Why a Crypto VC Would Choose Solana Over Ethereum

Transcript

Banklist Nation. I'm joined by Mike Dudis from Sixman Ventures. Mike, welcome to the podcast. >> Thank you. Great to be here. I appreciate it. >> Mike, we've never had you on the podcast before, but we have been around each other since like the very beginning of crypto. It's good to have you on. >> Yeah. No, I'm delighted. Uh I've, you know, read tons of what you've written. Yeah. We interact on Twitter and real life and obviously listen to a ton on your podcast. So, really appreciate it. So, um, I want to the current event of the day is once again memecoins and the trenches and that's just been a seemingly an inevitable component of the crypto industry and and it never seems to be like resolved as a topic of conversation and you have a particular

uh perspective I think that I want to I want to get it here on on the episode today. Maybe we can kind of go back to the era of Bonk because that is what I remember like your first actual involvement in like the memecoin trench era and then I and then we can talk about like what's going on with like Robin Hood chain and like the Anom memecoin and like what that industry and like the the debate around base and everything. But I want to I want to kind of get your perspective around like the role that Bonk, the memecoin on Salana, played for Salana back when it was launched and kind of like what your thoughts or like strategy or just overall like perspective was around like memecoins on Salana back before memecoins were really as big as the thing as they are today.

>> Yeah, absolutely. So you know meme coins today I think people look at them and think of them as this like big uh you know professional industrial complex and to some extent you know that's quite true. The um at the same time you know the meme coins that have the most significant amount of value uh tend to be outliers and don't really fit that mold of kind of like the cynical short-term you know pump and and eventually you know go down rapidly type thing. So, you know, there's different types of memecoins just like there's different types of you know, VC backed tokens. Um, but anyway, the history of memecoins is you they're one of the earliest primitives in crypto and you know, Dogecoin is like I believe more

than a decade old and you know, she enu and so you've had you know Dogecoin is its own chain. Um, you Shibbeinu's and Ethereum memecoin and these are still you today worth billions of dollars. uh memecoins and this idea of you know call it IP community uh you know however you want to describe these um but people sort of having fun around something that doesn't have really tangible value uh is something that has lasting you know interest to humans and and clearly lasting value. Um so then fast forwarding to your question on bonk uh you know at the sort of depths of the Salana bare market so post FTX you post all the other things that went wrong in

all of crypto end of 2022 um you know the the mood the market participants you know in the Salana ecosystem. So the mood was low, the number of market participants had dropped dramatically and frankly the number of creators so so developers I mean there was a meme at the time a joke that there were something like 75 developers left in Salana and you know a group of folks who cared a lot about a Salana who had participated who had built things you know not just you know finance people or VCs or um you know enthusiasts or collectors but developers and you know other people who were pretty deep in the Salana ecosystem said hey what's a what's a really good Okay. Um, at a time of like low morale and activity to get

people get the chain reinvigorated, get activity back on the chain. Um, hey, why don't we reward um, you know, the folks who have been using the chain, building on it, and doing things, you know, for the past four or five years. Again, this was late 2022, I guess, not four or five years, but who had been doing things for the past three years. So, uh, you know, group of 20 folks launched a memecoin called Bonk, uh, you know, a dog coin. Again, this is before the meme industrial complex erupted. And the idea was if we airdrop, you know, half of the supply to folks who have built on the chain, used the chain, um, collected NFTTS and other things on the chain, uh, one, we're going to have, you know, a

bit of a stimulus activity. hopefully you get some excitement, attention and uh you know get people interested in you know building again again this is the stone cold bottom I think soul was you know at that point like close to 10 bucks and you know lo and behold uh it worked so basically air dropped you know 50% of supply within I think like a month or six weeks the token was trading over 400 million uh and so you a couple hundred million in value had been aird dropped at a time when that just wasn't a thing for memecoins out to uh the Salana community and developers, you know, some of them got like I think $10,000 plus at a time when, you know, their products were struggling and you know, many people were grateful and it

just led to a lot of goodwill. Uh over the next six months, Bunk sort of trended down you know into the summer and then uh but at a time when you sent it was really low, it was something really exciting uh for the community and then you know it was authentic. So we, you know, a group of folks continued to work on it. Um, and it turned into not a pure memecoin. So released, you know, products around it, a thing called Bonk Swap, a Bonk NFT sets, eventually a Bonk memecoin launchpad. Uh, and so, you know, the team still to this day, um, there's a core team of folks who are working on it, um, who give grants, who invest in and support Salana projects.

So like to me it still to this day many years later almost four years later represents you know the best of memes and community and I think shows that these things can be good um you know regardless of the value which has fluctuated quite a bit over the years. Uh in addition it caught the attention of Salana Foundation and Salana mobile. They ended up uh you know airdropping or loading you know it ended up being more than $1,000 worth of bonk onto the phone. So, you know, you bought the phone, it was essentially free if you if you sold your um bonk. And so, that was exciting. It was great marketing. I think it showed the promise of these things when done with, you know, great care. Um, and frankly, I it laid a um I think a template that others have done

incredibly well. You know, not perfectly analogous, but you've seen Wrecked uh have a brand coin. You've seen Pudgy, Penguins, Pangu have have sort of a brand coin. Um and so folks have done that really well. So anyway, you these things done properly include many many more people than for example NFTTS because you know millions of people you can hold a tiniest tiniest fraction a dollar worth or less um you or you can hold a tremendous amount. Um so you know like anything in crypto uh the really really really positive ones the the bons you tend to be the outlier and we have you know these permissionless blockchains where uh you know anyone can launch anything. Um, and so, you know, over time, uh, the memecoin landscape

has changed over the last few years. >> The reason why I asked, and I appreciate the story, and the story is like a good one, and as you say, that's like kind of an outlier in the memecoin world, like the the I think the default version of a memecoin like goes up to a very low market cap, $50,000, $100,000, and then goes to zero because >> scalpers are just moving on. And that there's like a million of those, but no one remembers those. and and like at the end of the day actually kind of people only remember the good ones because the good ones are the ones that last. I I kind of have like a complicated position on meme coins and I think that's true for the industry as a whole where like at the end of the day it's 2026 and I'm like no longer interested in standing in

front of the bulldozer of memecoins. Like memecoins are powerful. They're big. they have had proven successes and like despite all the negative things that people can associate with memecoins like they have lasted at the end of the day. So the evidence about the um persistence of memecoins is like ample at the end. But what my one perspective that I want to bring with you is like to to talk to you about is there like building a business, a company like a a Coinbase, an Apple, an Nvidia or any or even a private company, not even a public company. It's about like building, we're trying to build like a structure, a self- sustaining stable structure of people and inputs and

outputs that generate revenue. And that structure is like stable and can be handed on to other people to pass that along. and memecoins. It's a completely new thing and it is somewhat of a structure, but the structure feels so unstable and difficult to transcend through time because because one of the reasons is they're memes. They are not profit generating. They're not revenue generating. Like Bonk made the transition from being a memecoin to like an actual project. But like the idea of like a social structure that we build scaffolding around and there's like stability, it doesn't that's just not what meme coins are. And it's hard for

people like me and others to like wrap their head around this new primitive that uh doesn't seem to be something that like you can build a foundation on. I'm I'm talking in very like loose conceptual words, but I think I think you kind of get it. What's your response to like that? Yeah, I mean they're I think as long as people understand them as that that's uh fine, right? I agree. I mean these Bonk or you know Dogecoin are different things than Coinbase. It's it's a valid point. Um but you know humans are complex and you have multiple interests and like to do you know many different things with their time. Um, look, I can make a lot of money you

holding the A token or holding, you know, exchange token, and that's great, but I'm not going to do a lot with it. You know, it's going to sit in my portfolio and, you know, hopefully if it does really well, um, and the and the product does well, I'm going to earn money over time and fees and, you know, but there are things that I probably want to do with the rest of my time. And I think memecoins can be a fun thing, right? They're speculative. Um, they're enjoyable. Again, there's a community element. You know, people do things. there's a whole culture around it. You know, things like bag working and actually getting together in person like Bon sponsors a lot of in real life events. Uh it's in that sense they're very similar to NFTs which I think you know I'm an NFT collector still most NFT

projects BFB projects you know decline massively by the way even the best ones like Cryptounks which I still hold have declined I think 90% or something from the peak. Um, but I think folks who enjoy crypto would say that the communities that have grown up around those things, um, and the IP and and the events they hold, you know, tend to be worth it for the folks who hold them, you know, even if I mean, you probably wouldn't value the IP of most of these collections at where they trade. So, there's something about community spirit and spending time. But yeah, there's no like rational valuation framework, you know, that's going to fit into a model that I can put together to tell you what these things should be worth. So, they are always going to be speculative and

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>> Yeah. So, uh you know, full disclosure, I'm an investor in Bullpen, which is Anom's, uh you know, company that he's a co-founder of. Um he's a friend, you know, so basically I'm I'm positively biased towards what he does. Uh like any of us, uh Anom is right about many things and isn't right about many things. But what I love about him is he's like you. Um he's courageous enough to be public about his beliefs and confident in his thought process. And by the way, willing to change his mind and share when his mind has changed. And you know, there's very few folks like that.

Uh in addition, he's authentic. I know he gets a lot of I mean look he's so public that you're going to have every opinion on earth about him but you know whether you like his approach or not he is authentic and he does believe in himself and he does believe uh in the people who follow him and he does care about them he thinks he's going to create I've talked to him at length about this uh behind this Anom meme coin that he didn't start but that somebody gifted him the supply uh he was not a part of that at the start and I think he saw it and he said hey this is a moment that's similar to that 2022 Bonk launch.

He was one of the first Bon supporters. He wasn't involved in launching it, but you know, he got excited about it and helped, you know, drive that thing really high and helped and and you saw what it did to the price of Salana and the Salana ecosystem, the usage on the chain, the economics. And I think he believes we're in a point in the cycle where that can happen again. And uh I think where I and me and Anom disagree with folks is that like meme coins are done. They're just not. They've been around like I said since Dogecoin I think 2014 every cycle uh the class overall has staying power and every you know cycle or every few years one or a few of the highest quality you know assets and quality is I guess a fun funny term but you know some assets do

stand out and by the way that's true of any you know subsector within crypto there's very few good assets in crypto and actually memecoins have a pretty good share of the quote unquote good or highly valued assets relative to, you know, L1's, L2s, infra, you name it. So, uh, Anom is bringing a model that he thought would exist last cycle, and I think he's admitted that he was wrong, uh, in terms of how it would come to market. And, you know, that would be these like celebrity or creator coins, right? Uh and the the fault was that you know non-cryptonnative people people who didn't really care about um market participants and folks in the trenches uh came in and effectively you know all the way up to president of the United

States dumped their tokens you know while um you know Trump it was launched you know a single side liquidity pool uh and just meant to be pumped by people you know had a bunch of like to my understanding you know influencers and folks who would just talk about it non-stop so the price went up And you know, they were selling the Trump coin into that for cash and and made a tremendous amount of money regardless of how the thing performed long term. It's very different than what Anson did. Launched a thing, you know, it was launched at zero. Uh he was gifted supply. I think he's bought as it's gone up. He hasn't sold anything. And he has stated and we'll see. I mean, it's an emergent thing. It almost sounds silly to discuss it. Um but he's basically staking and he's got a big reputation.

Guy's made a lot of money himself and for other people. He's staking his entire reputation extremely publicly on this thing succeeding. Um, and he more than anybody else in the way that I think for example Aobe understands crypto pure crypto trading of you know things that people would say h have definitive tangible value. I think Anom's that for memes and fun and community and uh he's you know got a manifesto out. I I don't know that I've like read it in extensive detail but a lot of like pillars around which you know he's going to share in if the value of this token appreciates share value from his other business initiatives and from you know the attention uh with the community and give them tokens and I think he said there will be other

mechanisms to reward folks um but you know it's never going to be equity uh in you know Anom Incorporated or to my understanding in bullpen you know so you have to believe it's kind of similar to Pangu um and even bonk think that in the future um you know how we value assets will look different than you know how we historically have and that there will be some mixture of mimemetic community and attention value to certain assets. I believe that uh pretty strongly. I think crypto markets have shown that to be the case, but also other class asset classes are increasingly showing that to be the case with meme stocks with, you know, virtually everything in the AI economy now, you know, trading on sentiment and mimetic value and being really hard to

tie back to fundamentals. And, you know, you've got sort of the Elon meme industrial factory. Um, obviously he's creating incredible, you know, products for the world, very different than pure meme coins, but on any fundamental basis, hard to value those. Um, so I think it's a decent bet that you know if you want to, not it's not for everybody and it shouldn't be, but if you want to allocate a portion of your portfolio to the attention economy and interest and community and what people are talking about and um, you know, it's it's reasonable to think that this might be one of the most successful uh, you know, one of the most successful assets and initiatives. Uh, and again, this is not financial advice. Um, I I do I own some personally. uh it's not for example an

asset that's suitable for our fund. You know I run a fund and I'm a registered investment adviser. Uh so you just have to think about it in the right context. Where it gets dangerous is you know these are onchain assets that anybody can hold with no KYC. There's no you know we say we don't want you know accredited investor rules to prevent people from accessing things but then we yell and shout and scream when you know they invest in some of the wrong things. Um, but I think in meme coins like it's like pretty clear which assets are going to have strength over what period of time. Like there's only a few that have real signals. So I think this is a noble effort in an area where both Anom and me uh think well you know once again the

majority of onchain activity is happening in the memecoin trenches. you know, we've had three years to produce other things for consumers and other things of like social value that they could spend their time on, whether it be gaming, whether it be streaming coins, and you know, none of that stuff's materialized. So, I think it's like, let's try memecoins in a better form. Um, but I understand that many many many people are tired of that narrative and honestly don't want to pay attention and I blame them, right? Like some people if you don't like it, just mute the folks talking about it. Candidly, I don't try to talk about it too too much, but it is something that people do want to interview me about because it's sort of consensus that these things are useless and I don't agree with that.

>> Yeah. I think what I'm trying to wrap my head around is like the memecoin sector evolves like any other sector. It's like there's tech and sentiment and that kind of like has some sort of like direction of travel and like here we are in 2026 and like now the meta is unique to 2026 and so I'm trying to wrap my head around it now. the the thing that I still can't like to fully contend with is that like in the fullness of time the difference between like memecoins and like just again using the Ansom memecoin as an example versus like an equity public company or even a private company is that like in the future like say we're old dude we're like 70 80 years old and

Coinbase the goal of Coinbase at that point in 2080 is to be passed along from Brian probably before now, but pass along from Brian to like some other manager who will take the reigns and carry it forward. And the whole point of like Bitcoin and Ethereum and you know Salana and these decentralized networks is like we pass these decentralized networks to our children and they run the network and I I haven't asked Anom this. I haven't spoken to him about it, but like I can't imagine Anom is like yes and I'm going to pass the baton of Anom to like a new set of leadership where it will continue to perpetuate.

And so like it's a short-term thing and I think like most people see memecoins as like this popup shop of a casino. It's a pop-up casino game and like oh this one's a new game. Let's all play the game for a while. maybe we can play the game for years, but ultimately the game goes away and like we move on to the next one. And so that's I think what a lot of people like myself is like why am I even playing the game in the first place if it's not about like trying to make it as like perpetual and like as have as high growth as possible. And so that's I think when people like think about well this is just nihilism this is financial nihilism like what's the point? And like really at at the end of the day, even with Bonk, for example,

Bonk backed into being a project rather than being a memecoin. And so I think that's that's still the thing that I can't really get my head around is like why do I even play the game at all if I know that ultimately this thing will conclude at zero in the fullness of time. >> Yeah, that's fair. So um it's not I mean meme coins are just not that type of, you know, life permanent assets. So like I hold a portfolio uh of assets and you know I plan to you know pass you know wealth to my kids. Um but you know I'm I'm in my you know mid-4s and I plan to live a long time and I want to have some fun along the way and so I do things uh I play financial games of shorter duration. You know I of the shortest

duration at sometimes right prediction markets you know sports gambling like I want to have some fun. these things if they're not enjoyable um you know you shouldn't be doing them and uh I don't think you know anybody would claim yes that you know Bonk has the you know life the expected lifetime of Coinbase that being said it's actually interesting it's noble to think that like you'll pass co like that's the goal that you'll pass these things on your kids but like most corporations die over you know a number of decades uh most you know governments and and countries die over centuries. So, I mean, we're just talking in different time horizons and there's different time horizons for

different things we do. Um, >> yeah. So, I definitely >> I would just say, yeah, hold there's some nuance and like hold a portfolio of things that are for the long term and the short term and that you enjoy. Uh, some that you enjoy for for the dopamine and the fun and the speculation living in the moment and some that you enjoy because hey, in 10 years I'm going to look at it and I'm be excited they compounded by 10% per year, 15% per year. uh in favor of memecoins. What I do appreciate about memecoins is that there is some sort of implied idea about rewriting the rules of money and finance and how we value things. And you kind of talked about it like this is an attention game much more than it is like uh a a DCF analysis or an IBIDA analysis

and like if you try and take your old old world model into memecoins like you're going to have a bad time. And that was kind of like all the premise of crypto in the first place. Like Bitcoin is like, "No, no, no. We're rewriting the rules about money. Money doesn't come from the government. Money comes from the people." And that's a little bit of like rewriting the rules. And it's like what we tried to do and and to some degree had success in in rewriting the rules around ETH. Like no, don't value ETH on fees. ETH is money. Like [ __ ] your rules. Yeah. Bitcoin is money and and you know so most of the like most of the big ideas of crypto you know don't stay confined to crypto and then bleed out like into broader society um and and ultimately you know then have the potential to help

create for example businesses you far far larger than anything you know that was created before and I think you see that for example in some things like stable coins like things that go like ride on public permissionless rail I think are now enabling, you know, potentially in the next 5 to 10 years, we'll have the first trillion dollar plus uh you financial services company. We we just haven't had those. >> Um but uh yeah, it won't always be uh in the initial form of crypto with these like tokens that uh don't necessarily have intrinsic value. Yeah, I I think this is kind of like the thread guy thesis uh in if if you are a believer in like the memecoin industry sector growing bigger in the future because you

know Gen Z comes into wealth, Gen Alpha comes into wealth. They're chronically online. They don't they don't care about Wall Street rules and so they value things differently and so like the whole idea of evaluing something on attention becomes bigger. I don't know if you have a directional opinion on the growth of memecoins as a category or if you're just more lzair about like how big or small the memecoin industry grows. >> Yeah, so it's going to continue to grow as a category uh almost unequivocally. Uh it's also going to grow in terms of the number of absolutely zero value, you know, extractive things as well unfortunately. Uh but I just think we'll I mean meme coins are not going away. um the ethos of like again everybody being

able to participate them attention community will bleed into things of other value. I think companies with real IP will eventually will eventually at some point you know launch meme like tokens. Uh and you see you know companies like Robin Hood you know embracing meme coins being traded on their chain because they realize that that attention then leads people to discover other assets that they can direct them to of potentially you know more lasting value that should represent a larger part of their portfolio. What would you say are just the inputs into the reason why the memecoin sector will grow?

>> So, I think it's I think the term will evolve and they'll um you know, I don't maybe it'll always be called memecoins, but the I think you'll have things like game coins. Like I see my kids uh 8 and 12 is spending considerable amounts of money on you digital goods, whether it be in Roblox, whether it be in Fortnite, uh doing things their their digital skins. you. Our 8-year-old, uh, the amount of money he spends on skins and just those have effectively no tangible value, but the joy that he and his buddies have, you know, when they're playing and and talking and, you know, showing the latest thing they're wearing, hey, it could be a World Cup soccer player, it could be something else that, you know, brings human joy.

Um, those today are in, you know, closed environments. But I think as those businesses struggle or sort of like top out in their addressable market, I do think you'll start to see some of those things be traded. You're seeing it by the way in the collectibles industry um which has some IP a lot like has IP but increasingly now I think there's like mimetic value in cards you know to what the the prices are at all-time highs. Some people are saying we're in a bubble, but my my sort of thesis is similar to when we had NFTTS or we were sort of creating new fake IP that hadn't existed before. Like I think all the world's IP and fun is is eventually going to be tokenized, move on to public blockchains, be available to anyone

everywhere, and we're basically going to be importing and exporting all of these different cultures um and mixing and meshing them together. Um so like I don't know that it will be again we'll call them memecoins. We're going to have all these amazing tokenized cultural assets of all different types available to everybody. I think blockchain is going to play a huge role in that. So maybe uh what I'm really saying isn't that I think the memecoin economy is going to be 10 or 20 times larger. Um but it's the the ethos of it is going to subsume so many other things just like tokenized dollars is starting to in the financial world. I see you talked about um Robin Hood chain leading into to memecoins and that's kind of happened at the same time as there's been some blowback against Bass and Jesse and Brian Armstrong and uh Kobe like maybe a

month ago or something was given the reigns of the base app because I think Bass is now formally taking a step back from like uh creator coins and like web 3 social. My more skeptical, cynical read on the situation is that like the memecoin trenchers are always kind of looking for the next arena of activity and they got tired of Bass and so they moved on to the shiny new thing, Robin Hood. And so like now Bass is evil and Robin Hood is good because Vlad tweeted about a few meme coins. Uh it said memecoins a few times and now and now Robin Hood is like the good guy and Bass is the bad guy.

But I kind of think it's all not fair. It's like the the memecoin trenchers are just like moving on to the next thing and and the narrative is that base is evil and the narrative is that Robin Hood is good, but it's really just like the chasing the shiny new object. But I'm also not in the trenches and so I don't know to what degree the trench people feel actually slighted by bass and actually supported by Robin Hood. To me, it feels like a bunch of hot air. I don't know what if you have a take. It's just a timing thing like yeah base leaned into I think what meme coins AI coins and creator coins like right at the market top right remember AI coins were hot late 2024 early 25 Trump basically topped the memecoin market

things in retrospect were down only for most of 2025 and then you had 1010 uh the creator coins were a very were a narrow part of of this trend but those were never going to work that was just a really bad tonedeaf idea uh with bad timing, but bad timing compounded by a really terrible market, right? So everything is down like the all the majors are down. Uh and so base timing was bad. Robin Hood timing uh was great, right? Uh do I think that Robin Hood chain as a memecoin chain is like what's going to happen long term? Probably not.

Like there definitely will be some memes because on any chain that has users and a front door into what is a mix of an investment and a speculative asset, Robin Hood's about as speculative a mainstream, you know, financial app as anyone uses. There's definitely going to be your native meme coins there. But we've already had within just a couple of weeks, you know, Vlad got hacked yesterday and, you know, a memecoin, his name was launched and people lost a bunch of money on it. He had to apologize. This stuff moves like really fast. Um, so my guess is the activity there sort of plateaus and peters out and that's probably a good thing. Let's be honest. Um, so they've got a lot of attention and to my understanding, you know, tokenized RWA ownership on Robin Hood chain is increasing pretty rapidly

and like I'm that's what we need to happen like we need better assets on chain. That's been Salana's issue for the last few years uh is that we just don't have enough quality assets on the chain and that's what they the foundation there has been focused on you how do we get RWAS and it's starting to you know pay dividends for them um but we need more great assets on chain otherwise people are just going to keep churning through these things where you know bundlers are launching thousands of them per day >> right what would you say to the idea that like this was especially true in late 2023 early 2024 where like the whole entire crypto industry is just memecoins because it's kind of all we had. And I think a lot of people would say if we had more successful viral real use cases, you know, real apps, real

value acrruel, then like people wouldn't have been pushed into memecoins because the industry would be more serious, more legitimate, more real. But because it's taken far longer than people re considered, then like memecoins happened kind of as a reaction to that. And so, you know, memecoins are here because crypto hasn't succeeded as much as it was meant to. What would you react? How would you react to that? >> I would just say this stuff takes time. Like the Yeah, the lowest friction thing was the first thing to launch. You know, you you can launch a coin for a dollar. Um, and you you don't have to do much around. Of course, there's going to be a flourishing of those. It's not surprising to me that it's taking a longer time to get tokenized securities on chain, particularly given the regulatory environment in Washington

where because uh of the Trump family's ethic conflicts largely and and banks, you know, pushing back against uh dollars with yield on chain, you know, the uh Clarity Act hasn't passed and and is now looking unlikely to. So it's it's given folks uncertainty around launching tokens of you know real legal and you know feed generating value on chain but that is starting to happen anyway in permissionless manners with no KYC you know maybe not available geoblocked from US folks and other countries uh and we're now I think in a place where I wish we had been two to three years ago but we weren't and we had a very different administration in the US that was very hostile to crypto uh today if

consumers started coming back even if they start by trading some memes and you know funny other you know tokens there are real assets on chain that they can discover um particularly for ex US folks folks outside the US who can trade you know for example now SpaceX and Tesla and you know some of the you know AI super cycle tokens and I think that's exciting uh and what it does is again I think there's going to continue to be people trading the cryptonative assets including memes. Um, but I think we have a better chance of of stickiness and over time like less volatility in portfolios. Uh, if we have these other higher quality assets, um, the investment behavior should trend, you

know, more towards the call it the median investment behavior, you know, in the broader markets for non-crypto participants. And that would probably lead to fewer people getting wrecked by, you know, our cryptonative cycles, uh, and hopefully smooth things out. uh which would lead to greater retention which then gives you a base of users to continue to build and test products and it becomes sort of this self-reinforcing thing. Um because it's really really difficult to build out new financial infrastructure when you're operating on these like four-year boom and bust cycles. It just burns out your users, your investors, the builders, etc. Um I think we all hoped this past cycle wasn't going to quite be like that. It

wasn't quite. Um, I think we're we're nearing the end of it and getting ready for the next one. Um, I do think because we have many better assets on chain now, we have a really good shot here for a smoother next cycle. >> All right, let's get out of the trenches and talk about uh next cycle. Uh, sixman ventures. What are you guys investing in for like the rest of the decade? Like what what categories are you guys uniquely excited about? Yeah. So the the good thing is like most of the idea the the big ideas that crypto market participants, you know, earliest participants including us believed would come to fruition either have or are coming to fruition, right? So like Bitcoin is money, you know, maybe you know, ETH is as sort of onchain money in the Ethereum economy. Uh you know, stable coins as uh vehicles for better

financial services, blockchains and smart contracts, just better financial rails. um and better you know market structure so more accessible more people faster settlement cheaper settlement you know all those things are coming into fruition there's been a lot of activity a lot of building happening uh it's not as talked about publicly because a lot of the value is acrewing to call it equity holders um or acrewing in you know to to existing institutions like Stripe and PayPal and others um but you know what we're excited about is that many or most of the big ideas that we thought would exist, you know, are starting to exist. Um, so yeah, we're in we're investing into those. So things like stable coin finance, um, things

like DeFi, but DeFi, I saw you, you know, tweet about vaults the other day, but DeFi with, uh, you better not only, you know, native crypto assets, but other assets. So, you know, real world assets, equities, um, you know, bonds tied to, you know, could be real estate or other other like asset classes that have existed, bringing those things on chain. Um, you know, we're looking so we're continuing to invest in consumer. We think like trading and speculation and and these markets making them available whether it's no KYC or, you know, available to anyone anywhere, giving dollar access, you know, to folks who are ex US is really exciting. Um so those are like the primary areas and

then you know >> I feel like out of all of those the consumer category is probably the most um contrarian because everyone is doing like the institutional trade five real world assets tokenized compliant securities and like no one is talking about consumer crypto these days. >> Exactly. So we think that that is the class that takes the longest to develop. Okay. Because >> consumer side >> Yeah. It's the least. So it's institutions you know have been building for 10 years like they have deep deep business models they know this is better infrastructure for how they want to build towards the future they can commit to it. Um you know consumers sort of wait until you show them like a lot of stuff has to build up in the background

before you can get to like true consumer products of value. Um I think prediction markets is one of the first where you've moved like beyond well I mean obviously we had NFTs we had um you DeFi summer but like the on the on the consumer side we just haven't had the fun speculative products um onchain that had long duration with um and and I think that's finally starting to happen. Uh so basically that's happened because crypto has started to embed itself into other industries. So the biggest one that you're hearing about right now is is obviously the collectibles, right? So you have companies like Collector and Courtyard and even OpenC is now turning

into sort of the eBay of collectibles versus just NFTTS. And I think so those fun communitydriven IP driven asset classes, taste driven things that maybe you can't find everywhere else because market structure on eBay and in the real world isn't very good. Um those are the things that are going to start to migrate onchain first. So that's like the first area. We made an investment there in a company called Trove uh in Q4 of last year. That company's doing incredibly well. I mentioned Collector and Courtyard which are the ones that people hear about. So I think >> this is just the whole like gotcha universe, right? Which has >> so it's not there's marketplaces behind these. Um and uh but yes, I would say to actually you're correct. The largest expression of it today like is often the case in crypto is wow frictionfree, you

know, instant trading. Boom boom boom boom boom. um you know no KYC that is absolutely the first application. Now each of those companies has a plan to grow into um you something much much bigger than that. You borrowing and lending against the assets turning them into an asset class. I'm sure there's I haven't seen all their debts but things like private wealth management you name it. But I would argue that's a step change probably a 10x better uh expression of what we were doing with like PFP NFTts in 2122. It just takes a long time. So, we're we're confident.

>> Why is it better? Because it's actually like real higher Lindy LP IP that's been around for forever. >> Correct. I mean, it was like a Charizard. It just has more brand. >> Yeah. Many many decades of uh you know, sort of proof point. It's why you I think there's still a far there's a larger number of folks, you know, who invest in gold than in Bitcoin. It just takes time to get the credibility. Um so, you might as well start. And it wasn't until recently that you could con convince people to tokenize to sell and put on chain these higher quality assets. And we're we're finally at that point. Are Pokémon cards and meme car meme coins the same thing?

>> Uh no. No. And it's because of what we were just talking about like society has like society has valued these. There's also you know TCG there there's games to be played. There's communities. I think the ethos is the same. >> The ethos is the same. Yeah. and the valuation, the reasons why people value Pokémon cards in one way and then meme coins another way. I feel like that's highly overlapping. >> It is. It is. And it's just uh it's very like pop culture and fun and statused. And then you get into other asset classes like watches like you know why does an AP or PC like do they really you know they why are they sold for $100,000? A lot of it again is status and scarcity. Um, by the way, that's one

way that they're different than memecoins which don't, you know, they're in, you know, divisible infinitely, right? Um, so, so that's one area that we're looking for on consumer. Um, you know, another is obviously online gaming, things of chance. Uh, you can see poly market is mostly like sports betting. It's a for many people again a better form a better form because I can do it, you know, you can do it no KYC, you know, you have more markets, anybody can participate providing liquidity. uh I consider that consumer and I think you're going to start to see much much more uh experimentation there. uh you're also going to see uh like hyperlquid and hyperlquid like platforms will I think become interesting to consumers as again better assets come on chain there as

we're not just trading pers on bitcoin ethereum and vco coins but you know as we're trading oil and you know compute right these compute markets that are tiny tiny relative to all the capex going into the you know AI buildout but over time uh you know I think for example crypto folks have a unique like it's it's it was a new it's a new asset class that's worth you know trillions of dollars uh that didn't >> uh crypto like you preit like we created a new asset class um and brought we can argue about what level of quality market structure but bought brought market structure um you know over the course of 15 plus years um so I would make a bet

that crypto market participants will have a large part to play in how compute markets develop Yeah, I think a lot of people have attention on compute markets and I think this is going to be the first time where we see a brand new commodity uh be born out that isn't like crypto is a brand new commodity. That's not what I'm talking about, but like a commodity that you can kind of see like homogenized and codified into like a CME market. You can see compute like compute traded. I don't know how but like that's their job to figure out. But this is going to be the first time where a new commodity like that is born. And we have crypto rails like we have per dexes, we got hyperlquid, we got lighter. Uh do you think like that's crypto as an industry?

It's like our fight to fight to get as much of the compute market built on our rails as opposed to like CME or the tried rails. >> It will be complimentary is is my guess, right? And the way like and you could do a whole podcast on this. Uh but um so compute markets will exist outside of crypto you know largely right but um you know there will be there will be sort of crypto primitives that have the potential you know to participate like in that buildout. One is credit markets, right? You see with things like USDA, there are, you know, pools of folks who are willing to lend um you know, and different models for how those pools

develop um and how these loans are underwritten. So on the credit side, you know, you're going to have I think very novel novel models of of capital formation. Um I think as things are transacted uh things often will start in so like the AI markets are like extremely bespoke sorry compute markets right like a data center over here is selling something very different than a data center you know across the country or in India or somewhere else um you different machines different capabilities so like it's so bespoke uh it's not necessarily clear to me you know how crypto rails will play into that but what I know is that crypto market participants know how to take these very wonky, you know,

>> assets like do something with them. >> Yeah. The first time we've seen a commodity that's bespoke. Like there's 17,000 different types of oil. There's like sweet crude, sour crude. Well, we we figured out how to like homogenize that. >> Uh yeah, it took an incredibly long time, much longer than than people expected. I think most intelligent people believe that uh or and again, I'm not one of these like deep deep deep compute market participants. Like I don't run a data center. there is a VC Meltum does so she's she's a great person to talk to about this but um the the point uh this will take longer than people expect the majority of this is going to happen offchain happened you know in sort of these OTC transactions

um but again you already have these markets uh starting to emerge so in other words like the hyperscalers are already doing things around um allowing folks to hedge and and offload um and what you'll find is a lot of the cap tables for a lot of these businesses come from, you know, have cryptonative folks on them or um, you know, folks who were mining Bitcoin and understand the inputs and that a lot of this has to do with energy and electricity and and all of those things. So, um, again, most of the value in AI crypto, so in compute markets and in other areas, most of the things are happening don't involve tokens today. Like for example, um, now what is it NES or Nouse research? Um you know most of the folks open router like

the crypto founders who started AI companies they don't have tokens uh many of them have sort of tried to stay away from the fact that they were uh crypto native founders and if you go pitch many I mean you saw the open claw founder like you doesn't like crypto at all. I think somebody launched a token his name. Um, so you when you're talking to folks in the AI industry, you know, you don't lead with the fact that you've come from crypto markets. Even though, like I said, um, you know, crypto market participants do understand a lot about emerging asset classes and novel market structure and then all the financial instruments around that. This wasn't in my agenda, but I do want to talk about this is there there was the crypto founder like Alex Otala who founded OpenC and then then left to go found

open router but he did he left OpenC in like 2023 like right after the chatbt era. There are plenty of people in my circles who have departed from the crypto industry to go into adjacent industries, AI, robotics, but they were but they did it kind of maybe because they were forced because the crypto industry has kind of contracted at least the middle of the market the where the jobs are created has contracted pretty meaningfully over the last four years. >> Absolutely. >> But they are still crypto people and they're loyal to crypto. And so like my my my bullish angle on this is like actually crypto has a bunch of moles everywhere. We have moles in AI, we got moles in robotics. And you know one day when it's time to come home to roost

like these crypto market participants who like grew up had their first you know adult job and their first adult paycheck in crypto who are now in like robotics or any adjacent industry. when it comes time like now the knowledge of crypto and the like loyalty towards the crypto industry is like being spread out in these adjacent industries. So I'm actually kind of like marginally bullish on that actually being good for the industry because that is just like going to be a way to legitimize the crypto industry when these people actually have like influence and control over their respective industries. Likewise. And I don't necessarily know for example though that that means that we'll have you know cryptonative tokens launched and I don't necessarily know that that's

by the way that that's important. Um >> the but what I do think is you know when the you know robots are paying one another or you know when my agent wants to access you know >> the website on a usage basis um that your agent spun up. Uh I think the folks who create those businesses, you know, will be sympathetic to using, you know, blockchain rails that settle faster, that allow for microtransactions, etc. Um but it'll be interesting in that, you know, much of that value may just acrue to equity in companies. Uh and then hope hopefully in the future those are tokenized equities that um are you know issued and transferred and settled and

registered on blockchains. I think like DTCC um the largest securities clearing house is you doing all sorts of pilots on can and other networks and I think it's very likely um that quote unquote crypto becomes defined much more as you know incredible financial infrastructure and ledgers versus um the cryptonative assets that trade on top of them. There will be a few, you know, very special ones like Bitcoin, probably Ethereum and Salana and, you know, a handful of others. Um, but the rest of the tokens will look much more quote unquote equity-like, you know, and be even if they're un even if they're sitting on top of protocols, but I think things like Hype and Pump, you will be much much more tied to business performance and look equity like.

>> So, currently the uh market cap of Ethereum is $225 billion. The market cap of Soul is $43 billion. Mike, if you had a million dollars and you had to hold it for the next five years, are you picking ETH or Soul to allocate that million dollars to? >> Uh, so we we've made that choice. I I can't give financial advice to others. Um, but we're, you know, well known as a Salana, you know, more Salana bullish fund from a asset perspective. Um, that doesn't mean from a builder or an ecosystem perspective. We have many many investments in the Ethereum and EVM ecosystem >> but yeah as as an asset I just believe that soul has better properties than ETH particularly given the value

differential so one is you know Salana has significantly more activity than ethereum um on you know virtually every me metric of regular usage that um it doesn't in terms of like TVL and total value issued but I think a lot of that has to do with legacy you know massive value creation from many many years ago and folks simply from inertia and and wealth creation just holding their assets, you know, in Ethereum out of loyalty. Um, if we break out, you know, 10, 20, 100x to the real world, you know, you don't have those same Ethereum loyalties in the general population. Um, and you know, Salana is a global state machine. You know, it has high throughput, low fees. Uh, but it also has a fee mechanism whereby, you know, priority fees, you know, people can pay

for, you know, the price that they want for their transaction. Um and that allows Salana to capture more revenue and you know you can sort of back into a situation at some really really massive scale where soul uh is actually justified. You know you could run a model that prices at high model >> and this is yeah but this is in like your Coinbase example of very very very long-term horizon. I think both of these >> um soul and ethereum trade mimemetically over the next five years based on you know how much is being built in the two ecosystems and I just think soul is going to continue to grow at a much higher >> is trading mimetically the same thing as trading like money >> it's trading on activity it is I money

is yeah money can be mimetic to your point but different types of memes yeah like they're different narratives one uh so I think soul once again um and like soul will trade on a momentum narrative over the next 24 months would be my guess based on more activity happening on the chain. You're going to see a much higher rate growth rate in stable coin volume. You are going to see, you know, per start to finally succeed. Like they're at like zero right now um virtually on the chain and that's going to change. Uh you could just go through any use case and I'm I'm very confident that soul is going to have a much faster growth rate and it's coming from a lower base. So I just would expect it to, you know, be a better asset over again a couple years than ETH.

>> If you were the CEO of Ethereum and you were in charge with the driving ETH value capture and approval and price number go up, what would you do? >> Uh, so I would lean into I would actually lean into uh ETH as money on all these L2s. I'd lean heavily into Robin Hood. I'd do things that Salana can't do. So give more companies like Robin Hood uh persuade them not to launch like L1's like Tempo. persuade them to launch their own chains on arbitum and and really be a place where you know you can control your call it like semi- decentralized chain your base I mean they have the two largest ones right now so it's just getting more of the world to uh financial world to make non the non-stripe choice um of launching tempo and and more of the

Robin Hood and Coinbase uh and then you again you're not going to trade based on the underlying flow through economics uh you're going to trade like I said more on nar narrative. Hey, all the world's largest financial institutions like if Revolute built an L2 that would be incredible for Ethereum. Uh and I think from a narrative perspective, you'd say, "Oh, look, that hundred billion, $15 billion company, you they're building a big part of their future on Ethereum." That's the battle that I would >> L2 more L2s, bigger L2s. >> I would I just don't think the ETH L1, you know, fee capture as fees have just dropped over the last few years, it's definitely a better L1 than it ever has been, right? and you you know continue to want as many assets issued on the chain. I think you want the black rocks

of the world and the issuers to put assets there. But I think you want the companies that are building out, you know, really robust ecosystems of products, you know, the ramps, the revolutes, the next set of companies. You really don't want them uh building on the tempos relative to uh building on L2s. >> Markets don't move one asset at a time. One day it's Bitcoin, the next Nvidia, then gold, and then the S&P. But most traders are still managing their portfolio across different platforms, different accounts, and different pools of capital. Bit just changed that. Their new stocks 2.0 0 product lets you trade tokenized equities directly with USDT all inside the same app you already use for crypto. This is not just another tokenized stock product. Stocks 2.0 is designed around deeper liquidity, faster execution, and the lowest fees in the

market at just04% and 1:1 economic exposure to the underlying stock. Dividends, stock splits, and other corporate actions are reflected automatically, helping your position stay aligned with the asset you actually want exposure to. One platform, one account, multiple markets, crypto, equities, commodities, and more. All accessible with USDT. Bit. Trade smarter. Start trading today through the link in the show notes. This is not investment advice. Some exciting news. We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it. The best crypto cycle investor I know. His name is Michael Nato. He runs the DeFi Report. This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 1010 price drop happened. His cycle analysis has been absolutely on point.

I've been following him for years. And this year, we started recording weekly podcast episodes. Each one we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure, entry targets, fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether, and where we are in the cycle. There's new episodes that are released every Wednesday. They're 30 minutes, they're short, they're punchy. I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most. So, let's do it together. Go subscribe to this podcast. Search the DeFi Report wherever you get your podcast YouTube Apple Spotify or find a link in the show notes. There's a new episode waiting for you. Now >> there's been a a lot of speculation that the bottom's in or that the bottom is at least near uh soon to be in. Where do you have a position on where we are in the cycle?

>> Yeah. And also what do you think about cycles? >> Uh so it just feels like they're inevitable. I >> this one uh so it's so weird that people said it felt so awful. I think it it was because it didn't go as high as people expected, but I also so far it hasn't gone as low as people feel. So it is getting to that lower volatility uh type cycle environment. I don't have the data right in front of me. Um but it's been a lower uh sort of cycle. If if we have hit bottom, but even if we went a little bit lower than we did, it would still be that would be the case.

We didn't go as high, not as low. I think that's going to continue. Then maybe what I'll be looking for though as we finally break out of the Bitcoin four-year cycle and maybe you do as we start to get so many h havingings out and it may not have as big an impact. Um but what's happened this this cycle again lowervall and you've had the ability like people have kept building and you've seen immense equity value get created in a couple of themes we were talking about like stable coin finance like real world asset issuance. So two massive massive categories. Um, so it would be great if that continues. I do think, you know, I couldn't tell you if we're going to go lower over the next couple months, but I think, you know, by early next year, uh, it's going to feel clear that we have sort of the wind at

our sales. Regardless, by the way, of the regulatory environment, that's been a big uncertainty, but it just feels like Clarity not passing is somewhat priced in. Um, for individual assets, it'll be interesting. You know, I don't know what Hyperlid's regulatory status looks like in a world where Clarity does or does not pass. So I think on an individual asset basis there's a lot of questions but for the market as a whole um I expect that you know we're going to see act more activity moving forward and we have just more themes to do that behind you know we have pers prediction markets defy with real world assets and stable coins moving at like every you know breakout stable coin company we see the chart is just wildly insane over the

last 6 months >> you said a lot of equity value has been created by these platforms and and tools and I think that kind of also taps on to taps into a lot of uh the frustration that a lot of the industry has where we wanted to create value in the tokens and it's great that we are creating value as an industry but it's a bug that these these native tokens or tokenized not tokenized real world assets but tokenized assets are the things where the value is expressed in uh where do you where did you see that trend changing or or how do you think about that >> it will change but it's going to take a long time. You're trying to create basically I I think so the things that block works is doing um with their

transparency framework is a positive I think you know browbeating everybody to adopt it right now and being so they're a little intense about it but I think it's a very noble long-term goal and it is unquestionably uh the direction that the industry needs to and will move in. So maybe it's good that they're browbeating people. Um and it do this now and everything that doesn't do this now is illegitimate. Like that's too much. That's not um because the market isn't valuing tokens that way, right? Like we're investors in Metadow and they have ownership coins and you know the market is giving, you know, certainly is giving downside protection to Metadow tokens, but I don't think you've seen them sort of

valued at a premium or any sort of breakout. Um and they're working on their model, right? It's futuri dominated now. I think it's pretty complex and people are trying to you know figure that model out but there are a ton of experiments being run even pump which you know is known as a memecoin launchpad has their ace platform where you can launch a token and then you can have that token confer uh equity-like rights um to the holders. So every company across the spectrum is experimenting with bringing better quality assets on chain. It's just time horizon. It's going to take a long time.

It takes a long time for you know to to get folks launching ETFs or indexing like you listen to the histories of Vanguard and Black Rockck. It takes many many decades to change how people invest especially when you're creating you know brand new types of assets that might have equity plus um you know considerations to them and especially in a world where many many people have been burned by very lowquality assets like Aluna. >> I think that's the thing I'm really coming to terms with lately. When I when I got into crypto, I was 26 years old and in in 2021 I was 29 or something 20 and and 30 and I thought we were changing the world tomorrow and that's kind of how it feels like in a

bull market especially one as violent as that bull market and you know and so we're three years four years later from 2021 five years later from 2021 and so many people are disillusioned and myself included and I and to some degree I'm Dude, maybe these things take 20 plus years, not like six years, and that's why everyone feels so bad. >> Yeah. I mean, obviously, right? So, like just AI as an analogy, uh, you know, basically people were writing about the things that are happening today, you know, in the middle of the last century.

Um, you know, even at the turn of the century, >> yes, AI seems to have gone so much faster, at least from the consumer perspective when we were exposed to it in 2023. So well the thing is people were exposed to it earlier than that. Like I read you know Ray Herzwhile's age of spiritual machines and we laughed at it you know in 2000 2001 and it took 25 years but basically everything that he said would happen by 2030 is happening is on the path to happening by 2030. There was a lot of disillusionment early last decade. Um but sort of under you know in the background you had the demises of the world and so many incredible people doing things and most of it was probably very dissatisfying to people who were deep deep in the industry like oh we're you know beating

people at these games. Well that's not what our mission is like we're trying to change the world and you know you basically create a new form of intelligence and then boom it just happens. >> Um but the time horizons uh were longer and um on a much much smaller scale. I'm not comparing uh stable coin innovation AI but like um in intelligence innovation over the last 2 years but you can see this explosion happening after not a lot seemed to happen for many many years to the point that like even five or six years ago people were like hey tether is like a scam company and now it's one of the largest you know companies in the world. I suppose crypto did have a very slow rate of progress up until up until 2020 2021 and then that's when a ton of the investment came in and

you can maybe one of the reasons why AI seems to have gone so fast post 2023 is because there has been literally infinite amount of money to invest in that bubble and that accelerates the rate of innovation. Yeah. at least as a consumer like I I log into like cloud and and open AAI like every single month and the models are better and think they think better and they think faster and that doesn't seem true about crypto but maybe that's because like AI is >> giving people the right product now right like just having raw intelligence that's you better than for example Google searching or you know the ability giving me the ability to code having never you know been a CS major or trained programmer it's it's incredible um and crypto had a chance uh in the from the 2017 era, 202122 era and I

think we're both in agreement that we haven't given folks yet the right product that had long duration and uh again we've talked about a few of the areas but like hyperlquid giving folks a better way to you know hedge and and speculate and get um you know leverage on assets like in a much better way than they can traditional financial markets. So just improving upon traditional financial markets, traditional financial infrastructure is a really big step function change. Now it doesn't have the wow factor of AI intelligence, but I do think we're finally giving folks the right products that will scale and will lead to sustained usage. And I suppose I suppose in defense of crypto changing finance is hard. Way harder than AI

because AI doesn't really have like an incumbent to compete against. But finance a has incumbents to compete against. But also your mistakes rebuilding finance are catastrophic by definition. And so >> progress is slower because people don't want to get hurt and also regulation kind of also doesn't want to to let you hurt people at the same time. >> Yeah, it's easier. It definitely is easier to regulate to penalize. Um and we're just getting by the way to that cycle in AI where it's like hey do we need to slow down you know can we release these frontier models without um you know government or a non-government agency like FINRA reviewing them. Demis just proposed something like that and I think a lot of people got on board with it. So you're going to see yeah that

blowback is happening um over the next year or two which uh likely will quote unquote slow progress. Um so it'll be interesting and then to see what people's expectations are. Um right now AI is is growing a lot due to noneconomic activity just to you know fundraising and the ability to continually fund raise and in many cases offer products um you know below profitability. Uh how long can that continue for? We'll see. >> Right. Right. Mike, it's been great. Thanks for coming on the show. >> Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. >> Making the station. You guys know the deal. Crypto is risky but not crypto enough. The institutions are here. So, we are going even more westward. It's this is Frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.