Who is Responsible for Low Float, High FDV? | Roundup

Transcript

fast forward two years from now two and a half three years from now what are we going to be saying about this particular moment in time okay it was so obvious right we had an ETF like why are you overthinking it man you had the most defining moment of the industry to legitimize this asset class you have a president that is a presidential candidate that is talking about like crypto's become presidential now this episode is brought to you by SE say's V2 upgrade introduces the first high performance parallelized evm already live on public devet maet comes later in Q2 you can follow along with the say Journey on X say Network say is spelled s eii go follow say on X say Network scary stat for you the odds of

falling victim to online crimes are one in4 AA provides digital security protection to keep your personal information passwords online activity and Technology safe from online threats for Empire listeners or is offering 14 days free plus up to 55% off an Ora subscription when you visit Aura a.com blockworks terms and conditions apply cite for details you'll hear more about Aura later in the show hey everyone Santi and I have been talking about salana a lot recently and we're excited to have a salana sponsor of Empire marinade marinade is a staking protocol on salana and the only Stak pool that delivers autore rebalancing me rewards and automatic downside

protection with their new protected staking rewards optimize your soulle stake with marinade by hitting the link in the show notes big thanks to marinade we'll talk more about them later in the show are you tired of high gas fees I'm excited to let you know about scale a zero gas fee modular blockchain that's become a perfect fit for gaming and AI apps because of their instant finality and lack of me explore the scale ecosystem today at scale dospace ecosystem and stay up to date with the gasless blockchain on X scale Network that's scale Network big thanks to scale for sponsoring Empire oh boy are we live here it

goes there it goes we have we have failed you guys we've not brought you a Roundup in a while and uh feel a little feeling a little nervous today I woke up super early I'm in New York I email Yan him like I'm ready to go like I'm excited about this he's like can we delay for an hour I'm like God anyways I'm nervous how's the New York trip that was great really really productive uh what are you doing here uh nothing man I just came to see you like do I need another reason to be newor likely no I I uh I had to be in uh Mexico for uh my I'm the Godfather of my best friend son and so so I I was here I

got invited to be at the saana office yesterday to talk to the cohort of apps like a Founders startups that are there I can talk about that really exciting uh but it also uh yeah been caught up with Ben from parfi Mike dudis from six-b Ventures a bunch of teams that are here we're obviously hosting the um the uh you know meet up today Thursday so yeah I mean New York's great it's my favorite city in the World nice why don't why don't you live here if it's your favorite City because I've lived here before I've lived here for six years so I like coming here for like a month or two at a time like I'm always here in the summer

and then I come for the marathon it's just you know I like where I live now yeah yeah Fair um yeah dude I mean we we get like 12 days a year that are like this week I feel like with the you know 72 sunny and then it's just [ __ ] yeah look if if if I were to ever come back I would or just move I'd be New York for sure yeah feels like the second home to me I went to the Knicks game last night I was gonna go dude I went yeah oh what a game are you when do you leave town we should go to game five if they if they if the pce well that's next Tuesday yeah no I leave I think I

leave Sunday but uh they've been wowan it was popping it was crazy man it was like ah they were down 10 and then they came back and Brunson got injured and they came back yeah so yeah it cool I mean was when was the last time the Knicks like were playing good couldn't tell you couldn't tell I'm more of a football and baseball fan I don't follow basketball that closely honestly but like I love it's my favorite sport to go to in person I just get fired up in person mine is hockey and then and then basketball um Monaco has a good basketball team but yeah I I bought like this shirt like there's this brand that I like New York or nowhere and mono has a good basketball team yeah yeah they they they're European Champions a lot a lot

of like the retired us players end up going to Mono um but uh I bought this this a New York and nowhere brand they have the new NX version I bought a shirt I all fired up watching the game in my hotel room put the shirt on let's go yeah they yeah they did it that was a cool collab there were so my actually my wife looked I went to the game with my wife and she looked at me last night she's like I think New York or nowhere is not cool anymore because there's all these like Banker Bros wearing New Yorker or nowhere she's like I think that brand is out okay I'm gonna return it yeah so just the heads up that's that's the fashion insight for my advice uh from from my wife what is say like sporty and rich is now like the thing that's that

was cool like six months ago cool that was cool at the US Open now now that's right that's right the I sympathize it's like the attention fan of crypto is like that of a fire like a you know of a fruit fly or an elephant and like I think the same is true for Brands it's talking to Alex from nanson last night um the founder of nanson and we both kind of were just like nans for cont data intelligence company uh they like mine like they all like surface insights if you want to understand who's the person fund behind the wallet they're pretty good at it yeah um we were just talking about how like this it's it's a very weird cycle right now

it's a very um so in the last couple of Cycles the basically the firing gun was shot for the cycle so in like all of 2017 was just like a ripper of a bull market um March 2020 Co hits uh Mar black Thursday happens and then prices you know obviously prices crash and then think from like that from like a week after that especially starting when like you could probably say the firing gun was like Paul tutor Jones calling Bitcoin the fastest horse in the race I think that was around May of 2020 it was just a ripper of a bull market for a year and a half and this Cycles felt very odd because the there

hasn't really been like a firing gun I would say there's probably the Bitcoin ETF stuff in December and like leading into in December leading into the new year and then into January like boom bull Market's back and and now there's this like consolidation choppiness that I think is making some people like a little uncomfortable but I'd be curious how how you think about that because I can share how I feel about it from the operator's perspective but like from someone who's seen many cycles from the IND perspective let's talk about I look I'm I think there's this phenomenon where the Mind plays plays tricks on you looking back on the prior Cycles it it looks like it was a ripper

in the moment it doesn't feel like a ripper as much like throughout 2021 2020 2021 cycle Paul Tor Jones I would have thought like compound liquidity mining was more like also very defining moment of the cycle where like yeah kick started def5 summer then you had Renaissance of nfts because you had the wealth effect of you know WiFi and all that stuff but in the midst during that moment I'm trying to think like it it wasn't like it never feels obvious you're always on the edge you always have PTSD you're like covid and uh and then you know people now looking back we say well yeah you know

there's a huge liquidity injection people had time they were in their homes they like we fit this narrative as to why the cycle happened we look at the data and you know it all fits really nicely but but I you still have draw Downs at least five to 10 draw Downs of 10 15 20% of these assets uh and in that moment a lot of people were questioning how long the cycle would last how sustainable it was how other things might impact it and look on the margin this I would agree with you is a little choppy it's a

bit like hav have not and you're also exhibiting seeing that in traditional markets right you have the returns in the S&P have been concentrated in a set of The Magnificent Seven or whatever um and everything else has been like muted and so it's a very much a Have and Have Not the return disparity is also in crypto you know been pretty noticeable right eth has you know oscillated in a very tight range this hasn't done anything really Bitcoin is certainly rally because of the ETF as you said um and then you've had Solana right which has you know been front and center and in just the price action uh and you know ordinal activity and whatever but I don't know like maybe

the question is perhaps more interesting is Fast Forward two years from now two and a half three years from now what are we going to be saying about this particular moment in time okay it was so obvious right we had an ETF like why are you overthinking it man you had the most defining moment of the industry to legitimize this asset class you have a president that is a presidential candidate that is talking about like crypto's become presidential now it is a for like the ETF moment is a defining moment perhaps the most impactful of this industry because it legitimizes the asset class people can buy it through their retirement accounts the type of buyer you know I mean like that might be

the thing that we look back and you're like why why the hell did I overthink that I should have just bid gone played basketball and chilled because this is a secular Trend and like don't try to play cutean oh the the life of an investor sounds nice one too no what I'm saying but like it doesn't sound it's not easy right because sitting on your hands and doing nothing and I tweeted about this last week or like a couple days ago is extremely hard it doesn't get easier because you have the opportunity cause you have the ability to invest in a number of things different asset classes you make more money the of the things you can invest in also goes up like and so it's not easy to sit on your hands right

um and I I just think that I put it differently I've had there was a podcast that we recorded um where I was visibly stressed about that morning like selling a position in whiff for instance and we went through it and I didn't do anything um and I was just on the flight here I was thinking about look there have been specific moments over the last couple months where I've wanted to make drastic changes to the portfolio because of macro because of crypto because of price action you know when price does X you kind of but I'm just I'm I'm constantly now going back what is the core thesis

my core thesis a cycle and it's X salana is the most retail friendly chain it's the most advanced therefore memes will do well I like I'm doing other stuff but on the margin and I was talking to bad about this like at Pari we got one thing extremely right we were early in defi we owned it we anytime there was like a company that wanted to raise money in defi they called us we were top of the list and we owned it and we went hard at it and we were early we did many other things but like when you think about like maybe in your portfolio too and I'll stop talking is I think if going back like you have to get one or two things very very right in

investing and I'm not talking about time it could be but be you know I mean like what is the thing that you're G to get extremely right this cycle or in the next couple of years Beyond like what you're doing at block works right like from an investing standpoint what is it I I have one that I that I will I continue to go back and and doing it in size I mean I would guess for you I would guess for you your two thing you could get everything wrong this cycle but your two things are meme coins and salana I would guess yes well specifically salana like I am of the mind

that salana should like I don't see a compelling reason and I haven't from teams or investors as to why salana should not be at Parry with ethereum that's the TR that for me and again none of this is whatever advice or whatever but that's my thesis yeah and I keep hammering it I was yesterday at the salon office I'm like every time I talk to a team I'm like what do you get building an XY Network that you can't get in salana I'm monitoring fire dancer I'm when their progress there I'm monitoring the spam issue I'm like I'm very focused on that I'm doing other Investments of course I'm interested in other ecosystems of course

it also feeds I'm paying attention to Aptos we just had them on the Pod I'm paying attention to like why because it also influences you know and moan at it like these things influence my thesis and Salon like and so and I will invest there I'll hedge part of it but that's just the thing that I have the most conviction on like that's the thing that I'm most focused on and it does take a lot of time like not doing anything doesn't mean like stop just pencils down you know go travel and do [ __ ] no it's like constantly like revisit the thesis like when the salana spam issue happened how many people did you talk and they're like game over like look at Bas like

[ __ ] Works you're like agree let's give it a couple weeks to see how the devs come together and like you had a Herculean effort from the salana jeto and the rest of and a bunch of other teams and you're like holy [ __ ] like that's actually came more bullish out of that incident than than before you know so yeah I don't know like what what does think that you're trying to get right I mean for me it's just like extreme focus at block works right now like I told you I messaged you this week you sent me a really good deal and I was just like I'm I'm gonna pass on this I need to I'm basically stopping most Angel Investing I'm not really trading around the portfolio at all I'm just like I'm 100% focused on block works right now I think um I don't know I was

talking to some couple founders recently and they're they're really chasing this reaking narrative and I was and they're not they're not reaking companies at all like they have nothing to do with reaking and they're like yeah like a lot of them are like we think we're going to try to grab a piece of the reaking market and like I don't know you've got igen layer launching and I don't know I just like don't like that strategy at all because I don't know if if you bring up what you mentioned about Pary it's like Pari probably lost a bunch of deals in gaming or they lost deals in N I brought like aium seat round of Pary Ben was like you know game is and and I and I think I think I remember you guys passed on axi I'm pretty sure too but

which like sucks but also I understand the decision to pass on that because uh if you did it if you did all of them you're just a general you're a generalist fund and the way to build something when you're just kicking off is like I think you want to own one thing and that's how I think about it at block works is like there are there's going to be a huge wave of retail that ends up coming into crypto in this cycle probably let's say back half of this year maybe more likely into 2025 we get the E ETF narrative whatever second half of the cycle we will not dominate that game like that is coindesk coin Telegraph right Bank list like I like I will give like I will seed all of those

retail people to them because like I want to own the crypto native audience I want to own the information stack for crypto natives like that is what I'm what I'm 100% locked into right now yeah I want to pick your brain because you recently acquired Nathaniel uh's podcast yeah I've been that podcast he's been in the space for a while like what was the thesis there I'm just curious if if you're willing to share there's there's three elements of this there's the personal element there's the very like um so the P the I I'll talk about the breakdown specifically like the breakdown podcast and the asset and then it'll I'll zoom out into the broader blockwork strategy and how I think about media so the breakdown is solving this issue isue where I don't think that there's a really good daily crypto podcast if you look at all the best

crypto podcasts whether it's blockwork shows like Empire Light Speed zerx research um on the margin th like thousand X I'm gonna get in trouble because I'm sure I'm forgetting some like they are xerx research like they're these they're usually like twice a week you've got an interview show and then you've got a a a Roundup at the at the end of the at the end of the week Ford guidance same thing uh other even other shows Bank list on the brink um I don't know other crypto they all follow the same format I really believe that there needs to be a daily crypto show um where it's like you wake up you're on the you're on your 15minute Subway you're you're commuting to work it's just like what are the two new stories that you

need to know Nathaniel's the only one who's been able to nail this it's six days a week he's done it for years it's got kind of this like Lindy effective podcast where it's been around for a while and it has a it it really drastically increases the size of our podcast Network so it kind of does a couple things for us because it's a it's a massive show because it's been around for so long it gives us more advertising capabilities so we can go to different advertisers some of the big players um some of the big players like the Krakens and ledgers of the world like they have such big marketing spends that even if something like bell curve is really good content like they need to deploy big budgets it's like being a billion dollar fund versus a 1010 million doll fund

like even if there's a good opportunity you need to deploy in size so the breakdown is kind of like gives us that inventory the second thing is it gives us distribution for other shows it's like an it's like an it opens the door to other channels at blockworks um so it will be like this big daily podcast then we can drive into like Empire or bell curve whatever and then it gives us the ability to like create more Talent at blockworks so we'll start so Nathaniel's going to keep hosting it but we could bring on a reporter we could bring on Byron the newsletter writer we and you can start elevating different Talent theoretically like Byron writes a newsletter daily he could there's no reason why he couldn't do it this so this is the plan so the so the daily

newsletter of block works and the breakdown will end up becoming the same brand yeah that's exactly by the way this is this is the uh the only newsletter I read daily Byron's Byron yeah he's good let's go Byron's great he's great the malvine of crypto baby um yeah I I think it's the best daily daily newsletter um in crypto right now so the breakdown and the daily newsletter will will become one and the same maybe the daily newsletter will end up becoming the breakdown by blockworks or something like The Branding will end up being the same Byron will start going on the show more um and that gets me to like the broader blockwork strategy where if you look at media media is media is dying like media is dying as we like traditional media is dying and

there's only two media types of media companies that are going to end up working there's like a couple of the biggest players like the New York times they'll they'll actually end up working like their business model even though people on crypto Twitter hate them they're one of the most successful media companies in the world today they've done an amazing job pivoting away from like display ads on their website into products um and then there's very traditional B2B um not not traditional but uh like B2B digital media companies so this is how I think about block works is not B Toc very B2B I only care about like crypto professionals and crypto natives the problem is once you scale big enough start creating more and more generalized content yeah and then you sit in this messy middle of media and

the messy M middle kills you Vox Vice BuzzFeed Huffington Post like you're not big enough to compete with social media you're not small enough to have a niche audience you're screwed so what blockworks is GNA end up turning into is essentially a house of Brands and when you when when you see our podcast like light speed zerx research bell curve like the long-term goal for these is like they're not just podcast they're brands that we're building and you're going to have these like dieh hard communities like cult like we have like a cult following around light speed we have like I don't know we have like kind of a cult following around Empire when you go in person you see these people they like they just love Empire these will turn into people are showing up to the event

today I mean we've got like we tweeted out one link one time and we've got I think we'll have like two we have like 200 registered so that's like one link one time and I don't know probably got could have gotten like over a thousand if we really pushed this thing So eventually all of our podcasts will get newsletters and then they'll all get in-person activations as well so kind of giving away a little bit of the secret sauce here but like you'll have let's say a light speed podcast a light speed newsletter and then like a light speed stage at at the permissionless conference that's an example of what it could look like so the daily newsletter of block Works was missing a podcast and that's where the breakdown slots in that's nice yeah we're excited first first acquisition

yeah um should we pivot to I mean there's been a lot of new stuff uh we can talk about the emergence of there's been really interesting activity on social F you had pump. fun uh uh fantasy uh has just been interesting in its own way we obviously can talk about Trump and the comments that he made yesterday at um at a dinner in Mar Lago uh work there's other stuff that we can comment on Let's do let's do social F stuff so there's probably three apps to focus on here there's like social consumer so this week the context for this conversation is this week uh fantas two two big things happened i' would say

there's fantasy which uh are you an investor in fantasy I think we're both investors we're both investors in fantasy um I love love those guys I mean they're just electric yeah a double click here I'll like yesterday I was talking to the founders cohort of Founders in the salana and I was like I talk very specifically of things that I look for in a Founder because it's a people business you're investing early stage their and I I end up I end up passing in Founders that don't speak fast and both the pump. Fon and the fantasy guys both of them speak at lightning speed and I was like okay yes sign me up I'll invest on that Bas um yeah I mean I I met them at the alliance St I went and gave this talk to

like the Alli St cohort and met them and they're yeah they're they're El electric so uh friend friend. Tech launched their token um and did their airdrop uh uh fantasy top which is like you can essentially gamble or bet I don't know the right word to use here but you can bet on your different on different creators on crypto Twitter uh they basically went they basically went live and a bunch of people started gam like betting on on on different crypto Twitter influencers or people whatever you want to call it and then pump. fun I think did they launch their token and they launched like a chat and social feed to see what your friends are trading I didn't follow pump off fun as closely but anyways a bunch a bunch of

big stuff happened I remember last summer when friend Tech was launching um and I was talking a lot about it you were like pretty anti friendtech I think is fair to say I never got yeah you never got on it I'd just be curious to get your take on like updated thoughts around social fi about a year later yeah I had this great discussion with uh a few folks yesterday including Ben and Mike U um about it um I'm not dismissive of the category I think there's Nuance to it frch is extremely close to it's like it's like you saw it with the airdrop you had big name accounts dumping like small airdrop amounts

you're like one maybe you're not as you're laring as like you know generational crypto wealth but like you're dumping $12,000 drop on it's like what are you doing man like you I mean like it actually is I would argue that the benefit of doing that it's like it doesn't if you're that wealthy it doesn't comp your wealth then why you doing because it's hurting your reputation it's very confusing to see actually does these big Twitter accounts do that and it goes back to my initial skepticism with something like fentic is I there is this component where sometimes you do things without expecting anything in return Financial return and I appreciate crypto is an area where we're trying to financialized

everything see what sticks this is an area where I feel extremely strong about we shouldn't be doing it I don't want to understand if you're buying my token and then selling it like it just taints uh it creates a very weird awkward relationship you would argue what's the difference between fantasy is these cards right you I have a card that represents like the World Cup right you're collecting these cards and I would argue that and I would argue as someone who's been very Pro meme coins of just like let the market do what the Market's going to do yeah true although it just feels really it feels very direct and personal with friend it doesn't feel as direct personal a step remove of

fantasy um it's fun and maybe it's just this idea that there's like this image and the card trading I think it's the trading trading card that makes it very related like just and I don't know how to explain it other than it it feels Less in your face I think the if someone sells my card and is trading it then I'm like yeah that's fine if someone's like dumping my key I'm like yo man what's up like are we friends like what's going on like yeah did you appreciate that or I know what you're saying I mean one is very purely just like it it feels like a game fantasy feels like a game friend I think the other thing with frch is which I'm still on frch and stuff I'm still like

sometimes occasionally there but like you have you basically then have to put out for your for your key holders by um because there's this chat feature so there's because there's utility baked into buying the key ah great point you know that it makes it's like I don't want to put out for you guys I don't want to so I've I've got basically you've gotten yourself into a situation where all of a sudden you're like created another job for yourself and to be fair I'm gonna show you my DMs after this I'll send you a screenshot it is probably at this point 50 maybe maybe 75 maybe a 100 DMS of people being like why didn't you tweet this weekend I bought your fantasy card so they like I bought

your fantasy card why didn't you tweet this weekend um I was like at I was at this like dude I'm I'm like I took the weekend off of Twitter I'm sorry like I didn't respond to was baptism in in in uh Mexico and in the weekend over the weekend I was like I wake up and I'm like what have I done wrong I don't have DMS open but people are like this guy's not tweeting it sucks and like and I pink the fantasy guys at Travis I said yo man uh did I do something wrong here no I just uh Tom Schmidt apparently has like this rubric of like best practices for F influenza or whatever I don't

know uh it's uh I don't know uh it just feels different it's more fun so let's talk about maybe well well on this point though yeah what is the last thing I want to say is it's interesting also in the sense that they're in three different ecosystems right you have Fantasy on blast you have friend Tech on on on ba base and you have a pump. fun on salana right yep and that in and of itself I think will be a really interesting experiment as how things unfold here's the here's the big takeaway I think to

have there is this is the first time in history we've seen these breakout consumer apps have this I think it might have been Chia who was talking about this have this big impact on the chain that they're built on right so if you think about base base was nothing until friendtech brought a ton of it wasn't farcaster that brought all his users to base in the early days it was friendtech then uh blast like blast was just a bunch of like crazy speculative stuff until fantasy like brought now fantasy's probably the biggest driver of users to blast I would assume um and then salana salana is already very like diverse ecosystem but pump. fun you could you could argue made a pretty big impact here in the last couple of months as well so I think start to see these

chains like you remember in the last cycle chains were really fighting to get like Starbucks and Nike and you had some of these like ridiculous like10 million doll deals to get those people on th those people realize doesn't those don't make a difference obviously people realize those don't make any sort of impact no [ __ ] um but there's gonna be like allout fights I think to get these world-class developers and Founders to come build on your chain because that's where the impact matters yeah yeah yeah it'll be really interesting um okay here's here's I got the data shout out Ali Zack who is at panta it's been one week since the launch of fantasy in that time the platforms onboarded 33 and a half

thousand new addresses seen over eight and a half th000 eth in trading volume for reference during fex first week it onboarded 27,000 new addresses so so fantasy's already added 33 and a half thousand new addresses and then I saw the uh some folks in the slack blockb slack Channel were commenting about the fees that were generated in the last seven days fantasies generated over 9 million in fees frex generated five million in fees and pump do funds over three million in fees like these are these are real dollars for startups quite a lot actually yeah uh we'll see if we can run rate those figures into you know for the rest of

the year but uh cuz you know French uh I'm I'm curious to get your thoughts of someone who was on it early you know with the airdrop and everything uh and V2 and the team um it's had sort of its ups and downs but like out of all three like or like which one are you most bullish on which one you know updated thoughts in frch like you said you kind of sounds like the frequency of you using it is slightly lower and and maybe throw in farcaster into that equation too I appreciate it's like a more generalized but like you're also I think you're one of the most active in the category so yeah maybe throw in yeah okay so let me let me

maybe explain to you how I view so there's like friend Tech fantasy farcaster uh our head of marketing was asking me about like lens yesterday there's I bucket those in two different categories so there's like friend Tech and fantasy those are a lot of the users there people who view crypto like just this speculative asset that's like a thing to gamble on and my take on why those are taking off right now so if you if you think about it frch took off during like Peak peak of the bear Market it was I think like summer 2023 uh we were just like super Cho like things were slowly starting to come back and I don't think it's any sort of surpris that fantasy launched during this like weird choppy consolidation period I think like the friend Tex and fantasies

are going to do really well when like people just need to get their get their inner Gambler out basically then there's this other group of people who really like this it's more the like Andre cohort of like you know we have these so like these web to monopolies and we're we're breaking down those barriers and that's where like you need to build these censor censorship resistant protocols that enable you to like control your own data and build a competitor competitor to Twitter that's the bucket where I see like foraster and lens and things like that um the group number two oftentimes views group number one as negative to the industry um and group number one says that group number

two doesn't like misses Miss misses the force for the trees like it's all just speculation all the way down both both of them I think are those are very negative takes on the other group and it's yeah I I think that they're both doing great things for the industry and like both very value add I just think they're like two very different groups actually yeah yeah and actually uh before we move on other things there's um there's this recurring discussion that is percolating in front and center polarizing in crypto right now that I'd like to just address quickly which is this idea of high fdv low float coins and why people are interested in meme coins and to your point I was reminded of that because

what you just said which is there's a camp of people that are very critical and dismissive of meme coins and there's others that are complaining as the reaction of the Community is we tired and fed up of these protocols that launch at high ftvs low flow it's like down only and I just think I've seen the most crypto Twitter has terrible takes always but like in this particular area it is you constantly see people that try to come out ahead with specific narratives that are just factually incorrect I'll give you an example someone says oh you know it's the fault of VCS I'm like no it's not it's a fault of teams that come out with a high valuation I'm like wait a minute do you understand market dynamics it's not like

the team sets the price the market sets the price for the token idiot oh yeah but market makers I'm like you think the team controls like what the token does it's like it's actually really challenging like you of course you need to have market makers in the mix like obviously like this is look at traditional markets who whose fault are you saying that it is for the low flow High FTV stuff and what are your thoughts it's it's it's like it's just the thing of the market it's like you can't uh two examples salon and ethereum ethereum did an Ico at a time where it benefited because there was no precedent you just could got away with it so to speak on the regular you couldn't do that in today's environment after ethereum did the Ico and after you had the wave of

icos you can't do an I like your lawyer would scream at you right and so unfortunately projects like salana and then every every other project right now has to raise from Venture funds and do it in a way where it's like Equity with a token warrant and that's kind of the best model that you know lawyers have kind of agreed on given the current regulatory environment in a perfect world probably yeah do an Ico right allow people in the community to invest distribute to that would allow a greater distribution of tokens but at the same time investors VCS and teams don't own much of the tokens right and they carve out a big

part to the community to decentralize in large part but also to compensate people for participating in the network for taking smart contract risk for because you know that's a core principle of crypto which is you make your participants owners in the network in a more Equitable manner fine I get it but it's like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place here and in large Parts because of regulatory ambiguity and if we can update credit investor rules then maybe hopefully we can get to a place where you can bring in the community and participants earlier and then therefore have a token that is more

distributed out of the gate and the float is higher but it's kind of like you can't control that and so I would just caution people when you hear these people talk about it's a VC's fault it's like no man VC's take a lot of risk early stage that's that's the nature of the game there always will be a place for VCS now can community members become VCS absolutely yeah absolutely but you know it's challenging um so yeah I don't know every cycle there's always this idea of like VCS are evil and what not I'm like as someone who is an investor I'm like [ __ ] off we take a lot of risk not everyone is created equal but you know people the a lot of times the influencers that are commenting on this

are guys that are butt hurt cuz because they didn't get allocation in deals and that's the reality of things and you've got you've got the wrong brand for yourself you can't call yourself a VC it's got to be institutional Angel that's the I'm an in by the way no one's ever I'm an Institutional angel I don't write your 25k checks no I'm like a fund but I'm an angel too that's that's a better brand for you San um yeah me I've seen it all over the timeline you're seen this so this is why we hate FTV coins I'm like I get it this episode is brought to by say se's belief about the world I think is a good one they believe that the evm is here to stay agree with that they believe that the evm is going to look kind of like what JavaScript ended up

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standard and digital safety check them out a.com blockworks 34-day trial hey everyone Santi and I have been talking about salana a lot recently and we're excited to have a salana sponsor of Empire marinade is a staking protocol in salana I remember when they launched I think it was back at a salana hackathon and they were funded with this 80k grant it's super cool to see how far they've come they're the only stake pool today that delivers Auto rebalancing me rewards and automatic downside protection with their new protected staking rewards you can stake natively or liquid Stak with marinade and get the same high performance delegation strategy that thousands are using already to stake your soul to over a

hundred of the best Salon validators marinade has been live for over 2 years and they have audits completed by four of the top security firms in crypto the delegation strategy is a first of its kind so if you're staking your salana if you want to start staking your salana if you want to get some yield from your soul start staking today with marinade go hit the link in the show notes big thanks to marinade for everything that they've done in salana staking land go check them out go stake your salana with marinade today hey everyone Jason here I know you've been hearing a lot about the intersection of crypto and Ai and that's why I'm really excited to share our newest partner and sponsored Empire scale a high performance modular blockchain that's revolutionizing gaming and AI with zero fees and instant

finality scales unique architecture allows for massive scalability and has already saved users over 6 billion in gas fees the five main takeaways that you need to know for scale one zero gas fees two scale has instant finality and lack of muv three the zero gas fee model of scale is really important for blockchain gaming adoption as Gamers don't have to pay transaction costs or have the skl token four scale is mult chain this design allows for nodes to be combined to create chains and for individual sub nodes to actually be removed and relocated which creates greater security and collusion resistance and five scale has become a really good fit for AI daps because they're fast automated zero fee transactions big thank you to scale for

sponsoring Empire we're excited to partner with you guys bridge over to scale if you're listening to this at scale dospace for/ ecosystem follow the journey along with scale on X at scale Network that's at scale Network big thanks again to scale for sponsoring Empire yeah I mean there's another half that's calling out the operators for launching at these high fdv lowf flow tokens my there's a there's there's a couple things going on there's an overbear there's a there's the SEC the SEC let's like the SEC is basically restricting the ability for startups to raise capital and distribute tokens the whole reason that there's like I saw a bunch of people commenting this week about like the points meta so

stupid like points points points points are forced on points are being forced on operators and Founders because the SEC is tell is it if if you are a company and you give tokens to someone in exchange for dollars you are [ __ ] there is no way around it you are screwed so what you have to do is go points points points air drop based on these points like points give and the network at that point is sufficiently decentralized in some capacity and you know you further like obviously this points thing is dumb but like I don't have I think it is some ways well I think uh I here here's what I think it's dumb tokens used to be

about incentivizing early users right the the thought was like and I really did believe this was like the early users of uber this is like the common example like the early users of uber should get should benefit and the same and like Unis swap right like who did Unis swap give their tokens to like it was the early users of Unis swap like it was the liquidity providers um you know and and that and that was awesome and like to okay so step one of tokens was like well first off it was about raising Capital with these tokens but then like moving beyond that it was about incentivizing early users then it became a customer acquisition game it was like we don't need to incentivize these early users let's use tokens to acquire new

users and now what we've moved to is stage three where they're now an investor acquisition game so we've gone from using tokens to incentivize early users to customer acquisition game to investor acquisition game and it's causing these like there's there's a lot of reasons there's a lot of reasons for it but like there's the overbearing regulator with the SEC there's a lack of new entrance in retail people um like we can look at some coin coinbase head earnings like there's some really interesting data around retail people we could pull up or lack of retail people I guess I should say but then there's there's this over abundance of VC Capital um and it is leading to there it's it's no one's fault it's no one's fault not the operator day the

end of the day have agency no one's forcing you to buy World coin at 100 billion FTV is not a meme yeah I'm not saying that look at the stats no no I understand that look at the stats and make a decision for your that's also I mean that's the last thing I'll say at this point you know yeah it is a challenge you know I in a perfect world absolutely let's bring in let's actually instead of airdropping 50% of people that just you know uh for the sake of it no allow them to invest because I think a lot of them may want to invest put skin in the game have a lockup for a year yeah you know and so I'm all for that it's just it requires uh re you know new updated accredit investor laws and whatever when

we get there we you know I don't think anyone disagrees with the idea that we should update those rules not just in but outside as well um then the other thing uh I wrote a piece now on AI and I've been talking about like a lot of deepen projects which is like led me to this realization which is tied to this I've heard a term that I want to share in the podcast because it's so nice I think it's called participatory networks and I think it was a founder of geonet who referred to that in Industry conferences and I think the the way I've started to explain crypto like in New York I've had meeting with people outside of crypto I'm like listen look at networks networks are

extremely Capital if intensive to this cold start problem right in order to bootstrap Supply incentivize demand think of uber right so so Capital intensive um and I think the key takeaway is crypto is creating a new type of mechanism to bootstrap networks in a very Capital efficient way whether it's Bitcoin or deepen and for the simple reason that the cost may be the same but you're offloading that cost away from the company protocol into the participant meaning the do-it-yourself Enthusiast that is expending their own resource time compute hardware and so the company doesn't have to spend that

capex hundreds and millions of dollars to do it themselves and I think that if like I think when I've started to explain that to people they understand networks and the capital intensity of it and you're like well yeah of course these networks are going to actually be able to get off the ground and compete against traditional networks that are very Monopoly likee in a credible way and it sounds dumb and obvious but like yeah when you give participants a greater incentive because they're earning part of the ownership in the network then it's going to work it should work it should disant or displace a a incumbent that is not sharing that wealth equitably so anyways a ramble but I

wanted to share that because it's a something that I've started yeah did you look at the coinbase earnings I did I did all right um retail Q4 2021 177 billion in trade volume retail q1 2024 56 billion so for retail we're only at 31.6% of all-time highs so where we're at today for the retail trading on coinbase is 31.6% of what the retail high was for coinbase in the in the last cycle institutional we're at 69% of the all-time high right we're at 256 billion

today versus 371 billion in Q4 2021 really interesting data points so institutional we're 70 % back retail were 30% back and that is exactly in line with what it feels like today I would say like that quantifies exactly what it feels like on on crypto Twitter today I just I don't know I I really it was really interesting seeing that data yeah a lot of uh a lot of the market participants were focusing on like when coinbase reports earnings they focus on the like of the last month to run rate right because to your point like this quarter has been a bit iffy right in the sense of like you know markets have cooled down a bit

and so you're trying to like run rate earnings guidance into you know into the rest of the year like you're looking at the last month uh but yeah I mean the volume in q1 was like pretty strong then it it's come down a bit um yeah I wonder what it just their net income is [ __ ] insane look did you like let me just read these numbers for you guys Revenue 1.6 billion so revenue is 1.6 billion net income is 1.2 billion so Revenue was up 70% net income was up 330% quarter over quarter adjusted iida 1 billion Opex less than a billion 0.9 cash they're sitting on seven billion of cash

usdc on the platform doubled quarter over quarter and ba number of Base developers is up 8X quarter of quarter like say that again revenue and net income three billion Revenue was 1 .6 billion yeah net income was 1.2 billion that's crazy yeah I mean run that forward like what's stopping coinbase from becoming top three financial institutions in the US in the world there was a chart that went around Twitter this week and I heard it on um the my first million podcast which is like a big Tech podcast um and they were talking about how everyone was talking about how NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange are these like amazing amazing

amazing businesses and there's no mention of coinbase anywhere and I was like guys like just wake up to the to the next biggest exchange yeah I mean it's sort of wild obviously we saw the stripe announcement done accepting usdc they're expanding internationally um you know obviously we've been talking about coinbase in the Pod very publicly and vocally I have a position in coinbase of course and um yeah it's it's really impressive what they've done um the market share growth of usdc is also quite interesting I know we're going to have Justin son later on in a couple weeks like you're really talking about like um I think how you think about us DC's continued dominance and growth um in payments and maybe with

stripe kind of becoming more involved in the fold but yeah it's been pretty impressive um and and I think the the market again this is a name where the market just doesn't understand all the nuance and components of their business model I remember last year and you know they were so focused on oh you know fees are just going to come down on you know retail trading fees like that spread is gonna come down and they just sort of missed just yeah things yeah how do you size a position of like two things you're very convicted on salana and coinbase I buy as much as I can like how do you let's say you had

$100 say you had $100 like how and I know I know how convicted you've been on both of those for a long time like how do you allocate dollars into those two things and like how do you actually how do you actually put on that trade because there's obviously you could just buy coinbase Spot and salana spot but like there's different ways to play it like how how do you think about that coinbase was different because obviously it allows you to do different things with derivatives and whatnot in a more efficient manner um with options and whatnot but coinbase it's a multi it's a it's a different strategy for me because that part of my portfolio outside of crypto is like relatively smaller but I want to capture yield for the reason that I always want

to have cash so my strategy is I want to I want to capture a lot of yield outside of crypto to then take on way more insulate my lifestyle and then take on way more risk so if I'm creating a lot of cash flow that is not correlated to crypto I will have the capital to invest in times where no one has the capital or you have dips and you have cash and so with coinbase did these like Phoenix notes or reverse autoc call converts where you know I was you know clipping a very high coupon I'm talking like 30 40% and basically all I all that had to happen like when coinbase hit 30 bucks my bet was like there pretty decent margin of safety here have we bottomed reasonably speaking can it go down another 20% maybe another

40 God like it just feels like a stretch feels like it was oversold and the reason why I felt it was oversold is because the coupon that was being paid CU someone on the other side was probably short whatever and like they were giving me like a 45% coupon that like an on an annual basis to basically my bet was coinbase will not go down more than 30% at that level 30 bucks uh if it goes above the strike price which is the spot I get called but I get called in six months so I'm basically earning 20% in six months right and you can talk you can change the the callability date like you could be called like every quarter right basically if if spot goes above the

strike you get called but you get paid the coupon whatever it was right if you it was a quarter it was six months nine months in a best case scenario you don't get called for the year coinbase doesn't go down more than 20% but doesn't go up uh at the issue price so you get paid 40% on the position and I'm not trying to get cute on the portfolio that I have outside of crypto right because I have a ton of exposure to it but I do want I'm interested in earning a yield higher than treasuries I'm taking more risk but I understand the name so I've done that I've staggered it throughout the year when Kies was a 30 40 50 basically every time it got called I would you know recycle recycle you know and the coupon is very compelling right I mean you

could earn 5% on treasuries or you can earn you know 20 30 40% on coinbase um and it's a name in the worst case where I don't get called and say coinbase goes below 30% I get settled in shares I'm fine owning coinbase down 30% but in the meantime I earn that coupon right so in the worst case scenario right or not worst case like coinbase goes down below 30% I'm happy to own it at that level or I might even have the shares to settle uh and so for me it was uh it was just a way to express a view on coinbase where I didn't want to get overly cute on going like just uncomfortably right but I was very I could do that in size and earn 40% in size is pretty awesome I

think and that cash with that coupon I use it to reinvest into higher beta stuff I go and buy Soul Spot or memes or whatever right uh but it's just the the coupon the the yield component the cash flowing component is always something that I've learned over multiple Cycles you always want to insulate your lifestyle and have cash flow that is allows you to not only cover living expenses but give you the ability to invest in really high beta risky stuff I.E startups with duration risk with execution risk and that for me has just been I have a traditional portfolio that I optimize for cash flow that I then funnel everything

into soul with and stuff like that right um and and with soul I mean it's it's actually an interesting exercise obviously you can buy Spot there's the FTX uh kind of estate um sales that were really compelling and interesting um again they have higher duration right because a lockup is you know multiple years out um if you're earning and if you have in your life cash flow component then you don't worry too much about duration right you're like I'm happy to be patient uh I'm happy to hold Soul like so differently so the soul math was like the the FDX estate math

was very interesting because the thing that it doesn't apply just to Soul but let's put it I'm going to use Soul as an example say soul is sitting at 100 and you could buy for 30% discount or whatever 50 say 50% discount and you're unlocking 50% of the position in a year so basically all you have to believe is absent staking rewards let's just not add complexity is all you have to believe is if you're getting it at 50% discount and you're unlocking half of the position all you need to believe Is It soul doesn't go stays at that level right so it stays at 100 and you're like the question that I asked myself was well in what version of

this world if Soul doesn't hold 100 say it goes down to 70 what does the rest of crypto look like okay you could apply that to bitcoin too but uh for some like soul I do Wonder like what is the mem coins unold what is um ethereum do and for me it was uh my thes that like that's sometimes like looking at it from that perspective for me was useful to size that position in particular like well if Soul doesn't hold this level we have bigger problem on our hands votes yeah but I'm comfortable owning it for multiple years like in a scenario where really [ __ ] hits the fan I want to be owning stuff

that I'm comfortable holding for 10 years and I the last thing like I was talking to B about this it's like I this cycle different from others I've gone extreme left extreme right there is things that I can't change I've have positions in networks that in startups that you know I'm I'm comfortable holding but in the liquid part I'm shifting more towards liquid this part of the cycle I'm shifting more towards just concentrated extreme left extreme right we had the the I'll credit Joe mccan shout out to him in November we had him on the pod and people should go listen to that PO we talked about Bon and the question that I asked them you remember it's like all right we all here so's G you're a soul bow I get it gun to your head do you own soul or do you own

Bonk you can pick one and he said Bonk B and I agree with that I kind of again I'll say this I'll preface this like none of this is just don't do this right like just but I'm I agree with that um thec and so my thesis for Bon was different like I I obviously like rallied like I I bought Bon Then I then understood that a lot of the contributors were unlocking their Bonk and you know you've just it's been down lonely it's been challenged right whiff doesn't struggle with that and so for me I was lucky to have discovered whiff early on and I think whiff is like the again the thesis that you need to get

very very right is for me my core thesis is soul is a retail chain memes will do well problem with memes is it's like shooting it's it's a power LW it's it's like most memes will go to zero most people will it's like it's tough to bet on these things I just think if you look at if you look at the strength and down days in the market just whiff is just like sort of like stronger than Soul it's CRA it's crazy how res seriously is crazy like soul is down whiff goes down 15 but then rebounds the strength in the name is like it's crazy right now so what so Santi you have a you have a $100 meme coin position what how is it all in whiff is it whiff and Bon is it whiff

bon no no sold all my bnk sold all my bnk when I realized like a lot of contributors were investing and selling and I was like I don't want part of this this just whiff is the pure expression it's you know it is what it is right $100 me coin position $100 in whiff and you're just sitting in whiff uh like well it's appreciate it a lot dollars invested is a question you're asking like how did I I'm I'm actually not asking about dollars invested I'm asking about oh I I uh because I I put in way more in Soul than I did in whiff let's just be clear let's take your position like snapshot of today meme coin

position what just meme coins is it all in whiff or is it like whff and Bowden is it no 90 97% of it is whiff whiff yeah I just I I'm I'm comfortable I I just I've bought other stuff um who runs whiff who's behind whiff no idea man noidea isn't that crazy rather not no yeah um but my who has the smart who like who has the keys to whiff who has the smart no one so and you don't and you don't care about that no I don't care about it I just think it's a cute dog um with a hat and the the the anchors that I have are okay

soul I think can do a 5 to 6X then whiff has higher beta to that it will be extremely volatile it'll be hard to own like you're going to get punched in the face you're GNA have stomach wrenching volatility days but the reality is like hold the line like I'm holding line I haven't sold with um I haven't sold so I'm selling other stuff um to fund private deals or whatever um um but uh there's like clear comps in the market I think everything is kind of relative out like for instance you look at um she sheep trades of like 20 18 billion 27 billion no it's like 18 billion I believe let's look those are

the comps for me like I think uh obviously doge is king of memes but um she I think off off an interesting comp as a sort of a where I think things can go like she is trading out 22 billion fully diluted 13 billion market cap circulating uh so 60% of the of the tokens are in circulation and you know it's down 7% from its peak assuming things say the same I just think that to me would be an interesting kind of anchor for something like whiff if it's the most dominant meme in salon now hypothetically and salana continues to do what it I think

will do then whiff should do well and it should probably Converge on something like sheep and whiff is sitting at you know two billion three billion depends on the day yeah 2.8 billion so you know it's a 10x I think soul is a six whiff is a 10 maybe 20x and extreme scenario so yeah I appreciate like the relative component of like of my portfolio might go up dramatically uh and so at that point that might be a reason why I might take you know I might it right if whiff becomes like 90% of the position like you know I can't you know it's like no

like no matter how much I don't know if you're comfortable sharing this what percent of the portfolio is whiff right now uh it's high single digits High single digits M High single digits the better question is what percentage of the whiff network is is Santiago next question no good pod man this is good I don't know if you have anything else um I'm pumped for the Empire yeah I'm really pumped for the Empire you know this is um yeah it's uh it's really nice to I usually don't like conferences but I I think after going to ass and then token 2049 the idea that now like we can meet these people that are listening to the

Pod um is really cool so uh yeah it's exciting I'm I'm really excited to go out tonight and hopefully everyone listening here uh that lives in New York very close by can can stop by and say hi we got a little treat um so the multi-coin guys invested in this company called baxis they're a um oh yeah yeah they're doing um they're like a a whiskey platform basically like I think and digitizing a bunch of like so the whiskey Market's crazy I actually know this cuz my old manager this guy Cooper from the company I worked aty are we going to be serving pmpy Von Von Winkle well V Von Winkle yeah you know the game I don't drink but yeah yeah so I he used to buy whiskey in B actually was

bourbon he's from Kentucky used to buy bourbon on these like Facebook marketplaces and it was these like crazy auctions they' all happen on Facebook marketplaces and there's like you'd send your money and just like hope that someone sent you a bottle of bourbon sounds like m a month later yeah literally and I think I I really haven't looked into back's much too that that much but like P the founder after they raised so they raised from salana I think I spoke with them Ventures multicoin bunch of folks $5 millionar and uh there I the founder is gonna bring some whiskey in so shout out to I honestly don't even know his name but his name is whiskey Titan on Twitter what you're saying is don't come to meet us come for the whiskey you come whiskey come for the whiskey apologize like

there's free pizza and you just show up because you're a broke college student it free whiskey so whiskey awesome D it's uh been a while I was excited and nervous after you know felt like uh you know we had done this in a while so it was good and um yeah thanks everyone for listening and hopefully we'll we'll see you back your regular scheduling uh next week all right everyone be well take care all right you heard about say a couple times just want to give them one last shout out big thanks to se for sponsoring this episode of Empire there are a ton of reasons to build on say if you want to get in touch with them you can reach out to me I'll put you in touch directly with the team you can also get in touch with them on Twitter at say Network you can follow the

journey at say Network they are currently live they've got sav2 on public devet today mainnet goes live later in Q2 really excited to have SE sponsoring and partnering with us on this episode of Empire [Music]