What Durov's Arrest Means, Maker's Skynet Pivot and Crypto's Censorship Bull Case | Hivemind

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all the new buyers are going to salana all the new users are going to salana and then like on the institutional level it's like clearly just like Bitcoin they're just like buying Bitcoin they complain about free speech in places like Russia Iran and China but then they arrest a guy like this for for basically upholding they were arrest Jura for like upholding free speech I almost think people get pushed towards crypto rather than pulled like they get pushed by the current current things becoming more and more restrictive rather than pulled by Superior ux don't get chopped out of your bags nothing set on the hive mind is a recommendation to buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is strictly for informational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our own opinions not

Financial [Music] advice hi everyone my name is Jose masedu and welcome to the second episode on Empire of the hi mind podcast the goal of the podcast is to provide an inside look into what we like to call the deli hive mind bringing together some of our brightest Minds from each of the divisions to share insights Alpha and [ __ ] posts so today was bit of a slower two weeks in crypto we're going to start with with markets um Yan you want to lead us off here yeah uh so I guess main development that's happened

over the past two weeks has been the uh doish pivot at Jackson Hole by japal and so um you kind of immediately saw a pretty broad rally across equities and and and crypto uh and and you know e equities have continued to do well but crypto has kind of reversed the entire move which isn't great to see particularly when you see equities doing well and crypto selling off and so you try and you know figure out is there a reason why or is this just kind of you know what the Market's doing um it's you know on one

hand there's rumors that the US is still kind of continuing to sell a lot of the Seas tokens which is possible um it's it's harder to tell now that they've cated a bunch with with uh coinbase and so there's you know they do OTC deals they're doing a bunch of other stuff that um makes onchain sleuthing a bit less uh signally so you kind of have that um it's honestly way better than [ __ ] Germany just sending coins straight to exchanges and then everyone front runs them like that was the worst way to do it ever that was terrible I do think the the it is um easier in the

long run though right because you're basically ripping off the Band-Aid and you have that Clarity mhm well I think if they announc that the sale is complete or something then that would be useful but also there's got to be some OTC desks if that's how they're doing it that know that this is happening yeah I've been asking around haven't been able to get too much info I mean the the coins have definitely been complete dog [ __ ] compared to like everything else for the past little while I mean BTC is the only thing that looks like relative it still looks bad but it's looked like okay at least like eth has been on awful Soul's been awful uh everything else has been it's just been yeah pretty bad

people are again people are still like kind of going insane but everything kind of sets up well right like we're still up a lot from last year and we have like all these rate Cuts coming this all this liquidity coming as long as the economy just doesn't totally like Nuke and go to [ __ ] yeah bitcoin's still up a lot not other basically just been six months of chop I think that's chop in Bitcoin but like zero in all like a well there's like pockets of of exuberance and then just brutal sell-offs out of nowhere well like infra and memes and Cosmos and like I guess

some some like yeah some Al of the actual businesses have been okay but a lot have gotten murdered what about EPF flows did you do you want to touch on that just like yeah set as you brought this up maybe well no it was kind of like crazy how they were like back toback days where BTC had like a quarter bill of inflows both days and eth was like neg5 mil one day and then zero the other day um it's just not I think it's fair to say that like there hasn't been this like institutional demand for E they're just sharpening their pencils so don't worry yeah just they're just sharpening it up but like this is we talked about

this before though how it would have been better if the ETF kind of got delayed until post election um you know more time to sharpen the pencils yeah think about how sharp they'd be yeah but honestly the the BDC like BDC keeps chugging along it's almost at 18 billion uh in net flows which is pretty at like 178 right now so you know black rock or there's probably like 400 million in flows last week 300 million keeps on chugging along it's like over time it adds up I think it's kind of like kind of drifted into the background a bit people are still watching it but not as much as is when the ETF first

came out and I think that over time it it really helps and just they're taking a lot of SPL off the market over like periods of time um on the thous I don't know if you guys listen to the Thousand xod I only started listening to it because it's on the Empire feed and so now that I get these but uh Avy Felman he was like he thinks eth could be the xrp of this cycle like what do you think about that what does that mean uh I think it's just like that it's going to 589 no like I think the ratio will just like keep going down against BTC every every little like there's like nothing is going to make e start performing now except for some like Mass of news um and

so basically every single pump on like the E BTC ratio you just kind of like don't get like shaken out of being short ebtc um and then like if something massive comes and there's this big news you kind of have time to like position um that that's what his kind of take was he thinks that there's like no reason to own eth for like rest of the cycle I think it's a reason able argument uh the biggest Catalyst now is just how bearish everyone is but that that really isn't enough like that it's certainly a good setup for you know maybe a short-term

rally because everyone's caught off sides and and there's you know covering that needs to happen uh but I don't necessarily think we're quite there yet um it seems like something that will happen more so after there's been more selling and people people get more confident in in trying to short eat as like a pair trade or whatever it might be and so um yeah the argument that everyone's bearish I I don't think can really move the market right now people no like I have people were calling eth contrarian in December of last year so um it's still like 300 bill or whatever it's just like a terrible reason to be bullish in the long term in

the medium to long term I but listen I also think yeah I also think I mean go ahead that's your only thesis everyone's bearish that's no I'm saying no I'm not saying you I your only it's the number one smart Contracting platform in crypto like by if if you look at it as an ecosystem basis by tvl right there's like $60 billion in tvl by developers by new developers by like commit ship to ecosystem like it's just it's just the number one like I don't know how you need to find a it's so hard to find a bull case for the for this well I because markets are forward looking right and so it's it's more about you know yes at the moment it it certainly

is but there's a there's not a lot of reasons for why the gap between eth and the others shouldn't converge over time from here until something changes who are the others there's only really Sal basically I think it's like right now everything else is on like whether it's the rollups or like the app specific rollup thesis it's most likely to happen like on eath right right now but you're seeing more of like you're seeing more of these move uh chains and like rollups that'll continue to like gain relative adoption because they're so small um you're seeing svm a lot of like svm app rollup zap chains now which further you know eats into the

Eva Market share whatever and again eth is just like a mass of [ __ ] valuation so yeah but I think it's all about like who are the like since there's not a ton of new users in capital coming in all of like there's not enough for everyone right so it's like where are all the new marginal users and marginal Capital going and it seems to be at least on the retail level it seems to be e or sorry salana like all the actions happening there all the new buyers are going to salana all the new users are going to salana and then like on the institutional level it's like clearly just like Bitcoin they're just like buying Bitcoin yeah here's the thing I actually think that like I don't know what the right soul eth ratio is but it kind of feels like maybe where

we've been the last few months is like kind of where it's going to be for a while I think that you could actually see eth and soul both just being like boring assets for the rest of the cycle and you actually know but like you actually start to see some of these other assets maybe with like some actual fundamentals behind them start to get more interest and everyone will continue argu arguing like eth versus soul but it'll kind of just stay like flat ratio wise um I could I could see that happening I mean I'm I'm partially Playing devil's advocate as we we know from previous shows but I do think that like eth and the ALU ecosystem are still the leaders by like almost any metric

you can you can possibly conceive of and so I think I don't know I I I do think it's tough to you don't need like uh to come up with this with this crazy bull case like there's a lot of Nar narrative shots on go that eth has like any one of these l2s could could take off any of these applications could take off even this like um ZK proofs uh or like these these proofs of off chain actions thing that we we consider putting on the podcast that's being built on eth like the in general the marginal new thing that that that launches in crypto is built on E because almost all the new developers are are coming in on on on ethereum and and l2s so I just think there's like a lot of ways that there's a lot of ways that that e can can do

well um yeah I mean yeah yeah no I agree it's not impossible uh but I think with the current information yeah and it's also like it can get more adoption in some of those areas without really affecting like the fundamental value of it as much as you know people may have thought before right like I also think E's going to do lower like lower block time and and probably a few other changes within the next like six months to a year um I don't think I don't know about pre-conference or anything like that given just how long kind of more fundamental stuff takes in ethereum but I think we've seen like with vitalic

engaging more recently and stuff that there is somewhat of a fire up the ethereum community's ass now from from the competition from salana um I am pretty bearish on the L1 moving moving at any sort of speed um but yeah I still think geith is eth is dominant okay so most people probably saw pavl jurov the founder of telgram was arrested in in Paris last Saturday so we're recording this on on Thursday the 29th of August and then he was they they officially filed charges I believe yesterday and he was released on a 5 million EUR bail uh yesterday as well so

this is an interesting story for for a bunch of reasons for those who don't know this guy has a history of sort of going against governments so he's the founder of of VK which was kind of the Russian Facebook in 2006 um in 2011 he refused to honor police requests to delete opposing political party um pages on on VK uh he actually posted a picture of his of his dog instead um and and that very picture and meme coin is is what got like pumped to to Infinity over the last week and took down telegram which is pretty funny um yeah and then he did it again in 2014 where he was asked to cut to out like

Ukrainian protesters to duck Ukrainian protesters and to De delete nal's page he refused to do both and eventually had to leave Russia and sold VK to to Kremlin friendly owners um and then obviously at the same time like he already knew he was going to have to do that he was starting telegram um he ended up getting French in UAE citizenship but had his phone hacked by them both um 2018 he had another spot with Russian authorities where he refused to give encryption keys to them ended up actually like winning that somehow and telegram didn't get banned in Russia and then apparently like a few articles say that he's received a bunch of different subpoenas from from European governments and refused to comply with them which is what France is alleging in this in this case that

basically he received subpoenas about you know child pornography and terrorism and and all these things and refused to comply with them and that's why they're arresting him um T went down a bit but not too much considering how like big a news this was it feels like and then obviously there was the outages and and stuff as well um don't know anyone want to add anything to that or or go straight to just giving your your two cents on it nothing to add yeah yeah that's a good summary um yeah basically very sharp guy entrepreneur his whole life um very ideological in terms of you know kind of some libertarian values but but

basically preserving privacy preserving freedom and and basically kind of had to sacrifice his his first company that was incredibly successful that he he built from the ground up um and and yeah he had to sell a stake and then kind of went passport hunting around the world yeah and what's really interesting about this is it's like um I think Russia has has asked for him to be for him to be sent there and has like spoken out uh against the the Western double standard on Free Speech right that they complain about free speech in places like Russia Iran and China but then they arrest a guy like this for for basically upholding they

were arrest Jura for like upholding free speech um and yeah this guy's just it's yeah he's he's just gone against governments his whole his whole life um and I think he thought he'd have a better time in the west but seemingly not all right can we talk about it like from the taon angle um so I've like never been bullish on t uh I'm not going to be after this either does anybody have like the bull case though that this is like bullish for ton for some reason I mean it kind of depends on the response um and and what what he comes out and says in terms of you know is there some you know leaning into

the whole censorship resistance idea is there some element of of trying to put something some of this on chain or lean deeper into into the ton ecosystem um I think there's there's a decent argument to be made there um I I don't know that I guess what's the the longer term bearish argument for this and ton I feel like the bearish argument is that like at least I listened to the Tucker car Tucker Carlson interview with pavell and it was really good but it sounds like there's not a lot of people who work at Telegram and if like I think he said there's like 30 Engineers or

something so I feel like if you take the lead guy and he ends up going to jail and then like you start kind of exerting force over the company in some way and it like degrades or I don't know what they would end up doing into it but if like here's a hypothetical let's say telegram is shut down yeah is that bullish for T probably not right that that yeah agreed yeah but I feel shutting it down seems super extreme yeah it's probably in between like them exerting if he gets arrested them exerting like what level I mean they can't shut it down like they've like even Russia tried to shut it down in Russia and there was this whole like telegram channel of people operating proxies around the world to keep it

running and they literally couldn't shut it down there were there's like twoe long campaign you can you can you can ban it in France or or in Europe or whatever you can take it off of app stores and stuff and then sure people can still get around it but you're going to lose all like that mass Market I just don't like I I I mean what they obviously we have incomplete info but just from a surface level perspective what theyve arrested him for they could in theory arrest every other founder for that's like the whole you know as long as North Korea doesn't use your protocol you're fine uh but if North Korea starts using your protocol now you're breaking the law as a Founder like regardless if it's like a

privacy thing or whatever right um so yeah under I get what you're saying that's what all these Regulators are like Paul seem to care about is like they don't actually seem to care about how any of the underlying Tech works it's just if Bad actors start using what you've created well it's I think that's that's a scapegoat and reality it's we want access to your back door and we want you to censor and and do actions on our behalf and then if not then there's you know price to pay and and so you've seen Zuck come out and and talk about how that was interesting yeah that uh so like probably touch on that but but it's

clear that you know it's either cooperate or get arrested and and I think you know because North Korea uses it as is is a scapegoat yeah this is highly speculative but I assume that when France gave him a citizenship uh and stuff like this they assumed there' be some kind of good pro quo that they'd have some special access or whatever and he wouldn't just leave all their subpoenas on red or you know whatever he's doing and and they got angry that that he did that anyway um but I agree it's interesting uh like and the same thing with Elon right to some extent like he's also he outed the Twitter files like refused to cooperate had that whole thing in Brazil where he was literally like publicly spotting with the Brazilian president or

whatever and it's it's one thing for Regulators to be like this but hopefully the you hope the Judiciary sort of stays independent like they have in the US mostly um although they haven't with tornado cash in Europe as we covered in like a previous episode but it's pretty scary when yeah exactly what you guys said you can get arrested for for someone using your your platform right someone doing criminal activity on your platform regardless of whether you had anything to do with it especially in a crypto sense because once you publish a smart contract it's there forever so you have this unlimited liability for someone to come in and use your use your platform yeah I feel like arresting him would be incredibly shortsighted in terms of the second order effects for

incentivizing any kind of Entrepreneurship ship in your country yeah but it's like I don't I feel like they're coming to a point where it seems like a lot of the world governments in the west are getting more authoritarian and more censorship like I think the the Facebook letter if no one read it I think basically Zuckerberg came out and said we were influenced to like censor certain things during covid well was Co and and like election related stuff which is crazy like it's one if you yeah it's one thing if you can if you you know it's the scapegoat if the scapegoat is it's for the greater good because we don't want disinformation about this disease which I think you can somewhat you know rationalize as being for the greater

good but but like the other one is just you know pretty cut dry election interference yeah yeah no that's pretty wild and even the co one like I remember when that was going on they're like censoring doctors like across like actual doctors who were just giving their opinion across the these platforms like on all social media so it's definitely kind of scary that you're heading towards this and I think the world would look a lot different um without Elon having bought Twitter because like now we know like Mata coming out confirming it the Twitter files that these governments have are in direct con like contact with all these social media companies influencing what is said and what stories they want to

like kind of amplify or or censor and you know you have to imagine that's also happening with the traditional news outlets and I'm sure there's like you know some confirmation of that so really you have like X in the US and and maybe telegram as like two really widespread um apps that have put up a big like stand against you know censorship and one of those like elon's come under like a lot of scrutiny in the us but as Jose said hopefully you know the legal systems upheld better there but now like you have the telegram founder potentially bacing 20 years in prison so it'll be interesting to see what happens yeah I I agree with censorship there is like uh an argument

for some censorship though right like I mean even in the law right now like freedom of speech has at least in Europe I don't know about the the us but in Europe it definitely has limits like there's there's things you can't say and and I think I'm pretty sure they're wider than they are in the US and I think we kind of seen some of that with like Twitter Twitter's definitely become a uh like I don't know if has more inform misinformation but there's definitely a lot of misinformation on Twitter these days like even the UK riots right there was this everyone was saying the the stabber was a was a migrant and then turns out he wasn't right he was born in the UK son of of migrants and that was basically the the the Tinder that Lit the whatever the expression is you know

the the Ember that Lit the fire and and caused a lot of those riots and you had people like massive accounts like Andrew Tate or whatever just spreading this despite the fact that they knew at the point that it was already clear that it was false still spreading it because obviously it gets people gets people angry right ah UK bunch of losers you won't even protect your country migrant comes like migrant straight off the boat comes in and stabs three kids you know all this stuff is super inflammatory and it's going to get people angry and cause violence and there is like some limits that you that you kind I don't know I think Community notes is is a really good system for it although it's not working particularly well it's sort of been like taken over a bit Yeah but I feel like there there is an argument

for it yeah I think it's all trade-offs though right the problem is yeah it's tradeoffs on one side yeah I like you know there are negative effects of of of inflammatory language but the problem is the way that you police it gives basically control of what you're able to say to an impartial government Authority who who whose motivation is is to maintain power and maintain control I do understand Jose's point though like these these riots they're kind of like a partial government they're kind of like this is kind of like a societal Bank Run like if you remember how quickly like the S svb stuff and all that spread on social media um and you just like get

these Bank runs like this is a whole thing now that economists are and like Regulators are looking at is like Bank runs in the social media era right because of how quickly things can spread even if it's like not necessarily true or not and yeah you're seeing that when you actually have it like start riots purely based on misinformation like yeah I don't know what the right I don't know what the right answer started the r though right like those it was something that was building up for a host of reasons and it it was going to be triggered one way or another and I think this was just the event that triggered it yeah like this stuff's very difficult because it's obviously extremely complex but it definitely feels like we're heading not to say that some rules or

guidelines around like censor freedom of speech like you know hate speech or something isn't important but it definitely feels like we're leaning more towards okay like they are censoring stuff like that uh Zuckerberg said like that was fully a political thing that they were censoring it was like I think the hunter B laptop story which right like that is nothing to do with I'm trying to think if there's like implications there on like no I don't think so very political yeah so I think the one was political yeah agreed yeah very I mean all these organizations yeah so I think the one interesting one of the interesting takeaways from the Zuck

thing is if you think about his motivations right he his he's pretty agnostic to Dems or Republicans he is fully focused on what's best for meta right and so for him he also has an insane uh back end for full of probably the the the best source of info on the opinions uh of of the minds of of Americans right like there's it's hard to argue that there's someone who has better collection of of information of on opinions and so um for him to come out and and say this probably suggests or could suggest that you know what he's seeing leads to a a a kind of Republican

Victory and he's trying to better align himself with the next administr if he thought that that you know the Dems were were set to do well here then realistically there's no real reason for him to come out and and burn that relationship um so I do think there there's some kind of Takeaway on that front in terms of what his opinion is of of kind of thetion yeah I wonder if there's but the powerful stuff got me thinking um you know if we are worried about more censorship in the future like are there any projects that we think are kind of I know like are we even like like rwe R Drive kind of the Perma web I know like fcoin there's some other storage platforms but it's like you know some and like farter like decentralized

Twitter that sort of stuff seemingly is going to become more important as like the web two versions of those systems come like increasingly under attack or like under threat I saw a tweet the other day and it was we need a social media platform created by Anonymous founder and I was like oh yeah that's actually that makes a lot of sense like you need a Satoshi style social media platform because even faras probably you can probably go after sah i' have just what you asked for please anything give me anything cheaper than any VC round you can find

yeah this is a seed this is a 2014 seed round anything I think the this seems like an obvious use case for crypto that is becoming more and more like important and just how like the financial crisis I guess like pushed Satoshi or that group in into making Bitcoin right like I think you know increasing censorship could kind of force people in into trying out like a decentralized social media or Internet of some sorts I do think all this stuff is like narrative wise all this stuff has been pretty good for crypto um like you're seeing way more

people talk about these things that only crypto people would talk about like five years ago and it's because it's just like continue to become more like prevalent and um like dude family members even like talk to me about some of this stuff now whereas 5 years ago they would be like your uh conspiracy theorist um yeah I've always had like this theory that people like it's hard for crypto to provide because like ultimately crypto gives you like the sensorship resistance um and the cost is this way worse and like pretty different ux it's I mean worse is a like it's

better in some ways but but definitely like clunkier ux and so the only way that people can get pushed to use this is if the the sort of costs of using your existing stuff just become so high that you don't want to do it anymore right and and so I almost think people get pushed towards crypto rather than pulled like they get pushed by the current current things becoming more and more restrictive rather than pulled by Superior ux and I think you've kind of seen a slow progress towards that in in all of crypto's history and to me the world we're going towards now is pretty much like if you could have written the script for like a world where crypto really thrives it' be like pretty similar to to where it seems like we're going now but just La last thing on

durov thing um again like it does seem like if who knows what's true with this stuff um but it does seem like if he's not answering subpoenas for like child pornography and terrorism and stuff like that like that that's pretty bad right like we we all agree that you should be you know child pornography and terrorism is bad if there's people doing that on the platform you should probably be uh and there are suspicions you should probably be providing information about them it's just that that needs to be obviously well delineated and stuff like that and I guess the argument is people have is that it's it's a slippery slope until you start asking for information about your political opponents about people you just don't like about about whoever it might be um and just being

like quite radical I think I think Europe is becoming pretty radicalized I mean it's also because he like had that information cuz telegram is like an unencrypted app that their servers just have all this so for like something like signal like sure I'm sure all that stuff is happening on Signal no it's not not by default um I we've talked about this before we talked about this before are you sure are you guys being serious right now cedus is the the secure I'm so like disappointed that you guys think that telegram is secure it's like the most insecure messaging no I don't think it's secure I think but I thought it was like encrypted but they but but they had the decryption key no no it's encrypted

that's why all your devices like will sync very easily too uh no but like I'm sure all this stuff happens on Signal too right but signal actually has no control to like get any of this information right whereas he actually does with telegram it's so it's kind of like if you now develop something where you're in the position that you can you actually are able to access this information yeah obviously if those claims are legitimate then but I also don't I don't know who knows it's true as Jose said but listening to him speak on like the Tucker Carlson interview which assuming that he's being genuine with what he's saying it sounded like they tried to cooperate with law

enforcements on issues that were like you know on illegal things like uh definitely child porn and um terrorism would fall under that category where they would uh be cooperative with governments but at the same time it seemed like they had gotten a lot of subpoenas about stuff that would be crossing the line like people that don't like political opponents you know uh protesters that's what it's made it that's what he made it seem like on on that interview that there's like a lot of times where they said no to governments because you know they're trying to do what's right and uphold freedom of speech but obviously it's a very at some point it becomes a blurry line like in Canada this is a great

example there was like peaceful protests during Co about the the vaccine mandate in Ottawa that the truckers were doing and like there was a lot of like the government started freezing people's bank accounts saying that they were like violent which like there's a lot of okay okay so I just need to say I wouldn't call them peaceful necessarily okay they're blocking the roads but it's not they were like no they were being very aggressive to like nurses and doctors too like it was pretty bad so I wouldn't say that it was like completely they harming anyone I don't think that there was any reports of anyone being harmed but anyways like what if you start to to label those people terrorists than because they're like shutting down the roads which you know that's like a very

slippery slope and they started shutting down some people's bank accounts so it's like that's yeah that's not grounds for freezing of assets that's I know so it's I mean even the Canadian like Supreme Court even like ruled against that like that was unconstitutional to yeah but my whole point is it's a very slippery slope right like on one time you could just say okay they they protesters who like maybe getting like aggressive with blocking the roads and stuff and then like it slips to like oh we're calling them terrorists because of this and it it can get very messy like nobody knows really what the full truth is in some of these situations yeah I mean I think the EU is heading to to a point where it's basically going to have like its own

internet like similar to China or whatever like you saw the guy send that open letter to Elon threatening him or whatever um I mean already the cookies thing and then like EU just has a different approach to things right they believe that regulation by this bureaucratic central body is is What markets need and like I I fundamentally disagree with that even as a European right we kind of saw with these the cookies law like what changed I just have to click accept before I go on to all these websites like everyone just goes and clicks click clicks accept um and I think that this is like forcing people to comply with the FSA right um that's just been put in like they're basically threatening to to ban Twitter Twitter right that was what that that

that was what was implied in that letter that that um that he sent to Elon if that's the case you end up with your own siloed like European internet which seems yeah even worse for for Innovation and Tech in Europe which is already like no better way to Kickstart a dwindling continent well you're not kickstarting it sadly you're just sort of continuing dwindling like to try well they need to do something to Kickstart yeah Innovation growth anything yeah honestly [ __ ] Europe for the cookies thing that is just like so stupid Europe's just turning into a museum it's like the worst possible but yeah this lays a really nice like breeding ground for these decentralized if someone were to make like you know

it's very hard because you have to get the network effects you have to get the users you have to make the ux comparable and people have to have a reason to switch but it definitely feels like we're heading in that direction and maybe even like if pavl gets released maybe he's going to think more about putting stuff on on T or you know blockchain it's just it also makes the stakes way higher though right like it also means that you have to have way bigger way bigger coonies to go develop on on crypto rails if if you can literally get get arrested like whether it's the tornado cash case or or this if and this is not like sort of like fines and civil cases this is like like hard jail no no but this is in crypto rails

this is just like a yeah but I mean if if Regulators get increasingly aggressive on people developing these kinds of platforms and hold them responsible for any action that happens on them it's definitely going to be make it harder for people to want to do that yeah yeah I feel like entrepreneurship is being less and less celebrated in the west yeah more like they're enforcing more sprinkle 25% unrealized anyway should we get back to to coins people don't come to us for political commentary I feel like I trying to tie it into coins are wein coins coins are really dumping dumping now uh I know but but honestly like what are interesting projects in this area I feel like R weave is the one that keeps

I keep coming back to does anyone storage yeah but you can make like yeah I feel like we probably need some more time yeah take just on this stuff we'll research that for next week I think crypto X is one of the most interesting sectors here just because I think AI is the next it's already happening in terms of people passing stupid AI regulations but yeah I think that's going to be a big one too um do we want to move on to maker in on on theme with their Skynet Rebrand yeah so uh maker long awaited Rebrand that's been kind of hinted at for a while um

basically uh in 21 or so days uh the it'll launch and and what you can do is die will be upgradeable one: one for usds maker will be upgradeable one to 24,000 redenomination to Sky um and you don't have to do it so some can stay with an native asset some can Rebrand um the the reason you'd want to re brand is because there are going to be kind of incentives that that'll exist for um maker holders so basically if you're if you're as a skyh holder you'll be able to lock up tokens and they'll stream uh there's

there kind of you know a few games to play in terms of uh like locking up for an extended period or a short amount of time but without going into each specifically basically people will lock up uh to earn a combination of uh Surplus income from the protocol and a certain portion of the spark uh Supply which is going to be a new token that'll launch and then usds holders will also be able to get a yield uh via uh spark token kind of being distributed um and so yeah the idea is uh that the big one of the I think the big sticking points for people is the fact that now uh usds is freezable right so die still won't be but but usds will

be which you know goes against the vision of of the concept of a decentralized stable coin backed by a decentralized asset uh you still have it backed by partially backed by decentralized asset in terms of eth but now it's no longer you know a decentralized stable because accounts and and wallets can be Frozen and so um yeah price reacted pretty negatively to the news um I think it it's just you know because of where the market is right now now most things are a seld the news and then I think it was a bit underwhelming in terms of um you know the shift away from a decentralized stable coin via the freezing um and then

yeah all this stuff will go live in like I think it's on uh in 21 or so days in September um and how does it get Frozen by the way is it like is it a A multisig or yeah who who free who controls the freezing function that I'm not sure of I also think the redenomination is kind of cringe like you're making it it's like eight cents or something I think unit bias is a real thing in crypto though no but it's like there's been enough but there's been enough there's been enough studies on this and psychologically the optimal price range is like 20 to 80 and they could have just done or crypto for stocks for stocks

yeah but like I don't know if this is it's true with meme coins but like what low unit bias like somewhat fundamental play has done well because of this like didn't WiFi try this with like woy or whatever and come for a bit it was just people arbing the price between the two like um I don't know I found it kind of like lame to be honest yeah I mean if there's a time to do it it's now I think it makes sense I I notice it even like with meta that's $3,000 a coin I feel like I have so few shares like I feel poor when I hold my

meta vers just holding something that's like if it was three cents a share but I have a lot of shares it it really messes with your head I swear I've never had this like feeling me nether something going from one cent to two cents is totally different than someone going from $100 to $200 like just in my I know it's not different at all but psychologically still as long as it impacts some people then it makes sense to do it right that's the kind of Cal no but the counter argument to it in why 20 to 80 is the is like the prime range is because it begins it makes a lot of people now take your product or like whatever less seriously right and so there's actually a negative effect from having like the low unit um and he kind

of just come off as like a joke in a sense and like I think that makes sense in with like um stocks because older Generations might ass associate it with like pink slip uh not pink slip uh what are they what's the like the P sheets pink sheets yeah the pink sheet stocks those are all like kind of traded with those prices and so I think there's some kind of negative association from the older investor base but I I feel like the younger crypto peeps probably uh gravitate towards the smaller number more Shar is better yeah I mean it it was hard for a onee Rebrand to really like not be a

sell the news event right like you've been hinting it for so long people are going to have really high expectations for it I don't know the whole Rebrand and like having all these coins and stuff just seems like maker trying to be I mean I'm I'm and I'm I've been holding maker all through this to unfortunately but it seems like maker trying to be trying to be something it's not right it's like uh like hey kids are we pumping some coins today you know you know what I mean like it's say it's the meme with the guy like I'm somewhat of a whatever myself yeah I'm somewhat of a meme coin myself exactly you know after hating on the on D5 summer and stuff like that but I do think um yeah I don't know I was a

bit underwhelmed with the with the Rebrand is but I kind of expect it to be you know it's probably like a branding agency thing but I do think that this the overall it's like pretty pretty bullish maker having all these coins they're going to basically be used to to kind of subsidize die growth like spark itself is is especially with the a growth recently it seems like spark itself is going to be like nine figures of of Dollar Distribution to to maker holders uh Robbie from our research team put out a post on it and and basically he was saying that um he's expecting a decent amount of of usds supply growth somewhere to the tune of 1 and a half billion based on kind of you know an assumed 1 billion fdv for spark

and then an accepted uh yield of 15% for usds so I I do think that combined with you know yield for holding maker um will kind of you know you have your supply sync demand kind of um grow like boost and demand increases Supply sync mechanics that I think probably do well into the launch or at least from here considering how much it sold off yeah I saw another take though that was good that is like this wasn't a new product launch it was like a compliance launch because they added way more compliance features um than they ever had with maker so it's like you know blocks us obviously it also blocks VPN

so it can tell us if you're using a VPN they've got the freeze function that we talked about um and so there was like a lot of added compliance features and so I mean when you think about maker down now it's basically like I guess you want a piece of the like the circle the tether business you can kind of get that here right and so kind of democratizes like ownership in that business but it is like it's not like what it originally was like the original ethos right um and maybe that's just like a function of there just was not product Market fit with that cuz like how many people really ended up

needing a like I don't know how many people actually used Dy because they needed to use Dy no it was a byproduct of Leverage yeah well it was also like early on it was move fast and break stuff and then once you get bigger it's like all right how do we preserve this and let it grow um I do wonder if it was a you know something that's the adjustment was to cater to the current Administration and if there's a a change and and um regulations ease up then maybe they get another Rebrand and and make some adjustments yeah I mean so so they're getting 17.5% of total spark Dow supply per year for the next two years right

yeah but the whole way total you have to like lock up your tokens I think for some egregious amount of time and then if you like unstake you lose like 15% of your tokens or something like I got to look into it but there's some massive yeah penalties there's some massive penalties for unstaking I don't know how this is works but if you have to lock up Liquid tokens be careful so almost never works out yeah I to look into the detail I didn't see that there's a no exit there's a no loock one also which you assume just say lower yield yeah true yeah just be care if you care about trading and stuffff

that's like I've seen a lot of those you care about losing money yeah like don't unless you're a long-term investor and really want whatever you're getting be very like put a heavy discount on whatever extra yield you're getting gem Hunter always looking out for the for the Common Man extra 10% yield when the bag goes down 50% it's not worth it yeah yeah yeah um I do think it's o o overall it's the right approach though like every kind of stable coin learns this right you need to vertically integrate the whole stack it's just really not going far enough and like kind of took too long um like Robby in in the alpha feed not mentioned they should have launched

like a wallet right and Gone Gone deeper into payments and stuff like this which I think would have been pretty interesting um I also wonder how much D actually moves over I think that'll be really interesting because I heard someone told me um I never checked if this was true actually but that basically over one and a half billion dollars of die hasn't moved in two years um which is wild right because you're basically giving up like the SII yield which at some point was like 15% or or something along those lines um and hasn't mooved and that's like the most bullish thing I heard about maker in a while um and I wonder if that will now move to usds or if it just just stays stuck and d and like what all those people are are doing

that's like 30% of the that's a lot yeah it's bullish for expansion nothing moves over then then there's a lot more yield to be had for for new usds Supply yeah Jose a 10% yield you know what D was actually useful for is when tornado cash cuz it had like no fre on it and then people used it but now that's like gone as a use case too yeah people just swap their die I mean it kind of does but I mean tornado cash just doesn't have the same value that it used to with us not using

it yeah I agree it's not what it what it used to be and it's sort of pivoting closer to to usdc and stuff definitely agree with all that um a lot of stable coins designs like there's like m0o and aore are doing these interesting things too where like actually Robbie's posting a piece today uh he goes into like Moes uh it's pretty cool but he talks about some of like these different stable coin models too about how something like mzero actually lets like applications mint um the stable coins the yield actually goes to the application so instead of like Circle or like tether holding these treasuries and banking all the yield uh the application actually

gets a lot of that pass through which is pretty cool model um but yeah what did you want to go into like prediction markets yeah yeah I need to look into the M Zer thing I've heard good things about it [Music] um yeah I don't know I still still still think Athena's best position in the in the stable coin like vertical um yeah and I still think you you do have to verticalized like you can't just build the state coin and hope they will come that's why MZ is kind of interesting because I guess you use apps as as your distribution um for for your stable coin um but I feel like you can kind of do

that anyway right like for instance all the l2s did that with Athena right you would deposit usde and then they would like stake it and and keep the yield or distribute some of it or whatever doesn't seem that Innovative it's also a different model though we're talking about like a Fiat backed cash stable coin versus this like synthetic dollar it's like just a completely different like some people just might not want they just want the Fiat Dollar in the bank stable coin right so yeah I think the other difference is basically like what the the natural source of yield is for a lot of these if you know if you pass through via treasuries as as rates come down that that kind of becomes less appealing versus one that's a function of just demand to go long so

you have a an organic yield that that actually improves as rates come down yeah I I think everyone's going to end up doing treasuries like I think Athena will end up doing treasuries too honestly I think everyone's just going to have that Baseline of of treasuries and then you're just going to have to like find higher sources of yield and and then I think it's mostly honestly like go to market like the yeah and and building an ecosystem around your your stable coin yeah but I don't know like now that the BDC and EF are out will yields for BTC and E ever get like really crazy again because like the hedge funds can put on the basis trade and they can do it with a lot more

Capital than I feel like in better margining requirements via the ETF than like crypto hedge funds couldn't you do this with the CME anyway I think that uh you can maybe post the BTC as coll like the BTC ETF as collateral for for doing the CME trade versus before like what I don't know what you're actually posting as collateral for the CME like if they would accept something else but I I could be not true I think I've read that I don't know the intricacies of it but it makes sense in theory yeah all right prediction markets last I think we should I think we should just end it maybe we'll talk about prediction markets next

week it's been a sleepy summer I mean it's been an hour you want to like go into this this is like a big topic I feel like we can maybe cut some of the long political stuff I don't know that was good that's important I thought that was fun yeah all right all right don't get chopped out of your bags yeah don't get choed out of your bags yeah exactly that's true that is the message of this episode no actionable tickers Duncan has not yet shilled banana all right guys thanks very much for tuning in to another episode of the hive mind hope you enjoyed it um and yeah please leave us comments we should actually respond to the YouTube and everything comments

I'll go through and do that we'll we'll start responding we promise uh see you again in 2 weeks [Music]