Bankless - ROUNDTABLE: Crypto's IPO Era | HYPE vs. SOL vs. PUMP | Jon & Bread

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Crypto markets are buzzing and institutional appetite is peaking. With Circle’s IPO wildly oversubscribed and a new wave of companies racing to go public, we unpack what this means for the industry.... Jon and Bread join us to break down the hype around crypto IPOs, why TradFi wants stablecoin exposure, and what it signals for projects like Solana, Ethereum, and Hyperliquid. We also debate value accrual, ETH vs BTC narratives, and whether apps or platforms will dominate the next phase of crypto. This is the IPO Era of crypto—let's dissect the winners and the delusions. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐SELF | PROVE YOUR SELF https://bankless.cc/Self 🟠BINANCE | THE WORLDS #1 CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/binance ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 0:32 Vibe Check https://x.com/intern/status/1932238240880222270 https://x.com/blknoiz06/status/1932072994731647435 10:13 Crypto’s IPO Era https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=NYSE%3ACRCL https://x.com/HadickM/status/1931323504525279522 18:11 Ethereum Valuation Debate https://x.com/DeeZe/status/1932475461348835800 29:29 Hype vs SOL vs PUMP https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=KUCOIN%3AHYPEUSDT 40:44 Hyperliquid vs Centralized Exchanges https://dune.com/uwusanauwu/perps 50:35 PumpFun’s Token Sale 58:16 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:03 Welcome Bankless Nation back to the Roundtable. We're back in session. Today, the man with glutinous glutes, 0x bread guy, good as you. Hey, guys. And today at the top of Ethereum's most wanted list to John Charbonneau. And then, of course, the world's most Zen Dijin, Andy 8052, he is out golfing. So it's just us two today. Bread.
Starting point is 00:00:25 John, good to see you guys. We ripped it with Ryan Chen Adams last week, but it's good to have two of the boys back in session this week. I want to get this week started off with kind of just an overall vibe check. There's like a lot of activity. There's a lot of buzz. Animal spirits. Animal spirits going around in crypto. Animal spirits.
Starting point is 00:00:42 Yeah, animal spirits feel present right now in the crypto industry. There's two tweets that are kind of echoing around, one from intern. State of the crypto markets. They say, ICOs are back. Apps are generating revenue. Crypto IPO going parabolic. Bitcoin tapping all-time highs. Stable coin growth with no end in sight.
Starting point is 00:00:59 And then Bitcoin accumulation vehicles popping off. and right. And then another tweet from Anselm saying, appetite for crypto exposure has never been higher, various entities alongside Taylor, buying multi-billions of Bitcoin. Circle is a lot of this same thing. Circle IPO, 25 over-subscribe, 5x and open, plasma, $500 million ICO filled in two minutes, ply market and X integration, and then also the United States government actively pursuing regulatory clarity. A lot of reasons to be bullish, I feel pretty bullish about the second half of this year, I feel like the second half of this year could get frothy. That's not my base
Starting point is 00:01:32 case, but my base case is like at least a slow grind up. So I want to kind of get a sentiment check from you guys about what you think the next like, you know, second half of this year will look like. Oh, that's tough. Like, you know, like we've all seen the structural bullishness that was in place for this to happen, right? It's, it went all the way back to like the ETF inflows. Like the, the loosened regulatory frameworks of like just, hey, hey, Like there's, there's appetite for this thing. So, like, I think we've all loosely, like, thought directionally this would happen. But in a volatile Trump market, like, there's, like, the path was never going to be a straight line up.
Starting point is 00:02:07 I still don't think, like, it's not going to be just like, oh, we're just grind up from here. It's going to be fine, guys. No, like, something is going to happen over the next six months. That's going to scare the bejesus out of us. But then we have to look back to stuff like this and go, like, guys, we're fine. Like, there is some fundamental structural stuff that, like, is bullish for us. And we need to stay aware of that. But, yeah, like, this has always been kind of what we were hoping.
Starting point is 00:02:28 for just like it will it will pull up it's just it's not going to be it's not just going to be a slow grind I'm confident of that so I'm hearing a neither affirm nor deny any it'll go up I think it'll be up I'm holding my options there my options are they're expired at the end of the year I think those are a good move but yeah man I got I know I'm going to have to a white knuckle probably for a few weeks between here and there okay so you're saying by the end of this year we will be higher than we are today and in addition to that there will be one of those big tweets from that one Twitter account that says like $500 billion has been liquidated from the crypto markets in the past like two hours. Of course.
Starting point is 00:03:04 Yeah. We always get out over our skis. Because we're feeling this, like we're rattling off lists of like guys, it's a new paradigm. And then like that's when everyone, like they long at the top. And then I just did it last week. I told like I under my first purposition. I longed at the top and the ass fell out. So like, okay.
Starting point is 00:03:19 Like you know what? Got to grab this thing for a little bit. Revisit these kind of lists and say like guys we're fine. Like some of these things will carry out. And I think it's going to be no different. different. John, what do you think? I was listening to a podcast yesterday where they brought up Supercycle more times than me more times they made me comfortable, which is more than zero. Yeah, I mean, I broadly agree. If this administration is good for anything, it is good for
Starting point is 00:03:43 volatility. There is going to be periods between now and the end of the year where we question everything, probably back down on the downside. I just wouldn't be surprised by that. But at the same time, the just broader setup for the space is really just great right now, where, I mean, back on the just higher level of, I mean, where is the administration, where are politics? The environment is just so much more positive where, I mean, we saw in the past week. I mean, like the SEC was having a bunch of the industry leaders come in and talk about the industry. Like, they want to openly engage, you know, people were retuning the tweets of Paul Atkins. Do you think we're represented well in those instances where they pull people in to actually have conversations?
Starting point is 00:04:19 Because, like, that's always been the question, right? It's like, you know, in the past, we've had those conversations, but it was, you know, SBF. And it's like, ah, that actually did more damage, right? I think we're represented incredibly well this time around. Yeah. I would say that we were represented very well. My partner at DPA was one of the speakers that they had at this event, Michael Jordan. So you're obligated to.
Starting point is 00:04:38 So John says, yes, we are representing. I think we're represented incredibly well in Washington. But it really is just an amazing tone shift to see PSC and other regulators that are very actively reaching out to us because they want to engage. They want to get this right. And we see that in the enforcement actions, the guidance that they're giving, where last year it was they were sending enforcement. enforcement actions. And the past week, we are looking at the SEC tweeting out how D5 fits in the American spirit and we want to respect self-custody for you. That's still just a crazy shift for me to see in the past year. And on the legislative front, we're obviously seeing strong progress on the genius
Starting point is 00:05:11 bill is moving forward for stable coins. We'll see where market structure bill goes after that. Hopefully that gets pushed forward. But very broadly, the macro setup is there. This is being accepted as a real asset class. The framework is being built for us to actually be able to mature the industry. So the onus is really on us to build the products that take advantage of, hey, you can go build mature real products now. Like, please go do that. And I think that we are starting to see signs of that as well in the industry. And then you are seeing the institutional demand for the product as well, as evidenced by them. We'll talk about this later.
Starting point is 00:05:40 But the circle IPO, which was the biggest left curve, mid curve between, you know, what was the right take on this IPO versus what was CT saying about it going in. And it's very fitting, too. I feel like I've seen a lot of tweets over the past few months or so, six months. months plus where a lot of people that you talk to who speak to more institutional investors and people who are looking at crypto from the outside, larger money managers and the like, versus you compare their sentiment to what is CT sentiment, has just been the widest gap that you've ever seen. And I think something like the Circle IPO was a very representative of that where everyone on CT for the past few weeks was just mega bearish on this. It was,
Starting point is 00:06:19 like, their margins are compressing. Coinbase makes all the money on this. Like, how do you justify this valuation. And then they list it, boom, 25x over subscribed. The thing rips 5x over the next few days. And like, here we are. Do you think it's because it's so simple? Like, why? Yeah, I'd actually like to pull this apart.
Starting point is 00:06:36 I think people really want stable coin exposure. I think it's really, I think it was really that simple. It's a narrative trade. It's a narrative play. Like, there's, I think we would all be in agreement. The fundamentals of the circle business does not at all justify its valuation. I agree with that. And then, I mean, there's some degree of fundamentals versus what is the short-term price.
Starting point is 00:06:58 You know, if you bought the gray scale Bitcoin ETPs a few years ago because that was the only thing that you could access and you wanted to express a bet on Bitcoin, was that a bad bet or a good bet. Depending on where you bought it, I mean, it was a bad bet in the sense that, I mean, you're paying twice what is the underlying literally worth. But you had the right macro bet and over a long enough time horizon, if that's the only way that you're allowed to express your bet, maybe that is a rational thing for you to do. as someone who is able to take much more, let's say, nuanced and directed bets on, I think there's going to be a lot of stable coin growth.
Starting point is 00:07:29 What are the protocols I want to invest in to profit off of that, whether that's D5 projects or what other early startup. I think that there are better alternatives. But the reality is for a lot of people, they do not have access to those alternatives. They don't have the sophistication or the desire to invest in those alternatives. They see this is the big regulatory stamp approved. This is the nice white listed, white glove, U.S.T.C. Stablecoin. provider and they're a public company now, I can go buy this thing. Is it expensive based on comparables? Yeah, it is, but I really want exposure to this thing. And so people are going
Starting point is 00:08:00 into it. I think it's that simple. I think there's a scarcity effect of people really want stable coin exposure. And there's limited opportunities to do that, particularly in a public market's way. So people, I think people just really, really want an exposure to that. In the wild west of Defi, stability and innovation are everything, which is why you should check out Fract's finance. The protocol revolutionizing stable coins, DFI, and Rolex. The core of FRAX finance is FRAXUSD, which is backed by BlackRock's institutional biddle fund. FRAX designed FRAXUSD for best in class yields across DFI, T-Bills, and carry trade returns all in one.
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Starting point is 00:10:32 thing I can do to get stable coin exposure. Therefore, I'm going to slam by. To me, like, I can't really differentiate that between somebody being like, yeah, like, I want to, I want access to blockchain technology and, you know, banks running blockchain technology or the future, therefore I'm going to buy ripple. Like the disconnects between fundamentals and actual like reality is just so large here. Like John, I'm guessing you're not buying Circle. Brett, I mean, you're not buying. I don't think anyone on crypto Twitter can like justify buying Circle at a $25 billion valuation. And so what one and half of me is like, well, you know, we all just mid-curved it because the thing to do was to clearly to buy, at least in this moment of time.
Starting point is 00:11:14 But then I also'll like project forward, you know, five years. Like, well, will it justify itself then? Like, like, maybe we're not, maybe we're not right now. We're just early. But then also, like, being early is also being wrong. I don't really know how to think about it. I think it's mostly commentary on just like the size of our ecosystem, right? Like, like, one, like, yes, we have awareness of all these, these comps within the ecosystem
Starting point is 00:11:38 that we can look to like tether and say, like, look, tether is dunking on circle in every measurable, like, factor. And, like, we have awareness of it. We can't get exposure to it. but like we have awareness of it. So it allows us to like look at it, say it's not the best. It's not whatever. And then just like the relative capital size of players in our ecosystem to the gargantuan tradfire world, like the public markets, right?
Starting point is 00:11:59 Like this could be this could be the splash on effects of just like a bunch of people in that market that just want to get exposure to it. And as John said, this is the only thing they can do. So it's just like, yeah, they can pump this thing to 26 bills. And like that's not really that big of a deal to them in their market because it's like that this is what we can do. And this is like this is the splash on effects. of our capital size relative to us where it's like, that's a big thing.
Starting point is 00:12:21 Like this is like all of this was a crazy move. And yeah, we couldn't move it to quite this degree because our purchase of small fish, right, relative to the global markets. Yeah. So one of the funny treats I saw, someone did the math of, I don't remember the exact number, but it was basically if you take the current multiples that circle's trading at and if you throw that on top of tether, like, oh yeah, we get, we get an implied valuation of like a trillion dollars or something like that.
Starting point is 00:12:44 Right. Is that Rob? And so do you actually think it's worth that? No, probably not. And so I do not own any exposure to circle right now because I can't justify the current prices based on what I think are reasonable expectations. But I'm not shorting anything in crypto. I have no plans to do that at all.
Starting point is 00:13:06 They are a great business and I wish them success. I mean, that's separate from what do I think the short term price is going to be. But even as someone who doesn't hold any of it, the, sentiment has been super positive around crypto, around this, and as it should be. Because this is a great, really healthy side for the industry showing, hey, there is a lot of demand for this. This is something that people take seriously. This is another step in the maturation process.
Starting point is 00:13:31 We have another big list of public company. What is this very likely to do for all of those other crypto companies that were considering going public at some point in the medium term? Maybe they were thinking about going public next year. Those timelines are probably being pulled up. I saw one of the tweets was, it was Gemini, I believe. they were pulling forward their timeline to looking to file. There's a number of other exchanges and other operators.
Starting point is 00:13:50 The race is on to go public right now. Yeah. This was a very clear sign that the market's open now for this. And so that is super healthy and really, really positive for us to see. And that has trickled down effects throughout the rest of the funding and startups and all the other products and crypto that are downhill of that. It would be interesting to see the price performance of Gemini post IPO because Gemini is an exchange.
Starting point is 00:14:11 So it's going to get comped to CoinVase, not to Circle, but it's Circle that is the firing gun for Gemini's like being okay like it's we're good to go and cracking is going to be the same like crackin's probably making similar moves and as a coin holder i was excited for circle to go live because i was hoping that that like positive valuation would blow back onto my coin bags which didn't really happen and so there's an interesting juxtaposition there of like oh yeah jemini crackin chomping at the bit to go public but their comp is is coin base not circle and so like I don't I don't know if the market's going to give them maybe unless there's like a fresh chart premium for IPOing
Starting point is 00:14:52 I don't know I don't know if that exists in TadFi what do you guys think about that I broadly agree I think the really really strong demand right now is for stable coins in particular and that's the niche that circle was filling and so I don't think that these other ones are going to fill that exact same gap but nonetheless I still think it is a very healthy sign that you have just showing hey there is market demand for institutional grade crypto products right now. This is something that institutional investors want to be investing in
Starting point is 00:15:19 now that we have all the clarity. So it's a good sign nonetheless. I agree that it would be even better if they were the third biggest stable coin issuer to go an IPO right now. That would probably be the thing that you want to do even more. But it's a positive not sign nonetheless. And how well they go will be a good indicator, though, of how broad this demand is and how does that put for other crypto companies that are potentially considering? Because I assume that it's very possible Gemini or someone like them is next in line. And so we'll see what the demand there versus how isolated was this just to crazy stable coin demand, which is possible.
Starting point is 00:15:51 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how many we are six months into the Trump presidency. So like Coinbase went public 2021, really before the Biden SEC cracked down on crypto. So they just got in right before that gate shut. And then we had just, you know, four dark years. And now, you know, Trump comes in, opens up the gate. People start to go public.
Starting point is 00:16:10 And now now there's like kind of a lineup, right? So micro strategy also was able to finagle their way into, like, becoming a Bitcoin acquisition company because they were already public. But now, like, Joseph Lubin and Espe and, like, there's another Ethereum acquisition vehicle company. And now there's, like, Bitcoin copycats. And it's, like, Seoul Strategies. And now there's also a circle.
Starting point is 00:16:29 And then Gemini and Cracken and Anchorage and, I don't know, chain alias. They all want to go public. So there's a growing number of ways to get crypto exposure, or potentially soon. Maybe by the end of this year or early next year, there will be, like, a pretty pretty rich number of ways to get exposure to crypto in Tradfai. And without even like having to actually to go into the crypto industry, which is kind of interesting. I'm curious as to like how that market equilibriates when there's a variety of different ways to get exposure. Again, even in addition to the ETFs too. And you don't even have to like join the industry. You can all just do it from like Robin Hood or
Starting point is 00:17:06 your brokerage or whatever. You had me curious. Like obviously we all know Circle and Tether the two biggest or USC and tether the two biggest coins. It's like, okay, like, what is the third biggest? So is there another stable coin IPO on the horizon that we could like even like realistically look towards? And there's basically nothing. Like there's market caps. Yeah, the market cap for Tether and USC are 150 billion to 60 billion. The next biggest, which is Athena's USDA is 6 billion.
Starting point is 00:17:31 So like the falloff is a 10x below USC. And then like then it's die, sky dollar, black rock bill. Then even like World Liberty Financial's like US dollar or whatever the hell it is. Paxos isn't on there. Like, Paxos is like a stable coin whitelister, so it's not going to have one single. It's like infrastructure. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:48 But like it's not going to command any sort of like premium that Circle did. Okay. So question for you guys. Like 160 billion dollars of stable coins on Ethereum. And ETH BTC is like, you know, I have seen tribally indifferent profit maxis be posting about the ETHBTC ratio. Like it's been flat for three months for the first time in two years. stable coins dominantly on Ethereum, we know this. But then also, Bitcoin dominance is just creeping up and up and up and up. I put out this tweet, which for some reason, like, triggered a
Starting point is 00:18:21 bunch of people. Max Payne is 75% Bitcoin dominance and no alt coin season. And for the record, we are at 64% Bitcoin dominance. Going from 64% to 75% is a big move. It's like a much larger move than going from like 40% to 50% because as there's less, as there's more Bitcoin dominance is harder to become even more dominant. So, There's a lot of people like interpreting this tweet differently, but like for some reason, I feel like there's some horseshoe phenomenon where you have like stable coins on one side and Bitcoin on the other. And when stable coin growth is big, it validates, it goes all the way back around and it validates
Starting point is 00:18:57 Bitcoin. And then like the Ethereum, the pro Ethereum side of things, it's like, well, no, Ethereum is the stablecoin blockchain. There's $160 billion of stable coins on Ethereum. Brad, what do you think? I hate that I keep going back to this. like, ETH the technology can be great for stable coins. It doesn't necessarily mean, ETH the asset goes up.
Starting point is 00:19:16 Like, that's the problem. That's the problem. Like, there's structural stuff in place that, like, the SIAP Bitcoin Bulls can, like, people are just going to buy it. Because you always think there's going to be a next buyer, right? You always think the next buyer is the nation state or it's the government or so whatever, someone on a treasury. Like, it gives everyone confidence to buy this thing because you can peg the next buyer on that thing.
Starting point is 00:19:34 It's like, ETH is delivering all these technical properties that are fucking awesome for stable coins, right? Like, it's great. I want to have my assets there. as creditable neutral is decentralized, but like I don't need to have ETH the asset in order to, like not in size, in order to have my stable coins be settled to and transferred in and denominated in on Ethereum mainnet.
Starting point is 00:19:52 It's like without a high velocity there and like bringing execution back to it. Like I think that is the unfortunate truth is like I can say, yeah, stable coins are on Ethereum. That's fucking great. Like they belong there. Ethereum's awesome. Doesn't necessarily mean their asset has to go up.
Starting point is 00:20:06 Yeah. Yeah, there's a difference between like a stable coin exchange and a stable coin vault. And Ethereum, I think, is a very big Cibicoin vault. And I don't know how much like Dex, Ciborne Dex volumes there are. I mean, there are definitely an ample supply,
Starting point is 00:20:18 but enough to generate fees. John, what do you think? The perfect test case, it's, it's kind of funny. I mean, we just debated. Ryan, Berkman's had actually tweeted out. The point in the tweet was it a couple of days ago. If tether makes billions a year on their ETH business,
Starting point is 00:20:34 but their BTC maxis and Alt L1 launchers, meanwhile, he's on track to become a multi-trillion dollar asset without a tether bid. let's see if tether ends up foaming Eith when they see BTC is the first but not the only special stuff like to which I replied or they're the perfect example of why Ethereum providing value does not equal ETH capturing value. Tether is the quintessential example of they have built a gigantic profitable business which in large part does use Ethereum with a bunch of tether there. They use the chain obviously very, very heavily and you can go check Pala's tweets and you know what is tether
Starting point is 00:21:05 holding. It's it's Bitcoin and gold. And so it is that still very barbell of hey we can use the chain, but still kind of just be Bitcoin maxis. And so where does that go in the future? If there's increasingly even more stable coin issuance on Ethereum, is that positive for Ethereum enough? People debate this one all the time, like how positive it is for your chain if there's a bunch of RWA is on there. My gut is it's still positive.
Starting point is 00:21:29 It's just that we do have to realize that there is a difference in value accrual between, hey, someone puts $100 billion or whatever, some crazy number of T-Bill, dollars, whatever, that's sitting on this chain, but it really is just idle capital that's not moving. Maybe a sex has it off chain or whatever. This is just, you know, a money market fund that someone has a bunch of money just sitting there and the off chain issuers just clipping all the money versus we have a bunch of money on chain that's high velocity capital and is being traded a lot, is actively producing a lot of fees. Those are obviously qualitatively different and do have quantitative results on, you know, what is the value capture for the base asset? And so Ethereum is more in that
Starting point is 00:22:10 former camp of a lot of the capital there is it's winning in the size of capital and it's not currently winning in a lot of the velocity of capital metrics, things like trading volume and a lot of user metrics. And so it's definitely still positive in my mind to be winning the institutional capital and a lot of big money going there. But it's definitely not a one-to-one comparison. And so looking at it simplistically, I think just doesn't hold up, obviously. I just like, I hate that like everyone's tying winning or like success to just like raw dollar. like the price going up.
Starting point is 00:22:42 Like that's what's like, that's the, the fight everyone's having, right? It's like, it's doing great. Like, it's service. Like, it's doing all of these things.
Starting point is 00:22:49 It's servicing his purpose. Like it has this crypto ethos. Like, it's doing all of that. But everyone views it as a failure because price isn't going up. And like, unless my bags are going up, like this thing sucks, right?
Starting point is 00:22:59 Like, and like that's, that's not the case. Maybe, maybe there's an acceptance where it's just like, and like, I've talked about like the compression lower of like all these infrastructure plays. Like,
Starting point is 00:23:07 you know what? Maybe all these things will serve their purpose and like facilitate app growth and like all of them will kind of just like sit where they are. They don't all have to go up infinitely for this to be a successful thing. And like if that's the future of this world, like maybe that's just how it's going to play out. I think there's like two common trains of thought which will put you in two different conclusions depending on which one you are. There's one that's like, okay, in one to two years, there's going to be 10x of as much real world assets tokenized on Ethereum as there are today. And then like the Eith Bull will say, and just by
Starting point is 00:23:40 proxy of that, ETH will be bullish. Just by association, just like at some point, BlackRock is going to have so much assets under management on Ethereum that they're just going to want ETH by proxy of that. And people in their orbit will also just want Eith by proxy of that. You know, how much demand does that create? Uncertain, maybe not a whole lot, but like still, like 10xing V-O-World assets on Ethereum is going to, you know, have a huge halo effect around the Ethereum brand and ether of the asset. And that's bullish.
Starting point is 00:24:09 And like, I think that's somewhat true. I agree with that. I think that's mostly true. And then there's like, I'll, like the John Charbonneau's, which is like, show me the mechanism for how it captures value. And if it's not there, then I'm buying Bitcoin. And I kind of understand that too. Like, there are ones like, and a little bit of a narrative play. It's a little bit looser.
Starting point is 00:24:28 It's a little bit more about belief about the network and the growth of the network. And then the other one's a little bit. But no, like, no, show me the burn. Show me the value accrual. I want to see the burn. And it's like, I also, I see that one. I see that one as well. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:41 It's a very bar- Bell. Both are going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Both are going to happen. Both are going to happen. What do you think about this tweet from D's?
Starting point is 00:24:47 D's I consider a good faith, profit, maxi, tribally indifferent trader who's in it for the vibes. He's tweeting out the ETH-BTC ratio and he just goes underwater beach ball. What do you, John, when you see this tweet, what do you see? The chart looks good to me as someone who doesn't understand charts at all. I remember the last time someone to ask me on. a panel, like, what do you do for technical analysis or whatever? I've answered. I have never drawn a line on a chart in my life, and I do not intend to draw a line on a chart. Not what I do. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, I hate that I can draw lines on charts and it makes me feel smart. Like, I can, I could do it. It's like, hey, it actually did hit this thing. It actually did bounce whenever I drew this thing. Am I good? I think part of it is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't describe any of that stuff here. Like, just because the lines there doesn't mean. It doesn't mean. It actually did bounce there. It doesn't mean. mean shit, right? It's all, it's all like backwards looking to where like, oh, it
Starting point is 00:25:43 invalidated the line. Therefore, my entire thesis changed. I no longer think it's a beach ball underwater. I think this thing's going to this crater center of earth. So it's like, it's always going to do that. So he's trying to be a little predictive here. But yeah, I also still just agree that like you need structural shit. Like you will have the splash on stuff that you're talking about. And but you, like, it's all about conviction that you can instill in people. Like that's all it is. You need to instill conviction in people like John, right, who like he needs to see material things and you need to instill conviction in people who are just like all vibes based and like yeah man it feels good like everyone's having a great time on the chain like I'm
Starting point is 00:26:15 gonna buy it because all my homies are buying it like so you need to service all of these things it's just the the Johns of the world and like I'm starting to get into this camp it was just like I need to see I need to see more of like like structural stuff in place of value accrual and like it's just not there the one thing I am getting starting to get a little bit pilled on and I even wrote about it I think today and the response to the debate thing is like we're talking about these nation states, like, if everyone's going to come on chain, right, we have all these RDAs. Like, everyone's starting to put more and more money on chain. Like, Ethereum is, like, the place that most people would trust their, there are a large amount of assets to be.
Starting point is 00:26:50 Okay, cool. Like, if you take that a little bit further and say, like, well, smart contracts on Ethereum still aren't, like, totally trustless and, like, in an adversarial environment, like, I don't want some, I don't want tether or circle to be able to, like, unilaterally freeze my shit. So it's like, if I, if I have to accumulate, and I want to, like, I want to put assets on chain. Or if I have to accumulate assets on chain, money on chain, I'm going to accumulate ETH because it's the only thing that, like, it's truly, like, credibly neutral, permissionless, pristine, as Justin would like to say. It's like, it's the thing that no one has control over. And I, I do appreciate that outside of, like, maybe changing some inflation numbers
Starting point is 00:27:22 periodically. But that's few and far between. That's like, that gives the scariest to some people. Generally bullish, not bearish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd agree. Yeah, I'd agree. Like minimal inflation relative to the entire market. So like, so then like the next question is, okay, what do we think the global appetite for something like that is going to be on the long run, right? If we think everyone's going to bring their assets on chain, we're talking 10 trillion,
Starting point is 00:27:43 tens of trillions of dollars potentially, okay, like if you want to do that in an adversarial environment, are they going to accumulate ETH to sit there and hold on to it because that is the one asset across all of these chains that is like the best place to just like store your value, right? Or to like not have to worry about third party risk or counterparty risk? Maybe. But is that enough to pump the price to Valha?
Starting point is 00:28:03 I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I do think in the future when like central banks are counterparties to each other, that will be done on Ethereum. Like without without a terrorist negotiation, right? Like if North Korea wants to do a deal with like you guys like, look man, like they spin up a smart contract. It's publicly viewable. It's like I don't want I don't want anyone to be able to intercept this shit.
Starting point is 00:28:28 They're going to probably do it on Ethereum. Like that's like that is the place where that entity has to do that thing for like some high stakes shit. It's probably going to take place on Ethereum A net. I can do it on base, right? Base is going to rug me and he's going to steal all my shit. It's not going to happen on Bitcoin. It can't even fucking do the thing. It's not programmable.
Starting point is 00:28:43 It's not going to be Solana because of whatever reason, right? So like, now the question is like how much value is that, right? I don't know. That's the question. Let's talk about hype really quick. We got the hype chart. We hit $42 with hype, which is I believe an all-time high. I was talking to a crypto Twitter legend who I will remain unnamed.
Starting point is 00:29:04 They said, they're bearish soul because of how well hype is doing. What do you think about that line? Barish Salon because how good hyperliquid is doing. John, what do you think? So, I mean, just disclosure, I've said this much times before, but we own both. We own both hype and soul. I think it's fair to say that soul is definitely starting to see at least the early stage difficulties that ETH has had over the past few years, which is, I mean, the largest part
Starting point is 00:29:33 of it is it's really hard to move an asset that's $100 billion plus. It takes a lot of you really got to show me something to convince me, hey, there's a lot of upside left on this thing. And so, I mean, very simply looking at Sol and Hype, I mean, what are the metrics that you can look at? Obviously, one of them is just like fees generated in some form. They're both, like, pretty comparable right now. So Sol's been running a bit ahead their RV relative to like hype fees. Really? Solana is generating as much fees as hyperliquid is? Yeah, they're in roughly the same ballpark. I think the ballpark has usually been that Seoul is generating RV of like closer to actually a billion dollars annualized.
Starting point is 00:30:10 Wow. Possibly a little bit more. I thought hyperliquid would be running circles around them. Oh, no, no, no, no. Hyperliquid is still behind Seoul on like actual fees to the chain. And then hyperliquid is in the ballpark. It's usually been in the six to seven hundred million dollars annualized. Obviously, these numbers fluctuate up. At times, Seoul's been much higher especially. But that's ballpark. I believe where they are right now is hyperliquid. somewhere in the ballpark of like 600, 700 million annualized, and then Solana is like closer to a billion dollars of REV.
Starting point is 00:30:36 Solana Rev was 1.4 bill last year. Yeah. Wow. Like that sounds right. Yeah. So it's in the same ballpark, but Sol is like definitely higher. And the other part that's notable on that, and this gets into the, you know,
Starting point is 00:30:48 apps versus platforms point is you look at what people are paying to hyperliquid. It's not the hyper EVM. That's generating still at this point, even though people are talking about it, effectively a de minimis amount of fees, certainly relative to hypercore. The vast majority of this is at the app level. That is what people are paying for versus on Seoul.
Starting point is 00:31:06 Obviously, these are platform level fees. This is REV. And on Solano, whereas most of the money going, it's going to platforms like Pump, it's going to Axiom, it's going at the app player. So there's certainly a lot more economic activity that's happening on Seoul. It's just this, this soul versus hype
Starting point is 00:31:22 is very emblematic of the current big meta question of platforms versus application. on top of them, what is actually going to be the revenue generator going forward, what is sticky, what really owns the user. So it's very much a bet on that kind of split. And I mean, even in Salon, I mean, this is why we've also been investing increasingly at the application layer, not just at the protocol layer as well, because that is where I think a lot of the stickiness is and a lot of users are going to gravitate there.
Starting point is 00:31:48 So part of it is that of just, you know, do you build a first party application versus a totally general purpose platform? And then the other part of is just sheer size. you know, soul has hit 100 plus billion. And so people very naturally start looking for, okay, what's the next trade? What's the next salana? People always want to hit, you know, what was the next Ethereum after Ethereum, you know, went at $80 that was sold at 8.
Starting point is 00:32:10 And people are saying, okay, what's the next? Like, you got to hit the next one. And so people kind of like are naturally always looking for that. Hype is in a relatively good position for people just like psychologically want that kind of trade. And these are two of just the big applications and platforms and crypto that which currently are successful and people are using a lot. So positive.
Starting point is 00:32:29 Hyper Liquid right now is at $40 billion versus so long as $95 billion. So obviously still a gap, but not that large of a gap. And so I think the universal question that I'll ask as a representative of the hype sidelined tribe, is it too late to buy hype at $41 at $35 billion? Because like, that doesn't make me feel good. I feel like I'm just top-lasting everyone's like, you know, $10 purchase that they bought during, like, the tariff scare. It depends on what you think the general growth is going to. Like the, yes, John is doing great at comparing, like, what is going on with hyper liquid fee generation versus the Rev of Solana.
Starting point is 00:33:13 But, like, Reve was created as, like, a proxy to try to figure out demand for the actual blocks based on Solana. And then, like, to try to, like, determine, okay, there's, what's the value of accrual here, right? There's clearly a bunch of activity going on in the chain. How much of that is going back to the native assets, Solana? Like, do you apply a multiple to that? Like, you know, all of this stuff. Whereas, like, 100% of this shit that's being generated on hype is, like, I think it's 97% of the actual fees are going to hype buyback.
Starting point is 00:33:39 And that's instilling a lot of conviction. And then, like, you think about the growth. So, like, a dollar generated by hype revenue is worth, like, I don't know, 5, 10x more than a dollar were generated by Salana revenue. Because it just goes to, like, well, we're going to have the pump ICO soon. Like, so, like, some of that goes to, like, we're going to have the pump ICO soon. So like someone that's going to be going to pump token eventually. I'm assuming it's some component.
Starting point is 00:33:57 Like some of it goes to G-Doh. Some of it goes to like the photon, you know, trading bot. So like it gets dispersed amongst a bunch of things. Whereas because hype has created the tier one application, right, the native app, like basically all those fees go directly to just buying hype the token. Right. So and then now it's kind of becoming a cult thing where like a lot of the actual applications being spun up on the hyper course or the hyper eVM side are kind of doing a. one of the thing. It's kind of like an honorary burn. I don't know how long it'll last because everyone's just going to profit max. But, you know, it's kind of a thing. So, you know,
Starting point is 00:34:31 I was top last thing with the whole last like, like, three weeks. So I bought from like 26 up to like 36 over the last few weeks. So I anticipated going a little bit higher if you think it's going to continue to grow its moat. They're talking about like now a bunch of other, a bunch of other defy or not defy, but blockchain native applications are buying tickers and trying to do their launch on hype specifically as opposed to doing it through centralized exchanges. They're talking about, you know, doing unit to bring on much more assets. They're talking about HIP3 is the big thing that everyone's discussing lately because it
Starting point is 00:34:59 allows more and more units, or not units, more and more assets to be brought on Jane to be traded. So like, if you think it would continue to grow just by it being the virtue of it being a good product and people wanting exposure to hype, then like, yeah, you can expect more revenues, which you expect more bullishness, which you expect
Starting point is 00:35:15 price to go up a little bit more. That's my thesis. I generally don't have a very strong opinion usually on value distribution mechanisms. I think in most cases, it doesn't make a tremendous difference, whether you're taking in fees slash Ravis from users and using it to buy back and burn the token versus distribute it directly to stakeholders. I think there's a meaningful difference if you're redeploying it for growth, you know,
Starting point is 00:35:38 if you're taking those funds aside and using it to grow the protocol, but if you're returning it to shareholders in some form, whether it's a buyback or staking, I don't think there's actually a tremendous difference. It's just a company doing dividends versus buybacks. It's not a huge difference to me. I think the bigger difference when you're evaluating platforms versus application level fees, and this is something we've swayed back and forth on bread, is I think the more important point to me is depending on what type of activity you're using to generate these fees slash REV,
Starting point is 00:36:07 you may take a different view on how sticky those are and how much headroom they have to grow, and so you would apply potentially different multiples on them. Simple classic example would be, you know, if you looked at Ethereum fees back from a few years ago where it was generating, I mean, the annualized run rate was something crazy. It was like $20 billion a year. But where was all of that coming from? It was just a shit ton of congestion fees. It was super, super high base fees. You know, people were just like yeeding $500 to get a uniswap trade done. Like, obviously that is not sustainable activity that you could project forward in any reasonable way whatsoever.
Starting point is 00:36:40 That's like obviously going to go away at some point versus I would say there's a higher degree of sustainability to a general purpose platform where you know users are paying right now a fair amount of priority fees in MUV. And this is where Solana Value grow primarily is right now compared to ETH. The base fees are de minimis effectively. And there's a meaningful amount of priority fees in MVV. So I would say that's generally a stickier source of revenue compared to high base fees. I would say it's a little bit more durable going forward. But at the same time, apps are trying to eat into that margin too. And if there is too high a margin on priority fees enemy view, well, then they'll leave and go make their own chain if they're not able to internalize it on your chain.
Starting point is 00:37:16 So even that, not perfect. And then I think generally the stickiest thing is going to be, if you just have a killer application that people love to use, and there is a big market for that to grow into, you will put a different valuation multiple on something that has revenue that you might assess to be a lot stickier, a lot more durable, and a lot more head route to grow. So that does make a difference in what type of platform you're looking at, you know, what is the quality of this revenue that you're actually getting? And, you know, how can I forecast that forward? So that does end up looking pretty different on a platform versus an application level. Imagine if your checking account and defy wallet finally spoke the same language. That's Mantle banking, an all-in-one Fiatte and crypto account. It lets you save, spend, and invest all from one dashboard. Swipe for coffee, stake ME3 yield, or even use virtual cards for payments through Apple Pay. So it feels Web 2 simple, yet stays Web 3 sovereign. For allocators, meet Mantle Index 4, the S&P 500 of crypto.
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Starting point is 00:39:49 This first one is hyperliquids market share around DeFi perps, so Dex perps. It's already a 78% market share in the Dex landscapes. Going from 78 to 88% is like pretty hard. And then also you're only growing that much more. So like to growth is tapped out on Dex perps. So like where does Hyperliquit even go from here? How does it get any bigger than this when it's already at, like, 80% of market share? And, like, congrats.
Starting point is 00:40:16 You've won when, like, your number two competitor is other. Like, it's just another category. Like, you just won. You just won dexes. But, like, you're also, you're also done. Like, there's no more market share for you to go to. That's the bearish case for hyperliquid. The bullish case is looking at hyperliquid versus Binance perps volumes,
Starting point is 00:40:32 where weekly hyperliquid volume, I think, has peaked out at 11% versus Binance is 88%. Hopefully this Dune dashboard is correct. But if you just look at hyperliquid versus Binance, we're like, well, it's only got 11% of Binance's market share. That's a whole lot of fees left on the table. It could just, if it goes 50, 50% versus Binance, it's going to three-x its fees. And all of a sudden that $40 billion, so Salon is $95 billion does look pretty like justifiable. But I think it's really a function of just like, how well can Hyper Liquid get Binance traders to
Starting point is 00:41:05 migrate over to hyperliquid? And why haven't they? Why haven't they already? Like, why haven't they by now? I don't really, I'm not a perpetrator, so I don't really know. I don't know if you guys, either of you have any, like, information here. Yeah, so the difference or the edge that we had at Meggie Eithet that, like, is encroaching specifically on what hyperliquid is maybe losing to some of these centralized exchanges is that the centralized exchanges are just like, they're more performant, right? They don't have blockchain backends.
Starting point is 00:41:28 They don't have to deal with latency. They don't deal with block times. So they're very, very performant. And the, the most side is a downstream of like needing consensus, right? It takes time to actually, like, agree on something, which then makes it good and true. Like, they do some stuff to get around. that. But for us, like, if you have, or this is L2's broadly, if you have a chain that has a a predictable block builder, right, then you can co-locate next to this thing, then you can
Starting point is 00:41:51 start to encroach on some of these performance numbers that centralized exchanges actually can tout, right? So, like, this is, this is like a comparison against GTE, which is one of our applications building on Megheath. Like, they're working specifically with market makers so that they can co-locate next to our sequencer so that you're the latency roundtrip for them to actually execute this stuff on chain, if it's cheap enough, is, you know, in single digit milliseconds, right? And because you can afford that stuff or because you can, you can get some predictable outcomes from the construction. So, like, if volume is the metric that just says, like, these are the things we want to capture and we want to bring that stuff on chain, this, this is a vertical that
Starting point is 00:42:28 we're actually trying to push for because hyperliquid may not ever be able to approach on that because, yeah, they have a distributed validator set as an L1, right? If you're doing that, then you necessarily can have a little bit of delay for achieving consensus. So, You know, will they ever be able to eat into GTE because of that fallback? We are not GTE, but for Binance because of that latency fallback, who knows? But that's the vertical that they're pushing for. So what you're saying is this gap between the like 75% market share that Hyperliquid has on the Dex side of things versus the like 9% market share that has versus Binance. That gap is the latency of the Apple market.
Starting point is 00:43:05 Yeah, it's just saying like, like this is volumes, right? volumes are going to mostly dictated by these very large players that are doing high frequency trading, trading tens to hundreds of millions of dollars pretty consistently. And they do that stuff because there's some properties that they can count on, whether it's not too expensive for them to execute the order. They can get rid of toxic flow. They have latency expectations for like interacting with the thing that is actually taking the order. And it's like, will they ever leave the confines of a centralized exchange that can say, look, bro, you can get your order on chain for free or not on chain. But you can get your order in the order book on chain. are fuck, it keeps in it on the order book and single digit milliseconds for free,
Starting point is 00:43:41 like will they ever leave that environment to go to a public ecosystem like hyperliquid that it costs money to put your order on? You deal with toxic flow for ordering like will they ever opt into that? Maybe not because the performance is not going to actually really be able to keep up on the latency side with a centralized counterpart. But like maybe the middle ground becomes a construction like an L2 where these market makers can co-locate next to a sequencer, which is the block builder, doesn't have consensus so you don't have to worry about the delayed block time.
Starting point is 00:44:06 it's a much more predictable environment. Well, I'm going to agree with half and then disagree with half. I agree the half that matters is the centralized exchange side. I don't agree that latency is actually the determining factor here or the reason why users are market makers are primarily on these exchanges. I think the very direct risk to hyperliquid is primarily that, for example, you can imagine perks getting legalized within the U.S. and having a regulatory framework around that in the short to medium term.
Starting point is 00:44:35 like there's clearly regulatory and institutional interest in that happening. And then the question is, okay, Robin Hood and Coinbase have Perps now. What do you use? Do you use Hyperliquit or do use Coinbase? I, as a U.S. citizen, do not use Hyperliquid, but if I were to hypothetically use a Perps platform in the United States in New York, I would probably have to use one that does not KYC and take my documents in the way that finance does.
Starting point is 00:44:58 So you could imagine some of those users may be using Hyperliquid now, but they might go use Coinbase or Robin Hood. That option present itself to them. I don't think that's a latency consideration to them. I think that's just a fact that they own the user and they're a good product and I trust them with my funds. And empirically, I mean, most users are getting their face ripped off when they trade on Coinbase and Robin Hood. They're not paying these cheat fees for best execution. And market makers are increasingly, to my understanding, I mean, the big market makers really are on hyperliquid and it is quite profitable flow.
Starting point is 00:45:27 And it's not entirely clear to me that reducing latency further based on where they are is actually going to meaningfully improve execution, particularly within the fast batch. fast batches where they do have prioritized and free cancels, which does help the market makers a lot. So my understanding is like that they are trading there now, most of the meaningful ones, and they are doing well, and users obviously love it. The bigger issue to me is the regulatory clarity that comes around perks. And then you assume that all the major players who are currently being held back right now, do they come in and squish the market? Does Coinbase come in? Does Robin Hood come in? And do they win the market now that is the best available option to most users? Does Hyperliquid still have a product market?
Starting point is 00:46:04 market fit after that. Do we have a regulatory event with Hyper in the future? Do you think? Obviously, you just called out like the KYC, like not being a requirement for coming and operate on change. Yeah, I mean, this is a risk to them existing right now is that the, there is very unclear regulatory clarity for, I mean, pretty much all decentralized D5 protocols, but I mean, especially someone like Hyper Liquid that obviously is not KYC and is a is a somewhat decentralized network, but this is all the stuff that gets into like the market structure Bill, too, of a lot of the legislation and that regulators are thinking of is what is a sufficiently decentralized or sufficiently mature network? What exactly is your definition of that that allows
Starting point is 00:46:42 you to operate differently than a centralized counterparty? And that's all TBD still. So yeah, it's certainly a risk with them. It strikes me as like a tether versus circle debate with how their approach to the market where it's like, everyone has funded hyperloquist specifically of like, oh, unregulated exchange, you're doing all this stuff and there's no KYC you're going to get funded, which is like, that's what's been pushed back against Tether for the longest time. It's like, oh, my God, they, like, they don't have any, like, audits. You can't tell who's doing what. Like, there's, like, there's just a lot of opakness to the actual system itself. But it, like, because it just, like, asked for forgiveness as opposed to permission, it got an incredible
Starting point is 00:47:14 amount of network effects. And, like, like, it's all throughout the ecosystem now. I wonder if it might be similar with hyperliquivor. Like, they, like, yeah, it's probably not, like, the best way to go about this thing if you're doing it by the book. But, like, they've undoubtedly, like, 75% market share, right? Like, it's crazy. Like, if, if, if they continue to go down that path, does it get to a point where it's just like, all right, we'll ask for forgiveness, pay some dollars, and then we're on our way. I don't know if that's the right comparison. I think they're better comparison because Tether hasn't done anything illegal.
Starting point is 00:47:42 Like, there's nothing wrong about, like, Tether's business. Like, you can call it shady and opaque, but I don't know if there's any pointing of fingers of anything actually illegal being done there. I think the much better comparison for Hyperliquid is Bitmex, which did, like, get in trouble for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. and not K-Y seeing their users and being just like laws a fair about users on their exchange. And they were an absolutely centralized exchange. And like, again, all of the laws that pointed towards BitMex being illegal,
Starting point is 00:48:16 I don't necessarily respect myself. I think those are bad laws that should go away. But those would be the same laws that would be pointed to hyper-liquid. And so I'm not sure that the tether versus hyper-liquid comparison is apt. Yeah, I think it's more just like, Like having a dollar backing every dollar on chain kind of situation. Or like everyone always questions of like, if you're going to be doing this thing, this is how you should be doing it. If they claim that there's someone that has a dollar for every dollar, but they had not done any proof of reserves up to this point.
Starting point is 00:48:42 Like that was always the flood that I had always seen. It's just like, look, they just, like the bot would go off on Twitter or on Twitter where you'd see like, oh, Tether just printed a hundred gillian dollars. And it's just like, did you just get 100? Like, do you actually have that money or what's going on here? $1 trillion printed at the Tether Treasury. Yeah. So, like, you would see that stuff and like, like, is that like illegal? Like, I don't know what their claims are. Like, what I call the regulations. But like, it's the same tactic in my opinion. It's something that's kind of like, okay, like we're starting to get into a territory that's whatever, but it's undoubtedly been good for their network effects. Let's get into the last topic of the week. Pump Fun, planning a $1 billion token sale coming in a $4 billion valuation. So this is a combination of an air drop that I think has been more or less confirmed along with a billion. billion dollars of sales from private investors and then also sales on exchanges to like retail investors. I think at NICO, I'm actually a little bit fuzzy on the mechanism, but this is the news
Starting point is 00:49:39 that went around the, the shot heard around the ecosystem. And then the reactions to this have been mixed. This is obviously very pricey. So the individuals who are able to get in into this pump sale are coming in at a $4 billion valuation. So it's already priced in pretty well. Growth is already pretty priced in. But otherwise, like the exciting thing is a pump. Tump token is confirmed. And then a pump airdrop is like all but confirmed. And so it's a pretty big moment for this ecosystem. And then there are different takes, of course, as you would imagine, some people are pointing at this being bullish. Some people are pointing at this being like, well, this is the end. This is the top. And then also other people are saying like, why do they
Starting point is 00:50:15 need one billion dollars for that, which is a whole other thing? I think the one, one thing of note is, pump is going for a like sitting shoulder to shoulder with some very big web two gargantuanes like Twitch and it's going to try and be like a creator streaming platform that just has a token aside with it as well as more as like presented front and center but it's interesting to see Pump the long term the end game for Pump trying to sit shoulder to shoulder with a streaming platform which is interesting because they're really late leaning into like the creator economy side of things John what's your take when you saw this the immediate reaction for myself which was mostly a counter reaction to what people were on Twitter I saw a lot of the stories at first
Starting point is 00:50:56 were quite a lot of the reactions for us were quite funny saying this is extractive of, oh, they've been extracting for the past year or two and now this is their final. What do they need $1 billion for after they made $700 million in cumulative revenue? Like that was a big reaction. It was just quite funny to me of crypto is the most, you know, we're supposed to be free markets, people in the world. And then they will call it extraction on ironically when you have the most successful consumer app in crypto, which users pay willingly to use, pay them money.
Starting point is 00:51:23 And then they also sell a share in this. profitable protocol openly at a price that like anyone can participate in or not participate in. And that's extractive. So I don't think it's extractive. I understand that obviously a lot of people don't like meme coins. I mean, my view on this has been very consistent for a very long time of, I think people just really over intellectualize the hell out of meme coins. I don't think they're that complicated. They're fun. They're mostly a new form of gambling. Just like be direct about that. That's cool. Casinos are a real market in the real world. I mean, this is effectively, I mean, do inter-netive on-chain casino as it stands right now.
Starting point is 00:51:58 I mean, obviously, also, hopefully this progresses into more real productive assets and stuff like that over time. But meme coins right now and that that has product market fit, love it or hate it. Like, this is a protocol that has had serious product market fit over the last year, has generated a ton of money and, like, actually makes sense. And so just, I mean, like, it's emblematic of that trend that we were talking about before again of, you know, what, what are this? the interesting areas in crypto of, you know, this progression from fat protocol thesis to fat application thesis. Obviously, Solana and Pump are right in the middle of that of that has been the hot chain and this has been the hot application for the past year or so. And where it's, it's similar to hyperliquid where it's running a comparable revenue run rate to hyperliquid
Starting point is 00:52:42 over the past year, like quite consistently again of, I think they generated something like $700 million over the past year, which is ballpark about like half of what Sol has been doing. So, I mean, obviously anyone can do their own, like look at the asset themselves, like everyone free to make their own interpretation. But it's not hard to see why people are like looking at pomp and interested in it as one of the very few incredibly successful applications that we have seen in crypto that has a lot of product market fit right now. And yet, to that point of that, you know, going on and competing against a lot of web two incumbents, you can imagine that's where a lot of capital needs would come from. it is not cheap to go take on, you know, Twitch and finance at the same time. You know, you can go look at what are the top streamer contracts. You can go look them up on money.
Starting point is 00:53:26 Like they're gigantic. And they're very much aggressively going after this blend of this inevitable collision course between social and finance that is like very directly coming. And they are very much right in the center of that. Trying to build out the social and streaming platform really owning the user and then financializing all of that and having the trading infrastructure around that. That's a very big vision. and it's a very expensive vision to build out, which they've done a very good job over the past year.
Starting point is 00:53:51 So it's understandable what they could use the funds for. You guys have $100 to allocate at Pump at $4 billion or hype at $40 billion. How do you allocate that $100? Oh, all into pump. 10x cheaper? All into pump. For sure. I don't think, I think hype can do a 2x or 3X.
Starting point is 00:54:11 Kobe was calling for 150 today. Kobe was what? Called for 150 hype. He's like, I think 120 to 150 makes sense, but I don't know when or how it gets there. Kobe's very long hype. That is a 4X. That's a 4X. And so I think what at Kobe's size, like 4xing is pretty good.
Starting point is 00:54:31 But like pump, if I've only got $100, like I'm throwing it on the smallest market cap thing possible. And $4 billion, that seems fine. And a fresh new chart, you know? John, what would you do? No opinion, no investment advice. Everyone does with a lease with their own money. I think both are great successful applications. Like I understand the investment case that people are making for both of them.
Starting point is 00:54:53 I mean, the very simple thing that you could do is go look at what are the big money makers in crypto over the past year or two. It's these two protocols head and shoulders above everyone else at the application level. It's soul and then maybe it's like Tron. And then you take basically a big leap down at that point. And then you have like Ethereum and Sky and a number of these other protocols that are great. But I mean, even a lot of Solana's revenue came down. stream of pump is because of pump. Yeah, if you look at the correlation, if you look back, I've seen people post charts about this. If you just look at the correlation of pump fee revenue
Starting point is 00:55:25 over time and Seoul RV over time, they're very, very highly correlated, which is unsurprisingly. And so I think that's the interesting comparison to that a lot of people will make is in many ways, obviously Solana is at least at this stage highly reliant upon a lot of speculative trading, a lot of meme coin activity. And in many ways, this is the clear. value expression of, you know, hey, I think that meme coin activity is a real thing. I think that this is a, you know, a actual sustainable application that people like to use. What is the right level to express that view? And Pompon and Solana are obviously the two different layers of that, the application versus
Starting point is 00:56:03 platform layer. I think that's a very interesting comparison that you're going to see a lot of people making. And obviously, you've seen a lot of people speculating also over the past few days, you know, hey, is this why Sol is underperforming lately? If you know, are people taking that view? very literally where are people going to get capital from to put this in. You can imagine a portion of that is going to be people who are selling soul. It's a lot of the same audience.
Starting point is 00:56:24 It's this very fat protocol thesis to fat application thesis trend that we're starting to flee out here where people are getting very interested in the applications that generate a lot of money again. John, Fred, it's been another week. I really appreciate you guys coming on and giving your thoughts. I always learn a lot. Thanks, too. Thanks, thanks a good thing you guys know the deal. Crypto is risky.
Starting point is 00:56:42 You can lose what you put in. But nonetheless, we are here the West. This is Frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

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