On The Brink with Castle Island - Weekly Roundup 08/09/24 (Japan chaos, Ripple settles for $125m, Customers bank) (EP.551)

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode:  What happened with the rate-based turmoil in Japan? VP Harris announces Tim Walz as her VP pick Ripple settles with the SEC for $125m Is Jump quitting crypto? (again) Are Plustoken ETH on the move? Does the Harris reset with crypto have legs? Does Trump's promise to end Choke Point have legs? Adeyemo for treasury secretary? The Fed issues an enforcement action against Customers Bank, one of the most active pro-crypto banks Our Olympics recap Nic's airsoft misadventures Austin Campbell's thread on Customer's bank Sponsor notes: An Update on Crypto Markets & Coinbase Q2 2024 Earnings: In Coin Metrics State of the Network Issue 271, we provide an update on crypto markets amid the unfolding global market sell-off and break down Coinbase's Q2 2024 earnings. Withum's Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology Team specializes in crypto-assets, offering accounting, tax and advisory solutions to fortify trust in a dynamic industry. Contact them today to get started. - withum.com/crypto

Matt Walsh and Nick Carter are partners at Castle Island Ventures. All of these expressed by them or the guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Castle Island Ventures. Guest and hosts may maintain positions in the assets discussed in this podcast. You should not treat any opinion expressed by anyone on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only is an expression of their personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes.

What down by bad mortgage investments, Lehman, which has 25,000 employees will be liquidated. The Federal Government Loans American International Group, AIG, $85 billion. This is a different kind of market and the Fed is asleep. The federal government is stepping it to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants that have been threatened by the housing crisis. The Bank of England has pumped 75 billion pounds more into Britain's ailing economy with a new round of quantitative easing. You print a couple trillion dollars and all of a sudden people start to worry.

So out of this worry, we have something called the Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Welcome to Ron the Brink. I'm Matt Walsh. And I'm Nick Carter. And this episode is brought to you by Witham. If you are a regular listener to this show, you know we are serious about tax accounting and auditing. And so are most of the startups in the digital asset ecosystem.

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I don't know. Has anyone been talking about inflation? Has there? Is there still? I thought it was back to normal. I don't know. I see it in our podcast editing bills. There's a lot of inflation.

I have to address the fact that we had the mother of all bad calls. Was it last week? Yeah. what did we say Jay Powell great job soft landing it is actually comical how bad our timing was after that all hell broke loose although maybe we're back well that's why I'm glad we have these I don't know are we back are we back I don't know

thank you to the listeners of the podcast who didn't waste a beat just telling us how foolish we were with saying that Jay Powell was doing a great job so something broke in Japan and it almost took down the entire planet and do we know what happened I can't I read a lot of threads about it. I'm none the wiser. The Japanese carry trade, you're not an expert in that? The thing that no one in crypto had heard of until last week? I am not an expert. I'm sorry. I will admit it. I've never been to Japan. I barely know

what a carry trade is. How did it, how did Japan almost take down all U.S. financial markets? Do you know? I'm by no means an expert on this, but it seems like Japanese interest rates being what, zero for the longest possible time, there was an incentive to borrow yen and to lever up on other things. So basically take a low interest rate, you know, currency and go do things that could yield higher interest rate and basically clip the middle there is kind of the overly simplified way to describe it, I guess. And Japan announced that they were raising interest rates, which basically made that less of an interesting trade. And in some cases, you had financial firms that were putting tremendous leverage into this trade. So levering up the balance sheet and borrowing money to put on

this trade. And so it seems like some people were caught off sides, although it kind of reversed. And then now the Japanese central bank is signaling that they will be kind of easing back on that interest rate increase. So it seems like things are kind of back to normal. But these market moves, which happened on Sunday and into Monday, it makes you wonder if there's people that, or firms or other, that just blew up as a result of it. Can you put the carry trade thing into football terms? I don't know. Could I put the carriage right into football terms?

Explain, yeah. It's like that scene in the office. Explain this to me like I'm an eight-year-old. And then he's like, actually explain this to me like I'm a five-year-old. Okay, so we can't. No, I can't. The short answer is no, I can't. I don't think that there's a football analogy, not one that I can.

I should have warned you. I should have given you five minutes to think about it. That's okay. Well, Bitcoin is back at 60K. So maybe everything is peachy. Well, I don't know. I'd love to have someone on the podcast at some point that can just do a whole podcast episode

on how the government can actually work with easing. So it seems like there's been some treasury activity in the treasury market. So buying up U.S. treasuries and some liquidity has been injected into the system this week. But maybe we'll do a full podcast episode on balance sheet of the Fed and how that works.

Well, other big items this week, a lot of politics. As always, a lot of politics stuff happening. But before that, should we do the deals? Let's do the deals of the week. First one up is one of our portfolio companies that I think we initially invested in back in 2018 or 2019. Andrina, this is a decentralized wireless company. They raised $18 million in a round that was led by Dragonfly

with CMT, Castle Island, Wintermute Ventures, and others. So congratulations to the Andrina team. Such an interesting story. I mean, really been a fascinating one to follow. You know, Andrina, their first pitch to us was D-Pen before D-Pen even existed. Right. And they built a wireless network and are now self-actualizing and finally doing the D-Pen part. It's been very interesting to track that one as Deepen became a theme over the years. Do you remember their first office that we went to?

It was like a fifth floor walkup in Chinatown in New York with no air conditioning. I do remember. I cannot believe that they actually had investors come into that office. I specifically remember how hot it was. There was barely any furniture in there. I was miserable that day. But I was entranced. I was entranced by the vision.

Yeah. I mean, they had some actual proof of concept in there and they were showing us how it worked. It was pretty awesome. I was sweating bullets. I mean, I run pretty hot as it were. There was like 100 degrees in their office, so they were pitching us. It was crazy.

I think I was in a full suit for some reason. I used to wear a suit back in my younger days. And there was like no furniture in there. No, I think we're sitting on boxes listening. And it was a D-PIN pitch before D-PIN, as you point out. So it was a very futuristic type of thing. You know, being a venture capitalist, it's, you know, sometimes you've,

really got to get in the trenches. You know, there's a physical element to this job. There is. There is. You know, that was a very good example of that. VCs, you know, tip your, tip your local VC. We don't get enough credit. Okay, next one up is Curio, a Web3 game studio. There is 5.7 million from Bain, Capital Crypto, 7X Ventures and OKX Ventures. Then we have cartridge. This is an on-chain gaming environment that raised 7.5 million from BitCraft, fabric ventures, Starkware, and others. Then we have Kalani, a decentralized solvers protocol. There is 2.5 million from Ethereum Ventures, Nacent, and Figment.

Then it's Block Scout. This is a blockchain data exploration tool that raised 3 million from 1KX, primitive, and nosis. Then we have elements, but without any of the vowels. So it's all consonants. They're an on-chain trading platform for commodities. There is 2 million from Graph Ventures and Foundation Capital. Where do you stand on removing vowels from company's names? That seems like a very popular thing.

I think that's kind of a Web 2 era thing, like a mid-2010s, and I don't support it. Next one is Lynx, L-Y-N-C. This is a mobile data-centric layer 2 in the move ecosystem that raised 1.5 million for movement labs, levitate labs, and Smape capital? Smape Capital. Is that a typo, or is there a fun called Smape? I don't know. Could be either, if we're being honest.

We've had some. Shout out to Smape for making the first appearance on the Castle Island podcast, if so. We've had some transitions with our newsletter, and it's honestly, we just don't know if it's a typo or not. Next up is Nexio, Bitcoin Layer 2. There is 2.5 million from Ladis and Wise 3 Ventures. And can't forget Coin Metrics with the Metrics Minute. today's metrics minute we're providing an update on crypto markets amid the recent sell-off over the last week bitcoin dropped 13% while sol and eph decline 16 and 24% respectively although

they have since rebounded somewhat bitcoin recorded 45 billion in daily spot volumes on monday only a billion lower than march when it reached an all-time high bitcoin's futures open interest dropped by 28% indicating a significant reduction in leverage in the market ETH experienced its second largest every day of trading activity with spot volume on trusted exchanges reaching 28 billion. The mid-movement of jump crypto's holdings, ETH deposits on exchanges rose by 360K units, while the ETH-BTC ratio reached its lowest level since April 2021. That's your metrics minute. So what is going on this week?

We talked about the Japan carry trade. You know, to me the most interesting thing about that whole ordeal was as it was unfolding on Sunday, It was really Sunday night that I think most people who were outside of crypto started to see that something was happening. But I think us crypto people saw jumps while it's moving and the crypto market dumping on Sunday morning and realize that something was up here. So is this fud or is it Duff? Duff is inverse Fudd. Is jump out? Oh, Duff? Yeah.

I'm making Duff a thing. Is jump out or not? Because I feel like it's every week people rumor that jump is out. But I don't think they're ever really out. Well, I don't know. I don't think anyone has the answer to that, but it could be a few things. So for those who might not have seen it, Arkham, I believe, had jumps wallets tagged. And we started to see pretty aggressive selling in any number of cryptocurrencies on Sunday morning, which is not something you would expect to see on a illiquid weekend. So if you were trying to get out of a couple billion dollars worth of crypto, you'd want to do that over time and you want to do that during market hours largely. So, you know, what could it be? Could it be? Could it be that Jump had exposure to the Japan carry trade elsewhere in the complex and just wanted to get out in front of the market and go to cash earlier. Could it be that they had to, you know, batten down the hatches a little bit? Could be that. Could it be that they're getting out

of crypto? I mean, obviously they have, they've had a lot of turnover over there. I'd be really surprised if they got out of crypto proprietary trading, though. But could be possible. So speaking of wallet's tagged, there's also a room. that a bunch of ether held by Plus Token, remember them, were on the move this week. So if you don't recall, Plus Token was responsible for, in my opinion, this kind of big run-up and then collapse that we had in 2019, five full years ago. They absorbed a ton of coins, both Bitcoin and Ether through this gigantic Ponzi and then it exploded. They dumped all the coins, and apparently they still have some coins.

But weren't they arrested? Didn't the Chinese government arrest some of the founders of that project? Yeah, I mean, I thought the Plus Token thing was in the past. But the ghost of Plus Token is back to haunt us. Yeah, there had been a lot of good analysis on that. I think Chinalysis had written up a really good step-by-step on what had happened with Plus Token. But it's possible that that would be the Chinese government activating some of the accounts, I guess. As it turns out, there's just, we're haunted by all of these

ancient scams and hacks and all these coins that are held by the state that are then being abruptly sold terrible yeah it's just the wall of supply you know just wait till satoshi comes back and dumps all of his bitcoins for xrp so yeah i don't know i'm not sure if the tagging was correct for plus token but that was something that also spook the market yeah so we had a little bit of a I mean, the equity markets took a nosedive on Monday, but have since recovered. So a lot of geopolitical instability as well out there. So it seems like a tough time to be an equity trader, certainly a tough time to be a crypto trader. Yeah, and then, of course, the headline political news this week,

the Harris campaign has selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walts as the VP candidate. We don't know where he stands on crypto. He also doesn't own any financial assets. at all. He only owns cash, as far as I can tell. Long the dollar. He just loves the dollar. Trust the Fed doesn't see the need to own any investment assets. Interesting. Yeah. So I don't think he's ever said anything about blockchain's digital currency, crypto, very unclear where he stands.

Not a ton of political news as it relates to crypto this week. There was a letter that was sent by Elizabeth Warren and a number of, of others urging the CFTC to shut down online betting markets on politics. So polymarket being the largest one. So I don't know. No surprise. Elizabeth Warren needs to get a letter off every week, right? So there were on the political front, there are a few developments that are indicative. I don't think the Harris reset with crypto has legs. I don't know. Just one man's opinion. There was the rumor that Wally Adyamo is potentially being slated for Treasury Secretary. Adiyamo is a crypto critic. So that certainly doesn't pretend very well.

Treasury Secretary for him, huh? Is that realistic? I don't know. It's just a rumor. But the other development this week, that's also along the lines of the resetter lack thereof was the settlement that Customers Bank entered into

the Fed. Customers is one of the most well-known crypto-focused banks. There's not a lot of them left. And it seems like they're being systematically dismantled all the banks that have touched crypto. So, I thought Austin Campbell had a really good

threat on this that we'll put in the show notes. But look, I think it's just more evidence that Operation Chookpoint is still going. And the rules on BSA-compliance, for banks that are doing anything creative are so stringent that the Fed can just have full discretion in terms of who they go after. And unsurprisingly, they're going after a lot of the crypto banks. Pretty much every single one I'm aware of is facing these kinds of issues.

So not a very promising sign there either. Operation choke point two point is alive. It is thriving. It is employing a lot of people with the federal government. it is uh it is not shut down yeah not at all and you know people keep saying to me oh well you know you know trump said he would end it but how do you know like and on this matter specifically we actually do he does have a track record because brooks was his com you don't say comp troller right you don't say the p and comtroller yeah he was the i just go ahead of the occ so the he was the con troller no p and under trump brooks passed this fair fair access rule which was a great rule which was

specifically designed to end choke point solid behavior so the republicans when they were in power they could have turned around and used the architecture of choke point to go after their own political targets through the banks but they didn't they specifically said there should be no political prohibitions on who the banks serve. There shouldn't be any discretion. The financial regulators should be fair to the banks. They shouldn't influence them. And the bank should be fair to the payment processors and the firms that rely on them. So on this matter, I do think it is a credible promise to end chokepoint. So I do not have any doubts about Trump's honesty on that front. Yeah, Brooks was great. He was only there for a short period of time, but he made some impactful decisions. I think

Anchorage was approved under his. Yeah, the crypto charter and the Fintech charter and the Fair Access Rule. He had a great tenure as a controller. Yeah, he was great. All right. Elsewhere, it seems like several prominent Democrats have come together to form a, is this a Zoom meeting? It's like Democrat crypto people for Harris.

So I don't know. Is that happening today, tomorrow? That's like chickens for KFC or lobsters for Outback Steakhouse. I don't get it. it doesn't make sense. I don't believe at all that there's any credence to this reset. So I don't

understand who these people are what they believe. I think it's the rationale I think for some of these people is to hedge your bets. You know, you better off having Harris be in the middle on

crypto as opposed to what we've dealt with over the past four years. So I get the logic but I don't know. I sort of, I'm of the mind that you want to see a little bit of proof of being for real. Like you don't want to just show me something first here. Are you actually going to undertake it? I get what they're trying to do.

Like if VP Harris is actually in charge of the government right now, we don't really know who's in charge. Let's say she is. Then she could undo a lot of the administration's anti-crypto moves right now. But there's been no change at all. So yeah, we need some. evidence that they want any kind of reset with the industry. We just don't have any evidence of that.

So I don't see why we would be giving them favorable press coverage or giving them any credit whatsoever because we haven't seen anything yet. In more positive news, did you see that there were some interesting developments with micro strategy? I don't think we touched this last week, but they have filed with the SEC that they're going to issue $2 billion more of their own equity. And do you know what they're going to do with that? What's that?

Buy more Bitcoin. Oh, I thought they would invest it in operations and growth. Well, that is growth. That is growth. That's growth. Yeah. So they're not the, it's an offering. That's actually a chunky amount.

And there now are other firms that are doing the micro strategy playbook, right? Yeah. So there's a firm in Japan called Metaplanet. I don't know anything about their operating business, if they have one or not. but they just got a small loan this week, $6.8 million to buy Bitcoin directly. So it's kind of one of these micro strategy playbooks, but in the Japanese market. You think that'll be a thing where you have these local markets where you have micro strategy playbook run?

Well, the trick is to buy low and maybe sell high, but certainly buy low. And to microstrategy's credit, they did do that. They started buying, I think, in the 16K range, March 2020. or summer 2020, so don't forget that part. Yeah, buy low and don't get over a lever, I think is the thing, right? Some of the firms, I mean, it's just, I don't know, maybe the opportunity to buy low has been lost. Well, maybe not. Maybe not.

Maybe not. In other news, big settlement here. So a court has ordered Ripple to pay a $125 million settlement in civil penalties stemming from the 2020 SEC lawsuit, man, that feels like a long time ago against the company around issuing an unregistered security and secondary sales and blah, blah, blah. So the SEC had been demanding a $2 billion judgment against Ripple. So from that perspective, I think this is a huge win. I don't know.

Have you seen a lot of analysis on what this actually means for Ripple going forward? It seems like a big win, but I don't know if there's any strings attached. Yeah, I mean, it seems like they basically cleared the air with the SEC. I think that's the end of it for them. And it seems like a big fine, of course, on a headline basis. But the grand scheme, you know, they vastly negotiated down the size of the penalty. And, you know, if you think about Ripple, like, I would say they did a lot of things wrong with the way they marketed XRP. and if the SEC can't win a resounding victory against them,

can they do it against anyone? So I do see this as a win for the crypto space, frankly. I mean, Ripple had to spend so much money to defend themselves. And in a lot of ways, it was great for the industry, I think. I think they've really forced the SEC's hand and taken this battle to the courts. But you wonder what this does for XRP, the token going forward. I don't know why CME wouldn't list a futures.

contract on this now. I mean, it's sort of clearly not a security at this point, right? I mean, there's, you know, there's still the matter of any utility for the XRP token. I mean, you know, what's it for? Like, especially as Ripple has basically abandoned this concept of XRP being a bridge currency, they're now getting into stable coins. I think stable coins disproved the notion that people would use XRP as a bridge currency. So fundamentally, they need to find a use for it. But legally seems like they're in the clear. Yeah, I don't think any of that matters for, obviously like the software is being used in production.

And I don't think that the utility of the thing actually matters when it comes to approving an ETF. I mean, you could make pro and con arguments about the utility of Bitcoin and ETH. And there's ETFs for those. They're just, they're not securities. They got CME contracts. And I don't see any reason why a derivatives exchange in the U.S. wouldn't add XRP at this point.

yeah it is i i suppose you know we're not like big xrp fans on this show but it is refreshing to see a crypto company make it through to the end of litigation with the cc and emerge out the other side basically alive and intact and that's one of the first times we've seen that so really credit to them yeah the only part of the reason why we've historically been down on xrp is that they're something what are they they they're giving money to green peace and trying to get politicians to shut down Bitcoin mining over the years. They've done some stuff that's pretty hostile, but what's the enemy of my enemy is my friend sometimes?

Yeah, we're all on this together now, I guess. But yeah, maybe they could drop the environmentalist critiques on Bitcoin. That'd be nice. But yeah, it's a big tent over here in the blockchain and crypto industry, you know. So elsewhere in SEC News, we talked about Nader Al-Nodji, the founder of BitClout, formerly known as diamond hands. He has now abandoned that moniker. He posted a video under his own name on X, I guess, is what we call it now. And he didn't really address the allegations against him, the embezzlement

or the fraud allegations. He basically just said that DeSoe is the best protocol ever, and it's going to save the internet. Oh, I didn't watch this. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's good. Well, I wasn't very impressed with it, to be honest with you. He didn't address. the notion that he may have embezzled funds raised and siphoned them to his family. He just said the D-So is great. Honestly, it sounded like he wrote the script with chat GPD. Well, maybe he's looking at Sam Bankman-Fried's trail of press interviews after he was charged where he just dug himself a grave and maybe he's saying to himself, I'm smarter than that.

Yeah, to his credit, he's been pretty terse with his communications, which I think is the way to do it. So, we'll see how much. Not much you can say. Yeah. I mean, to me that looks like there's a disgruntled investor, maybe that felt they've been defrauded and actually tipped off the SEC and the SD&Y. That's my guess. There's a, yeah, it would seem that there was a $3 million investor that was pretty central to the charging documents.

So my view is they still have them dead to rights. so we'll see. My view is let's wait for the courts to figure it up. Yep. Elsewhere, there was a $12.7 billion settlement approved by U.S. judge between the CFTC, FTX, and Alameda research. Yeah, interesting. So FTX and Alameda are now required to pay that $8.7 billion in restitution to customers

who have suffered losses plus an additional. $4 billion in disgorgement. So, I mean, these are U.S. dollars. So there is a lot of money moving back over the next few months to FTCS customers here. So you've got $8.7 billion of FTCS moving. You've got $2 billion of micro strategy shares that are, you know, that's going to be $2 billion U.S. dollars to go buy Bitcoin. You've got some interesting dynamics here just from a flow's perspective in this market.

Yeah. is duff. I think this is tough. Yeah. Inverse Fudd. It's not Fudd. Yeah. Yeah. This is good. Yeah. Yeah. Have you been watching the Olympics? I haven't been watching as much as I would have liked, but I did see the 1500. What a race, huh? Was that guy's name that one, the U.S. guy?

So Cole Hawker won the men's 1500. This was the craziest story ever. In fact, watching the athletics and the Olympics, I don't know, I guess I wasn't paying enough attention in previous years. Is the U.S. always this good? It's, we're particularly good this year. Because we've been absolutely crushing it. As I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, I disavow the United Kingdom. I disavow. And I'm so proud of the U.S.

It's amazing. I love being American. We keep winning. It's a great showing. And, you know, usually, I guess Russia is not competing. some people saying, hey, well, Russia's not in it, but I think we'd still be crushing it. So, oh, that's a good point. Yeah, I guess Russia did used to win. So the men's 1500, that's a hard race. They're all hard. I think this one's extra hard. There was this huge rivalry between the British guy,

Josh Kerr, and this Norwegian, very strange Norwegian guy, Jacob Ingen Britson, who was something of a phenomenon in the 1500. All of the coverage leading up to the race was about these two guys. And it was understood that they would be gold and silver in some order. And then in the race, Ingen Britson just faded in the last lap. And shockingly, the American Cole Hawker just came back from behind and took gold. It was incredible. Very, very unexpected. Huge underdog.

Unbelievable race. Unbelievable. I used to spend an in order of an amount of time before social networking back when I was in high school and just reading track and field message boards. So I couldn't tell you any of these people now, but I used to be on top of this stuff.

Yeah, I think if you're a track and field fan, you'd just blown away by the performance of the athletics. You also had the 400 meter final, which was also shocking. The US one, Quincy Hall. He was wildly behind in the last 100 meters and he just found another gear

and you could see him grimacing. You could see his form looked off. He was taking super long strides. He's a track athlete, you know, like he didn't look smooth. No, exactly. But he found this gear and he took gold in that last 100 meters.

I mean, it was just incredible. And then we had a U.S. person took bronze in the 10K, right? And that was the first time someone from the United States has meddled, I think, in 40 years in the 10K. Yeah, we're not really good in the sort of like middle and longer distances. I actually had to pause a Zoom call we were on before this for the men's 200, which was also shocking in the other direction because no, this episode comes out Friday,

so I feel like I can spoil it. Noah Liles was the heavy favorite in the 200. He took gold in the 100. The 200 was meant to be his best race. And he did terribly. He got bronze. Well, he's at least taken home the gold in the 100, right? Photo finish.

Yeah. But people were hoping he would go for the double, which I was looking at this. Usain Bolt won gold in the 100 and the 200 in three consecutive Olympics. That's crazy. Like just generational talent. And no one's coming close to his world record times now.

Yeah, it's kind of like watching the swimming now that Phelps is not in it, it's just boring. I used to just like Phelps crushing everyone. Yeah, I mean, I actually saw Yusain Bolt at an Inter Miami match the other day, and he was looking rather portly, I'll tell you that. Really? Yeah. Huh.

Surprising. He, man, he just dominated in his day. Now, he was incredible. So, yeah, Olympics has been a good little distraction here from the Japanese carry trade. Yeah, I figured out how to watch it as it turns out you had to buy a peacock subscription. So I did figure it. Someone DM'd me that. So thank you.

And the athletics in particular has been incredible. I mean, there's been other good stuff, the swimming, the gymnastics. But yeah, I know people are mad at the Olympics because of the opening ceremony and it's like satanic and things like that. But I don't know. Feels great. It's really bringing us together. Is calling it athletics instead of track and field a European thing? That's what they call it.

It's track and field. I don't know. That's what they officially call it. Yeah. But yeah, I didn't subscribe to the Peacock thing, although I think I had that at one point. Wasn't there a football game on in the middle of last year that you could only watch on the app or something?

I had that for one night. Yeah, I mean, the streaming situation is so horribly fragmented. I feel like just like good old cable was so much better. Yeah. You need like 15 different streaming services. terrible situation. Speaking of, we're on a wild non-cryptot tangent now, but did you see presumed innocent? I know.

I don't know what that is. New show with Jake Gyllenhaal on Apple TV. Really good. See, that's the problem. I don't have Apple TV. Yeah, you got to get it. We need to re-bundle. We unbundled, and now we desperately need to re-bundle.

It's like every corporate restructuring. Every three years you decentralize, and then three years later you re-centralize. everything. Yeah. Okay, I have another tangent for you, which is, have you ever played Airsoft before? No, I don't know what that is. Okay, so it's like paintball, but it's much more painful, and you're shooting old plastic pellets and it's gas-powered rifles, basically. Okay. So I went with the guys in my boxing gym, and one of them brought all of his eight-year-old cousins, and at the moment I walked in, I knew that I was cooked, because, You just got lit up by a bunch of eight-year-olds.

These eight-year-olds were wearing full tactical gear. They looked like they were about to deploy to Fallujah. And they had scopes and lasers on their little airsoft rifles. They were wearing the camo gear. Some of them had military helmets on. Oh, you don't want any part of that. I showed up in jeans and a hoodie, and I got one of the default rifles, and I got completely lit up.

Oh, that sounds awful. Yeah. And you know, the rule is when you're shot, you like surrender and you like raise your hands. You get to walk back to your spawning station. And they wouldn't let me surrender. They would keep shooting me. They were just, oh man. Sounds embarrassing.

Like it was okay because I'm like a grown up or whatever. It was totally not okay. I told them if they did that, we would be fighting for real. So I got shot a lot. and I have these horrible waltz all over my body now because of it. Like it broke the skin. That's tough. Get in there on the warpcast if you've ever done this activity, which is what's it called

Airsoft? Airsoft. Yeah. Never heard of it. It was fun, but I felt like it was like 5% of being in an actual military engagement. I could hear the bullets whistling over my head. It was honestly terrifying. Yeah, that sounds terrible.

I don't think you want to do that. So yeah. And if you go into Airsoft and you, you see these kids with the custom gear, just leave, is my advice, immediately leave. I could have told you that at the outset. Yeah, if you see someone coming in with a full kit like that, I mean, you don't want that.

So anything else happening in crypto this week? I think that's it. It's been a pretty slow week. You're kind of a light week on the politics side, relatively late week in the deal side, but what you'd expect in the second week of August. Yeah, VP Harris is officially leading in the polymarket, which is my North Star here.

So she has inched ahead of Trump here. So if you work in crypto, start working on that second passport is my advice. On that optimistic note, we will see you on Monday. Have a safe and healthy weekend.