you know like the office meme which is Corporate wants you to identify differences in the two images and it was poly markets October 24 prediction of the election outcome and the real outcome and it was like the same it's like the same picture uh and I think that's just goes to show how powerful that was because everyone got it wrong like I was tuning in on you know even Bloomberg's of the world they they they got it wrong either they have a lot of bias because they they spin on one side you know they're either very pro-liberal um and they don't like to report things as they are but now we have what is a more credible source of Truth in real time combined with Twitter being owned

by Elon which is surfacing a lot of these insights and so I think that was just very very powerful to see um it was also the fact that it didn't go down you know it's pretty amazing as well there's a lot of volume on the line and um I think it was very very good to see that I mean I think again yet another crypto application that is providing a lot of utility we talk about stable coins a lot prediction markets for this election were essential so shout out to Shane and the entire poly Market team for just becoming so embedded in the election and um really showcasing yet another another use case for crypto that is really useful for people so that was that

pretty awesome to see yeah I mean the success of poly market then I mean Robin Hood just launched prediction markets as well like this is it you know I was watching flipping between like I said MSNBC CNN and fox and fox was I mean Fox basically turned turned off their coverage for a little bit and was just showing poly market like yeah you know one of the real I've really fought this what I'm about to say for for years because I'm a real believer in media I'm a real believer in journalism and and strong reporting and um I probably underweight the impact that poly market and Twitter has on the world and I have for the last

couple of years because I'm a real believer in Media with that caveat one of the biggest losers of this election is mainstream media mainstream media just you know if you don't think that they are I'm I almost am I I'm still in the processing phase of it for me like I think I've come around to this later than most people have um because you know running a media company and and I think I I think actually there's I want to make a clear distinction between like what I'd call Niche or B2B media and then there's mainstream media and mainstream media just completely completely flubbed it here I mean they just they just missed um and they missed

really badly and I've been reading the coverage after the election specifically mainly from The New York Times and from the Atlantic and they're continuing to miss they're just continuing to say you know half this country is misogynistic and and and and sexist and that's why that's why the Republicans won and it's just really polarizing it's very point because people like my mom was getting alerts on her phone uh you know I landed and I'm with my parents here this week and she was like getting notifications from The New York Times mom just turned them off like just like a poly Market he's like I'm gonna win she's like you're really calm I'm like he's going to win like unequivocally I've been telling like for me it was it was a no-brainer like I just never like

obviously the the odds kind of fluctuated a bit but I mean um for reasons I just felt he was going to win but the the the the media coverage you remember what I told you when I invested in in you guys yeah a big part of my thesis was you have an opportunity to create a new Media company and show the world what that could be and that might be through different mechanisms that you can leverage some elements of crypto to create just a better organization I think eventually you ought to wonder like is there a probability where you turn into like there's a very good there's a couple paths here one that you continue to grow and the path towards growing is becoming very polarizing and clickbaity and appealing to a particular constituent base is that the right path

that's certainly what like the New York Times and so and even Fox like they become very political they become very biased in their reporting but there's another Avenue here where you can actually like growth is not incompatible with being objective and being balanced and I think you guys have proven that over the last two years like you have been uh I go back to that moment where one of your reporters uh published a oped piece I forget it was about not not a not a reporter um an opinion an opinion it it was an opinion piece my bet yeah and you guys published it it was controversial most people didn't like it but you know opinion pieces are important um you

should be kind of doing that and so I think it's been from my standpoint I think it's been very refreshing to see you guys kind of try to build and restore some of that balance in reporting and media organizations um the question is as you keep growing like can you uh can you like avoid that trap that every influencer every large organization some says in order to continue to grow you need to resort to these click baity things why because I don't know for a variety of reasons if you're an influencer you know the value that you get you know it's a very small percentage of the cut that you get from YouTube and Instagram and all these things so in order for you to kind of it starts with very pristine content and

then over time it just gets co-opted and you have to do brand sponsorships and you know all this stuff is that really bad no is it objective no um so as long as you have proper disclosures right so anyways I think that um I'm optimistic I don't think media let's just be realistic media organizations will continue to have a really big influence in the world and how people consume information right um but you now have prediction markets at surface the truth and can at least be can at least be a a a thing that you can point to and say no actually well how do you reconcile what you're reporting and what's the Market's telling us like how do you bridge that Gap yeah yeah like I'm I'm actually very excited to work closely with poly Market

in the in the coming years because I think that they media and prediction markets serve two sides of the same coin which is trying to get to the truth um so what media is really good at is actually contextualizing some things like again not the New York Times and and The Atlantics uh of the world anymore but I think like someone like blockworks like our our editorial team I think I think is probably the best in the industry and really really really good at what they do um and they're very good at contextualizing things and adding like background and and like thinking through things and like and sourcing things and and actually just reporting on the facts um what media just because of like what media is worse at is quantifying quantifying the future

and quantifying the facts so media can add context but it's very tough for media to be like there's a 71% chance that Trump is gonna win and uh you saw the New York Times start to try to do this which is like their you know little they had a like the New York Times needle they call it but OB you know they completely they completely whiffed on that but but that is them trying to quantify the future instead of just adding context and I think that is where but but the problem with that is it's just an internal team of people there doing that or it's some model they've built and what you need are the free markets quantifying things dollars backing backing the predictions and so like I think the future will will not be

oh it's only prediction markets or oh it's only media it's these two things kind of working in tandem where the prediction Market helps quantify the news and contextualize yeah I think you're triangulate on the truth but in a world where you don't have prediction markets a world is better in a world the world is better when you have prediction markets to at least fact check to to uh you know there's a big dis just to to focus the the discussion in this podcast and other there's a lot of debate around well which prediction Market's better there's a big Divergence that we talked about in the prior episode well who's right predicted says one thing poly Market says another there's a big gap trying to explain that Gap is useful that's where we should focus the conversation um the question will be of

course like what is a future viability of a prediction Market the election Encompass a lot of volume um you do need to have for prediction markets I think to be um to surface the truth it goes back to this there's great book called wisdom of the crowds and in order for the crowd to surface the truth meaning a market to surface the truth I think you need to have sufficiently large number of participants that are also uh heterogeneous meaning if you all have like left people in in extreme scenario you have you know imagine it's a soccer match who's going to win the U Champions League well if you have all Madrid fans only betting on the market and if you have many real millions of Real Madrid fans well obviously that that's a very um um homogeneous market

large but homogeneous so that skews it so that's not surfacing the truth what you want to have is a sufficiently large and like number and participants in the market and dollar is backing it across a very diverse group that that surfaces the truth that's like the criteria that I think is Jim forget his last name in wisdom of the crowds so that would be interesting to maybe this like from a product idea poly Market it would be useful for them to kind of maybe try to quantify that um and so because there's a lot of different markets people can go to poly Market you can pull it up and they have on all kinds of stuff you know uh Sports uh you know discrete events and whatnot some of them have very

shallow liquidity so is that going to be useful enough arguably not yeah um but I think it's still it still allows us to it's still better marginally irrespective of whether it's sufficiently large or heterogeneous I do still think that it is a good thing to focus on just to F like for a conversation starter to say well what's the Delta like why is this phenomenon occurring right yeah the the last thing we can move on from this is if you the context that so I think people think of just media as news stories but like I'm really really really bullish on podcasts and newsletters obviously as

people know from from block works and Empire and stuff like that but like you know we didn't cover the election actually that closely relative to some other blockworks channels but we have a show for forward guidance and like Quinn Thompson and Tyler and Felix who's the host of Ford guidance like if you listen to them you would have made a tremendous amount of money like they have been so early and so right on the Ford guidance podcast and actually the other thing that I missed out on mentioning was like I was just plugged into the we we launched all these telegram channels across the blockworks like podcast so there's an Empire Channel we can link it in the show notes there's a Xerox research there's a thousand X Channel and I think the best source of

information for me during the election was actually the for Biden telegram Channel um so yeah that's just so anyways yeah let's um let's get into crypto how do you think about just how are you repositioning your portfolio are you re rethinking your invest are you do do you feel like you were perfectly positioned do you think you know so I mean it was interesting looking at what went up right Bitcoin went up like 7% eth went up five or six percent um the meme coins went up like 15% coin went up 20% and the defi tokens like the probably Blue Chip def went up like 15 to 20% as well um so how you know some of the l1s like

soie apto 10 to 15% like think there's a a really interesting thing to do which is look at the performance in the first 24 hours which should actually I think give you some signal into what will happen over the next several months so I'm curious how you're thinking about this uh I didn't make any changes I was very well like positioned coming into it um I was as long as it could get um and so I was fully allocated so as we were recording this Bitcoin is all time H 76361 eth uh is at 2,800 salana is about to hit 200 it's are 194s um and so yeah I

think you're right it was really interesting to observe which ones uh rallied the most um but they get defi tokens and I think there's a category in coin gecko that talks about like SEC Securities I want to look at that and how that performed let's let's go quickly there um categories so coo has a a nice filter says categories and there's one that uh in particular that I'm really curious about [Music] um apologies here where is it alleged SEC Securities that includes salana Tron a bunch of others so that was that was up I'm I'm pulling it up here for one sec

that was up over the last um over the last seven days that's been up quite substantially um and that includes Soul BMB Tron near filecoin mtic like and then you go down the list from there you know a lot of defi tokens so these ones are these are up actually less than you know like file coin's only up 6% near is only up 4% Ton's only up 2% tron's down 5% the things that are up the most actually tend to be uh well memes are up the most right the yeah the

memes and defi like Li is up 12% um right oh on the you're quoting s day not 24 hours yeah oh yeah you're right you're right right yeah more than 24 hours is the thing but yeah yeah yeah absolutely I mean I think it's um I mean everything is going out right but I I do think uh so what I of course I uh if you look A's up 30% in the last 28% in the last 30 days in the last seven days excuse me what's like whff is up whiff is down actually up on a 7day per Whi why is whiff down I have no

idea that I mean it was it it it red quite a bit from the bottom it was like a 190 or so now it's at 238 go up quite a bit Yeah so Ryan Watkins had this tweet um or I can pull it up he said there's more opportunity uh single greatest setup for liquid tokens uh we've had since 2021 Global liquidity is expanding regulation is radically easing a potential us strategic Bitcoin Reserve could spark a sovereign Bitcoin accumulation race crypto is unambiguously becoming the election trade and will likely be the fastest horse in the race a few powerful alt narratives are accelerating AI Autumn Soul super cycle meme coin Mania defi Renaissance how do you think about like are you trying to pick any new

winners right now are you relooking at things are you basically just sitting in your salana meme coins coinbase stock and just kind of sitting on that yeah yeah I'm not not doing like I uh Chris berneski had a tweet around like if you've been sidelined you have the window on allocating is closing and so yeah he's had something to that effect yeah actually actually would take the opposite argument here uh and I responded to his tweet I'll tell you why we'll read his tweet first and he said he basically said that it's a bit further down um if you've been sidelined you have a narrow window of time to fix your mistake that was a day

ago my response him says I'd argue you have plenty of time because it's still very early and this industry will grow much more than most believe we're at a point where most businesses don't appreciate how crypto works or how it can help them I think you'll know we're no longer early when most businesses leverage crypto and yet their users may not even know it or care about it and that's the point because I do think that like many transformational Technologies crypto will be invisible but its impact will be felt like again going back to discussion like poly Market was very visible it was very useful for for many people beyond the crypto kind of um what is still very small ecosystem out would characterize even though there's millions of users however you want to slice it but you

know what I mean like okay like we talk about the biggest opportunity I think ahead of us is if you're a project the design space hopefully just opens up dramatically and the things that you can explore and the way you design your token economics and how and then the inverse of that is um or the AL alternate point is a lot of businesses have been sidelined like from a from in people that want to invest in the class you know we've heard it from multiple institutions like the black rocks of the world like a lot from an allocation perspective many banks raas can even you know most of the flows into ETFs are still self-directed accounts or not managed accounts meaning the banker is not calling can't recommend uh an ETF product but I'm quite excited obviously

from my vantage point and what I'm trying to do now with the fund is you ought to wonder how many businesses I think at this point understand this have a good sense of what crypto can do for them but they haven't really comfortable um getting involved because of the regulatory lack of regulatory guidance and Clarity and a very hostile environment right so I mean I think it this is a perfect setup obviously you can play it in the short term there's a Hu I think the Market's continue to you know I sort of agree with Ryan's take and Chris's take like you know it feels like 2025 is going to be a great year uh for a variet variety of reasons but if you extend that to five years 10 years like thought that that I mean you know I mean

like it's not a 10 trillion opportunity here if this really works it's going to be way bigger than that scale is the blockchain that is Simply Built different let's face it other L1 networks have costly transaction fees that increases 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 G and host five of the top 25 games on dap radar you should definitely check 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 hey

everyone Jason here I wanted to quickly talk about Kronos ZK evm a Next Generation zero knowledge layer 2 blockchain Network focused on scalability security and innovation secured by ethereum it further expands the Kronos ecosystem using ZK sync Tech Kronos ZK evm has launched its pioner program offering early users loyalty points for engaging with Kronos ZK evm and its daps join the first Quest by depositing cro in the Kronos ZK evm bridge to receive ZK cro and loyalty points at Main net launch and that's not all in addition to receiving ZK cro and loyalty points you could also win part

of a 30 ,000 ZK cro giveaway by depositing in the bridge the more you deposit the better your chances of winning visit zkm drron dogbed for more info now let's get back to Today's Show 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 your yourself it's really complicated to figure out all the tax withholdings 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 of today's episode let's face it building on crowded l1s or expensive l2s is just not going to unlock the next generation of applications in crypto that's where super containers come in offering a completely new solution that transforms your development control imagine dedicated customizable app spaces

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I wanted to take a few seconds to tell you more about them these wallets feature the world's first secure touch screens which don't just simplify your digital transactions but also keep them extremely safe 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 choose the most trusted name in Hardware wallets and take control of your digital Security today at ledger.com or hit the link in the description of today's episode to check out their latest wallets so I think you both are right Chris is probably right that we're entering the stage of the cycle where

things get really freaking crazy like 2025 could be really really really crazy and like do you really want to be buying if you're tra kind of trading the Cycles you know um do you want to be buying Bitcoin at like 120 or something like maybe not like late stage cycle if you're holding for a decade yes what I think nobody is thinking about is um we had a massive uh out out what's the opposite of influx uh uh departure of developers actually to AI about a year you know maybe over the last like two years and what you're about to see I think and we're kind of positioning for this with uh we just announced per Miss list 4 today um which

I can I don't I know you're probably 7 a.m. there right now so I can I don't know if you've seen it yet but we're bringing yeah we're bringing it to Brooklyn well you yeah okay um we're up by 5 am what are you talking about yeah I'm drink great Hawaiian coffee this is that looks that looks phenomenal actually um the thing that nobody's thinking about or I just haven't people seen people talking about is what happens to the industry when you get a 10 when you 10x the number of developers and these aren't crypto developers these are Shopify developers and stripe developers and developers coming from traditional Capital markets and from from uh Airbnb and from Facebook and look it takes them some time and maybe they're not as what they what they lack

on the crypto Nativity and the ability to launch a token and have that token go up they make up for and More in their UI their ux their ability to think about customer acquisition and um yeah just build a really good consumer product so I think people forget what happens when you 10x the number of developers in an industry and that is about that is much more important in 2025 than the price going up in 2025 we are about to 10x the number of developers IND we hit a just an all-time high before the election and maybe the market was feeling that that I'm talking about Bitcoin um it's sort of like we've gone this far in a very hostile

environment you know no matter how you want to talk about it Lance Vance from framework had a great tweet around how difficult it is to run us you know based investment firm in crypto like from one day to the other and I've seen it your bank account gets shut down it's it's very difficult to have service providers um you know people constantly discount you so it's from that standpoint it's very hostile most teams left the US they went to Dubai they went to Singapore they just gone even to London because that's marginally better um so I mean certainly like you're gonna have more developers coming into the space but from my standpoint like there's a lot of really good Tech that's been built it's just it's just it has been adopted because is legal it is legal to work in

crypto now like even you it's it's been it's obviously been you're not going to go to jail for working in crypto but they make it about as hard as as you can make it to work in an industry I mean everyone was getting debanked last year it's hard to set up a fund you can't accept tokens everyone's setting up these Cayman entities there's no rules around how to issue a token like it is damn hard to operate in this industry even hosting conferences look at all like consensus used to be the flagship us conference they're hosting their event in freaking Toronto next year like they they left the US and so here's a here's here's an interesting take that I agree with with Shia um he said if Trump wins eth loses its regulatory mode mind you eth he's referencing eth has been

dubbed as a nonse like not a security accelerating the timeline for the soul e flipping I actually agree with um um it's an interesting take uh I of course have talked about salana flipping ethereum um because I see more developers I see more activity there some of the like the slope of the curve and if you go listen to the debate that I had with aicho Avo is actually the one that that described it like this shout out to aicho he said the slope of the curve because they put out the developer report there are more developers in ethereum today there's more tvl in ethereum today but the slope of the curve is one you want to be looking at is from a the best new teams are building on salana the best most exciting projects are building in salana more users the the newer users and

developers entering the space are going to salana one of my portfolio companies time. Fon just announced that it was going to move over to salana um there's plenty of examples like geonet some of these projects like they all realize the activity and the attention is in salana because it provides a more in like just a more seamless um frictionless experience for the for the user so I actually you know shall frame it from that L which I thought was interesting and I agree with um so Solana is up vastly Sana responded much more than ethereum um after the election like sana's now it was like a 160 now is it close to 200 eth has gone up as well but salana like the sole East chart pull that up I'm not I'm not a chartist or

but I do appreciate uh I'm not a Char but when I see the soul eth chart going up I will want I'd be REM look at here here let me get out of the prices for a second and show you what I think is uh more more interesting which is um not actually I I tweeted this I said us conferences are back so to uh so toally tweeted breakpoint USA 2026 Jill said hear me out Devcon 2025 and rousi said can we finally have more conferences in the states yet and the thing that is interesting is I mean s you've been in how long you've been in the industry a decade right every two years we Ean every two to three years we Ean flow between Asia and the US Asia

and the US it's like you know us super hot us cracks down everything goes to Asia then China China does the Bitcoin mining ban everything come backs to the US then FTX blows up Gensler cracks down everything goes to Asia and this marks the US is back on I would say the US the US trade is back on people are reminded that New York is the crypto capital of the world the Hub of all the of you know of all the capital and um I just think that's good net good for the industry net good for the United States like it doesn't make sense necessarily that this industry should I mean I'm biased I'm a US person but like it's a good thing to

have a strong and vibrant us ecosystem absolutely the US in my mind like when people ask me where I'm from I identify American I'm not American but I identify American because it's the best place in the world for two reasons one it has a system that works why let me let me elaborate on that crypto you've still had very hostile you know the branches of government when makes a democracy great you know you have executive legislative and administrative you know even in a very hostile Administration you still won most of the biggest most important court cases when it went to court and the Constitutional interpretation of things like there was a Bedrock there like you and we talk have talked about it how many times in this podcast is you have to believe in the court system because

if the court system fails and it fails in many other countries then that's a problem so no matter who the executive is no matter how the administration the leg legislative um composition is on one outside of the aisle or the other you believe the courts will interpret the Constitution and the key values and principles of a country and what it stands for so I think like from a systemic standpoint countries are great from that reason like the interpretation of the law needs to be sound and predictable it has been in the US for crypto I appreciate it's been very regulat like the hostility has been on all-time high but the courts have ruled in the favor of Ripple um uh what is it dcg grayscale right um You have to ETF approv we have to sue the three-letter

agency to get it approved and we won you know I mean like so that's really powerful uh and the second one is just from a cultural standpoint like it is a place that it is aspirational still for most people around the world like you go to the US because people care more about what you think and what you stand for as opposed to where you come from if you come from money or not um and you can actually fail and and people people allow that there's so many cultures where you know it's not very pro-innovation because as soon as you fail it's like seppuku like your family it's a disgrace and I'm not going to name the countries but you there's many cultures like that and so I think I came to the US and for me it was the it was

the biggest opportunity that I had because you you are in the most competitive markets whether it's New York whether it's um Elite institutions um and and also you people care more about what you think and that's so refreshing incredibly refreshing people that don't appreciate that live in the US go and travel go meet people ask people ask immigrants where they come from and how they're treated in their country culturally for that reason I think America in my mind has always been the greatest country for at least of Our Generation uh is it on it is it is it at its prime and Peak no but I'd argue where this is a big inflection point to recover marginally what it

lost um and I'm really excited to see that heck I'd move back I told you this I'd move back I'm not sure I'm going to move back do you think you'll move back I have I have office space I have office space in New York now let's go that's where that's where most of the people that I'm hiring are going to be based the strategy and most of the businesses that I'm already looking to acquire are based in the US the other thing that people haven't mentioned is the IPO Market is going to open up it's been really tough to raise money as a crypto company I mean we're we're not raising but like talking to a lot of founder friends if you are a seed and series a like you you've probably actually had some success the last uh couple of months but series B series C

and series D are completely hamstrung from fundraising right now and the there's two reasons for that one is the IPO markets are closed they've been they've been closed but they never been open for they never been open for crypto companies really they've never been they' they've never been open because CTO compies the fundraising environment has sucked you haven't really had new money come in or being allocated to crypto funds well all the funds are really struggling to raise as as you know there's some some tiny fundraises happening right now with with these funds I think a been most of the success have been like Sub sub 100 million funds some have break in like 100 200 there's

few that have raised more than that so there just no new money and um you know uh tenent Dan tapiero and tenent led our last round and I saw that Dan said something on stage at an event yesterday said they got like 30 to 50 inbounds yesterday um from from folks and you know we had our board meeting this week and he was saying similar stuff um yeah uh just about like what what would happen which is there's a lot of allocators who are now just woke up and they can't allocate to the liquid crypto markets like they're not just buying eth or Sal so they need to allocate to these funds that'll take them you know what six months to do and so there's actually this like there's a real lag in the

fundraising markets um from an event like this and so it's I would watch it to you know maybe we'll see it like end of q1 going into Q2 like I think you'll start to see it might be it might be sooner than that actually you think well what's what's what's different now of course is um well two what I'm thinking about is how many of these allocators haven't allocated and we waiting for the outcome of the election waiting for uh you know and so now that that's been resolved where are they going to allocate are they going to buy an ETF have did they do that before the election um and how much of their allocation of crypto from a portfolio

standpoint is going to go to funds A historically it's been this idea of like I'm going to allocate in a fund and that's how you know I I'll let them handle a lot of the complexity now you have an ETF in the picture right but we've had it for a while I think uh the ETF the people that were on the sidelines I would argue more of that Capital will flow into funds less so on a marginal basis in ETFs because people I think for the most part kind of like were comfortable buying a Bitcoin ETF maybe in ethereum ETF um but you're right I mean we should we should track flows but I I do think I got like two or three emails from different funds they're like we're opening the subscription window all of a

sudden and you're like yeah of course you are which is good you know like and I think there and I think to your point around Dan and tent like a lot of them are getting inbound interest from people that that were just waiting for this to be resolved to then saying okay I want to do I do want to have exposure and now I want to find the right manager to do that for me yeah yeah um we just talk about this um how crazy thing I have two two friends who are down in marago and um actually well I'm not gonna I mean basically Trump was just saying extremely bullish things about crypto to them um like out

outlandishly bullish is what I would say uh just outlandishly bullish if even 5% of what he said about crypto is is true and actually follows through on it I mean it's a huge so like take the bit yeah take the bit you know Bitcoin went up 7% overnight but take something like the Bitcoin Reserve so as a reminder the Bitcoin Reserve was uh introduced by Senator lumus back in June I think um and basically what the Bitcoin Reserve means is you would use existing funds at the fed and the treasury to purchase one million Bitcoin which would make the US the largest one million units of Bitcoin units of Bitcoin which would make uh the US the largest nation state holder of Bitcoin give us about a 5% it still is

because of the C's Bitcoin yeah uh yeah good point okay it would give us about five yeah yeah that's a good point but it would give us about a 5% ownership of of the network which people are like oh they would never they would never do something like that well news flash is that we are 5% ownership of the network is about on par with our stake in the global uh gold Supply actually so this would get us on par with where with our ownership in in the gold Supply and you know if you look at where we're at as a country we have 36 trillion in debt growing at about a trillion dollars every hundred days um all roads seem like they're leading to inflation there's a risk of losing the status as

the global Reserve currency if that keeps happening and um if you have a a long-term outlook here like everything from a macro perspective signals that you should increase your exposure to risk assets I don't think it's really crazy to think that Trump might actually follow through on something like the Bitcoin Reserve or shutting down the ability for the US Marshals to sell their their seized Bitcoin yeah these kind of things that it's like it seems like these outlandish things but now that it's actually happening I mean the head of his transition is Howard lutnick Howard lutnick is the runs canit jail who Banks tether right he owns personally hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin um it's just like I don't think people are really B

understanding how how insane this actually could get people ask me why I steal a crypto is because I tell them very concretely I am of the mind that I'm earlier now than I was before because you see the impact of starting to work in many things that perhaps before I didn't appreciate and the second I think uh sort of this quote by U Bill Gates which is we tend to overestimate what happens in two years and grossly underestimate what happens in 10 and I appreciate we've been at this for more than you know since like the financial crisis but I genuinely think that this is like I think uh our most of the markets and people's imagination doesn't go that far you know so you stop believing

because if you've been in an environment where things have been slow and not all of it is attributable to a regulatory environment that has been hostile but you've become tired you've become more skeptical heck you become cynical and it's really important my in my time in crypto it is so important to check yourself in the mirror and say have I become cynical because you got to remind yourself of why you came into the space you got to also re underwrite your thesis as you're doing now perhaps with this there's new information there's there's a new environment you should re underwrite the thesis but go back and remind yourself observe talk to founders of what's working and again it's like invert and say if it's been working and we've gone this far with the tech not

being as great that was like or with the regulator BS been Hustle the combination of all that but you have some really powerful really useful pieces of tech like a stable coin or like a prediction Market or then you wonder like okay yeah yeah this can actually this can actually be way bigger than 10 trillion or way bigger than digital like a gold market cap yeah how much value do you think could settle on the [ __ ] internet how big do you think that is you I mean like that's not 10 trillion it's hard hate to break it way way bigger than that now is it going to take like the challenge always like markets always get ahead of themselves and maybe that's Chris's Point like you gota you know you gotta

you got to underwrite that you got to move before others do um and and a lot of the big moves in Prior Cycles have been you know you had to you had to be allocated like the difference between allocated in like a month before compound launch liquidity Mining and the month after was a difference between a 30X and a 20x or a 15x or a 5x like it was months and so is that going to is it going to be different this site time around I don't know markets do react very violently but man I just it is still kind of crazy that money can now move kind of at the speed of light and and that's just we're talking about this most people like don't appreciate how limited the investment opportunity is for people

outside the US they cannot buy Apple stock I've had this belief that perhaps the most amount of money in this space will be captured by people that aren't in the space today but will be in the next couple of years because they they're coming at it from like that fresh perspective that you came at it like when you started in crypto you're like holy [ __ ] this could really transform the internet but you know you spend enough times to get rugged a few times you get frustrated you lose patience you become cynical but I think the whole theme of this episode The Narrative is I think you ought to rewrite your thesis I think that's a really good point I mean take something like

tokenized stocks like that will happen but if you've been in the industry for as long as we have you hear that and you're like oh my God you don't get it 50 people mirror and synthetics you don't get it everyone's tried that does doesn't work someone will come and do that someone will come and do that or here here's another one I want to move these freaking election I mean thank God it wasn't a close election because and and and you know thank God it wasn't a close election because if it was close I mean the next three months in this country would be would be total hell like the the election fraud and the votes getting recounted like we gotta move these we got to move these votes on to a damn blockchain or something or

some better system like some entrepreneur who's never worked color Colorado did this a pilot I don't ever piloted these things but like all these like all these entrepreneurs in crypto who are the really good entrepreneurs including myself would be like that's been tried before you can't do that and some some entrepreneur out there is gonna be like oh my God we gotta fix this crypto yeah I know what makes a great founder you and I have listened to it so many Founders you're a great founder what makes a great founder I'll tell you why I'll I mean I'll tell you why I think the best Founders need to be like maniacally obsessive about a particular idea

combined with some naivity of how say naive you have to be naive you have to be naive enough to not fully understand how difficult it's going to be but you have to have both the ability to take extreme pain that's a quote from the Four Seasons founder Excellence is the ability to take pain right that requires a maniacal Obsession about you know right now I'm obsessed about friction in system it pisses me off every Hotel every interaction that I have I'm like God damn it there there has to be a better way to do [ __ ] things you know so you're maniacally obsessed about something you are obsessed about media and the frustration with it but you also have to be naive enough how difficult it was going to be and you have to keep at it so your point is that is it almost

requires if you've been in the space long enough you probably lose that sense of you know naivity but you have to be kind of new coming into the space and say well [ __ ] why are we counting votes with paper and all this crap like there surely is a better way to do that that in an immutable Ledger right right and he doesn't know that there have been like 30 Pilots like I'll give you an example what talking about mistakes I made in my investing trajectory uh which is not very luminary but nonetheless uh I passed on helium multic was like an early investor and they came to me and said hey you want to participate I was like this has been tried way too many times in web 2 like why is it gonna be any

different and it was that you know sometimes or or like a lot of people passed on defi because they said Unis swap oh you must not know centralized order book models if you're a finance guy you're like centralized order book models will always be superior I'm like yes but let's talk about you know some of the benefits of an amm so anyways uh yeah to your point around developers I think in a perfect world you want to understand out of the new developers how does that quality compare relative to Prior Cycles or prior like is the quality not just the number of it but the quality of the founder where are they coming from are they the

exceptional Founders um that in moments of time in this industry have come from the likes of Google and the top like web 2 kind of companies are they entering the space and where are they building which ecosystem which application now all this to say some some of these Founders are not necessarily the best because historically it's been very difficult to build in crypto right and a lot of the same Founders that came from Stamford or some of these Elite companies ended up were the ones that ended up leaving the fastest because they lost conviction and they knew that they could just go and find another job right what I'm trying to say is I think most of the people that pivoted the AI or left to space and like in Prior Cycles were these guys like you know um that came from the the the Googles of

the world and like they lost really quickly uh so anyways um I'm not suggesting that everyone in Google in Stanford is soft but you got to have a lot of grit in this space and a lot of ability to take pain and and so anyways it's not easy I saw this week I saw two pictures that made me think of you I will show them to you oh boy here we go no no no this is one of them due to Rising costs all non-cash transactions will incur a 3.5% processing fee wait here's the other ridiculous the where's that New York um yep and then the other one was uh my local uh Bodega cash

discount 2% baby so friction in the system got two two to 3.5 that's this is my calling I'm like I'm just Obsessed the same that you are about media and transforming that I'm I'm obsessed from a this there ought to be a better way with just friction in systems it's crazy you want to see something else that's wild just because I'm sharing my screen and says nothing about crypto I went to uh wait is this a crypto pod I went to a butchering class oh wow this dude this dude Gary taught us how to butcher a full pig isn't that crazy wow well who's on the chopping block I tried to I was GNA tweet it I was

like pug pig butchering golden Market I was like like this has nothing to do you're just stretching you just saw something that was really is this really your first time you've seen like this Pro like the sausage making process so as I've never seen how the sausage is made yes yeah yeah well definitely avoid it um fascinating discussion we're both up at 500 am um have you seen have you watch the permissionless launch video if not I'm going to show you it it's 30 seconds this this is Brooklyn one it is can you hear the sound yeah I can hear [Music] it I like this song

[Music] call [Music] baby I'll be there by the way great song great song SI is that video how good is that video all right what El is I think that's pretty good right anything else you should talk about no no go uh I'm sure other people have much if you guys want an actual political take of what happened uh in this election and like an actual debrief of like red vers blue type of stuff um I'm sure Quinn and uh Tyler and Felix are going to do that on the Ford guidance podcast um but yeah that's it bullish crypto bullish crypto

in the United States um and just yeah if you if you have made it this far and you've been listening to Empire for a while like small tap on the back for for getting to this getting to this place um and I know a lot of Empire listeners like it was your first real cycle um and a lot of you guys came in and the last cycle maybe and braved it to through 2022 and 23 and got to this point and yeah just grateful for for all you guys for we have a telegram chat there's some some activity happening there so you might want to join that and there's there's some activity happening there yeah we uh let's uh let's put a link at the very top of the show notes make it easy to find we've got 362 folks we have uh somewhere between like 10 and 15,000

listeners per episode here so we gota we got to pump those numbers yeah rookie numbers let's pump them up ladies and gentlemen if we're not at 50,000 I'm quitting this I'm I'm gonna be I'm going to be way busier going forward by the way I mean I was busy before but we need to get 50,000 or BST 15,000 50,000 and that's like Sal boss go um great great uh we released the Zach episode on the day of the election so I would recommend going and actually listening to that episode if you guys missed it it's it's uh Zach the founder of bridge it's his only interview he's done since selling the company to stripe uh so I'd really recommend going to listen to that sure

yeah and by the way thank you for the feedback I know a lot of you have DM me a lot of people really like that episode um and this is one of the most DieHard listeners he always sends me feedback on episodes um so again now is your chance to share feedback live on the telegram group or on YouTube or on Twitter we are listening uh if you like stuff or you don't like stuff that we're doing please let us know we appreciate it cool cheers folks see you Tuesday thank you guys 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

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