Why Is This Cycle Different? | Weekly Roundup

Transcript

let me share another snippet from this conversation from this morning with this big asset manager he's like three things stable coins there's cash flowing protocols and applications and Bitcoin has become digital gold and there's a massive generation of uh generational wealth transfer down to Millennials and then eventually gen Z and they're going to buy Bitcoin not not digital gold and they're going to want they're not going to invest in the stock market they're going to invest in crypto tokens he's like that's what we care about that is a 20-year bet this episode is brought to you by scale the next evolution in layer one block chains explore the gas-free ecosystem at scale.

Spacey and follow their Journey on X scale Network thanks to scale for making today's episode possible all right everybody Welcome Back happy Friday happy Saturday whenever you're listening to this it is a beautiful day in New York City Santi what's up Sir you look like you're in a hotel I am in a hotel I'm traversing my way to das uh so I'm really excited to be there um you know it's I know where people want us to talk about macro prices of all over the place and the sentiment on crypto Twitter is like terrible a lot yeah it's it's it's one of those times where you know crypto markets feel like like a a young teenage

teenager that is like has zero patience and if you don't give them candy they just like start you know throwing a tantrum but you know I was thinking about this this week like there's just a lot of things to be excited about it just feels like I mean we're probably going to see it in D like the amount of institutional interest in crypto is strong um it's just one of those weird moments in the market where everything's going down not just in crypto so it's like you know drawing conclusions because the NASDAQ and S&P went down based on crypto just feels like a useless exercise I mean okay not not to not to turn this into a Das ad but I will but but no actually like I think Das is very indicative of the discrepancy in the different types of

crypto markets so if you look at crypto Twitter right now like you said like Giga bearish and then I didn't I don't neither of us went to eth Denver but I heard it was like you know very bearish like very like low Vibes like you know people were like very disperate at side events like I don't know what to build the investors like I don't know what to invest in um Das is again this isn't actually just an ad for das but like it's a very different type of Market at Das like people wear like a suit at Das to give you a sense if you've never been there and we uh to look at the numbers usually D had like 800 to a th000 people um a year and a half ago we had our biggest Das which was 1,200 people then at D

London in March we had 1,700 people we just passed 2100 tickets today by by far the biggest D we've never had over 2,000 people the last one D London 1724 was the biggest we're going to end at like 2500 attendees which blows past all projections um we sold out of the VIP tickets like at this one like three and a half weeks ago um I just think there's basically two markets developing there's the crypto native plays a lot of games perpetually online like very internet native and their G the game they've been playing is not working right now and meme coins were probably the top of that game they were the most

like perfect example of that game and the institutional crowd is all in right now I mean we had I had a meeting this morning with like one of the largest asset managers allocating to crypto they are all in they are trying to figure out how to Value the longtail of tokens because they're just allocated to bitcoin and eth right now and like they're all in um and so I mean of course like you know we we talked about in this podcast about narratives a lot and I think there is there's this Dynamic where the longer the longer time you spend in crypto and you go through a couple of Cycles you become cynical and I think you should always be skeptical by default because you know it's something new it has risk it's it's

when you're trying to disrupt something in anything that you do you have to be skeptical I think it being a curious person is also goes hand inand with being skeptical like you you ask questions you question assumptions like it draws your curiosity your thirst for knowledge but being cynical is something that I've observed like so many people that I've met over the years in this space just eventually grow grow tired and batter down and just stop believing in the tech because yeah look it sucks like there's a lot of bad stuff in the industry that we just see it more in the open the analogy that I draw is like we talk about how much we love open source but like it's like if you saw a building being built you're going to see like in

the open most of the time you walk around these cities they have like a protective layer where you don't see it until it's like fully un there's a reason for that because if you saw how it was getting built you never pling want to see the scaffolding and you don't want to see all the inner workings and and I think it's like when you're building in the open um and when you're especially an open source system it's G of get messy right uh we're not a perfect industry but yeah I think I think we're at that moment in the the time where it's just easy to become cynical because prices are not going up and you know that that ultimately gets out people but you know I think um a lot of the institutional crowd like if you've been working at a black rock or

some of these players in there's always been I think like really young people within those organizations or just people within those organizations that have taken an interest in crypto and now they can actually go to Senior Management and make the bull case for like adopting crypto in some capacity in their business and a lot of it is tied to the regulatory environment I mean like [ __ ] since November of last year like it's a total 180 and I think like I just continue to be really excited about that there's just so many things that we haven't we try to learn about them but so many organizations have been so quiet about their interest in crypto that now it's sort sort of sort of starting to come out that's one of the reasons why I

think Das is going to be interesting this year is like having those conversations with those players they come to D to maybe share it more publicly or learn some insights but I'm really excited for that reason like just learning learn like like JP Morgan is an example right most people like look at what Jamie Diamond says publicly and it's like oh wow like they they're really bar as an organization and then you go talk to the team within JP Morgan and you're like whoa like they employ it's a massive team that's been working on crypto for many years and it's sort of one of those things that um until you go talk to them um it just becomes difficult to appreciate so let me share another snippet from this conversation from this morning with this big asset

manager I said um does does the um how what is the impact of all these meme coins and it feels like the industry is kind of like self- emulating and like hurting ourselves um and like you know just has not been pretty the last couple of months and the Libra mem coin and Trump mem coin and Melania meme coin all this stuff he's like he's like we don't pay attention to that because obviously those were scammy things he's like we're not he's like you guys thought they were real things and you guys made up these stories and you make up these narratives that they're like things he's like we look at that it's like not to put us on this high horse but it's like obviously that was was not going to end end in a pretty way he's like we are very focused on stable coins

and the fact that some of these applications built on top of ethereum and salana are making money uh and that did and that Bitcoin has become digital gold he's like three things stable coins there's cash flowing protocols and applications and Bitcoin has become digital gold and there's a massive uh generation of uh generational wealth transfer down to Millennials and then eventually gen Z and they're going to buy Bitcoin not not digital gold and they're gonna want they're not going to invest in the stock market they're going to invest in crypto tokens he's like that's what we care about that's a 20-year bet um he's like I'm not paying attention to like yeah this you know salana deck volume going down week over week he's like I don't I don't care and it actually reminded me there was um I thought Dan um forget I forget Dan's

name he's one of the co-founders of Masari um just real real OG in the space he had a great tweet he said people are getting disillusioned uh dis disillusioned right now for this cycle he goes yeah that's par for the course he goes in 2013 it was quote all these clone coins are a disaster this isn't what it used to be 2017 it was yeah all these cash grab icos are a disaster crypto isn't what it used to be 2021 nfts are such a disaster the metaverse is a disaster this this space isn't what it used to be 2025 memes are such a disaster the space isn't what it used to be um and and I thought he had the right take on this which is guess what 90% of the activity in crypto even the Bitcoin only 2011 cycle has always been short-term trash

but the 10% sticks around and we had a new long-term oriented 10% every cycle and now you wake up and Bitcoin is A2 trillion dollar asset class and a globally relevant macro asset store value this is what winning looks like and I'll keep I'll keep rambling on here for a second it reminded me of um Mike and I are both big fans of this book called Titan which is the biography of John Ro Rockefeller and Mike shared a snippet um I think last month which I've got pulled up here from from the book it's that um it's from rockefeller's book drilling for oil seemed less like an industry than a lottery Rockefeller succeeded because he believed in the long-term prospects of the business and

never treated it as a mirage that would soon fade and I can't help but think about that quote every day when I look out on the timeline and see a bunch of people treating this industry as a mirage that would soon fade and treating this industry more like a lottery ticket and less like one of the biggest businesses and industries of our lifetime that's getting built in front of us and I feel I I I feel grateful to be a part of this just like I think if you work in the AI industry it's like if you work in AI or crypto right now you should feel grateful that you are part of like such an insanely Big Industry that's getting built in real time and like please for the love of God just

zoom zoom out a little bit you know uh let me let me share my last thought on the market here and then and then we can move on because neither of us are Traders and we're not you know we have no clue what we're talking about but let me just share that like I think one of the reasons that everything is that the market is down so much people would point to what like tariffs but the other reason the main reason is uncertainty nobody knows we came out of four years where the president was hiding you know hiding in his room not saying anything now we immediately have a time when everyone's hinging on the president's tweets it's like a really Stark difference from the Biden Administration um let me just paint a picture for you guys where right now like you know chaos

with Ukraine like we're pulling funding inflation um like tariffs on the whole world and prices are going down so much and a remarkable amount of uncertainty let me just share like okay imagine you get a peace deal with Ukraine imag and Russia imagine inflation starts to lower imagine we pull back on tariffs with Mexico and Canada um imagine there are some tax cuts like imagine some certainty comes into this market like that is um I just remind people like how much markets can change really quickly and that nobody really knows everything and it's more exciting and more as someone who works in media it's much easier to write a headline about how like the world is ending right like you know what is it bleed if it bleeds it leads like just

just a reminder for people this episode is brought to you by scale the the next evolution in layer one blockchains with a gas-free invisible user experience instant finality and robust security scale allows for Limitless scalability and has already saved its 50 million users over 11 billion in gas fees scales High throughput zero transaction costs and Powerful web 3 infrastructure make it the ideal platform for gaming Ai and other High throughput apps to explore the gas-free ecosystem visit scale dospace EOS and follow their Journey on X at scale Network thanks to scale for making today's episode possible this

episode is brought to you by ZK sync in 2024 ZK sync took a step toward a multi-chain future by transforming from a single L2 into an ever expanding network of ZK chains the elastic Network to onboard the whole world into crypto many specialized chains must be able to coexist work together and share liquidity institutions and Global Financial leaders choose ZK sync for unmatched security scalable infrastructure better onboarding gasless transactions and privacy first design join Over 20 chains including abstract sofon and Kronos in the elastic Network today behind ZK sync is the ZK stack it is a One-Stop platform for building

private blockchains on ethereum the stack solves all the typical privacy regulatory user experience and deployment concern of blockchain without compromising performance or security join the elastic Network today at ZK sync. iempire thanks to ZK sync for making today's episode possible on that point like trying to time markets is not something that I've I haven't met anyone that has systematically been able to time markets time and time again it's really hard I think it just pays to be well positioned in things that you understand well and are monitoring that might be a particular might not be crypto might be crypto but uh I think the world's just become like V is going to be a thing it

just is like the markets are just skittish they have always been it's just it's become they're becoming more like high frequency High Velocity kind of thing like the average holding period of stocks let alone crypto has come down a lot over over the course of generations so like that Dynamic is going to persist I think uh it reminds me so much of like poker like if you play every hand your dealt you're G it's the shest way to kind of lose all your money you should not be playing every hand trying to like react to the market constantly unless you really like unless you're like an exceptional saon like I don't know like uh you know Ray Delio or Stan D Miller or some of these people have Al also gotten an incredibly wrong like go listen to Stan Dr Miller's like anecdote

of when he tried he was short uh the tech tech in like late 1990s went really short flipped bullish and then like two weeks later or something like that that like the market just collapsed and you're talking about one like perhaps the most successful investor of all time like you just it's so hard to get the timing right uh so yeah like uh just remember on that note there's this famous hedge fund book called Market Wizards by uh Jack schagger and the book is the book is great re interviews all these quote unquote Market Wizards right and uh there's like 10 or 15 Wizards it's like Richard Dennis and Bruce kovner and Michael Marcus mark and every single since that book was published I think it's like I

think there's 15 15 wizard every single wizard except I'm pretty sure Paul tutor Jones has since blown up these are the smartest of the smartest fund managers who are trying to time the markets so uh yeah just like nobody can time the markets for a full career unless you are maybe like one in a one in hundreds of millions so um yeah you're you're not smarter than most of these people all right let's talk about the news um there was a sandwich attack on Unis swap going to get hopefully all of this correct but uh correct me if I'm wrong a user on unap V3 was just sandwich attacked out of 216k while simply trying to swap 221,000 usdc to usdt mind you this was a pool that had over 35 million of usdc and

usdt in it how did this happen an me bot front ran the transaction by swapping all of the usdc liquidity out after the transaction executed they put back the liquidity um the attacker tipped a block Builder Bob the Builder who's one of the biggest Builders 200k and profited 8K from the transaction um so I think it starts to I think a I think a question arises from this which is what is the what is the role so I think so I think probably how this happened is like the slippage was maybe set to like 100% or something tolerance it it must be it's kind of surprising he might have like disabled it for maybe

like he was trying to trade like a more liquid asset um that you know you you increase the slippage tolerance but uh yeah it's a very expensive mistake uh make sure that whenever you're trading in a decks you you know you you set parameters for slippage um I think by default it's like automatic but like it will like range if you're on the Unis swap interface it automatically and in most interfaces it sets the slippage and they had probably I think set the slipage to 100% like every good UI is going to set the slippage that's many years of crypto UI has has gotten to that point Who's is there a is this on the user is this on I mean probably is on the user but you should have like a

fat finger mistake most likely but it should have been like um maybe like flashing red and I do think that the front end will show like hey like your slippage is really high you should consider maybe not doing this I I'm not sure if the user saw that when he was swapping but he probably should have seen that um but yeah uh I think it's on the user in this case yeah yeah yeah I I do think there's a there's like a bridge that I was on the other day and I was swapping let let's call it let's call it 10K into something else and it was giving me back 1K like trying swwa $10,000 and it would have G if IID

pressed the button it would have given me $1,000 and I messaged the I found who owns it on Twitter and messaged the founder I was like and and the reason for that was it was a coin with like very low liquidity I was like you need to put like big red emergency button here that if I had clicked this button like I'm losing 90% off my money yeah yeah and mo most front ends do do that but if if you have a front and you're not doing it you best kind of do it it's just kind of best practice like yeah hey I'm pretty sure you don't want to lose 90% of your money by doing this um yeah transaction simulation is something like I I do think that there can be most of the value I think will Ur at user aggregators like wallets and I

think there's a very big like we've come a long way in the front ends like in the uiux but there is still more room to improve and you know from a security standpoint like transaction simulations some of these things that can be can be um improved upon like even going back to the the the bybit hack right was it bybit like the the safe execution yeah yeah yeah byit and so yeah I'm sure it was yeah and and I think like you could have just simulated that transaction and like alerted people it's like hey yeah by the this smart you've never a lot of times you see it right it's like you've never interacted with this contract now you typically see that like if you're using Phantom like hey you've never sent money to this address are you sure you want to

do this um uh hey by the way this will upgrade the smart contract logic transfer ownership like stuff like that so there there's like a big big opportunity to continue improve that flow and make sure that you know um you slow down when you make transactions uh mgx an Abu Dhabi Sovereign wealth fund just invested two billion in binance for a minority stake the transaction will be 100% in crypto stable coins making it the largest investment transaction done in crypto to date this is also the First Institutional investment finances taken um all right so few interesting things about this one is that this represents 40% of the like basically Venture funding that's gone

into crypto and q1 that's not really the most interesting thing I thought the most interesting part of this is that where did this announcement come from came from CZ tweeting it out came from so if anyone wants to know who's who's running binance these days I can I can assure you it is not uh you know some someone else uh is like I mean I mean if you wanted a clear marker I mean he still owns like the vast majority of the equity right and yeah yeah he's by far largest shareholder and then actually hour hours later after that came out or maybe a day later there was just a Wall Street Journal article the Trump family has been in talks oh my God actually two

articles Trump family has been in talks for stake in crypto exchange binance next article Trump backed World Liberty Financial could be part of the binance deal so if you start reading it at the um at the same time uh CZ who served four months in prison after pleading guilty to a related charge has been pushing for the Trump Administration to Grant him a pardon people familiar with the matter said uh CZ remains binance's largest shareholder the talks began after binance reached out to allies of trump last year offering to strike a business deal with the family as part of a plan to return the exiled company to the US uh binance Executives saw potenti legal playbook in The Saga of Justin Sun who invested in a trump crypto

Venture last fall as he faced civil charges for from the SEC Sun invested 30 million in November in World Liberty Financial becoming its largest investor I didn't realize that Justin Sun's now the largest investor in World Liberty last month the SEC then asked a court to pause its fraud fraud lawsuit against sun in three of his businesses um after Sun's investment binance executives internally debated following the same route a cash infusion into World Liberty in exchange for a pardon for CZ That Wall Street Journal reporting I've seen a lot of commentary including from CZ that it's it's just like very inaccurate okay um and it's uh again just maybe a broader conversation about how bad that

the you know media gets these um I I might take the other side I might take the other side of this I think that there's some like pretty bad crony capitalism going I mean Justin Sun gave World Liberty 30 million became their biggest investor and then like two days later gets pardoned by the SEC I don't think this is just a case of like you know shame the mainstream media I'm reading an article I mean a post by CZ that says uh it was published actually one hour ago it says sorry to disappoint the Wall Street article got facts wrong more than 20 people told me that they were asked by The Wall Street Journal and other media can you confirm that CZ made some deal for pardon they probably asked hundreds of people to have 20 people reach out to me in essence they

try to make a story to report fact I have no discussions of a binance US deal with while anyone no felon would mind a pardon especially being only the only one in the US History who ever who is Ever sentenced to prison for a single BSA charge feels like the article is motivated as an attack on the president and crypto and the residual forces of the war on crypto from the last Administration are still at work I'm always happy to make crypto great everywhere us and the rest of the world it's good to see that even the Wall Street Journal thinks I should should be pardoned um so this was in response to a tweet by this guy Evan luthra says big breaking Wall Street Wall Street Journal reports that Trump's family is in Talks by Stak and bance us uh anyways

um but I I do I mean yeah like the world Liberty is thing is I'm not disputing that I'm just just giving the other side of C seems just like some some factual stuff that article is wrong Zoom zooming out from this I with the uh I met with the CEO of one of the other big Asian crypto exchanges they're top for ambiguity I guess we'll call them top five um Asian crypto exchange and they are full force pushing into the into the us this year um they've never they've never been in the US they've never played in the US they've never attempted to be in the US and they are full force pushing into the US and um as

they put it their words not mine they see one player of coinbase [Music] who all right we got the rats back in the uh rats back in the in the heating pipes um yeah they they basically see coin they basically see coinbase and then they don't see any other competition in the US and they're like look uh us other exchange B other exchange C and other exchange D all Asian big Asian exchanges we're all about to full force push into the us so I think it's going to be binance I think it's gonna be bybit I think it's gonna be okx I think it's gonna be I think it's gonna be all of them are gonna do a huge push into the US and um that's gonna change the dynamic right we in the US think of it

as like there's coinbase um Kraken and uh crypto.com which doesn't really get much attention on uh crypto Twitter but is one of the biggest exchanges in the US and it's it might change the game if those guys come in in a big way yeah it'd be interesting to see I mean it seems like I mean there's infinite amount of opportunities to go out not just in the US but other markets uh maybe uh maybe kathern kohley comes back do you remember you remember cther yeah that yeah she was a binance us for a while right she ran binance us and then just one day disappeared and binance just silenced her yeah this episode is brought to you by scale the next evolution in layer one

blockchains with a gas-free invisible user experience instant finality and robust security scale allows for Limitless scalability and has already saved its 50 million users over 11 billion in gas fees scales High throughput zero transaction costs and Powerful web 3 infrastructure make it the ideal platform for gaming Ai and other High throughput apps to explore the gas-free ecosystem visit scale dospace ecosystem and follow their Journey on X at scale Network thanks to scale for making today's episode possible this episode is brought to you by ZK sync in 2024 ZK sync took a step toward a multi-chain future by

transforming from a single L2 into an ever expanding network of ZK chains the elastic Network to onboard the whole world into crypto many specialized chains must be able to coexist work together and share liquidity institutions and Global Financial leaders choose ZK sync for unmatched security scalable infrastructure better onboarding gasless transactions and privacy first design join Over 20 chains including abstract sofon and Kronos in the elastic Network today behind ZK sync is the ZK stack it is a One-Stop platform for building private blockchains on ethereum the stack solves all the typical privacy regulatory user

experience and deployment concerns of blockchain without compromising performance or security join the elastic Network today at zync doio Empire thanks to ZK sync for making today's episode possible um I wanted to transition not to a news story but actually a Travis cling tweet which was there's a guy Bob Lucas who said uh I speak to a lot of crypto he's like a big Trader said speak to a lot of crypto folks IRL the most common theme I hear is I'm so tired I can't wait to get out this cycle and Travis said important part of what's going on with crypto right now we brought very few new entrance into the space this cycle relative to the prior two cycles the new entrance we did get are mostly the worst kind like anom and

thread guy crypto cannot attract new Talent right now because our reputation is atrocious and the multicycle Vets still left are mostly very tired and very jaded tough setup but those are the facts what do you agree with any of these agree with all of them what do you make of this yeah very much so I mean I I retweeted quote retweeted one of hisra Travis has been the like uh over the last couple months that's like had sober takes and I appreciate them um the first point I agree um I would qualify that by saying we've had new entrance like you know the Trump coin launch had a big onboarding event I think it was like close to a million people uh across moonshot and other applications but there's no retention so

and and that's really the piece that I'm mostly interested in it's like we're not really retaining those users and why because the you can reference a lot of um analysis has been done like that it's very kind of negative VV to play in in you know Meme coins like not most people don't actually end up making money and that has a detrimental effect on the retention of those users um you know in terms of the competition of entrance like I don't know um I I think we've all crypto is that industry that again you attract the best and the worst of of people but you know that that's very visible in crypto it's also case in other Industries um the point around top talent I would push back back

on very much so uh I mean I'll tell you firsthand I've been building in the open very intentionally I've been Amazed by the level of interest that I've gotten from people very very talented people that have never been in crypto wanting to join what I'm doing at inversion and that's like like been one of the most rewarding things I've seen so firsthand I would push back on three like a lot of people that have been tinkering interested in crypto are very motivated and maybe it's because like my mission is just like to fix a big problem that we have in the industry that talks about what Travis is talking about

um and the fourth Point multi cycle vets still left are mostly very tired and very jaded uh yeah I would agree with that people the longer that the market chops the more likely you are to become cynical and I don't think you ever want to become cynical and every time it's like tempting to do that and in moments where I can tell you there are moments where I've lost conviction marginally on this industry there's you know it hurts right when you see FTX when you see Terra when you see another hack it it it's difficult to process because it sets us back but when that happens I'm just reminded to go talk to builders I'm like all right I'm gonna I'm gonna have five calls with five people in my portfolio and see what

they're up to and honestly like it's it brings me back to the core of what I why I'm here and but you know a lot of people are not doing that and if you don't do that you're going to become cynical you're going to become jaded and you know you're gonna become better at some some point yeah that's that's the key point right there if you're not actively talking to I think specifically Founders in the industry it's really easy to get really jaded um that's why I like doing I give this talk like every Co to every cohort at Alliance Dow and it's purely I think they think that I'm doing it to help the cohort it's purely a selfish thing it really energizes me it's like every quarter I get to go in meet all these new Founders there's like

40 new Founders and um and you I give a talk about like media and stuff like that but like I get to meet all these super hungry talented Founders so my assessment of Travis's thing is like we brought very few new entrance into this into this definitely true uh the new entrance we did get are mostly the worst kind also probably pretty true um but we are attracting good talent right now and I think right now there's maybe a a lull in in the top talent because of yeah things like meme coins or some stuff like that but it actually ties to number four about the multicycle Vets are mostly tired this is how Industries grow I think again I I'd really encourage people to read Titan this Rockefeller

book it talks about it's it's it's about Rockefeller but it's really about the growth of the oil industry and the oil industry if you think crypto grows in in grows with volatility and Cycles like they had the same exact boom and bus cycle behavior for like 30 years in the oil industry and um it was a period it was yeah they yeah exactly they still have it um but like it was not even seen as an industry and the number of like grifters and scammy people who came into oil trying to make a quick Buck but then left and actually but like for every 10 people who came in one person one talented Builder would come in and the grifters would leave but also the the ogs would leave too they were the ogs of the oil industry and

they got replaced by the new Founders and then those new Founders make some money and most of them would leave some of them would stick around and build Empires like Rockefeller and that's going to keep happening in crypto like yeah I wouldn't be surprised if some of the OG defi Founders some of the like best names in the industry end up leaving but like some of them will stay and they'll become like the bezos's and you know I don't know jobs is of the world or something like that and some and some of them won't yeah it's not easy anytime someone says it's not meant to be easy and and you know hard things are worth um you know smart people want to work on hard problems crypto's always been that I think like since my earliest

days in the industry I remember like I was just seeing I was in I was in pal Alto in silen Valley and I would just see like really really smart people be interested in crypto um and for a variety of reasons right it's just from a cryptography distributed system standpoint a lot of people did their PHD on that were like oh this is cool or a game theory like you can run these experiments in real time or people that have deep app like like right now I'm spending a lot of time talking to like really seasoned veterans that have had experience in the financial system ftech Telco and it's almost like a lot of them really appreciate the problems that have Legacy Industries have um and it that's just by virtue of like they've been in

the industry for so long that they see crypto and like that that that hasn't changed like a lot of these people appreciate how crypto can fit into the equation is it clearcut and perfect and super straightforward no but but that's the both the challengeing the opportunity right you're not gonna know until you kind of do it right um the exciting thing about crypto is like you're you're not like like meeme coins are and we should talk about like the activity that's happening on chain and like Revenue over these chains I want to go to that next but like mem coins are like stress testing a lot of the infra and the same with it like the porn industry stress tested like you know internet you know connectivity in the early days like

you have an opinion on porn fine you have an opinion on mcoins that's okay but like at least appreciate that it is putting a stress test on the infrastructure and I get really excited about the fact that like we've come such a long way in in in building infrastructure that can you know you see a line s side into actually like just becoming the you know Future Finance like tokenizing stocks we haven't had that yet but like I I I think if you're in NASDAQ uh which by the way they they've announced more more push into like having like markets open 247 and all that like crypto at minimum crypto is putting pressure on traditional players to like innovate uh and not be complacent but also more importantly

maybe showing them a blueprint into how like they could upgrade their systems because it's not to say the crypto is going to blow up the traditional Financial system it's more so that they will just complement it and act as an as a really interesting like expansion pack upgrade pack and like if if you're at Robin Hood if you're at JP Morgan like you you're more likely like love crypto because you can see a way of like really streamlining operations and saying oh wow we can actually credibly do this now um because you know like salana processed 20% of all like NASDAQ volume in over the weekend like that's that's that's a very very useful proof Point earlier in today's episode I mentioned Ledger's latest products the

stacks and flex and I wanted to take a few seconds to tell you more about them these wallets feature the world's first secure touch screens which don't just simplify your digital transactions but also keep them extremely safe these wallets are virtually impenetrable to online attacks because they store your private key in a a secure offline chip you can manage more than 5,500 tokens and install up to 100 apps choose the most trusted name in Hardware wallets and take control of your digital Security today at ledger.com or hit the link in the description of today's episode to check out their latest wallets hey everyone Jason here wanted to uh just take a quick break and highlight everything that's been going

on in the mantle ecosystem in just one year mantle has seen its tvl surge by over 1,100% now reaching $11.69 billion that's just such a crazy amount to think about more than 225 protocols have made mantle their home while the platform's Eco fund has invested 38.5 million in 51 pioneering projects through strategic Partnerships with buybit including MNT as collateral supporting Athena to scale and the first ethereum L2 to integrate Ono Finance they just continue to be on the bleeding edge of l2s be sure to stay up to date with what's going on by giving them a follow on X at ZX mantle special thanks

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to rwe for making today's episode possible you can find out more by clicking the link in the show notes you want to transition into the protocol side like what's happening on chain I'm C you sent me this tweet and you said I want to talk about this Brandon farmer tweet um so I have no context other than the fact that you wanted to talk about it I I I can read the Tweet but tell me how you want tell me where you want go you scroll up I think it's interesting like he responded to he had an initial post that I think is worthwhile um love a good block chart let's go yeah there you go you don't hear as much about salana um R justifying it market cap this is because weekly RV is down 90% from alltime High um and he's like the basic premise

of his argument is that the types of activity are great for gener like the types of activity that have been flourishing in salana a lot of meme coin activity generates a lot of rev uh but as that has come down the question is like how do you supplement that rev um and his point is like you look meme coins are really value extractive like like a lot of that's been a lot of the composition of fees in in a chain like salana or others is just you know when it's like what drives um me is like the um heterogeneous like transactions when you have like you know like an event like you launch a meme coin like there's a lot of activity there and so priority fees go up that driv a lot of the the

composition of the fees go sorry go ahead go go so it just poses an interesting question of like I mean hey how do you value these chains and what is like the fee stream associated with that um and I think uh I want to make a couple of points one and I agree with like Logan and the friction on dis SKU have made an interesting response to that um which is like meme coins again are stress testing the infrastructure so like it it puts strain on the chain and it is a proof point to then you know like what comes next in the real opportunities tokenize stocks um how do value These Chains is like uh art

more than an art than a science you can't reasonably apply a multiple and say it's a fair valuation you need to again believe that like we grow orders magnitude ring on 100x more users and like we tokenize stocks and all this stuff like you can't you can't run a discount of cash flow and say any of these chains are valued like appropriately based on any sort of reasonable assem like valuation methodology a lot of it is just referential like it's like Bitcoin trades at a trillion or two and then everything else should trade at a some sort of reference to that and you know ethereum is at X soana should be at Y and you know we still haven't like figured out what the best way to do this but it's all like terminal value driven which is like in some sort of future State crypto is going to take over the

world and um but I I ping the friction this guys because you we had Logan here in the Pod and I think he's a very good thinker and um I think his point is um a couple but I'll share with you like this tweet um that I think is interesting and maybe you can just pull it up he says we should look at the breakdown of RV between low throughput chains and high throughput chains um and meaning if you compare the charts I think on the on the left side you have ethereum and on the right side if you click in it's salana and one meaning like something like ethereum most of the fees like the RV

the composition of that is heavy on the base fee whereas in salana his point he's making is his heavy on prioritizing transaction execution uh meaning like you look at the priority fees the validator commission is is is quite High uh and then some staking rewards um so anyways I think it's just uh an interesting chart or an interesting picture of compare like the the amount of Revenue and um you know that RV distribution um I wonder though how this this will look like when you tokenize stocks and um you know how does that um RV composition uh Shape Up um the but it is an interesting question

it's like um how do we had like that episode with Kyle from multicoin and I agree with his CIS which is most of the fees from these chains will be me so you have to believe that there's just more like a diverse stream of activity happening on the chain that leads to Priority fees going up and in so far as that continues to happen you have a very healthy growing like um fee stream for these chains but I don't know I don't have a perfect answer for this but I I do think that to be fair like meme coins were one of those like very high me activity that is not sustainable so you have to then think okay how do we

supplement that in a more organic way through other types of activ um and it's it's an interesting question like I don't uh I good answer for that but something that I'm paying attention to you know how do these things evolve how does the revenue and the composition of fees for these chains evolves over time is something that I think whether the Market's GNA like appreciate it right now I don't know you know this Market will not appreciate it but again like this meeting I had this morning the person was asking me to show that like all right like how much revenue is Jupiter doing what are the expenses of Jupiter how does that compare to something like um like they're asking like radium and drift and they're like

show me they're like can they're basically asking for like a p&l essentially so maybe it doesn't trade on those numbers right now but the capital that will come into the space and move the space forward um from a like more robust Capital markets perspective and like the liquidity and the institutional Capital coming in they they do care about that question you're asking so the current market does not but they but they do yeah yeah look the argument's always been like salana not the pick just on Sal but like highr blockchains like apas salana other suicide um it's that you become like you know NASDAQ you you achieve similar performance as like a centralized solution like NASDAQ and

then you can that paves the becomes a platform to for tokenized stocks and you know important note like again the Trump mcoin phenomenon like accomplish something that is pretty impressive which is 10 to 20% of all traditional Equity Market volume happened over the weekend like and you had livess and you had like functioning system so that was like I I get very encouraged by that um but uh one of the things that we should just think about is like topic for a later dat maybe we should bring on more guess is like when you think about okay crypto is going to displace X or Y industry you should then think about how much of that value is actually going to be captured by the the technology that displaces it some of these industries

should not exist like like for instance money remittance businesses like Western Union if you're doing remittances of wiely profitable business because you're charging four and a half 5% or whatever if you then say I'm gonna Bo buy that business and then layer on stable coin as well that like fee just goes to zero right when you're using crypto rails so that doesn't mean like again you're displacing an industry but that value is not going to be captured by strictly like becoming a remin operator you have to think about how do I supplement this maybe you have a deeper relationship with a customer that you can offer them you know uh bankingsales you can monetize that user in other ways but I think it's like crypto as a whole I think is going to just displace and Destroy many

industries that just have existed because these systems are really Antiquated and once you modernize them like that business just goes away so um I I think it's um it's going to be important to just monitor the composition of fees These Chains It's Something That I'm paying that was just a point I wanted to make I it's going to be important and and maybe we should have one of the things that I'd like to explore down the road is bringing on people that are willing to talk about like tokenizing stocks like there's some chains that have like started to roll that out and like I would love to like just have more deeper discussion and understanding of like okay when can we credibly see this like and who's going to do it who's going to capture most of that value who well let me ask you this

why does it matter who who Who's the buyer who's the buyer of a tokenized stock would you buy no let me dude you know that if like if you're not in the US you can't buy like I I know okay that's so that was that's what I was getting simp answer like when I go talk to people like most people in America don't appreciate this like you need to be a high net worth individual have a private relationship with a private bank outside the US to be able to buy these things normal you know Joe and Mary can't buy Tesla stock and I think a lot of what I think like crypto has been just like allowing people to get like that type of beta exposure like Equity like exposure like crypto projects like

when you buy ethereum you're like I'm buying kind of Silicon Valley exposure and it's better than like whatever local stuff that I can buy like oh boy like I think like in some places like China and whatnot you can like the range of investment opportunities is very very limited like domestically and they don't want like Capital flight has been constrained for obvious reasons but like a lot of a lot of the people that are punting crypto are because they it's actually worse back home they'd rather put money into these things like ethereum salana B&B you know all these tokens like Bitcoin um because they want exposure to something that may closely resemble the

NASDAQ like crypto as a whole has like very closely resembles the NASDAQ with like higher beta um but like when you open up the when you open up these pipes for people to buy buy like tokenized stocks it's like boy I mean when that happens that's going to be a truly a ground like a just I don't know how to describe it other than like it's going to be like a very meaningful like inflection point in the industry where you go vertical and fees vertical and users like whoever is there the question is probably Robin Hood does this better than most and they capture a lot of the value that way yeah but but but you know Robin Hood needs to have licenses in these places to operate

right like ultimately like you need to you need to still acquire users and like offer them these services in a traditional way and I think you're going to still have to have the appropriate licenses to operate in a particular jurisdiction and and that's something that like crypto companies as a whole have like probably at a disadvantage relative to traditional more well capitalized players like a Robin Hood right that um you know even though coinbase like this week I think announced it's going to India like they have some muscle they've navigated like getting licenses is but but maybe it's just easier for a traditional financial institution that has already connectivity in these places to like turn on the tokenized stocks when it happens and they have the distribution they have the users so I wonder who captured more

value yeah um last thing here I want to get your take on this um Venture funding still down still way way way down is this we talked about this about a month ago is this because the 2021 was so inflated and we're never getting back to this number or is this because uh we just haven't seen this we just haven't seen the Venture like what is actually happening in the Venture fundraising space and the uh allocating of those funds right now take like tell us what's happening behind the scenes I think if you adjust the scale here it's important because there has been an uptick in activity like like go go 2022 remove that for a bit and I know it's

kind of but just just talk like you know it's been fairly I'd say increasing a bit since La the middle of last year like July you know Q2 Q3 Q4 saw an uptick yeah um of course I think there's a big outlier what I would like to see is like the median the median and um mean of like average deal sizes across stages um you know how is that and I don't know if we can easily see this but I think there's some interesting reports of like the the average size for a seed deal versus a series a series B because like if you if you go back and extend the range like that huge outlier was like f there was like one or two deals

like FTX where they raised just like a massive amount of capital but if you normalize it by looking at the me like median transaction size across stages and I'm I'm going off with just what I've observed um through like what I'm seeing in in early stage stuff where I mostly invest in like there's a still like healthy amount of um Capital deploying into early stage opportunities I think it's more of like the later growth stages that there's only very few players that can actually fund those Han Ventures is well capitalized maybe someone like tent or like coin fond or brev you know there's there's only very few like a16z framework just launched a new fond

I think dragonfly there's like fewer players in the market now but um what I will say is from my standpoint um follow on rounds are more challenged because it's always been the case where like investors would rather allocate to a new company than an existing company because they're going to be more critical about an existing company if they haven't shown traction and I think that there's a lot of companies in those vintages that were raised Capital like the last 24 months probably need a raise soon and because there's no users they haven't got as much demand they're likely going to be in a position where they won't raise again

and and and you're going to see a lot of that Talent just have to move around and find a new home but that's that's that's not that's not new to the cycle like you had that same problem like the the cohort of companies that raised in 2018 huge rounds and then the ones that survived were the ones that were very well capitalized but if you weren't well capitalized you went through the winter you didn't raise around again you were like basically yeah um I gotta jump I have a call in two minutes with the customer I can't be too late I'll see you D go see you D everyone if if if we're you're there let us know in the group chat and Empire we might have some surprise events here and there but um yeah we're hosting an Empire Meetup wait hold on what day yes

there is hold on Tuesday right glad to hear no neither of us know I don't think it's Tuesday don't think it's Tuesday hold on wnes let's go to let's go to our side events page which you can find on our website do a little command F4 Empire very sophisticated y a dayes and gentlemen not there oh there it is Wednesday March 19th 6:00 to 8:00 pm THX and Empire a joint together at Dalton's Bar and Grill let's go do all right folks if you're in New York next week hit us up Wednesday 6 to8 see you d all right guys thanks for listen a great weekend

folks [Music]