The Untold Story of Delphi Digital's Rise | Jose, Yan, Anil

Transcript

know seeing a dying German Bank uh you know really kind of gets you pessimistic about like you know the traditional banking system and made us really kind of excited about what's going on in crypto and kind of like the opportunity to build this like parallel Financial system this is probably like in a weird way um the most bullish I've been in a while maybe maybe ever for crypto there's going to be a scenario where governments are actually helping us you you know push crypto forward this episode is brought to you by anoma the universal intent machine introducing a new era of applications where you define the outcomes you want to stay up to date with anoma you can follow them at x.com anoma or sign up for the newsletter at ana. net special thanks to anoma for

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co-founder Jeff a follow on X check out out the links in the description below what's up everyone welcome back to Empire uh the other day we dropped a new podcast in the feed and gave absolutely zero context um so that podcast is from the deli folks um I've known their crew for a very long time I feel like we uh Deli and blockworks kind of grew up together uh in a sense and so yeah I want to bring through the co-founders Jose Yan and Anil on the Pod talk about the deli story talk about what they're seeing in the market they've got a big research arm Venture arm whole bunch of fun stuff we can talk about so Jens welcome to the show thanks man thanks for having us a long time yeah yeah yeah

NE Neil how was the show the other day it fun um yeah always fun to have like get all the people together in New York um been here for a few weeks now and it's like the energy here is like you know best crypto hub for sure you guys think New York is the is the best crypto city in the world right now yeah I think so some people someone was arguing Lisbon which Jose you're you're a base there so you tell us some someone was arguing Jose is me with a mustache no I think in spite of itself New York's probably still still the best Lisbon's pretty good Lisbon has more actually that's not true I think New York has a lot of Builders too but lisman has a lot of like top people in maker nosis um a lot of ogs here as well I

think pretty much if you're not yeah like most I think Europeans or people that aren't American end up here also a lot of Americans actually but especially like if you're European or or non-american you you you tend to end up in Lisbon pretty good guys right Athena like there's a lot yeah guy from yeah guy from Athena's here the P guys are up north actually in uh but but they come here quite often uh yeah bunch of people nice so I want to talk about just like just this cycle and Anil and I were having drinks the other night and just talking about like are there any narratives that are going to pop up and like how how are people making money these days in crypto and I want to talk about all that but I thought it'd be an interesting place to start just talking about like the deli

story um and you guys have these like different arms of the business I've I've always found it very impressive you have five or six or seven co-founders which is like always seems crazy to me and is very like uh atypical for how startups are built so maybe a Neil if I could throw to you to just like share how Deli went from this like little I remember when you guys had just like you just doing some like research reports uh and then now you're this like large company so like yeah tell me the deli story yeah for sure so originally it was four co-founders but we do definitely consider it seven and I I'll kind of talk about how each one is kind of like joined along the way um basically Yan MJ Kevin and I we all like you know uh started in trafi worked at Bloomberg

worked at dorche bank basically my whole professional life has been with these guys by my side um and yeah honestly we you know at do Bank uh Yan and I were actually on the same team there um we fell down the crypto rabbit ho and you know seeing a dying German Bank uh you know really kind of gets you pessimistic about like you know the traditional banking system and made us really kind of excited about what's going on in crypto and kind of like the opportunity to build this like parallel Financial system so essentially in 2018 um we left our jobs um you know looked crazy to our whole team um you know our MD actually told Yan and I that like you know it's okay if you leave and try this Bitcoin stuff but because like if it fails you can just come back here and I think

yanan and I were both in agreement that we were never going to end up back at DOI bank but essentially sorted Del as a research firm because we thought you know if we could get paid to learn about this industry that we were super excited about it'd feel like cheating and obviously given our backgrounds we thought we were you know best fit to kind of like bring that value to the space um essentially first year and you know you probably no I have an amazing picture that I found from the early days oh my God yeah wow yeah I mean we literally I mean you guys were the only On's really holding like any you know good events um and always around the city so yeah we we came a lot manes you what did you say y crypto really ages you holy this is when

you were still Yan liberman CFA kaay I mean I could barely tell that was you like the glasses the like Dapper haircut that might have been the last time we ever wor suits yeah it's pretty incredible yeah wow so anyways go ahead Dan go go yeah damn um wow that's a flashback um yeah so basically in 2018 yeah like right around when we were going to these events and stuff like um we were writing a lot of research but no one was paying us for it there were like no real fundamental investors in the space like we had like two clients like you know shout out hash and like multicoin um and basically like the way that we started um making a name for ourselves was writing these really deep

dive reports where we we were trying to like propose certain things so Yan kind of pioneered a lot of this the hotle waves analysis um he he kind of built on top of some of the work that other people did but used it to call the Bitcoin for the bottom for Bitcoin back in 2018 that report is still out by the way so I think it's like always worth checking because like he was actually right to like literally the week um so that was always impressive and then um we wrote this big report on ethereum and actually what we were trying to walk through on on that report in ethereum was why the economics of e2.0 didn't make sense from like a security perspective and again we had just published a deep dive on bitcoin calling like the bottom and on eth we were saying hey this is like a risk and so a

lot of the eth Maxis back then were kind of very um you know upset with us I don't know Yan if you remember that but like literally it was the first time we ever got like hate and we're like we're just trying to help wh when is this give me like a time stamp on this I think February 2019 um so early q1 2019 um and it was it it was like I remember you know the Bitcoin report grew us from like zero to 1,000 followers this was like one to 10 10,000 followers whatever but I just remember that was the first day we were getting hate we were like man like what did we do wrong but then within 24 hours of that report releasing actually vital and the whole e2.0 Court team reached out to us asked us for our models and we ended up hopping on a call

sharing like kind of like how we walk through you know the report and how we were thinking about things and then like a month later vital ended up you know pushing through a proposal and then um shouting us out on some podcasts like L shining stuff um and that's really when the floodgates of uh Deli like Consulting really uh uh started kind of like opening we started working with a lot of the protocols that you know we were really you know we we helped work on a lot of like dii with you know synthetics compound a we helped transition from e l to there and um yeah honestly it made us like I think that was one of the biggest inflection points of Deli early on because you know transparently when we joined we were really excited about the space um we thought there were like some of the

smartest people we had ever met in the space and in some ways we thought you know by building this pix and shovels business we were just going to ride the coils of this like industry that we thought was going to be you know up only um obviously that was not the case uh and basically I think like when we were on that phone uh call with vitalic and like thinking about you know sharing our models and everything like that I think that was the first like real inflection board for depi where we were like hey you know we're going to be part of making this uh you know whole industry happen and I think after that we kind of gained a lot of confidence in working with a lot of these projects and I think it was and maybe Yan you might remember better about I think it was either Kane

or stany we were like doing doing some Consulting for them and you know back then we were just like you know we just wanted to provide as much value as possible I think like we were hopping on the scar like oh man we think we're providing value but like just in case like they have any push back we're going to give them maybe like an extra month of you know consulting or something like that before we could even get started I think it was Kane he was like Hey man like you guys don't have you know back then we were uh we were actually designing axi at that point and we were talking to him about like what we're doing with axi all this gaming stuff I think uh it was him who was like Hey listen you guys have no idea how valuable it is to have a team like yours

that um you know we're so you know F heads down focused on building synthetics that we can't look up and see what our competitors are doing let alone what's happening in the sector of gaming that no one else is talking about or thinking about right so that really informed us on think you know building out uh kind of subject matter expertise across not just every kind of like sector that we thought was going to exist in crypto but also every different perspective so that's kind of how you got to the dely that you know everyone knows of today which is you know dealt by research um deal by Ventures and deal by Labs where we build projects and then this this is you know I know the podcast is called the hive mind that's where we kind of like coin the term a lot is um

we any decision that we have that is like you know a big like we always trying to get these different perspectives so you get this you know an analytical perspective via research this Builder's mindset via labs and then this Investor's mindset via Ventures and I think gives us this like really unique seed in the market that you know you can only get by having people super deep uh from all angles and then when did so you so was MJ so MJ and then MJ left obviously went to start the fund and then it was Yan and Kevin and you and then when did Jose and tomm Tommy and is is Pierce like Tech I mean yeah came with me yeah came with you so what what's that story uh yeah you want to tell the Tommy

one or yeah I I remember meeting Tommy he was doing I think 51% yeah I remember obviously back then there weren't many um research shops in the space right um actually the like basically the month that we started I believe the block um you know Missi actually you guys too right and us all it it was that like q1 Q2 2018 it was like exactly decrypt launched misari launched the block launched yeah we we were in August of 2018 actually we're on we're about to be um yeah six years like literally this week so this is actually really Timely um but basically um after that Bitcoin report um so P was like an advisor to uh Tom and um basically he

saw the Bitcoin report and was like and you know hey Tom as an adviser you should work with these guys they're really good um he connected us and you know Yan MJ Kevin and I obviously we were like you know best friends and everything like that but we basically all had the same network right and I think one thing that we immediately saw with Tom was obviously loved his energy he was putting in the grind and he was like a one man you know shop at that point and we were kind of like impressed by how hard he was grinding and um how much you know time he was putting in and yeah we had like one meeting uh was supposed to be 30 minutes I think we sat there in that room for like three hours just chatting and getting to know each other and then um you know within a

month or two we ended up doing kind of like this merger where he kind of joined Deli um and brought his old Network and everything like that and then yeah we we never never like looked back since um Jose and Pier story is pretty fun was the etherum report as well right like you guys cited that's how we first got to True always loves to tell this part because my my part of the story is a little bit more funnier Jose go for it well yeah you guys you guys came to me yeah that's a generous way to put it that is maybe I can tell the true story and then I'll tell I'll tell the I'll tell the true story so these guys uh I was I was like doing my own token Eon stuff and um working at a place called

called am amix which was like a it's a funny story from back in the day um people who were around in 2017 will remember that name doing like research and token Eon wrote a report on ethereum close to the well I say close to the bottom then it dropped another like 70% or something or 60% since that report but it was like when everyone was basically really bearish eth I wrote a report about why I was bullish eth and like the fat protocol thesis basically which cited like a bunch of stuff including the burn which eventually happened like like three years later and stuff like this and these guys basically cited that in that report and then Tommy invited me on the podcast to basically debate an eth bear um I don't even remember the name of the eth bear I debated on the on the delat podcast but

any we started like working together more closely like uh started working together on a lot of Consulting Gates because we had a lot of deal flow that we uh could take up as well ended up and then also uh the fund actually came from this interaction too right I had a anchor investor for for a fund we were going to do with uh my previous company but ended up like I I just knew that like I really respected Dela they were like the best research up in the space and then I met them in New York um some might say stoked in in New York and then uh realized like we also got along really well and so I I was like why don't we just do this fund together like I have this anchor investor you guys uh are like on it you know they they like

found synthetics really early we were discussing plays all the time and so the idea was I just bring the SRO investor and we do Del five together uh and we all equal Partners kind of thing and that's kind of how how uh like we came together and then there's a long story with the anchor investor that we can get into he like it was initially was like a $25 million commitment then it went down to like 20 then 10 then five then two like through the bare Market it was like the commitments kept going down and then eventually he like rugged us entirely and was like hey I'm not going to invest when we already we' already like we we were just producing more and more documents for this guy like never produced so much documentation traveled around the world I literally never

worked so hard anything in my entire life exactly money did the guy did the guy have the money looking back TB no n he didn't I'm I'm like because like once so basically we had the we negotiated our first investment with the fund which was door chain um which was basically all the money we we we had we put into door chain and at this point we still thought the guy might have the money and so so we let him invest and at that point the investment was already up like 8X so he was he was like arbing into a to an 8X like fund and he still couldn't find the money like he couldn't find 50 he he was just a middleman like he was and we we have a like I was I piers and I spent a lot of time doing the the

fundraising like maybe for a year we were just traveling around meeting all sorts of like unsavory characters all over the world like craziest stories like people trying to hand us briefcases of cash and stuff um and and yeah this we we met a lot of a lot of and this is when I took up martial arts's uh the brief there's a lot of middlemen LARPing his principles in in in finance but in crypto especially like you know you get to the end and you're like let me just call my friend or whatever and you know so that that was what this guy was um yeah so funny stories from that time like from just the investors that we met so when did you guys realize that when did you guys realize that the way that

you would actually make money was from investing not from research because the way that I understand your guys's like the way that I understand your business model is you have research like Consulting SLS services and then the Venture arm and like research and Consulting makes money which is awesome and it's and I'm sure it's profitable and makes makes a lot of money but really it's there to serve as like kicking off for the like trying to find the 100 x's on the Venture side which you guys were able to do in the last cycle um so like when did you guys have that realization and and tell me if I'm wrong or or or not no not wrong I mean I think the end goal was always to invest in a structured way right through a fund uh we were always investing with Pas and

and so when we first started we didn't really have a background in crypto and and our backgrounds were on the cell side right so we didn't really have an investing background either it was it was writing research and and and making calls but there wasn't any direct fund management experience uh so for us you know we thought the the best path to getting there was through research initially and and building a history of of of good calls building a deeper understanding while continuing to invest personally and then eventually launching a fund and so we thought that that the end goal was certainly a fund and a research business but we thought that

the best path to getting there and or the highest uh probability path of getting there was was going with research first um particularly with you know the positions we were in when we first started research there we just realistically couldn't have launched a fund at the time it wouldn't have really taken off we didn't have any any network to even raise money even when you already when like you already had the brand right like and it was still hard to to raise a fund in 2019 like for for those who don't know we ended up just having to put in our own money like Del five Ventures fund one had no external invest APR cards and just uh Levering up which we don't recommend not not Financial advice but that point it was months yeah each other yeah yeah because we even then you had a

really strong brand right like a lot of really good coal synthetics and I think that also helps understand once you have like funds that are subscribers that end up making way more money off off your calls then then you actually do it kind of like sinks in pretty fast but even then it was hard to raise money so we ended up just having to put in our own money which is obviously ended up working out really well for us um because you know it kept 100 rather than 20% carry or whatever and it was also a lot of fun like I think it's one of the I always say like managing your own money with with your friends like the setup that we have is like the best job ever because you don't have uh clients and you don't have buses either which are twoo like awkward sort of like Rel

professional relationships right you're just literally like live and die by the quality of your own decisions um you're just doing it try to do it the best way possible with with people you really love and have gone through a lot so what the what's the structure right so what's the structure of Ventures or maybe I'm sure it's changed over the years I don't know if you let employees invest and stuff like that but was it just uh like a even split amongst you guys did you all put in the same amount of money in the first one yeah we basically you know give or take five 10% here there based on you know what people were able to scrap together but directionally everyone was in the same place um y do you remember like the percent because I'm assuming I mean you guys were pretty

young and like I'm I'm assuming not like very cash-rich um so do you like do you remember how much people actually put in in that first one and do you remember it being like a large percentage of your liquid net worth at the time I think technically it was over 100% of our like I put in everything in my bank account and got three credit cards from Discovery yeah yeah no l yeah exactly the first investment was Rune and then we were all holding Rune in PA and expecting it to pump so we could make our Capital calls for the next you know if we if we defaulted on the capital call we'd be defaulting on ourselves so like it wasn't it wasn't a huge issue but we we I think the money we committed for all of us was probably

like more than or or about 100% of our liquid net worth So like um it was really thinking about what else we could have Deli do to contribute to the space because you know the overall vision and mission for Deli is to make crypto happen sooner and better than it would without us um and basically every decision we do across these three divisions is really thinking about you know what are we contributing at the end of the day um and you know like Jose said the biggest benefit I think is like we don't have you know other investors or LPS or anything like that in you know really any of the businesses right research to is never raised so you have no investors in dela you have no outside investor LPS in the fund you have none of that no yeah um Labs did a small

raise for like an accelerator that they did right but um research has no investors too so for us I think you know um it comes with trade-offs for sure but I think one of the biggest benefits is it allows us to think in crazy like crazy ideas and ways that you know if you bring this to an investor that you know you know came to you and said hey build a scalable research business out or something like that um we can go and do things that like no other firm can really think about or do because we're just working for ourselves at this you know at the end of the day um so I think that's really what was so exciting as well as now we're still managing like mid nine figures um so yeah it's still uh yeah it it still you know allows us

this opportunity but yeah nothing really changed that much um I think it was just a number on the screen I think at least for me yeah I don't know what you guys think Yan I'll throw that one over to you yeah because you had I mean like just just axi itself like must have been a crazy ride both on the up and the down yeah and it it happened so quickly um so it definitely felt surreal uh we no one really went crazy with any kind of expenditures right or or or anything like that so it it it felt mostly like a number on the screen right it it was just other than Retreats which we can get into too but that's another story yeah yeah and a cloud couch right of

course um but yeah so it it it in reality could have been a very different number in terms of you know how that impacted lifestyle or anything like that like a much smaller number and it just felt like something something kind of crazy on the screen and and um yeah because it happened so fast it was still just kind of you're staring at it like okay uh this is what's happening now and um naturally you know as part of crypto as it comes up quickly it kind of comes down quickly and so um you kind of get numb to the volatility in both directions yeah that's it just like the volatility because think about it like we had a million bucks maybe like a year and a bit before then right we put in a

million bucks and then it went up to like I remember it went up to like six or something you're already super excited and then the the the swings obviously like even def5 summer swings for us you feel you really feel them because it's like 100% of our net worth is in this fund and it's like more money than any of us have ever have ever seen um and we were basically holding through the entire entirety of all of that so there's definitely a lot of definitely I feel like a you know like broken rubber like rubber band or something like just doesn't react anymore when to Market volatility but yeah the number I Echo with these guys said didn't matter that much like that was way beyond my number for sort of what I needed to the only thing that changed was our credit cards

right yeah remember we hit that number I was like I should probably pay off my credit card how did you guys make decisions so like let's say okay okay let's use axi as an example axi went up like 100x in like a month or two or something which was just I remember it's like one of the craziest I mean you guys and many other friends who made like lifechanging metal money SI like simply off axi did any of you guys say let's sell let's sell at some point or like how do you it's really a question about decision- making like when you have seven people making decisions these are yeah this is like a two part answer I'd say like this is where the high mind really comes in um actually was you know we we work really closely with that team um we like still you know very bullish

on those guys I think like Ronin is like going to be you know a big sleeper uh in this cycle as well um but yeah I mean literally you know every other fund who was invested in actually sold I think before $10 um we did not sell any before that and by the way like it wasn't because we didn't want to um some of us in the fun like you know MJ and myself were like yo Yan we should probably take some off the table um and usually it is kind of like you know by committee but Yan was definitely closest to this and you know Diamond handed us yeah I think I think uh yeah I think at that point I like Yan I don't remember what was the first price was it like the $37 or like the 75 or something but we Diamond

handed it um a lot mostly because of Jan's conviction um we were all really bullish but at some point we were just like this is way this is um kind of insane um like we got to take something off the table and remember like at that point we only had maybe like five to six Investments right axi was our second investment run was our first one um and then yeah like it was kind of insane but basically you know how we make decisions is really based off this High minded approach where um everyone kind of have has a different perspective usually if you don't have you know like some you know um specific knowledge on that topic you're not gonna you're gonna kind of like sit back and listen um because within delpi we're g to have at least four to five people who have really good

subject matter expertise and thoughts on that specific topic um now I'd say we have a much better process because like we have you know a much team right we have around like uh uh around 100 people across the three divisions um so that really allows for you know we can talk to our macro markets team about what they're thinking from a macro level and then kind of dig deep into hey the gaming analyst or something like that um and then obviously talk to you know the ventures team and figure out who's closest to the deal and what what they're thinking is happening and everything like that yeah so so yeah early on it was you know by committee with increased weights towards people who who had either some additional understanding a higher level of

conviction because they're doing more research or or has have historically been kind of better at judging certain things and and I think you know everyone was pretty good at understanding who excelled where and and long investment committees sometimes like seven people like trying to debate MJ on you know like uh there was long some long investment committees with the committee oh yeah they would get aggressive too because we're all like best friends right so uh and I think one of the best Parts about um us having this relationship is like there's we really like leave ego at the door um at the end of the day all we care about is coming to the best decision for all of us right um yeah it definitely got very heated um it was a lot of fun yeah for sure sorry I I interrupted you no no worries and

then basically it was going to say you know over time um you know now the operation exists as three kind of separate companies and and so there's people that are are heading up each division and they effectively kind of have um decision-making power in in that specific area but there's still you know broader conversations that we all have and catch-ups and and discussing what's kind of going on and and Gathering feedback and information but but ultimately now rather than you know rule by committee which made sense when we were a lot smaller and that wasn't a roadblock but rather kind of a you know a source of strength now there's a bit more separation uh that allows kind of

the businesses to to run smoothly and same way I can't imagine running just like a large entity with that many people making decisions because there's just no way everyone's going to have the necessary info so everyone told us it wouldn't work actually right initially but actually I think it worked really well for us the the committee thing because we just had to debate things it was we had very little money so we couldn't really afford to make mistakes and we had to debate things to death to where we understood every failure scenario to the nth degree and could kind of really prepare well for it and then I think over the years it kind of figured out who's who was better at it who was better at other things and like optimized and and had people focus on what they were good at who runs each

team Yeah so basically uh myself and Kevin run research Jose and Luke run Labs then Yan and Tommy run uh Ventures so you kind of have like an even split um and then obviously we you know catch up quite often basically every day nice um do employees get to invest in the in the Venture fund Yeah Yeah so basically what we've kind of done is since then um we're on our third fund now and and the idea is you know what we wanted to do early on was always in invest early stage uh that's where we saw the best returns that's where we thought we had the best ability to kind of uh distinguish winners from losers and and where you got paid the

most to be early and right on on Trends and ideas and so you know we still think that that's where the best Edge is and and that's where the best opportunity is so what we do is we kind of uh once with that first fund you know we in theory could have continued to operate that indefinitely but it made sense to um as we grew create a way for everyone or or high performers within the the the businesses to kind of participate in in the fund as well and so um we kind of do these smaller funds that we deploy and then we we launch a new one and the idea is you know there there's turnover um some people get some uh additional liquidity and and so now it gives them

kind of periodic opportunities to to invest how much they want uh into these funds and and um and it kind of allows everything to stay current and up to date and and kind of Keeps Us investing in those smaller areas we still do a couple of large deals I'd say you know 80% of our of our checks are probably in the 500 to one in a half range but you know we've done checks that are much larger and then we'll also do checks that are smaller when there's just not really the opportunity to put in additional money um you guys ever think about selling the research business and or selling the Consulting business and just doing Ventures like I'm sure you could have like you get any offers for research or Consulting over the years like yeah we definitely got into offers

over the years I think it is really good um signal for where we are in the cycle to be honest I need I need the real story know because when I said that the three of you all just got a big smiles on your face so yeah yeah no we've gotten we've gotten some um insane offers there's mixed opinions on this internally on this plan internally we've gotten some insane offers in the past I think um for us what's the B what's the biggest offer you got uh well honestly the number like I don't think the numbers were real because it was mostly in you know another Company's stock which you know I don't want to like reveal or anything like that but um uh it was yeah honestly right before a to right if it's the one I'm thinking about yeah and at the end

of day were just at the end of it we like maybe we buy um yeah I I think at the end of the day we realize that we're way more bullish on you know Deli Equity than you know another company's Equity um and I think like you know the way that I think about selling the research business is like we're always open to conversations and stuff like that too but I think one thing that we all do agree on is like at the end of the day like just having you know even from the ventures standpoint right like having this research business that has like this objective to go find Alpha and has you know the two kind of ways that we think about our our research and what we tell our research team is like one if it's on crypto Twitter it's already too late um so what

that means is like it allows them to look past the echo bubble so this is how they're always looking for you know the narratives that they think will emerge in the next six nine 12 months whatever um and then two um no matter what you write about it has to be the deepest possible dive on that topic um and you know happy you know if anyone wants to like you know challenge us on that and like read a specific report um we can send one on a them Celestia whatever have you but um I think those two things allow our research team to go deeper than you know a fund research team would go just for quick due diligence and I think that allows them to build a lot of expertise um that can help us make much better decisions on any of the divisions

right um yeah and that's the the sorry go ahead no go ahead Jose no I think the the other big thing is just that the the sum of the the hole is way more valuable than the some of its parts in my mind like each business benefits from these flywheels uh from each other really strongly so like I think the research is much better and more actionable because it has a the the ventures lens where we're really looking for Alpha looking for stuff that that that's investable looking for the next Trend and like that and having the team there to kind of help guide that and and refine that process because a lot of the research in the space is really good but a lot of it is quite academic right like it's maybe explaining how something works to you

what availability is and stuff like this but it's not really like Alpha focused in the same way and then also having access to Labs like actual Builders who can go look at code look at read ordit reports um like understand how this stuff work have deployed protocols with billions of dollars of tvl in them like that's sort of Priceless um and then the same thing obviously goes for for ventures like having access to the to the research side to to some of the best like thinkers in the space people that are that are deep in in rabbit holes across all the different sectors of crypto having access to the builders so I I guess it's it's hard for me to see how uh this any one of the businesses could be more valuable to someone else than to us you know like how any like

separating one of the businesses how how that could create more like how someone would be willing to pay What It's Worth to us I think is is is like a tough thing for for me to see um yeah one tricky thing could be like that we've been thinking about is if you do a services or Consulting engagement how do you think about selling the token like let's use axi for example like if you are really close with the axi founders and you almost like help build the thing yeah then at some point you at some point you need to sell the token to realize some sort of gains but then it's almost like a the personal element of that is like the founder is like hey why' you sell my tokens yeah and I think that happens with a lot of protocols for

and and and that's not just with Delights with every Venture firm if you're super close with someone you seated them like eventually you have to sell it how do you guys think about that yeah maybe I can talk about it from the Consulting angle then Yan you can talk about Ventures but I feel like the answers are pretty similar um we're very like long only um we we uh Diamond hand most of our bags for sure but obviously if they go up by you know 50 100x um it's just like you know just reasonable to kind of take some money off the table um basically always uh on either side consulting or Ventures we'll talk be talking to the team and kind of give them a heads up Etc obviously do it very slowly if we are doing um and basically every I I can't

remember the last thing that we have sold 100% of anything um like we still have exposure to axi still have you know like um to this day right and that was our second investment we still have exposure to run that was our first ever investment um so yeah honestly I think we've sometimes maybe done been too friendly about this um because like you know sometimes it's definitely helped you know block some sales right where they're like oh you know can you just not do it now like you know we should have just done it but um yeah I think at the end of the day like the space is like much smaller than people realize and you know the main thing that you got to kind of like um you know make sure you have is your reputation and Trust right and I think these are teams

that like we you know especially for us we work with really closely on both the Consulting side and the Venture side so these aren't just like you know investment number 38 to us these are like hey we actually you know hopefully help to make this happen right um so yeah I think it's like a little bit different where we're much closer to these guys than usual yeah it's it's also you know understanding what the correct environment to do it in is and and you know making sure that you aren't creating negative impacts on price and waiting until there's the liquidity to do so and also doing it very slowly um it is inevitable and and um is kind of just part of the business but I I'd say

we do hold more than most especi just kind of chatting with p and hearing you know yeah in general it's like when the thesis has changed materially from the initial one and it's it's almost like an opportunity cost decision right with like what other opportunities you have you have available um but yeah I think that's also pretty important like have they stuck to the the CST we laid out has it played out what's changed and being really like being able to react to that yeah yeah I just imagine it could and maybe I'm overthinking but some like let's say Ventures Ventures is like it's time to sell it's time to sell and an Neil's like wait wa or I don't know who runs whoever runs the services business or Consulting business is like whoa wa

we have like a $3 million engagement with them like like it's it's done at the end of the year we can't sell like I just I imagine it could be tricky to be fair like I don't I can't even think there might be one or two of those opportunities we we've we've yeah been pretty uh separate between you know what we've invested in and what we consult in um just based on you know so our our te is lean from a venture side but we're able to I think deliver a lot more on the portco side because of how much we're able to kind of tap into the other resources so uh what I'm basically saying is um we we do a decent amount on the POR Coast side that I think um typically you can charge for as

Consulting and so oftentimes there won't really be overlapping between Port Co and what happens on the Consulting side for research hey everyone Jason here I wanted to talk about something that's been on my mind a lot recently and that is where are all of crypto's killer apps we often ask this question on the show so I'm excited to tell you about Empire's latest partner anoma the universal intent machine intents are a new way to build daps enabling users to say what they want without needing to specify how it's done let's say you have an nft on one chain but you want to swap it for a token on another chain to make things even worse you also don't know which bridge to trust or how to navigate

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recommend connecting with them get in touch with their team by heading on over to re nud partners.com or giving the co-founder Jeff a follow on X check out the links in the description below what I want to start talking about just this cycle and making money in the cycle and stuff like that but um maybe we can wrap this first part of the podcast but just like like what does Deli look like in 10 years is it just more of the same just like the three lines of B business but 10 times bigger or like what what what's the Grand Vision here yeah it's good question um honestly the way that I think about it is like having a five 10 year plan in crypto is like you're not going to make it so like don't spend too much time thinking about that I think what we've

been really good at is being able to adapt and be resilient um you know from all a few of the stories that we've already told today but like there's many many countless more like every single time that we thought something had to happen for Deli to be successful that thing ended up not happening and it ended up making us better for it um so we do have Nord Stars right um for us like again like the whole vision is just to make crypto happen sooner and better better than it would without us and I think like for you know on the research side um some of our you know members have already started seeing a lot of these Community features um you know I know the blockor team was just talking to us about it a few months ago like we have these things like inline comments

and like Alpha feed and things like this um and you can kind of see this start turning into this community portal where it's not just you know the research team is just um uh one of the many members adding value through through all these features and uh things that we're having right and I think my dream on the research side at least is you know kind of like eating our own dog food as far as like integrating and working with a lot of crypto components and bringing that on uh into the portal too um because that would really mean that crypto's made it to a stage where it makes sense to integrate into our you know web 2 business right um so that's like the way I think about that Ventures I think you know yeah I'm like uh yeah happy for you to jump in too but I think

like we want to do this forever like we're we're super bullish um I think like people always say that you know crypto is early but like the way that I think about it is like the internet is really early right it's like 20 years old at this point so like um what I'm most excited about is like the next you know hundred years of crypto um and what that looks like and we're going to be around there um and yeah Jose I'm curious you know labs labs is an interesting one too we've already built a lot of projects there and basically how Labs works is we come up with an idea we find a team we give them a lot of our resources right both from like the token design to um you know uh um regul regulatory like legal Etc design and then we spin out these teams

eventually and right now um we have a bunch of um this year is going to be a big year for us because we have a bunch of those kind of com to Market um and I think you know for the first time in a while we're kind of like hey we don't want to you know we we take on more incubations right now and kind of focus on those projects so yeah it's kind of like you know playing it by ear for sure nice yeah no not to know I think on the Venture side certainly want to continue investing and I think yeah the decision making will mostly be around strategy which I think you know kind of rolls into what you wanted to go into next which is um how to make money in in the space right now in the market um you

know we've deviated a bit but we're because it's you know crop and and our our mandate is is very flexible in the sense that you know it's not really a mandate per se it's just how we're thinking about the space and and our thesis can change over time and so um I think our investing uh our investments will reflect that um which you know shuffles between liquid Adventure uh Sometimes Late sometimes early stage uh and yeah it it really varies but I think mostly we'll just kind of continue investing and and just adjust how we do it over time but but directionally um want to continue doing the same thing just not just to summarize I think like the way I see it is research is sort of

um unearthing the alpha like identifying where the alpha is in the industry the interesting things that are happening Ventures is deploying like Financial Capital against that and then Labs is deploying like intellect ual Capital against that and like plugging the holes so it's like Ventures is investing and then from everything we see in the industry from all the the working with teams from from like seeing what's happening we identify holes and then we try and go and find teams and incubate teams to build that so me one easy example is a project that's going to be announcing soon it actually might have done its first tweet by the time this goes out called Legion which is like help helping bring back IC which for us like obviously we've benefited a lot from the status quo being Venture investors um but we really think icos were actually much more um like made a

lot of sense they're much more egalitarian and like a lot of the stuff a lot of the regulations actually ended up making it much worse for for retail investors so there's that with metalx Gabe Shapiro's new project that we incubated that's again trying to make like governance um way more agile way more seamless um it's it's problem we've run into over and over again different ways we don't think that the current decentralized governance scales but we do think decentralized governance can be better than corporate governance because cor governance isn't that good that's I think the thing people don't realize when you have to like sign these board resolutions do all this stuff um and I think Gabe's the perfect person to build that and like Almanac like AI agents platform they've been building for for two and a half years like before AI was even a thing so like it's just trying to

find where we think the opportunities are and and find teams to to build that and I I hope we're still doing all of that in in in 10 years josean maybe you can take us into this next part like how are you guys thinking about just I don't know we're making money in this cycle like it's a really broad question but like liquid ventur what areas what narratives are overhyped what's underhyped like just yeah take us into this yeah no it's a great question um I guess so on the liquid side um I think the tricky thing relative to previous Cycles was you know the just

the the fact that not everything goes up now whereas before it you just have to kind of be right and and bet on the fastest horse and and and that was it I I think you know that's happened that that's not as much of a thing for a combination of reasons one you know there's increasing the amount of tokens uh I think there's a bit less retail and then the big one is you know people have have wised up a bit and and you know for for a handful of reasons one you have kind of historical data to look at and then there's also an element of survivorship bias right where um now naturally you you can't continue with that strategy and survive and so those that have helped that play out in the sense that all tokens go up have gotten burned and and and so now you kind of

have uh you know individual stuff going up periodically and and you also have this kind of hot ball of money Dynamic that that forces you to really see rotations rather than uh kind of everything going up consistently so um you know I think that's one of the things and then the other is uh value acrel has been difficult for a couple of reasons one is the the regulatory element right and then the other is um business like apps that are successful enough to make a lot of money that enough money to sustain valuations right and and so because we haven't seen too much of that um you've you haven't

seen a lot of individual kind of tokens do well on on fundamentals it's been you know more narrative hot ball of money type of of of um price action I think the the the growth of memes um has also contributed to that a bit in the sense that um you know there's only a finite amount of money that's going to get deployed and when um when there's the casino element of of memes um becomes a bit more appealing it's very reflexive right as more people into memes it becomes more compelling to do so because there's a lot more attention there and so um I think you know the fact that you saw memes run up late last cycle that

kind of got a front run combined with I think they've also absorbed a lot of the nft money because of the ease around speculating around something fungible and and the fact they have perps around it um that's cannibalized a lot of the demand for tokens that would be otherwise uh deployed into so you know you've had this barbell of of kind of majors and memes and then uh big wash outs uh on on on rallies and dips um on everything in between and so um it's it's been tricky right you you can it boils down to you know does it make more sense to almost take a smaller leverage long on on Majors or or if I mean so purely on on the liquid side

right or or does it make more sense to try and uh you know dive bomb into memes I think it really depends on portfolio size and um and and perceived Edge I guess in those relative sectors some people are are really good at memes but um I think for the most part they aren't like you saw even the pump fun stats right like when in terms of the the profitability the the percentage of of participants in profit is is insanely small and that's as in the trenches as it gets right so it's it's just another kind of example of how uh I think difficult and and and Cutthroat it's been where people are Jing earlier there's there's less kind of longer term

holding everything's kind of felt like a bit more of a of a trade rather than a longer term play and and I think you know that feeds on itself and has made the the liquid component uh in terms of Buy and Hold really difficult I think you've seen Traders Excel more than than Buy and Hold You have you know you'll have a handful of the Buy and Hold guys who could not get lucky but are early into a memes and are able to hold it through these ridiculous returns but most most of the times um that that those profits are given back and so uh I think on the liquid side it's been a much more of a Trader environment than an investor one um you know and then couple that with the fact that you just have the the the unlocks on on low float

High FD meme tokens really kind of pushing people away from projects which I think you know for some of them makes sense because they're just coming out at at at kind of silly valuations and and you're basically just exit liquidity to some extent um yeah Traders got I mean like h got killed right which kind of contributes to the overall culture that we see in crypto now like the survivorship bias just means anyone who is super high conviction hudler just got wrecked whether it was Luna or FTX you know there's like a lot of just just a lot of like anger on the timeline I think cedus cedus said it on the on the hive mind potties like the market right now is just driving everyone crazy like it's yeah I mean if you missed soul and and you and like

most people didn't make money with memes I think and if you missed soul you kind of like didn't really make that much money this cycle I think a good good example of of of that anger is you know people constantly saying oh I can't wait for the bull market but you know bitcoin's near all-time highs and and all like so many things have ripped and everyone's no I I just think crypto's lost its way a little bit this this this market and kind of like all the stuff people used to harp about um like censorship resistant money or like decentralized trust I think all this stuff still matters and it's still the USP and if this stuff is is gonna is going to do anything in the world it's it's by sticking to to like those those principles yeah maybe just before getting into these specific narratives

where do you think we are in the market like this this cycle and the whole the whole cycle conversation is a tough is a tough one I think but what what is your best like analysis of where we're at in this cycle I think we're still fairly early uh or or like you know approaching halfway uh but it but It ultimately kind of depends on uh how a few things from here play out you know election being one of them I think you know if you get a Harris presidency that probably means um you get more of a barbell type uh growth in in in uh in a lot of these names in the

sense that you'll have Bitcoin do well because there's just going to be kind of massive spending and kind of it'll accelerate the currency debasement element so I think you'll see you know gold and Bitcoin to do well and at the same time you know the that regulatory framework will push more people into memes because there's just no risk of their Securities right so that that's the kind of the barbell that I was describing and then I think if you get a trump presidency I I still think you'll have Bitcoin do well even if you know they go and and and spend less they're still going to spend right that's just what's going to happen and so um you'll still have spending and then you'll have regulatory Frameworks hopefully that will give Builders a lot of comfort in in kind of building in the US or serving

us customers which I think is is a pretty big headwind that we've seen you know just on the Venture side in terms of Builder risk appetite to to to to you know build something that kind of can ACR value or or or does engage with us users and so um I I do see more of a of a broad-based rally if you get kind of a a trump presidency yeah maybe I can also add some crazy bullishness here and by the way I'm a I'm a perable so like uh again not Financial advice I've been wrong many times before um this is probably like in a weird way um the most bullish I've been in a while um maybe maybe ever for crypto mostly because I think like

you know obviously you have things like ETFs and stuff and and break Cuts coming up but I think like when we first got into the space I think like even then ETF sounded crazy but they we're still on kind of like our map right like still people were like oh yeah it'd be if we ever got a Bitcoin ETF or something like that right um and now we're here but I remember when we got in the space it was I always thought crypto was going to succeed despite government being against it right um and I think this year what kind of started blowing my mind is there's going to be a scenario where governments are actually helping us you know push crypto forward which you know I think all of us are really aware like crypto you know at its core is kind of

like anti-government technology right in many ways and so the fact that you know because of these short-term election cycles and their short-term incentives like you all of a sudden have people um on both sides trying to kind of Pander to our kind of like audience and our our demographic and our industry um kind of blows my mind and I think it's like something that you know nowadays I think people just have a lot of um Catalyst like numbness um we're just always looking to sell the news or buy the rumor or something like that and I think like the end of the day you got to realize that a lot of these things that are happening are actually big Catalyst like the ETFs being passed like Trump you know going to Nashville and and and talking uh you know about

Bitcoin and everything like that so yeah I'm really bullish and I think you know to what Yan was saying too I think people are really underestimating how bullish it is for uh regime change where you actually get a positive regulatory environment for crypto because that would make you know it would kind of like bring in I think a new wave of Builders who are a little bit more risk ver beforehand as well as give opportunities to current builders in ways other than just launching a token right like y know you and I were talking about this just you know last week at drinks when I think the IPO Market is something that people don't really give that much um kind of like credit to or pay a lot of attention to but that is a huge way of you know for people to want to build companies and

products that maybe don't have a token in the middle of it um on top of these protocols and things like that so yeah I'm super bullish I think people on the timeline are need to get off crypto Twitter go touch grass and stuff and yeah and I think like Jose said it right like um you know if you're spending too much time in overtrading right now just buy the majors and enjoy you know the the outside returns um and kind of like keep your mental health I think is like the main thing that I tell people like a lot of the conversation I'm having I'm like you're overthinking this right now I'm with you I'm like bitcoin's at 60k and interest rates are higher than they've been in years and we're about to go into and they're and they're going to start coming down like Bitcoin hit an

all-time high with when we were jacking interest rates higher like now we're about to bring them down like don't don't over the dollar is rolling over like we're entering a dollar bare market like just don't don't uh yeah don't overthink this one I'm with you and to me more more macro wise I just feel like the world is becoming multi-polar you know like the US is retreating inwards like these are all the conditions that crypto needs long term to succeed and to me to replace like because the the US was basically the policeman of the of the world right of the oceans the dollar GL world currency um I think that's increasingly going to change and that is the conditions that you need for crypto to kind of succeed and to me I still see a world where like every asset um you

know debt instrument commodity is going to be traded on chain it's just the biggest Market it's like the global market and especially as markets become more and more siloed you know investing in Chinese markets super hard investing in the US is hard for certain kinds of people now um I just think like onchain will become the the global the only Global permissionless like market and right now it's memes but um I think there's going to be a lot of other stuff and and and it's basically the way I think about it is what infrastructure do we need to build for that to happen like what what if you think about a world in 10 years from now where we've won like every every asset's trading on chain what infrastructure needs to be built for that to for that to happen that's kind of what we try and try and look for in

back Jose give me three hot narratives in this upcoming cycle um I still think gaming like uh we've been we've been bullish uh we've been bullish gaming for a while I still think gaming is is going to be the one that brings in the most users um and we have a game and I think there's a lot of alpha in being being like watching the play tests and and like being early to see which games are actually good especially if you're a gamer which a lot of crypto people are uh and we've recently invested in one at we actually missed all the rounds for for this game uh we just like spoke to the team recently watched a bit a few of the demos and have just been like buying up uh in every way we can on secondaries

and stuff called Godzilla and to me that's like an example of what that like a top sort of shooter with that's fully committed to to to crypto and an onchain experience can look like like it's a sort of a war zone level in my mind shooter um or like more of an extraction shooter I guess like escape from tarov or something and yeah I've just been watching people play that um and I just think like something like that will really show the potential of what gaming can do and has like a really good chance to bring in like tens of millions of of of users to crypto probably the best chance um then other than that I'm I'm bullish I don't know if Yan you want to add anything there on the gaming side probably the best and most Avid gamer Among Us other than peers yeah no it's

uh I think you know the gaming element just takes a a lot longer to build out and so you know everyone was kind of used to the short feedback loops of of D5 forks and everything else and and so um I think that's part of why uh gaming has trended the way it did along with with some other stuff and maybe it's it's a a different longer conversation but happy to dive into that and then yeah another one is is hopia that that were super bullish on uh on on top which um is is basically taking Minecraft and creating so Minecraft is you you have your players and then everyone who's creating the worlds uh which are the world's creators and and so that's what is continuing the massive user base that

that Minecraft currently has so what what hopia is doing is basically um taking from the player side a game that's just like Minecraft is right now but with improvements to to uh ux and and and quality of life uh elements and then at the same time uh from the Creator side it's creating it's it's allowing them to do what they do but better monetized than they currently do so we think you know there's a a nine figure amount of of monthly active users on on Minecraft and so we think that that is going to be one of the biggest games to onboard a lot of people into the space where users can play from a browser and it's the exact same way they play now and then creators have can continue doing exactly what they do in Minecraft but but monetize it through

the benefits of of crypto rails and kind of what tokens can offer and so we think the combination of the two will be a really compelling way to to bring over a lot of users in another one that we're very excited about Jose what's uh what's narrative number two or Yan you can go I guess there's kind of Two Worlds I saw with AI one is the the like the incumbents the big tech companies own all the models and like they they own the AGI everyone interacts through through them right these massive models they have all the compute they have the talent they have the distribution to monetize the models right with with WhatsApp and office and stuff like this and they just win um and I think recently uh what we've seen is first of all meta like the unlikely hero Mark Zuckerberg is is like keeping open

source relevant um and and that's like really bullish for for for crypto and then also I think the other part of it is just that it's very hard for a generalized model to be like most cost efficient for everything right these models by their very nature are going to be super expensive to to train um and and so they're gonna they're going to need to be expensive like inference is going to be expensive too on them and so I think by necessity um you're going to end up or I guess it's probabilistic right like I think there's a greater chance that you end up with millions of models millions of small specialized models um some of which are are actually trained on the on the bigger models um that that serve specific use cases because people are always going to want

like the most cost-efficient way to to serve whatever use case they have and I think a world with that world is much more bullish for crypto xai than than like the other world where the sort of big big tech companies just dominate everything and I think that's the world that we're that we're headed towards and then it's like I I just think that the the thesis for censorship resistant AI um it's sort of the same like it's the same exact thesis that for Bitcoin right if if money was like one of the most important resources in in the world arguably the most important and you needed this decentralized form of money that couldn't be controlled and manipulated by the state um intelligence I think and and compute is now the most important resource in the world like being able to produce and and scale

produce intelligence at scale and um right now it's entirely dominated by a few centralized entities and I think like there needs to be and there will be demand for a decentralized form of intelligence and like decens decentralized censorship resistant run locally yeah Jose uh I'll tell you my extremely left bell curve AI take from uh my beginning of the year prediction which was um a AI is keep ripping as a narrative as like a mainstream public narrative and uh retail investors are going to want want some allocation to AI but the only like very obvious Public Market allocation to AI is NVIDIA and then I think there's like Microsoft and

Facebook but like those aren't like pure play AI place at least not in the minds of retail so retails like I I want to buy some sort of AI coin or like I want exposure to AI Nvidia the chart looks too expensive so let me allocate to the only other way to get exposure right now is from crypto tokens and I think like I have zero I haven't done any due diligence you know this world literally a 100 times better than me some sort of like they're probably going to buy the basic ones it's like aosh and render and bit tensor and like I again I have no I don't I don't know which one of those is better than the other and stuff like that but I think that's the super left curve like retail driven yeah I think if you want I agree with that and I think

that's all you need uh like right curve and left curve are the same if you want like the right of take on it I would definitely read like the recent Deli dii reports there were there were like some of the best reading I've seen on like thei thesis both the the ideological reasons for it the Practical reasons for it and then like actually where to find out for like what are the sectors within crypto AI that make most sense and are most interesting it's like that was and I think that one's been made yeah free on the portal now as well and yeah those are really really good my thinking yeah it just went public last week yeah that that one was really good actually yeah I think you know Jose's definitely gone way deeper and same with like Tom and you know Ken from our team like shout

out those guys um but yeah reading those reports definitely helped me build conviction and like this wasn't just going to be buzzwords and it's going to be a sector that people are gonna mid curb to be honest um and yeah I totally agree um y I'll throw a weird question to you if um it feels like there's starting to be more and more dispersion in crypto like it all used to just move together and now now doesn't really move together if they're related to like the L1 L2 trade if there were only going to be like three or four chains that make it out of this bull market with like outsized not just returns but like activity I'd say what do you think that's going to be uh so you know you have your Ethan

and solar are pretty consensus bets um with eth like instead of eth would it be like pick maybe one or two of the l2s if you think the activity go there oh the l2s uh I mean I think base is probably um the most obvious one um just based on you know the the access they have to users and the amount of additional incentives they can offer to um potential Port codes potential uh apps to build on them via access to the coinbase user base so we've kind of gone back and forth on this in terms of like yeah you know rl2 is actually bearish for eth and and um I do think what we need in order for the space to really

move forward are successful apps and I I think what l2s offer are a lot of additional shots on gold to help find those successful apps um so what like what they take away from eth in terms of fees I think they more than make up for in terms of additional users viral apps and also kind of moneyness of e to some extent where you have you know additional people that are holding it using this collateral or or you know whatever it might be within the app themselves so I do think base is probably um the the best L2 to to to to have breakout and then you know I think if you do get a a trump presidency with a uh you a reset in the SEC there's there's the opportunity for base token

um where where they're not necessarily as kind of afraid about that either which um you know will be tricky because unless they kind of decentralize the sequence or it's still going to be thought of similar lead to uh arbitrum and and optimism in terms of you know just being something grants yeah yeah I just think l1s and l2s are just sort of the generalized l2s and l1s are just like testing grounds for successful apps and every actual successful app will end up on its own execution environment like we've already seen it with with crypto right like dydx axi like even usdc has its own like issuance chain right like I think every successful app in crypto is

going to want granular control over its execution environment over its consensus and so I'm like uh I'm and you're seeing it with salana already too right like it's a narrative violation but there's already I think six l2s on on salana again the recent Del reports covers this really well there's like six specialized l2s on salana that are each doing their own thing because they they don't want to inherit um like when you when you launch it on L1 you inherit every single design choice and tradeoff that they all one made I think the thing is even on salana you don't see that many apps which require like synchronous Atomic composability right where the state actually touches each other and so I think the reason LT suck right now is just that the interoperability

experience between them sucks but I I think there's way less like actual need for that than than people talk about but again we have differing opinions on this on this internally and I just think you there you think about like what does because eth already like data availability brups are using Celestia so like what do you really want from an one as a as a like if you're an app chain if you're an L2 app chain what do you really want from your from your like settlement layer right and it's like you want basically uh all the all the main native stable coins right so you don't have to like Bridge you use some bridge and inherit Bridge risk you want native assets with good liquidity um you want like wallet Integrations and stuff to make it easy to to for people to to to

use you like make it very easily accessible and then probably you want like some community and users like initial users for your thing right which is what salana really gives you right now if you launch on salana and in general ecosystems give you like if you launch on salana or in an ecosystem you get all the hype from from people who are bullish on that ecosystem people who are bullish so um whereas if you launch on your own Island it's much more difficult you have to bootstrap all that from scratch and an issue for me is like thinking about that from first principles what does it look like what do you want from the settlement layer and really optimizing for that and I'm you're already seeing some really interesting Builders choose to build like um their rollups on there because of the the tools they have and I think

you're going to see a lot of that this cycle you're already seeing it right like I think Athena's just recently announced Athena chain which is I'm I'm really bullish on sort of the the idea of building a whole chain around a uh around a stable coin you know we've heard that one before didn't but but I think it's uh I think it's like still makes a lot of sense it's the killer app and I think stable coins right now are crypto's killer app for better for worse and I think building an entire chain ux around that and with all the apps serving that makes a lot of sense um but in general I think every successful app is going to end up making this decision honestly J good pod anything else you guys wanted to uh wanted to cover on

Deli the markets liquid versus Venture anything that we missed her no man I think uh yeah I think it was a lot of fun cool yeah this is great thanks man really appreciate it all right Anil Jose Yan always rooting for you guys appreciate the time and uh yeah excited to have the high find on the Empire feed let's go same here likewise this is awesome really appreciate it thanks for watching today's episode just wanted to quickly mention that the wait for crypto killer app wve is nearly over thanks to today's sponsor anoma the universal intent machine to stay up to date with anoma you can follow them at x.com anoma or sign up for the newsletter at ana.

net thanks again to anoma for sponsoring today's episode n [Music]