Winners & Losers From PUMP’S ICO With Santi & Rob Hadick | Weekly Roundup

Transcript

Every liquid fund I talk to tells me this is an easy uh you know forex, right? Or it's going to trade up to 10, it's going to trade up to 12 and then we're going to dump it. We're going to trade out of it. All of them are saying that. And if every single one of them saying that all $740 million worth and that represents, you know, call it 20% of the supply, right? What actually happens in that case? This episode is brought to you by Geodet, the world's largest decentralized RTK network delivering real time centimeter accurate positioning around the globe. You'll hear more about them later in the episode. Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial

advice or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the Block Works team may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed. >> All right, everyone. Welcome back to the roundup. We have Santi and uh I heard that this guy Rob was trying to replace me last week. So, >> wait, we had to include you this week. >> You know, this is a hostile takeover. You guys are sitting on this side of the table. >> The barbarians at the gate are just >> I know. Honestly. Honestly, I would like to note that Santi, you have two coffees.

>> Well, we're trying to get for a sponsor. Times are tough, ladies and gentlemen. >> No free ads unless it's >> no free ads. We lock alone. There's a there's a Maybe I'm not doxing the location of the office, but Blank Street's pretty good. >> But why do you have two coffees? >> Cuz you know, optionality. >> But why is one have milk and one's black? >> Cuz cuz I want to sit and as you'll see me through this sipping both of them at the exact >> I woke up at 5 in the morning. I woke up at I I I I like having milk uh a in the afternoon, but since I woke up at 5 in the morning cuz I'm jet >> such like a child thing. >> I mean, I've been doing this. How long have you been doing this podcast?

>> I like I like warm milk in the morning. >> It It took you uh not only six years we've been doing this, five years. Do you understand that I'm a child? >> Yeah, that's true. >> I think you know truth is coming out. >> Yeah, it's coming out. >> All right. >> Rob, was your Starbucks name? Uh um I >> it might be I think this is ununice honest unice. >> Yeah. So but >> Oh nice nice. >> It is a it's a quad. So as you can tell I also was up at five. >> Yeah. I know. I uh it's been a big I have I rarely drink. You can tell like how tired I am by how many Celsius I'm drinking. Usually I have no Celsius. But >> how many have you had today?

>> No. I just ripped one yesterday. It's my like >> two iced coffees in Celsius. It's been a big week. What are we talking about today? Big week. Big week. Big week for coffee. >> Big week for coffee. Um, let's, uh, so here are the things that were on my list. Um, uh, Poly Market UMA debacle. Um, there's like a million >> Zens key soup. >> Zens 200 million on the line. >> Yeah, exactly. Um, more a bunch of prediction markets are raising. So, we could talk about that. Bunch of treasury vehicles. Um, they keep coming out. Uh, bunch of acquisitions this week. Rally, Vertex, Portal. Uh, Monad acquired.

Yeah, Portal. Um, pumped up fund ICO. >> Yep. >> Rob, where are we starting? because this is your show now. >> All right, let's start on the let's start on the pump of ICO. Like I think that's what people want to talk about ICO, right? Yeah. >> Um listen, so doing it on a Saturday is a little bit interesting. I actually think that's uh >> zoom out. Give the context for for for pump. >> So I mean the context for pump, right? I mean everyone knows what PM does, right? >> Are you guys an investor? >> No. >> No. Um >> full disclosure, I am. >> You are? >> I am an investor. >> I mean there's not actually that many VCs in Pum, right? So >> six is the biggest. Yeah. So, Sixman did it. Alliance Dow did it. There's um you know, a bunch of angels like yourself.

They actually looked at raising a round called a year and a half ago and almost did from a couple VCs. There was some >> like the good investor I am. I passed on the $20 million the $20 million valued that I >> that's why that's why Sant's the investor and you run the media company behind the podcast. Yeah. >> Um >> I am too. No, but but so so so they haven't raised a ton of of capital and then you know essentially I mean I think as everybody knows right the last April last uh last March just blew up right and now it's you know the biggest uh protocol and the biggest application on Salana by you know magnitudes and it's done I think $700 million of revenue.

>> Yeah shy of 700 but yeah I mean it's it's a it's a most profitable protocol in crypto. How much is liquid cranking these days? It's the fastest company in history to 700 million in revenue. Crypto or non-crypto in the in the history of >> and they have like uh you know fraction of the workforce of any other normal company. How much is hyper liquid run rate now? >> 200 million. >> Uh I think it's a little bit higher than that now. Yeah. But um depends on the week but market share just continues. >> So all right so pumped up funds ripping for fastest company in history to 700 million of revenue. They a couple months ago start doing this fund raise right at a four billion. They say we're raising a billion at four billion. What did that look like in the private markets? I

mean, they talked to every single VC. There was a lot of interest. Um, and I think as you saw yesterday, they they went through the token economics. If you back into the numbers, they weren't explicit about it, but it's about $740 million worth uh that VCs and institutional allocators bought. And then the other, call it 260, is going to to retail through these these launch pads. >> And you guys, why didn't you guys do it? >> We don't really see it as like that we're the right pool of capital for that. So, uh, we talked about this a little bit earlier offline, but there's things that are, you know, long-term games for long-term people, short-term games for short-term people. And our perspective is when you do, you know, these kind of like unlonged like launchpad type deals, most of what is happening is people are trading in it,

they're they're hedging pretty pretty quickly. And so, you know, we try to make, you know, really multi-year uh, and, you know, maybe decadel long bets. And we we do that also we try to do that relatively early stages. And so we don't typically participate in these things that are call it, you know, multi-billion dollar valuations. Um I actually think if you look out over the last 3 four years, the worst venture deals in crypto, especially the token deals, have been the ones that have been done at, you know, a billion, two billion, three billion dollars, even for the most hyped protocols that have got raised a ton of capital.

>> And so we try to take a very strict view of how we invest. And it tries, we try to really be, you know, call it that seed through series B. But that also means, you know, call it, you know, zero to like three, four, $500 million valuation, not these multi-billion dollar valuations. But listen, I think it'll do well. >> Yeah. I mean, like Hyperliquid's uh trading at what 30 billion. >> Uh it's up to 41 billion this morning. >> 41 billion. Yeah. >> Uh why can't pump 10x? >> Well, listen, the trajectories are a little bit different, right? Uh like you saw it last week, uh the Bonk Launchpad, at least for a period of time, actually took the leading spot. Um I think back this morning, uh Pump took the leading spot again, but it's like 45ish% market share right now. Um it, you know, they

have they're raising a ton of capital. They're going to have this war chest. They have a story around just like democratizing um access to, you know, raising capital and the story around, you know, all types of media, all types of entertainment creators can raise capital. And I think that's like super interesting and and it remains to be seen what they can do. But it is a uh it is on a different trajectory and it is a business that is going to have a lot um it's the moes aren't as deep and it's going to have a lot harder time um competing or it's going to be a more competitive market than I think Hyperlid is probably going to be. I guess like uh if I were to like remove myself from obviously my my bias um both are very financial products like the user base is

marginally like I think like hyperlquid skews a bit more whale like like larger ticket sizes uh >> that's typical for trading >> yeah typical for trading pump is more retail they are launching their own chain so we should talk about like the implications for Salana because uh at one point pull up the dashboard for blockwork Salana uh pump contributed at the peak like twothirds of the revenue for Salana which is the we've talked about this at length in podcast which is how do you value these at once like how do you then rewrite your thesis on Salana does that mean that someone else takes a slot like like bonk um does anyone else come in and what are the true modes for these chains right whether it be hyperlquid or pump I mean this is something that I I mean I tweeted about this the other day

which is like moes I think are generally overrated and as is first mover advantages but like what happens in a world where you know if you're a protocol that is sitting on top of Ethereum or an L2 or or you know you see pump and you see them launch your own chain and they're wildly successful cuz they own the user they have the brand and then they expand in other verticals. What is like the how do you like then form a view around which tokens to allocate where to buy you know what I mean like cuz to me that's like the the the thinking ahead of like what other teams want to do this and and basically rage quit Salana. I have thoughts on maybe Salana, but before going too deep into what it means to the chains, what do you guys think? So this pump IC, so

the pump ICO is on Saturday, right? So we're recording this th on Thursday, episode goes out Friday, ICO on Saturday. What is this? What actually happens? >> So if you look at >> and and importantly to understand that we have to think about how what's the what's the vesting and the and like who who's locked up and who's not locked up and what is who can actually sell basically. So uh everyone who is participating in this round uh I think can sell immediately right and so you know it's a big >> so you can you could invest two months ago and then you could sell immediately >> you can sell immediately on TG right >> you would have invested at >> no I mean people yeah people just um I think they just funded like recently so it wasn't even two months ago that people

>> and I'm looking at pump on Hyperlid right now so there's pre-markets on Hyperl it's like five and a half right >> five and a half billion >> yeah is this going to be another circle scenario where people are overthinking it and >> that's my that's my take I will say Every liquid fund I talk to tells me this is an easy uh you know 4x right or it's going to trade up to 10, it's going to trade up to 12 and then we're going to dump it, we're going to trade out of it. All of them are saying that and if every single one of them saying that all 740 million worth and that represents, you know, call it 20% of the supply, right? What actually happens in that case?

>> How much you you you start wanting to front run the other funds because you're saying everyone's talking about everyone's selling at 10. We should just take chips off the table at eight. >> Yep. I mean it's and so I think there's a real question around the dynamics here. So my guess and I don't know I'm not a trader this is not financial advice is it actually does stagnate a little bit at you know somewhere above the four billion but that it doesn't have this you know huge run that people people might think >> I just looked up the short interest on this >> wait a minute hold on Rob's Rob just told he's not a trader like okay we'll close shop now like >> you can get paid 1% APR to short 5 a.5 billion FTV right now pump on hyper liquid >> but like okay objectively statistic like

so let's look at the stats right it's uh assuming that the revenue matters all the rage now these days so If pump is doing um 700 million of revenue now you got to assume okay what's a forward looking stuff uh is it 700 is it 200 I don't know um but at at on LTM basis if it's at 4 billion and it cranked out 700 the revenue share is actually quite interesting here because what made hyperl right a lot of it is like their their like the buy and burn right mechanism which is pretty substantial. >> Yeah. So pump has that as well. And so this is like if the market is objectively looking at hype because to me that's the comp different set of like users but like hype and pump. The

scenario for me is yeah there's like a lot of this like volume that is going to people going to want to try to trade in and out of it and there might be noisy in the first you know couple weeks but could this be at 40 billion 30 billion and where's the liquidity come from? >> So I think the fundamental story is like clearly there right and this is the story that you're you're talking about. I think maybe what Jason was asking, that's what I was responding to is more around, you know, what happens in the short-term trading. I I heard from a couple funds yesterday that they were surprised that so much of the $1 billion was going to funds as they had been at least told or or they thought that some that it was going to be significantly less than that call like two-300 million

bucks was going to go to the to the trading funds and that was true. There was an expectation that there was going to be a lot of buying at open from people who just didn't who got crammed down in terms of their allocation. Now I think there's like some concern that you know pretty much everybody is is allocated in some way but the fundamental story is clearly there if they continue to to keep market share the I mean they are competing on now with bonk on the um share with the creators so bonk actually gives more back to the creators and if that competition heats up like there is tech necessarily going to be less revenue for like the buy and burn mechanism but um you know it's going to be I think a very profitable company they're going to continue to do well and I think there's

a real fundamental story to your point Who did they acquire? Do you know? >> I don't. >> Yeah, >> I will say like the Noah, I mean, we haven't had him on the pot, but they're just uh I I've met a lot of founders in in crypto and outside of crypto, and he's just one of those like >> just like a true savage. Uh and he's, you know, like he's like 21. >> This episode is brought to you by Geonet, the world's largest decentralized RTK network, delivering real time centimeter accurate positioning around the globe. Powering technologies that enable precise navigation for drones, autonomous vehicles, first responders, farmers, and robotics, Geodet shows that blockchain can be a truly transformative force by delivering realtime centimeter level

accuracy. Geodet enhances emergency response, boosts construction precision, and enables advanced navigation for drones and surveyors far beyond the limits of standard GPS. To find out more, click the link in the show notes or follow them on X. Hey everyone, Jason here. Earlier in today's episode, you heard me mention the weekly CIO memo from Bitwise. In an industry as hectic, fast, and complex as ours, it's incredibly hard to get an easy nononsense stream of what's actually moving crypto. The memo comes from Matt Hogan, Bitwise's chief investment officer. He's been on the show before and he has this amazing ability to take the most complex topics and break them

down with clarity. Trust me on this one. The Bitweise weekly CIO memo is really worth the 5 minutes of your time. Check it out at bitweisinvestments.com/cio memo/mpire or just hit the link in the description of today's episode to get started. Carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before investing. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk terms and conditions apply. >> So, it's an it's what do you think of that? You compared them to Hyperlquid.

The difference is um they have a very different So, I was talking to the CIO of a big uh financial institution the other day and they are they are studying Hyperlid. They're studying PEPS. They're studying Hyperlid. They are not taking Pump seriously. And it was interesting. Pump is uh in their tweet announcing the ICO they said our airdrop coming soon. Our plan is to kill Facebook, Tik Tok, and Twitch on Salana. What do you think of this like kind of creator strategy? Because it's not a capital mark. Hyperl is dedicated to capital markets, >> per expanding herbs, bringing stocks on chain.

>> We I mean, do you remember that episode we recorded when they launched video >> and it kind of backfired because it was like >> Yeah. But now they have video again actually. And no, would tell you look we we just have to hire a bunch of people to like curate the stuff. Um I mean the the hyperbullish case of crypto is like if you look at objectively Tik Tok all these platforms the user generated content clearly creators are not getting enough share and so can someone displace them and of course distribution is king like at the end of the day if you're a creator you're going to go to YouTube because that's where the eyeballs are and and it's really really hard to displace but you have like bite dance that you know in four years like has really built distribution and clearly caught

>> but of course you don't talk about the other hundred type of Tik Tok you things that didn't work out. Uh they're raising a lot of money. Um I think they're really good builders. Um they clearly hit a nerve in crypto. Question is, is that going to resonate with creators? The the bullcase here is they'll share more of the economics to a creator. >> You're what you're saying, I think the biggest challenge for them is the perception thing, right? >> Well, I think there's another point here though, which is simply that the financialization of everything continues to happen, especially continues to happen in Gen Z, right? Like if you go and talk to you know this is even an outside crypto point you talk to to you know the zoomers and now I sound old by using the word zoomers but um they you know there's this perception that you

either have to do one of two things which is like you have to gamble if you're going to make it or there's like a lot of just opting out altogether and saying like I'm going to be a plumber and like I'm going to just not be part of you know typical like you know the the grind right >> you know trade school applications are at like a 40-year high. >> Yeah. Exactly. Right. And so this is this is the point and the way and and people are doing more content generation because they people are actually making a lot of money doing content generation in a way today that you couldn't in you know 10 years ago right and that kind of financialization of content generation financialization of our lives like that continues to just like go into every part of the way we live and I think that

that is the bet on Pump as well and you're going to see that bet on other platforms and I I think there's probably going to be to to your point around okay well this this fund wasn't taking pump seriously I think some of it is generational right like there is just like the the older fund managers don't understand how the younger investors are thinking about the world but the the also the point is is that the younger investors have less money than the older fund managers do and so there is that that dynamic as well >> I mean Jason you're a media company um what do you think about like c can they actually what is a hyperbullish case probabistically like to to displace and become like the next tik tok I mean that we we're we're actively considering moving stream. I mean so like podcast podcasts we think are an we

love the channel of podcasts. It's all going to streaming. Streaming is like the clear next evolution of this. Like if you talk to like the folks who I consider to be the best media companies like the bar stools of the world. It's all streaming. People have probably you guys have seen like TVPN. Have you seen this tech show? >> It's like that that's the model. The model is like uh on one end like very long live streams that are like because what live streams have is authenticity. You kind of just jump on like you're kind of Yeah. It's real. It's like it's just very casual and then on the other end it's like hyper optimized for social short clips and that that's the model. So actually this is like Blockworks's H2 like podcast thing. More live stream more short clips. Um less like these hourlong podcasts is like

this this model's a little outdated I think. So it's all going streaming. If pump can be the plat we're not thinking about Twitch. Twitch is not the we we don't even talk about Twitch in our in our like streaming conversations. We don't really even talk about YouTube that much. It's all Twitter because Twitter is where the audience is. So if more people move on chain, the audience is on Twitter, but could is the audience also on Pump? So we like we we're actively thinking about do we live stream? >> I guess like from from your genius in media, what does the product look like for Pump? like when they say they want to display these platforms, like what does that format look like?

>> Yeah. I I don't know. They You need to get people doing something on the platform that's not just trading. That's the That's the That's the problem. It's it's both a pro and a con because I don't want our streams to be hyper financialized, but this might just be the >> But so you had permies for permissionless right? >> And what was the learning there? Because that that was quasi venturing into financialization territory, right? And that was nut. I mean, those were nuts, right, Rob? You ever heard our permy story? >> I didn't know. Yeah, this is the first time hearing it. I'm sorry. You're going to have to buy a permy if you want to be invited back.

>> Permies. Permes were 2022. We had permission list. We launched these things called permes as our VIP ticket for permissionless. Okay. >> We launched them 555 of these at.11 ETH each. Um, so you know, couple I forget what ETH was at. Let's call it 300 3,000 bucks. So, let's call it $300. They ran up to 30k. >> Oh wow. >> 30k a per me. And um >> which by the way like that got access you to permissionless. Permission list I think it's thousand bucks. >> Yeah. I mean it got you at 30,000. It wasn't a good you know thing to buy to buy to get access to permissionless. Now they're trading like it's actually a good ARB. You can buy it for cheaper than permissionless ticket. But um >> I'm going to go buy one after this.

>> It's good. Yeah. Exactly. Um, but it's it was uh it was not an enjoyable experience having a bunch of people just likeounding you saying why isn't the token going up basically. So that was I mean that was our mini experience of having a token. So, I was talking to one of the six-man guys, Carl, who runs I think he launched the first stream on Pump Fun. And it's like everyone's in the chat just being like, "When token go up? When token go up? When token go up?" And you actually want people to be addicted to your content, not addicted to your number go up ability.

>> But, but I think there's a there's also a point here if you look at um like online casinos and I mean, you talked about Twitch a little bit. You said I'm not Twitch, but people are sitting in like on Twitch and they are just watching people play slots all day long, right? There are thousands of people doing this, right? And then they're playing slots alongside of them and then they're doing this in poker and now they're doing this in video games and like there's like streaming has become in almost every form a financial platform, right? And this is why I think like it it makes so so much sense for pumped up fun is because they'll have the streams and then it will be financialization alongside of it. And I think that is now the expectation of people who are a decade younger than the

three of us, right? That there is an expectation that we can do something else. We can do something else. >> Okay, so this is interesting is that people treat So I was talking to a bunch of uh you know we we have a bunch of like 23 and 24 and 25 year olds at block works and I was talking to a lot of them at permissionless. They don't and they they trade and stuff like they don't treat it as like invest. They don't treat it as investing. They don't even treat it as like the money making. It's entertain. It's entertainment and it's a game and they all just see themselves on a leaderboard against their friends where they're like, "Yeah, you know, I made a 30x out. This guy made a 40x out. He's on top of me right now." But like, and there's like Pump is kind of

combining a couple different things. One is nobody want Everybody has a second screen right now. And everyone's scared of being lonely. So, that's why streaming is streaming is booming right now because you just want this second stream uh screen up where you've just like you've got someone in the background like alongside you, right? to to this point. I had um like a 25-year-old like founder has only ever worked in crypto went to st actually went to Harvard. I had this person in the office yesterday and and they asked me what is the best game in crypto do you think? I was like you I didn't know what they're talking about.

I was like thinking actual video games and they said is it hyperlquid and memes right and like was the first one I heard talk about this on that episode with the vitrol where he's like >> he's like there's always been we we were we because this was when gaming was really big gaming as a narrative he's like he's like the thing fun I mean my god the best of my life >> defi summer was the best game crypto produced actually memes I mean I haven't really played the meme game as much but like memes for who those who have played it that's that's the game that's the entertainment >> I like my learning from because of course a pair was super early in in yield farming and that was super fun. I mean yams I mean was very very fun. Um and then you had the axis of the world

and I think where I draw the line is as long as people know the rules of the game it's fine. The problem with gaming as in the format that we saw axis of the world is that you try to call it a game and it was it wasn't a game. So, at the end of the day, like that just didn't it's almost better to just be super transparent about why people are coming into the platform. It's very clear that you're walking into the casino, whereas AXI was like trying to it's it's like a disguise as a game, but it's not fun. And if you're going to punt and you want to speculate, you'd rather go to Hyperlid or Pump. >> Yeah.

>> And not so much AXI. >> Um, lots of a couple other things I want to cover. Um, but the last thing on pump is what do you think about this? The thing that I think a lot of people were frustrated about is how much revenue is going back to token holders and why aren't they talking about it and why isn't it really clear? What do you think should be the standard and the requirement? Should they be required to say I know there's legal reasons too why they can't say >> um like I saw tweeted out that 25% of the revenue and like I think if you're pumped you're like you need other people saying it. Um but yeah what what do you think about this idea? I mean let's just let's take this in first principles right so if you are a company and you

make revenue and that drops to free cash flow you return that to you know your shareholders essentially or your token holders right you do that in a couple different ways you do that in dividends you do that in share buybacks right what's happening in crypto is because of the concern around securities laws people are doing these like token buybacks essentially right but I think it's very tough to and and this is part of the reason that they're not talking about it as much it's very tough to kind of walk this line that hey like this is a token that you know is not a security but will acrue value to the potential holders and people want to be able to operate and they want to be able to reach US customers and the pump guys are actually in the US right and so if that's happening people are going to be

thoughtful and they're going to try to be I think uh at least a little bit defensive about how they think about their regulatory structure right and so I think that's probably why they're not talking about it as much but to the point if we get more clarity on securities laws and get more clarity on, you know, what is happening with tokens. I don't think you will be able to just, you know, quack like a security and then like but say it's a token and have that reg. I think you're going to have to have disclosures, right? But I think if we get more clarity on what that looks like, what those disclosures are, you'll see people be more explicit about, okay, well, now you can actually utilize this or you can return capital to the token holder in some manner. And so I think that's all

>> I think the the pump guys are not in the US, right? They're like most in the UK and like the the team well you know TVD but but but the importantly on on buying on buying the like they have like a bunch of partners right if you can buy on this over the weekend it's like all the major exchanges it's non US >> continues to be only non US >> why did they go live with gate io >> they're trying to go live with everybody kraken it's by bit it's yeah they have I think they have basically everyone but Binance and they might still have Binance but I haven't seen it yet and not not Coinbase so because they can't because they can't go after the US customers, right? But you point the exact >> Let's talk about acquisitions. Let's >> Can we just one minute on like what

happens to basically like what is the case for Salana now? >> Yeah, let's let's talk about that. I I think Salana is going to go through a tough period right now. I think um if you look at actually what I think every cycle there's if you take the majors, it's like LA last cycle the uh bit Bitcoin maxis were super loud, right? And Bitcoin didn't go up that much and they got really annoying and ETH folks had their time in the sun and the Salana people were like the new the new participants and they were they were really you know they they got noisy but like they weren't like egotistical because they were kind of like scrappy and stuff like that. ETH people were like really loud like we're winning and all the you know L2 summer and stuff like that and then the Bitcoin maxis

were like intolerable. Now if you fast forward a cycle it's kind of shifted one. So the Bitcoin people are having a lot of fun. ETH people have become completely intolerable and Salana people think that they're winning. But I actually think it's you're gonna you I think there are a lot of lessons to learn from last last cycle. And I think actually Salana uh might be entering their season of what ETH went through the last couple years which is like some struggles and some trials and tribulations. I think ETH people are about to re reh have their time in the sun just like what happened to the Bitcoin maxis. I think Salana folks are going to uh have some Yeah. Yeah, struggles as people I don't know the pumps of the world maybe trying to get their own chain or something like that and then there'll be a new ecosystem

that pops up and becomes the new Salana. I I could tell you from my conversations uh I think every the core team of salon is very much paying attention to hyperlquid and and and I think pump is >> pump is also a part of that I think now which is like clearly hyperlquid is just lean into what salana has always been again if you if you look at where revenue is coming from and why these chains are being used it's it's financialization it's trading is the main use case and hyperlid just comes in and you know again when we talk about hyperlid why couldn't it trade like >> if you talk if you talk to people teams teams founders of teams who are building on Salana or folks at Salana the thing they're most I haven't heard them worried about something like I have

about hyperlact I would say like I think there's a a distinction to be made which is that hyperlid the per decks and the spot decks and but really the perex is is absolutely crushing right and like we continue to talk about hyperlid kind of in that context and then you the point you're making is more about hyper Hyper EBM, right? And Hyper EVM is is, you know, pretty dead these days, right? Like I think we can all maybe feel bullish about what it might be in the future and there's obviously some good builders there, but like there's not the the ecosystem of builders that there is on Salana today. Um, there's not the ecosystem builders, >> but there is there is there's not we see all the deals. So >> I know like there's so many people building on Hyperlid right now.

>> There are people building there, right? I would say the quality of team is significantly below what we see on interesting established chains. How would you rank uh so mega group of investors I think they to their credit they've been >> building like the the um ETH like was it >> the mega mafia and the quality of teams there was like actually pretty pretty >> for pre-launch training >> pre-launch I mean I was I was very very impressed how would you rank I guess like going going through a list of teams that are building on Ethereum L1 Ethereum L2s hyperlana monads of the world like yeah >> object like I know it's very qualitative but like if you were stack rank like where are the best where are the best

builders? I I give you my perspective but like you >> Rob, what do you think? >> Yeah. So I would say broadly like you know the ETH L2 ecosystem uh is but it also depends on like what part of crypto we're talking about. If you're talking about DeFi then we're talking about something different than we're talking about you know deepen or something like that. I I will say to this broader point um I actually I was talking to a very Salana aligned venture capitalist yesterday uh and that he this person was telling me that they've actually been very underwhelmed underwhelmed by the um the DeFi uh founders that they've seen building on Salana recently and and this person actually said to me and this is a person who's like as bullish Salana as anybody. They said, "I've seen better teams building on Monad and Mega E

pre-launch chains the last six months than I've seen building on Salana." And they were asking me why I thought that was. And and and I don't I don't know if that that statement is actually true, right? Um >> I I would say so. >> Yeah. So, but what what I what I do think is true is that there is something to be said about the network effects of, you know, just being on EVM, right? Like there are just less engineers who are building an SVM. But there's clearly a lot of reasons to build on Salana. There's a great core team to your point like there's you know very good tech there that has been battle tested in a way that some of these other ecosystems haven't been but h it just seems like the the whole ecosystem has gotten taken over by the sort of this barbell

strategy which is okay well you have the pumps of the world and you have memes and like that's where actually almost all the economic activity is coming from and then there's a lot of conversation around the institutional side and you know the foundation seems to be really focused there there's a lot of focus around bringing institutions onto Salana and the pitch has always been don't you want to be like on a you know monolithic chain where all this liquidity is right and we have this this great tech stack and what has happened is that the institutions have said actually we want to control our own execution environments right and Robin Hood is one of many that is happening and we've heard a lot of this come up recently there's a lot more announcements coming and that theory around don't these these institutions will want to be at the

place with the the best liquidity um actually maybe is true but you can say that Ethereum has the best liquidity but it it's really around people wanting to control their own environment And that I think is actually the kind of the reckoning at least from the seat that I sit in that is happening right now because there is the straight activity that's clearly happening. But but um you would combine that with with the institutional side and then Phantom going and using Hyperlid instead of you know Drift or or whoever. >> Isn't that the argument for Hyperlid though which is any of these people can just one shot integrate with Hyper >> HyperVM that point.

>> Yeah. like the you remember Jeff used to like a year ago Jeff from Hyperlid would say like we're the AWS for liquidity and it didn't really make I didn't understand what that meant at all but now that I see like Phantom just oneshotting >> pers to 10 million 10 million users like you could you could imagine >> I mean so I don't know I I don't look at I look at one 100th of the deals you do but like I've seen a lot of these guys building on Hyperlid they're building mobile apps and they're kind of Robin Hood copycats and stuff like that it's all just on top of >> what is it HLP3 or whatever their job. >> Yeah. So, so they they use their vault infrastructure and they use the liquidity of the the order book there.

Um, >> you're basically giving any front end in the world the ability to embed beautiful trading markets, right? >> Yeah. And I and I think they will uh I think it's very clear like Hyperlquid is going to continue to grow market share in terms of the DEX. I think the question that you know I was talking about a little bit more before is like how does it go from you know winning that that market right which is you know perpetual trading and maybe eventually spot trading to winning like a broader ecosystem. It's not clear to me that like they are going to be able to do that but it's also not clear they need to do that to be you know worth a ton of money to your point worth $40 billion.

>> But like objectively like again I go back to user aggregation theory will continue to be a thing like that's where the mo is and probably persists. um probabilistically can can hyperlquid just become bigger than Ethereum because you know most of the users in crypto today are trading and if Hyperlid delivers and on on the EVM and apps move there it's so kind of like the flywheel right like they have they have liquidity they have the users then builders come they'll build good products it's it's EVM compatible and so you know >> but I think I mean this gets back to a little bit what we just talked about which is what is the incentive for the best apps the incentive for the best apps continues not to be to go build in someone else's environment Right. And so this is why you talked about pump like

launching their own chain. This is why unis swap created uni chain. Right. And I think and I think hyperl actually proves this out which is that if you own the user experience, you own the full stack, you're able to go and you know meet the customers where they are like you're probably going to build a better product and then like it continues to be the whole reason why we I mean we're building on Avalanche and but it's EVM compatible and we're very focused on acquiring users that are going to be sticky and creating our own sovereign block space for this reason, right? We don't, you know, I I think like every I you extend that over and over and over and the incentives will always be for builders that have a good moat and have own the user experience just launch your chain. Yeah. And this is why Ethereum is

now you I think it was David Hoffman who put out a piece uh yesterday about okay well how does what's the bull story for ETH and it's like okay well what if we do we have you know native and based rollups that you know have more value acal and are more natively integrated into Ethereum and then you have easier shared liquidity across the whole you know ecosystem like that is the bullcase right and some of the things we are saying is everyone wants to own their their own environment but like if they can share liquidity and they can you know share security like maybe that they will like that is how ETH wins right and it actually to to the to this point about Avalanche like it was the sort of the original Cosmos vision and the in the the Avalanche vision, right? Um and

so it does seem like there's momentum behind that story right now in a way that there wasn't a year ago to when we started this. >> Um and it's flipped a little bit on its head to a year ago when everyone was just talking about a monol chain. This episode is brought to you by Geonet, the world's largest decentralized RTK network, delivering real time centimeter accurate positioning around the globe. Powering technologies that enable precise navigation for drones, autonomous vehicles, first responders, farmers, and robotics, Geodet shows that blockchain can be a truly transformative force. By delivering realtime centimeter level accuracy, Geodet enhances emergency response, boosts construction precision, and enables advanced navigation for

drones and surveyors far beyond the limits of standard GPS. To find out more, click the link in the show notes or follow them on X. Hey everyone, Jason here. Earlier in today's episode, you heard me mention the weekly CIO memo from Bitwise. In an industry as hectic, fast, and complex as ours, it's incredibly hard to get an easy, nononsense stream of what's actually moving crypto. The memo comes from Matt Hogan, Bitwise's chief investment officer. He's been on the show before, and he has this amazing ability to take the most complex topics and break them down with clarity. Trust me on this one.

The Bitwise weekly CIO memo is really worth the 5 minutes of your time. Check it out at bitwiseinvestments.com/ciome/mpire or just hit the link in the description of today's episode to get started. Carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before investing. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk terms and conditions apply. Let's talk acquisitions because Rob, you're I'm sure you see a lot of these. So, let me just run through the list of recent acquisitions. Thesis bought Loi.

Coinbase bought liquify. Uh, Inc. just bought Vertex. So, Inc. Krakens L2 bought Vertex, which was interesting kind of like protocol to protocol acquisition. OpenC bought Rally, which used to be floor. Um, Monad bought uh Portal, stable coin infrastructure. Um, take us behind the scenes of what's actually happening here. >> Yeah. So, I mean, M&A is is just been exploding this year. As you know, all of these deals that we talked about, I think were, you know, they're relatively small. They're not the big, you know, billion dollar plus deals. But what are or what do they all have in common? They all have in common some sort of like core infrastructure use case to make using the other protocol or the acquirer uh easier to use and getting them closer

to the customer. So like Monad and and Portal like what's happening here is now you can more easily natively onboard into the Monad ecosystem and they also acquired a a very good wallet and and an incredible team and Raj Raj is now the head of stablecoin and payments at Monad he's now um and no offense to to anybody listening to this who has the job as well but I think he's you know by far and way the most experienced person in payments running payments out of chain right and like you know I think the infrastructure of Monet is >> were you guys investors in both >> uh not in portal uh we're we're investors Monet. Yeah.

>> Got it. Yeah. Yes, sir. >> Yeah. Um, you know, and then you you look at the OpenC uh >> he ran crypto product at Visa, I think before. >> Uh, I don't know if that was his exact job at Visa, but he had a long a long uh history at Visa, and it might have been true. I'm actually not not quite sure, but he's incredibly wellconed. He's incredibly smart if you talked to him. >> And, you know, they think that payments is going to be a big part of their story. And so, um, uh, you know, they get that core piece of infrastructure and then they also get, you know, a great team. But, you talk about the OpenC deal, right? like, you know, this is they're wanting to get closer to the customer. They're trying to get this wallet in place, right? You talk about,

you know, Coinbase, they're they're trying to add a um another capability to their institutional clients with liquify, right? Um and so what you're seeing is you're seeing like capability bolt-ons. And I think what you're that help people serve their their core clients better and or either get and get closer to those clients. And then um I think the the reality is is there just were too many funded startups in crypto over the last cycle. There was too much venture capital and so the winners are you know building up these capabilities and they're saying buying versus building is actually better.

>> So let's go there. What are the terms when >> Well, I was going to say how much how much of the S M&A activity is is a result of like tokens are you if you're if you're a project that hasn't launched a token, you likely don't want to launch a token in this environment and maybe you're running out of money and so how much of it like the buyer universe is it's good to be a well capitalized player. It's a buyer >> or you have like an well like overpriced >> like liquify like a lot of these teams raised the last fund raise they did is 2022. So what does that tell you? They run out of money. So they had a decision to make. Do we go raise a series B series C or do we go sell? So like liquify, right? Liquify 2022 liquify

raises 5 million to build the Carter for web 3. Three years later sell to Coinbase. Why are first off are these are these up rounds down rounds? I guess you guys I don't know how much you can say about liqufy because you guys >> Yeah. So we can talk about liqufi specifically. We're we're investors there. >> So a different a different one of these. Then >> what I would say more broadly about the M&A environment right now is it is actually really a barbell uh as well, right? So there's these big, you know, billion-dollar plus deals that are happening that are really strategic, right? Ripple buying Hidden Road, Kraken Buying, Ninja Trader. These are really, really strategic deals for what people see as the next phase of growth. And we're seeing a lot of continued interest in those types of deals among, you know, the crypto unicorns, the Coinbases of

the world, etc. And then we're seeing a lot of deals that are, you know, in this call it like sub $200 million range of valuation where there are these teams who have built, you know, really good products. They're really good teams and but they maybe, you know, it's not a business, it's a product, not a business, right? And they need to go and to to really increase distribution, they need to go and be um, you know, part of somebody who already has that distribution. And what we're seeing in a lot of these deals is there's actually big earnouts uh involved in them. And so they're saying, okay, well, here's like some amount of money. And it's usually especially for the good teams like it's not down rounds to your or it's not below like you know the last round of valuation um and some multiple of that

but maybe not a maybe not a huge one. Um but then it's saying like if you can actually take this product plug into our distribution and then you can go and add x amount of revenue, x amount of growth, we'll actually pay you a lot more. Right. So you're seeing a lot of these earnout structures in these deals. >> Mostly earnout structures. >> Yeah. >> Got it. Uh cash or equity? >> Both. I mean it depends on the acquirer, right? Um but um we're actually seeing a I think you would be surprised at the amount of cash that we're seeing. >> Interesting. I heard uh two things. One like uh like Stripe for instance but acquired bridge and then privy um their position now is a hundred billion dollar you know company uh they don't like they'd rather buy. So like for instance there's like been a fair bit of turnover

now in the strike team like so there's a bunch of people leaving and whatnot and and their position is like look go build it we'll acquire you and for something like that if you have cash and you have all the distribution like like you you're also seeing people like outside of crypto saying okay if we need to be relevant in the space who do we go by and I think you have really well capitalized fintex right that you know might look at and and saying okay do we want to build it ourselves or do we acquire someone like a bridge or like a privy and I think there's just a really good universe of companies that you could buy Let's uh there's a rumor this week that Stripe is coming out with an L1.

>> Oh, really? >> Yeah. I don't know if you can comment on that. >> I won't comment too deeply. Um I I will say it's a a a rumor that a lot of people believe is true. So um and a lot of people that you know should know uh believe it is true. >> It's a wells substantiated rumor. So what what I would say um >> and if you think about that the fact that they bought privy and stable you don't just you don't you don't do two massive acquisitions and then just stop. >> Yeah. So so I wrote a I wrote an article uh not to show my own article but I wrote an article two three weeks ago uh called the first trillion dollar fintech and I talked about uh Stripe. I was talking more broadly there about how payments on blockchains when you own the

account when you own the end user when you own you know you're able to to be the issuer as well how you can basically be the whole network right and you don't and you can uh disagregate the potentially even the viso of the world maybe not if you need them for off and stuff and but you can also disagregate the the banks and and I use stripe as an example and I said you know what's really clear here is if you take their whole infrastructure that they have now they can own the endto-end user experience from business banking through payments through you know all their value added services that they do and so they could settle to a public blockchain uh and own everything on top of that or they could also just like we talked about before own their own execution environment settle their own chain right

and it's continues >> to be I I think clear to me that that that's likely what most people are going to be doing and so far that the evidence is there >> to be the merch of the world love or or the Ethereum folks of the world say they're not going to do that because running a chain is a herculean effort and you have to manage validators and what about is it permissionless or or permissioned and you know you see these arguments mostly from cryptonative people that that you know are are focused on one vector whether it's security decentralization or it's really hard to manage a chain what would you say to that like like a is that true because I I think like if you were to talk to like launching a chain five years ago very different than I think launching a chain now just because my

view is that a lot of this tech has commoditize. >> It really depends on what you want out of this tech, right? So, building a new salana today, building a new monad today, building a new mega today is not easy. It's very hard, right? >> Yeah. >> And doing that from from the the ground up and recreating the way consensus is done, right? Like that's really really tough. >> Um and you know, Monad was one of the first try to do this like parallel parallelization etc. Right? But uh there are also ways to launch a L2 out of the box or an Avalanche L1 or you know use a Cosmos SDK that is >> pretty simple these days. And so if you believe that you know one of those use those those kind of infrastructure providers can give you a an environment

that works for your use case you can do this with you know a a team that's not that deep into crypto or you know you can hire a team that's like pretty decent to be able to do that. What do you think about Stripe launching an L1 instead of doing the Robin Hood strategy of an L2? >> I I don't have the full details, so I don't know what it will look like. Um I mean I think the and I don't know for sure it's happening. So even to to say that um but I we'll have to see what it looks like, right? And so I I um >> my expectation is that everybody will want some interoperability with you know other liquidity and you know uh permissionless uh chains. So, you know, depending on on how that looks, there's a lot of a lot of ways they could build,

but um I think that would be surprising to see them go in a completely isolated like L1 environment that they then have to build their own bridging infrastructure for, you know, etc. Mhm. >> Although you could say most of these are just the amount of users on chain today is nothing compared to what Stripe sees which is like the stripe how much Stripe care about the current existing liquidity and user base of crypto versus what they could bring on chain like it's it's like it's it's a rounding error for them. So if they if they are really bought in to your point around becoming this like trillion dollar like um you know fintech and owning and end then if you are in for the long game you kind of say we'll invest and we'll launch our

own L1 today and interoperability is not necessarily like that like in the matrix of things where we've seen projects prioritize >> like interoperability I think is more of let's tap into the liquidity of the existing user base in crypto but you know there's only 30 to 60 million activives in crypto certain doesn't care about that. They they care about the rest of the world that's not on chain. >> Yeah. And I think for payments like that's a a completely valid point and and I've talked a lot about this publicly about you know my perspective that like payments was always supposed to exist kind of in their own isolated environments. Um even I've been in like you know a lot of the people like Mertton and others have responded to my post on Twitter like being telling me that I'm I'm wrong about that. I think

we're starting to see that play out a little bit. obviously that this hasn't fully played out but um for so I agree with you for payments but it really depends on what you want to do over time right so for Robin Hood I think very clearly better interoperability makes sense because they do want to do a lot of things around DeFi right and like that makes sense for them if Stripe is simply just you know saying hey like we're going to do some sort of settlement here for um you know our broad you know SMB you know customer base and we don't want to like offer like you know different types of onchain yield bearing products and we don't want to incentivize other or their founders to come build there. Like they that could definitely make sense.

>> Yeah. Is that a co-opting the the vision of crypto in some way, shape, or form? Like are these just are we just going back to databases and just like running them as such? >> You know, I don't know. There's there's no crying in financial markets. So, >> 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 $1.69 billion. That's just such a crazy amount to think about. More than 225 protocols have made Mantle their home. While the platform's ecound has invested $38.5 million in 51 pioneering projects

through strategic partnerships with Bybit, 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 0xmantle. Special thanks to the incredible Mantle team for sponsoring today's episode. I wanted to take a moment to tell you about today's sponsor, Zenrock, the permissionless decentralized custody network backed by one roundt partners 10T, Maven 11, and Spartan. Now available on Jupiter. Rock is the native token for transactions within the Zenrock ecosystem and secures Zenrock's decentralized custody network.

The first application launching on Zenrock is ZenBTC yieldbearing Bitcoin on Salana. ZenBTC will be live in April 2025. To find out more, you can follow Zenrock on X or click the link in the show notes. I wanted to take a moment to tell you about Citria, the ZK rollup, expanding Bitcoin's utility without sacrificing its security. Using ZK technology, Citria enables Bitcoin to function as a fully programmable financial platform. Citria is optimistically verified by Bitcoin, offering the most secure and native way to extend Bitcoin's utility to DeFi.

With Citria, developers can build scalable payment systems, tap into Bitcoin's liquidity with financial applications, and build privacy systems. Citria is currently on testnet and approaching mainet. To follow their progress, click the link in the show notes or follow them on X at Citria_XYZ. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk terms and conditions apply. Speaking of crying in financial markets, Poly Market UMA uh had some drama. So, the TLD, I don't know how closely you guys follow it. Are you guys an investor in Poly Market or No, >> we're pretty large investors in Poly Market. Yeah.

>> Okay. So, we'll have some bias takes only here, but that's okay. Um, so Poly Market has these has basically come under the gun recently for a couple of markets. the Fordo nuclear facility. But I mean the main the main one was Zalinski's suit. So there's a market that's like will Zalinsky wear a suit before July and he wore this thing that looked like a suit. >> It didn't look like a suit to me. I be fully honest. It didn't look like a suit to me. But but I know people called it a suit. >> I actually I actually didn't think it looked like a suit either. But um >> I mean if you have a million bucks on the line definitely looked like a suit.

>> Yeah. But you tell us you got a million bucks on the line. Anyways, there's there's a market and it traded like you know a month ago was trading at like 30% chance to wear a suit, 25% chance. >> So he wears this thing that looks kind of like a military suit I guess we could call it. And international media like the CNN's and AP and Reuters of the world said Zilinsky wore a suit and the market went is now trading at zero, right? So the or at one 2% chance that he wears a suit or something like that. Um, and so everyone's basically I I forget how much money is on the line.

It's like $50 million. >> I think it was it was close to 200 million million was on the line. 200 million on the line that Zilinski will wear a suit. And the big frustration I mean there's a lot of details here but the the the oneliner is that people think that UMA so UMA is how they um it's like >> Oracle protocol and that that basically resolves the market >> is the resolver here and there there are UMA whales who were also trading on poly market and said no that Zansky won't wear a suit and those people are also big UMA whales who basically colluded to say that uh this should resolve to no instead of yes.

>> You you can contest the market which is what happened I believe. >> Yes, that's what happened. >> Two hours after it resolves. So it resolved I believe to yes and then it was uh it has to be contested within two hours and it was contested within two hours then it resolved to no then there was another contestant they had a second vote and it resolved to no again $40 million market. I mean it I think this is like the criticism that you see in prediction markets. >> The official resolution criteria, sorry to interrupt, is the outcome will be determined by a consensus of credible reporting.

>> Right. Yep. >> That's what that's what >> the official resolution. So there's the official resolution criteria gets written way before the you know obviously the the due date and it says the outcome will be determined by consensus of credible reporting. So they're saying it's based on reporting and then AP and CNN and >> yeah and this is the thing like there is still human element to like this mechanism because this is the vector of governance on chain which is it can be colluded like you can you know you know onchain governance is a very funky area where like you know >> this is interesting Zilinski's Taylor confirmed it was a suit over 50 media outlets BBC Reuters etc said it was a suit. Wait, sorry. Zalinski's Taylor or do you just mean like there was like a >> Zilinski Taylor said it was a suit.

>> This is a >> he's definitely got that that Yes. I'm saying I think you're now going to have to put into question like does does he disclose if he has a position in this market. >> Uh and this is the thing like you like the token transparent thing. It's like you have to >> like he has to disclose. You think I think everyone has to disclose like if Sen like can like can Sinski have a position in this market and say Silinski puts his entire net worth >> on this market. >> We talked about this we talked about this a year ago which was or maybe several months ago will Biden drop out of the race >> and we said should Biden be we talked about this on should Biden be allowed to bet on his own poly market? Well, by the

way, this has been the CFTC's concern this entire time, right? And so the you know, event contracts are almost certainly going to be and and they have been um cleared so far by the CFTC. There hasn't been kind of a final resolution on that. Like uh there's been event contracts are fine, but there's been conversation around the political ones or you know, >> it's as far as I know, sports betting, for instance, if you're a referee in a soccer match, you can't bet on the outcome of >> Yeah. But those rules are made typically by like the the leagues themselves. >> Yeah. the FIFAs of the world, right? >> Tim Donah, NBA, >> right? So, um, but but there's always been a lot of concern with the regulators that if you have these markets that are things like, you know, politics or you have these markets that

are things like um >> assassination markets, >> yeah, you know, to to go there. Yeah. But correct. Yeah. Um, that you know, it incentivizes people to do things that you otherwise don't want to incentivize them to do, right? Um I think for you know things like okay whether or not someone wears a suit um you know who cares right like you if you want to bet on that you know that that somebody can go and see that market and go and wear a suit right that is going to be every prediction market forever. So if you're against that then like you're just against prediction market >> you're against prediction markets. Yeah.

>> But who should be how should these things resolve? Because I'm looking at the comments of the of the thing. There's an UMA person who said >> it doesn't matter about the suit. We have more UMA tokens. I'm not losing my investment. >> I think this is where >> that's that's a problem. Shouldn't you just have AI resolve these? >> Uh well, no. I mean, I think you I don't think you can just have AI resolve them, right? Um I I think so there's been a lot of debate about this, right? So, okay. So, should it be a centralized um you know, kind of judiciary committee essentially, right, that goes and and resolves this? Could you have AI do it?

Could you should you be doing it in a centralized manner with somebody like UMA? Clearly, there are issues with UMA because the token is not trading particularly well. Doesn't take a lot of money to go and influence the resolution of a market that has actually more money on the line than the that token itself. And there needs to be some sort of of of there needs to be some sort of change in how you use these types of of resolution or these oracle protocols. That said, I I think it's also like we would have this type of uh you know, drama essentially if it was just a centralized, you know, kind of judiciary committee who ruled against people that they thought was unfair as well, right?

And so you've seen a lot of a lot of debate around that mostly coming from VCs who have different bags. >> Um yeah, >> call sheet does it in a very centralized way though. >> Yeah. Yeah. So I mean they do it entirely centralized way. They have somebody internally who who takes a look at it. I I think the uh if I if I actually take a first principles look at this uh I I think it's pretty clear that there being entirely centralized is not the right way. Being entirely decentralized is not the right way. Some sort of hybrid solution makes the most sense. But but you also um you need to be really really thoughtful about how you define the resolution. That is the most important thing is being thoughtful about how you define the resolution.

>> That's a suit. >> Actually don't think >> I don't think that's a suit at all. I think that is like military. You think that's a suit? >> That's a suit. >> Have you ever worn a suit that looks like that? >> Yes. It's It's like a It's like a It's like a jacket suit. >> It's like a barber jacket, though. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Well, to to to the broader point, I think I think the there's there's clearly a lot of innovation uh that still needs to be done on this side. >> Dispute resolution is is the the heart of and I I do agree as much as again we Paris is I think the largest holder of Poly Market. So like there's bias on both sides. Um, dispute resolution is key and the interesting thing a lot of it has been dancing around like CFTC

stuff but like if we get more this is the this is the benefit of why like clearer regulatory environment allows us to explore different um different possibilities as a hybrid situation right um and I don't know I think you could leverage AI you could have a committee independent committee for each market and um and then or maybe you set a precedent that that's a suit and then going forward every tailor Part of the reason, by the way, that this was deemed that way is there was precedent, right? And so there was another market that where um something similar was worn that was deemed no, right? And it was a much smaller market and so it didn't have, you know, all of this, you know, hoopla around it. Um and so that is actually part of part of what happened here.

>> I I think just what's very clear is this is a area that prediction markets are now they're not going away, right? Like you know poly market's doing over a billion dollars a month of trading volume. Kelshi is doing >> I agree. >> These things are going to 100x over the next time. >> Yeah. Cali is doing 400 million a month or 500 million a month, right? It's and it's very clear that these are the way that at least a way that consumers want to get information. They they they are taking information from that. We actually invested in a kind of a a different point. We invested in another company where they run polls and you have to link like crypto wallets and your your your bank account to it and so it tells you how much money you have found. And so but but there's this this

idea that like putting your money where your mouth is is a way to parse information better and we're going to continue to see that idea take off and continue to be a part of the mainstream conversation. So these aren't going away and I think we'll just continue to have more more innovation and um and tweaks that will will help get us to the to the right place. >> And you send that further. It's it's it's it's it's a feedback loop where um you can also now incentivize and change behavior that you might want to see for political officials. You know, it's like, >> you know, 200 million online, Silinsky now has an incentive to wear a suit if his family members have exposure to it.

And is that a bad thing? Maybe not, you know, maybe. So like prediction markets when I was talking to Shane in the very early days the the uber bull case of prediction markets is that they influence behavior hopefully in a positive way >> not in a you know assassination markets is is is the is the ugly part of prediction markets but anyways >> Rob you guys I'm looking at Twitter you guys just led uh or co-led or participated in Agora. >> So we led the seed led the seed and led the series >> A and they led the series A. We actually upped our ownership in this round so we're we're super bullish. >> Why are you so bullish on this? I I mean have you met Nick? He's an incredible founder. I think there's I mean there's there's the macro point which is that

>> what does Agora do? >> Okay. Yeah. So so so going you know a high level Agora is they're a stablecoin issuer. Um but they are both stable coin uh issuer for their own stable coin called AUSD. They also uh do white label issuance and then they provide basically the full stack of APIs you need to do alongside issuance like other types of payments on ramps off ramps. you know, they'll they're partnering with a a wallet provider to basically make it extremely easy and a one-stop solution to offer stable coin finance, right? Um, so that, you know, just that theme and that idea, something we're we're extremely bullish on. And then combine that with Nick and Drake, the founders, who we think are just best-in-class in the market. We we continue to be extremely excited about what they're

doing. We we led the seed in in what was a a very kind of hot round a year and a half ago and then we we have been so impressed with how they've uh operated for the last year and a half that we up our ownership in this round. >> I agree with the a fantastic guy. Um I've heard you also tweet about like this rapidly evolving state of stable coins and large players coming in and you were at the Goldman conference and everyone's talking about stable coins. How do you invest behind something and you know we talk about distribution how important that is like what is the defensibility of this business model?

How much of it is going to be a function of them really just going fast and owning a category and when you have competing factions everyone's trying to like you know get into the stable coin market like how how do you see that? Right. So everyone is going this this hearkens back a little bit to the chain conversation we had but everyone is going full stack right when you have a technology that makes it much easier to operate at you know call it you know bare metal for on the tech stack but also operate directly and face the consumer and the middle gets a lot easier like you need to be able to offer a lot more right and so you know kind of what we've seen from bridge right what has bridge done bridge was an on-ramp offramp business right now all of a

sudden bridge is a stablecoin issuer they're a card issuer they're a virtual account uh company and they um do like crossber payments, right? So now they're doing basically everything, right, for and they're continuing to to offer new new capabilities. And so what we're seeing from a lot of these stable coin issuers uh is that and a lot of the stable coin companies generally is that they're they're offering a wedge product and they're saying this is the first one. We do this thing really well and then as they grow, as they make more money, as they raise more capital, they're doing everything else, right? And they're trying to own a certain part of the market.

So it it really becomes a yeah there's a there's a there's a tech game there. Like reality is and I was talking about talking to someone about this yesterday at one of the chains. Most of the like stablecoin APIs in the space are actually really terrible. Like a lot of the the call it you know first wave of stable coin companies have just built like really awful APIs for some reason. Um and so there's a lot of opportunity to build you know call it better APIs and and a better tech stack. Um but but beyond that you now have to go and own the end customer as well and you have to dog food your own your own stable coin. >> We've been pitched by like pretty much everyone under the sun about like >> oh stable coin >> which stable coin are you going to use

for inversion go acquire >> it's something we actively think about right I mean like for us is speed of an execution like we we we are of the mind that um a lot of values create will be created by stitching together best-in-class products that exist in this space. So we don't pretend to do like everything out of the gate because we're focused on acquiring companies where we feel that we can do it in the best way possible like like d-risk that part of the equation like that's a hard part >> who we use on the back end we are clearly relying on a number of infrastructure providers avalanche on the settlement layer and their stack uh and then we can have like there's middle parts of that layer >> and it all will come down to what we do in initially might not be the case as we

scale it and just will depend right >> who pays who in this Because I know if you want if you're a chain and and you want USDC Yeah. That's changing a lot right now. And I think Agora is actually pushing that change cuz if like if you're a chain and you want USDC to come to your chain, often times you have to give them a big grant. >> 20 million bucks. >> 20 million bucks. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean >> so all of the all of the stable coin issuers, all of them uh are being paid to deploy on chains, right? So >> there's a lot of money. >> Uh a lot of money. >> 2030 million. Like Codex for instance, it we're both investors. You guys share me that deal. >> Uh yeah, >> appreciate it. Uh but they launched like USC natively there, right?

>> So they launched uh USDC natively on day one. Uh and they're the only chain to on day one have have USDC natively which is is a really big deal for that deep liquidity. >> Um they're a little bit different because they have a deep partnership and relationship with with Circle and there's >> this is the Tether has plasma and a couple of >> and circle has as codeex um and and so there's there's so there's something happening there that's a little bit different than what's happening more broadly. But what's happening more broadly is that there is, you know, you're a new chain. You want to have USDC. USDC is asking for, you know, tens of millions of dollars for to um to Jason's point or now, you know, USDT isn't really natively deploying anywhere else right now, but USDT zero is natively deploying places. And same

thing, they're cheaper than uh than Circle, but they're asking for money, right? Um, but you know, you go down that list to, you know, like an Agora, um, or an M0, which are kind of the next two, right? Like they're also getting paid. They're just getting paid less money, right? But >> they'll share more yield, >> but yeah, and this is what's happening. And so the part of these agreements end up being that like so especially for Agora, a big part of their their business model is that they share most of the the NIM like also like a Paxos USDG shares most of the NIM with uh, you know, the end user, the end customer or or the protocol. And so, yeah, so they get paid to come on, but part of that is is incentives. And then they're all giving incentives to um you know, the

end user, the end the the retail customer. >> Well, see Jason looking at his um >> I'm called Uber. I got to be in Midtown in about 20 minutes. >> That's all right, man. We'll keep rolling. I mean, you're basically going your way out anyways, right? >> Yeah. Thanks for the guest. >> We'll make this a live stream. We're going to be here for the next 24 hours. You know, >> I got to call. I You know what I was just looking at is Revolute is raising at a 75 billion. Secondary is at 45 >> and um >> did you buy some? >> I'm thinking about it. I think they found some really good stuff. >> Yeah. Great. >> No, no. The 45 billion was last year. >> No, no, no, no.

>> Oh, you're seeing it right now. >> Secondary primary is at 75. Secondary mostly employees are selling at 40. There's a there's a big dis. >> So the mark isund the important number is 150 billion. So their founder did the deal a deal very similar to what Elon did which is he like doesn't get paid that much or something like that until they hit 150 billion valuation. Very ballsy. >> I believe him. Maybe we should do that for current version. >> It's like an extra like 10%. >> If we're the largest chain then like you know you unlock like certain that that's a great structure actually.

>> Yeah. >> I like that a lot. >> All right. That's the part. We're off the record. >> All right, you guys. Keep going. I'm out of here. >> Background. >> Uh, by the way, content recommend recommendation. I'm listening to um there's a guy Barry Diller. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah. I'm reading I'm actually almost done with Barry Diller's book. Um, >> crazy. If you guys if people are interested in So Barry Diller was he launched Fox uh TV network. He launched like ABC movie of the week. He was CEO of Paramount. He now runs IA, which owns Expedia. basically owns all the dating apps, Tinder, Hinge, all those things, Match Group. So, anyways, good good just memoir, Barry Diller's book, but the thing was he was a he was he was gay at a time when you can't it was tough to be

gay. So, it was a very good memoir. It's called Who Knew? >> Who knew? >> Who knew? >> I have two, no surprise, Founders Podcast. I love um >> That's right. >> two really recent episodes that are big. Amazing. Uh the Ferrero Rocher founder Michelle Ferrero. Amazing, amazing story. >> The second one is the Michelin brothers, >> like the the Michelin tires. >> Oh, interesting. Unreal. >> Talk about how the tires became the the restaurant guide of the world. >> Yeah, like the Michelin Guide and how they went about like the marketing genius behind it. Like the tour to France going on right now like like it was started by La Auto, which is a a newspaper. Who guess who owned the newspaper? The Michelin brothers. Why' they own it? Because, you know, for them

it was like getting people to move because they wear out the tires and they sell more tires. >> On the pipes, on the media, baby. Uh um and I just recently just started listening to Shane Parish. I mean the great newsletter. Uh he has there's um podcast on Anna. You you know this the Kane Nast. >> Yeah. Amazing amazing. I mean she's just an absolute savage. >> Yeah. She's a savage. >> She's just like >> All right. I I'll end with one uh since I really like fumbled this last time. >> I was going to say Rob. >> He didn't have a good I didn't listen to >> prepared. He really wants a job. >> He's Rob. Are you looking out? Well, I like when Rob earlier in the episode's like, "I read a really good uh piece on stable coins. I wrote it."

>> Content recommendation. My piece. No. Uh, so I'm I'm rereading a book called House of Leaves, which is my favorite kind of sci-fi like horror book that I' I've ever read. Um, it is like a descent into madness. It's more light-hearted than, you know, all of the stuff that we've talked about, but if you want a weekend read, you know, you're out in the Hamptons, right? Like, this is the book. >> Are you going to have this this weekend? >> Uh, next weekend. >> Look at this shirt. I mean, these He's ready. He's ready. Capri or the Hampton. >> You're invited. >> You're invited though. >> Oh, thank you. Y'all, you know I'm flying out tomorrow's like it's like you know the person's leaving. So, you're invited.

>> You're invited. Yeah. Yeah. All right, folks. Thanks for listening. Have a great rest of the Friday, great Saturday. We'll see you next week. >> All right. Thanks, guys. Cheers, everyone. Cheers. [Music]