The Pomp Podcast - #1478 Will Clemente | Is The Bitcoin Bull Run Over?

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Will Clemente is the co-founder of Reflexivity Research. In this conversation we talk about bitcoin, on-chain data, ETF’s, MicroStrategy, AI coins, meme coins, and some of the lessons Will has learned over the years.  ======================= Ledger has been trusted for 10 years to secure 20% of the world’s digital assets. Their latest devices, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex, feature secure touchscreens for safer, easier crypto management.Go to ledgerpomp.com to take control of your digital future ======================= Meanwhile is the world’s first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Protect your loved ones with sound money built to manage life’s uncertainty and a broken financial system. Their BTC-denominated Whole Life Insurance policies allow HODLers to pass more BTC on to their loved ones and a tax-advantaged way to access BTC for liquidity during their lifetime. Visit their website at https://meanwhile.bm/ to join the waitlist for a policy and to learn more. ======================= This episode is brought to you by Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR), a global leader in Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing for AI. Led by a seasoned management team, Bitdeer is driving innovation with its proprietary SEALMINER ASICs for Bitcoin mining and has a massive 2.5 GW power portfolio across three continents. Learn more about Bitdeer at www.bitdeer.com ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a great episode with Will Clemente, the co-founder of Reflexivity Research. In this conversation, we talk about what's going on with Bitcoin,

why he isn't such a big believer in on-chain data for trading anymore, and what's going on with the ETFs and microstrategy. Then we get into things like AI coins and meme coins. What is their place in the market? Are they sustainable and resilient, or are they simply passing fads that people are just gambling on? And then we also get into some of the best ideas that Will has right now and some of the mistakes he thinks he's made over the last couple of years in crypto. This conversation is incredibly interesting and it's got lots of unique insights. So listen to the whole thing

and let us know what you think. Here's my latest conversation with Will Clemente. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement

to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Today's episode is brought to you by Ledger. They're celebrating 10 years as the most trusted name in crypto security. With over 7 million users and 20% of the world's digital assets secured, Ledger continues to lead the way in protecting your crypto and digital ownership.

Their latest devices, Ledger Stacks and Ledger Flex, feature the world's first secure touchscreens, making managing your assets easier and safer than ever. Plus, the new Ledger Security Key app offers a secure alternative to traditional passwords, enhancing your digital security. Go to ledgerpomp.com to take control of your digital future. That's ledgerpomp.com. L-E-D-G-E-R pomp.com. Today's episode is brought to you by Meanwhile. Meanwhile is the world's first licensed and regulated life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Operating on the Bitcoin standard, they do everything in Bitcoin. You pay in Bitcoin.

They pay claims to your family in Bitcoin. You take out policy loans entirely in Bitcoin when you need liquidity. Meanwhile, Bitcoin life insurance has redefined what it means to hodl. Protect your family from life's uncertainty and a broken financial system. Build intergenerational Bitcoin wealth while the cost of living skyrockets in dollar terms. Get all the tax and legal benefits of life insurance now in Bitcoin. They are actively binding policies today. Whether you are a long-term Bitcoiner or are just considering it for the first time, a Bitcoin whole life policy could make sense for your wealth plan. Visit their website, meanwhile.bm, to join the waitlist and to learn more about the world's first Bitcoin life insurer. Again, that's meanwhile.bm. Go check

them out today. Today's episode is brought to you by NASDAQ-listed Bitdeer. They trade under the stock ticker BTDR. They're led by a seasoned management team. Bitdeer is a global leader in Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing for artificial intelligence, and they are backed by technological innovation and a massive 2.5 gigawatt global power portfolio recently bitdeer launched its own bitcoin mining asics named the seal miner to target what wall street analysts project to be a multi-billion dollar annual market their proprietary seal miner asics are redefining efficiency and performance and they are backed by the industry's most advanced chip roadmap with two more groundbreaking models set to launch in 2025 to learn more about bitdeer's

cutting edge technology and business, visit their website at bitdeer.com. That's B-I-T-D-E-E-R.com. Go check out Bitdeer today. All right. Well, I thought a great place to start the conversation is you are the wizard of on-chain data. Huge part of your contribution, I think, to the Bitcoin space was all this on-chain data. But things like the ETF, things like MicroStrategy, there's a lot of Bitcoin that's being bought, not necessarily showing up on-chain. How do you think that on chain data has evolved over the last couple of years? And how do you look at these kind of net new buyers of micro strategy, the ETFs playing into their effect on bitcoins price?

Yeah, it was what's going on, Anthony, nice to be back on the pod, like the old days. Um, yeah, I definitely think people initially knew me for some of this on chain data stuff where, you know, kind of look at the blockchain and analyze, you know different flows uh based on different variables um i think at this point the flows kind of to your point are uh so obstructed it's hard to really find any signal on that stuff um i want to say i like disavowed on chain but like i've very much stepped back from using it uh you know during the last bear market um especially towards the back end of 2022 into

the beginning of 2023 um the etfs just amplified a lot of the reasoning behind why um you know i think some of the stuff is still useful just to understand you know is is the bitcoin blockchain still working right so we can look at like asherate or active addresses um you know things like this just to block height just to give you sanity that bitcoin is still working um i think there's a couple things around like the cost basis of the network which is kind of useful but you know tracking like quote-unquote whale flows or um just looking at a lot of the stuff profitability metrics um obviously the market's bigger than just uh you know the etfs um but you know even you know things like cme there's you know just as much open interest on cme as as

binance and just in general i'd say a lot of the uh tooling for data and following flows that used to be super super transparent uh you know you could even even as you know recently as two and a half years ago i mean you could literally just see all of the derivatives positioning completely transparently in real time uh as well as on chain like all the spot flows now all that stuff is is uh you know very much obscured away uh with with the entrance of tradfi and you know as that gets more integrated into you know some of these kind of traditional venues that we're seeing so i don't even have an on-chain data subscription i haven't for i think like over a year now i just i just don't find that stuff extremely useful to be completely candid anymore what is your kind of

takeaway or a year after the etfs got approved obviously they had a major impact in the market But a year later, how do you look at, you know, what they were able to accomplish and then also what their role will be moving forward? Yeah, I think the ETFs unlocked a new wave of market participants that can trade and invest in Bitcoin for the first time. um you know i i don't know if we've seen sizable allocation yet from you know some of these very large buyers that you know are going to be needed to move bitcoin to you know 150 200k plus like sovereign wealth funds and large pension funds etc um but i think you know for some of the boomers that maybe liked bitcoin but you know didn't feel comfortable holding it on some crypto native exchange after ftx or they didn't want to hold their own private keys or they can't for fiduciary

reasons um the etfs uh you know kind of unlock the ability for them to allocate um i also think uh the etfs from like a qualitative point of view uh kind of de-risk bitcoin from like a career risk perspective so you know when larry fink's going on tv and shilling bitcoin um you know you're probably not going to get fired if you know you hold bitcoin as you know a three to five percent allocation, and it goes down 25%, like maybe you would have in the past. So I think those are kind of two underlying factors that have been a net positive for Bitcoin coming from the ETF. Recently, I believe, Grayscale or BlackRock filed, maybe both of them, filed for the in-kind redemptions on the ETF, which is good. So it basically allows people

to redeem the underlying bitcoin whereas before it was cash so you know if you wanted to redeem bitcoin and then move it you know wherever you wanted to for whatever reason you know you'd basically have to redeem in cash and then like rebuy uh and then obviously you have you know some some taxable events there um so you know now once we'll have the which i think that was like really stupid that they had it that way from the beginning it's just kind of a gary gensler thing um but i think now that you have the in-kind redemptions that's also going to be a net positive as well. Let's talk about MicroStrategy, which I think is the second big development over the last four or five years. They obviously have been buying very aggressively in the market.

They now hold over 470,000 Bitcoin. But we've also seen a number of copycat strategies. You've got MetaPlanet, Similar Scientific, a number of other businesses. How do you look at this net new buyer of corporate publicly traded companies being introduced to the market? Yeah, for sure. I think the expert on this for anybody listening is go check out all the stuff that our friend Dylan has put out. He's the head of Bitcoin strategy at Metaplanets. Obviously, he's been super deep in the weeds. I don't understand this stuff remotely or I've kind of looked into it remotely as much detail as he has. But at a very high level, you know, micro strategy is basically putting on a speculative attack on the dollar. Excuse me. You know, so basically, they're able to kind of leverage the ability to tap into, you know, the debt market. And, you know, they're basically able to, you know, take out, you know, relatively healthy leverage to purchase BTC and kind of harness the volatility within within MicroStrategy stock and some of the options pricing stuff that gets baked into that and ultimately kind of generate this Bitcoin native yield, which Taylor has done a great job of memeing for MicroStrategy, which basically just means that although you're getting diluted

and outright value in a traditional sense in terms of looking at just the number of shares outstanding, the Bitcoin per share is going up over time. And, you know, I would say the majority of people that are holding MicroStrategy, you know, on a directional stock picking basis are bullish on Bitcoin, of course, now integrated into the NASDAQ. So it should benefit from passive flows. But that's kind of the super high level of, you know, why MicroStrategy has been interesting. You saw it blew out tremendously relative to the NAV. You had some of the microstrategy people basically saying, you know, this is justified because you shouldn't just look at microstrategy relative to the NAV.

You know, it's this kind of underlying, you know, financial engineering. And that's the business as it's, you know, generates, you know, more Bitcoin per share. And it's a Bitcoin treasury company. You know, the reality is always somewhere in the middle. But we have seen microstrategy obviously, you know, cracked a bit over the last month and a half after that crazy rally that it had. You know, I think the way that we at Reflexivity Research, Anthony and I's previously owned company that got acquired last year, at the end of 2022, for the listeners, we put out a report on basically the breakdown of MicroStrategy in collaboration with BlockWorks, and basically said that Saylor was unlikely to get liquidated. um the only stuff he could technically get liquidated on was the silver gate loan

uh just because of the way that the debt was structured and sailor actually made out like abandoned on that because all the silver gate stuff happened and i believe they ended up getting back more uh more btc than than they would have otherwise so um you know i don't think that you have any immediate turn uh concerns in terms of micro strategy even if bitcoin went down you 50% from here. So it's a very interesting, I think, play in the public market. And especially now that it's included into the NASDAQ and getting passive flows, that's interesting for MicroStrategy as well as for Bitcoin, because then in theory, you start to have these kind of, at least on a very, very small scale, passive flows that come into Bitcoin over a multi-year

period, that can be interesting. One of the things that I see people talking about, obviously, the public market, we've seen a lot of corrections there. Whenever Bitcoin goes down, those public market companies go down. But what we have also seen in more crypto land is a ton of people pointing to the market caps of these coins. So they'll say, hey, it's a $2 billion market cap. But then the fully diluted value may be like $8 billion. And there's this really, really big overhang of kind of unissued tokens or tokens that are going through a vesting process, but haven't yet hit the market. It seems like throughout 2025 and into 2026, a lot of those tokens will become unencumbered and people will be able to hold them or sell them, do whatever

they want. How do you look at those dynamics of the market? And are there certain frameworks you use to evaluate uh kind of different projects or coins yeah this is like a really important thing for people to understand that are looking to trade this stuff you know first of all you know i'm very much like there's bitcoin and crypto guy and the crypto stuff is for speculating um listen there's too many tokens like we've got millions of tokens now in 2021 there weren't nearly as many tokens in 2017 there were like a few thousand so you know you just we talked about this in podcasts that we did at like the beginning of 2023 like they're even back then but this is even more so the case now especially with pump fun and all the meme coin stuff and the barrier to launching a token now

there were just way too many tokens going online you know even in again in 23 i mean you were looking at hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars with tokens that had to unlock and you know you got to ask yourself where's this money going to come from even if even if half or even if 25 of that supply is is you know sold shortly after the unlocks there's just not enough money coming into this space to absorb all that and so you know now at this point it's billions of dollars of of unlocks uh and then meanwhile you know you've got meme coins that have such a low barrier to launching, you know, you can spin one up in 30 to 45 seconds, you know, so you just go and pump fun and, you know, you can just toss in an image and you toss

in the symbol for the token that you want to do and you're off to the races. So, you know, what we've seen is just this hyper rotational kind of PVP market experience over the last two years where you, you know, seeing these really, really aggressive rotations from sector to sector and you know these very short kind of flash in the pan moments um you know specifically for the memes but also from from a sectoral perspective or thematic perspective within some of these on-chain games that are being played um so in general you know i i i feel like what does all that mean right what does all that rambling mean it means that there's going to be more dispersion in the market because you just can't have all these things go up like and in

2017 for sure even though i was in background around back then um you can just look at the price history of tokens back then um and in 2021 i mean everything went up you know you had stuff going to 10 20 billion dollars with no usage at all um and that was just because people wanted to buy crypto and people just came in and just bought whatever you know and that that just is not going to get rewarded by the market anymore you know the the market participants are too sophisticated now um and again there's just too much token supply so i think you know kind of you know you can't just spray and pray with with these altcoins anymore you've got to pick you know a sector or you know something um you know that actually makes money um or you know

something that's got a path to getting some significant adoption or you know has a strong narrative and these types of things so you know you've got all these all these tokens that are competing for this very scarce pool of capital and attention and so that just again leads to to more dispersion and so you know i think you've got to you got to think very deeply if you're going to play you know kind of the all coin games of you know what what you know what's going to be the next hot narrative in the next month and trying to think about you know second third order effects of things or you know what's what's profitable um you know one i don't want to uh start you know showing individual tickers and i don't have a position in this but

you know one thing that uh has held up i would say pretty well over the last couple weeks especially as um you know a lot of these on-chain coins got whacked was hyper liquid because um you know they're basically an on-chain dex that's also been kind of um positioning themselves as an l1 as well but they're very profitable um you know it's very simple you kind of are owning the casino and so um you know things that are actually making money it seems like you're you're seeing kind of a uh um a rotation capital you know back to kind of those things um i think it's the the memes and and the on the on-chain stuff is in a very tough spot um because i think the trump coin pulled forward a lot of uh a lot of the demand for these things you know trump went from nothing to 70 to 80

billion dollar market cap in 14 to 16 hours, which is the craziest thing I've ever seen in crypto, hands down. And for anybody that was paying attention the night that the token launched, I mean, it was just immediately everything nuked 25% to 30% on-chain and then continued to bleed out and has still been bleeding out. And the reason is, again, there's only so much liquidity on chain and there's only so much attention and so trump just kind of came in and just basically just like mobbed the whole market like he just kind of dropped his nuts on the table and everybody was like i have to buy trump coin you know this is like the greatest you know the greatest kol that you could possibly have for a coin in the history of mankind there's no bigger

name than trump so you just saw people sell everything that they could that night and put into trump um and it kind of pulled the veil back i think on how liquid a lot of this stuff is especially across the board um and i think it also pulled forward a lot of demand i mean you could have put millions of dollars into this thing we could have put 10 20 million dollars in the trump coin below 10 billion um and you know hit a hit a five to seven x it almost almost overnight um And so I think that, you know, pulled forward a lot of the demand for memes and, you know, kind of showed that maybe normies aren't going to come in and buy, you know, all of these crypto native memes and they're just going to buy, you know, things that resonate with them. And, you know, Trump obviously is the hottest name that there possibly could be. And you saw it just completely sucked the liquidity out of everything.

and then shortly after you know obviously bitcoin's kind of rolled over and then you know you had you have the deep seek stuff which maybe we can touch on uh and obviously the nasdaq's had a pretty brutal day we're recording this on on monday the the 27th you know down almost three and a half percent so you kind of had this like one two punch for a lot of these on-chain coins where trump kind of sucked the liquidity out of everything you know made everything very weak um the books were super thin and then you know bitcoin rolled over was super weak um you know you saw like poor reaction to a lot of the news headlines recently and you know i kind of called that stuff out on twitter of like you know this is a little concerning like you had

uh yeah i'm not saying that i called the top i was saying there's there's been some concerns you know recently for sure like you know you have the doge etf uh you know filing from bitwise It went up a couple percent, instantly got whacked back down. You had the Solana and XRP futures filings. They popped a little bit immediately, came back down. The market was propped up, waiting for this Bitcoin strategic reserve headline coming from Trump. Then we got left with this committee that's planning to put together a stockpile of different

assets, and it's not very clear. and so uh you know we saw a short pop on that you know bitcoin traded above like 100 607k or something and then immediately that whacked back down so you know usually when usually when uh you know you see the market reacting poorly to good news that's that's a signal in the same way the market reacting positively to bad news is a signal um so again i'm not saying that i like short at the top and sold everything like within a day at the top but there's definitely you know been vocal about this on twitter there's been a lot of signals of concern and froth um you know i have no idea i mean this is probably the worst read i felt like i've had on the market and you

know my four or five years in the space at the moment but you know if we go down to much lower prices from here like 80 85k which again would be like a normal bitcoin full market correction like the signs are the signs would definitely be there in retrospect so you know i don't think now is is like the time to pile on risk, especially into some of these like far tail assets at the moment. How do you look at the meme coins in terms of their place in the market? You know, obviously there's brands, but is this kind of, hey, these things are all going to be interesting. People are going to speculate and gamble on them. And then after this cycle, we'll be done with them. Or is there something more happening here other than kind of gambling?

We recorded a podcast last year. This might've been the last podcast that we did together. um but basically we broke down the meme stuff and kind of talked through everything i think the reason why memes did very well well there's a couple reasons uh to like distill it down into a few short ones i think you know from a super high level and not to like over intellectualize it but you've got this massive wealth inequality in the us a lot of that is driven by kind of the the moral hazard that was introduced after 2008, rich people that own assets, and that's especially become the case after, you know, asset performance has got super concentrated within indices, rich people that own a select pool of assets, have outperformed everybody that doesn't own assets.

And, you know, at the same time, those assets are becoming obviously less attainable as they're going up in price, and people that don't own assets. So you've got increasing wealth inequality, And there's other reasons, you know, around monetary debasement, why that's also the case. And then, you know, meanwhile, you've got, you know, the trend of, you know, everybody uses the Internet now. That's not like obviously a non-consensus thing to say everybody on the planet uses the Internet in like a developed country. And meanwhile, you've got kind of this trend as a, you know, extension of that. I think people across the world are just addicted to dopamine. I'll throw myself in there, too.

You know, I'm a victim to it. um every you know between social media the ease of access to everything um you could think of on the internet and part of that is obviously gambling um sports gambling is incredibly popular i'm 22 i mean almost everybody that i know that's not in crypto my age does some amount of betting on sports um you know obviously a lot of these major uh you know sports organizations have been working to actively integrate, uh, sports betting into kind of the broadcasting experience and watching games. So, I mean, it's just, you're hype, you know, hyper gamifying all these things and, um, you know, encouraging people to speculate on them. So, you know, when, when people discover

crypto, excuse me, specifically meme coins, I think that satisfies the demand for people to want to speculate. They want to gamble. They want the dopamine hit. Um, and, you know, I think if go back to last year murad you know eventually put together this really really you know uh well put together uh thesis on meme coins at token 2049 which um there's like 10 000 likes i think most people in crypto have seen it there's all these tech altcoins which to go back to the original point that we were talking about after the first question like in in 21 all these people got hurt investing in altcoins because there were these hidden unlocks but then that became very widely that information became widely known and you know now that's not really edge anymore of like gcr

very famously short at the end of 2021 because he knew all these altcoins were gonna uh unlock and there's a ton of supply nobody was there to buy it but like that wasn't like super widely known information over the last two years everybody i mean you could just there's like literal data providers that specifically are showing all the token unlocks so i think you know the meme coins were kind of a pushback against that as well as there was kind of uh just this general idea that like there's no value accrual to any of these tokens which largely is true for being completely candid right a lot of these things are just straight up speculative vehicles with maybe a promise of generating some amount of you know profit in the future um or some amount of you

know real cash flow in the future um and so meme coins kind of filled the gap of there being a lack of any type of uh um technology that people could actually get excited about like the space was and still is but was extremely jaded last year um and you know there's basically this idea that okay well like none of this is worth anything none of this is generating any value there's bitcoin and all this other stuff which is straight speculation why not take that all the way to the stream and just buy memes um which i think was a very rational thought process but i would say now it's a little different because obviously now you have this pro crypto administration that's come in with with trump and david sacks now heading you know the ai and and crypto stuff

um you know obviously gary gensler's out um you know we already saw a change around the the um sab role which allows banks to custody bitcoin and unlocks a ton of products for people to use bitcoin and i also think you know there's a 80 to 90 chance in my eyes that we're going to see some type of new we'll see how you know bullish it is for the space but we're going to see some type of new regulatory framework for this stuff come in in the next you know couple years if not the next year or so. And so now I think that kind of changes the argument a little bit because some of these tokens, especially DeFi, which had gotten beat down so badly at the end of 2022, things like Aave and Lido. Aave has been one of the best performers over

the last month and a half, not only because Trump partnered with Aave and his DeFi protocol that he's launching but um you know now you've got somewhat of a clear path to saying these things might be able to return revenue to the token holders you know stuff like ave or uniswap are making money um you know ave is the leading borrowing lending protocol on eth uh held up through all the credit contagion of 22 uniswap is you know very widely used for for token swaps um they make money but they haven't been able to return it to the token holder so all this to say um i think because of the pro crypto administration that's coming in the argument that none of these things accrue any value that's no longer true and so the kind of

void that meme coins were filling it's now a little more nuanced than that so i think some of the leading meme coins that have somewhat of like a lindy effect i think could continue to do okay um you know especially because if you're coming in looking to buy memes With $5 or $10 million, there's a very select number of assets that you would feel comfortable coming in and buying. These are things that probably have a long history of longer price history, at least six or 12 months of price history, have some amount of Lindy, maybe have gone through at least one or two significant drawdowns to kind of test the holder base, that type of

thing. I think it's going to be very difficult for brand new meme coins to come in and have any staying power. um you know a lot of them will probably do these like short run-ups and kind of burj khalifa back down as we like to call it you know look at like mudang or chill guy or any of these uh recent memes that kind of were a flash in the pan of like some you know social online trend that got really hot you know these things run for a week or two and then you know the narrative's dead and and that's it so that's kind of my thoughts on memes is like the the big established ones um for a

of reasons that we just laid out um those can probably do okay like i don't think i'm not saying that i don't think memes will do well um but i i don't you know i don't think we're going to have as wide of a casted just general meme coin frenzy like we did um at the end of 23 or throughout the beginning first half of last year and i think now because of the regulatory framework shift you know some of these d5 assets that were some of the least attractive assets last year are now um you know some of the some of the most attractive assets to to think about um i guess i'll pause there but i'll say like um the only thing that's tough is they have as silly as this sounds they they have kind of bounds of valuation that they are tied to so you know part of why a

meme coin can run so hard or an l1 can run so hard is there's no valuation that these things are tied to right i mean you can't really say you can look at like fees and things like that but um you know it's very straightforward with the d5 protocol you say okay well like how much revenue is it generating um you know how much money are they making from that revenue um you know what's the rate in which that's growing and then you can put some type of you know traditional like cash flow model on that and value it and so you know maybe it can trade at a pretty absurd you know multiple because it's crypto like 50 or 70x like some of these things are trading at but like it's you know they're not going to trade it 300 times right so i think to some extent um these things are

capped a little bit um from like a speculative like premium perspective whereas something like a something like a meme coin or you know bitcoin um are not capped by anything like that because they don't they don't have cash flows how do you think about these ai coins you know um it seems like some of them are meme coins in disguise and then it seems like some of them are uh tied to whether it's open source projects or you know kind of more concrete things so how are you evaluating that space yeah i i've been pretty publicly like interested in these ai coins over the last two or three months um they've gotten whacked with the rest of the market over the last week and a half for sure i mean partially because of the you know trump liquidity stuff and then bitcoin kind of

that one-two punch that I talked about for a lot of these on-chain coins. And then now on top of that, you know, the NASDAQ rolling over. So like these, these things are obviously not immune like anything else. You know, I think they've been holding up better than some of the memes, but my, my kind of thought process with the AI coins is I think they're the market they're going to be the markets kind of desired sector for risk-taking. And again, when Bitcoin goes down, I mean,

things are going to get destroyed but um you know i i think they're interesting because you know there's like kind of the bell curve mean but i'd say like to simplify the whole thing it's like the left side of the bell curve is you've had this enormous amount of gains being made in the private market in open ai um perplexity etc and then in the public market it's just been nvidia and retail and individual investors you know i am retail um you know have have missed out on all that price appreciation but they're excited about ai so you know kind of my thought process is um you know speculating on some of these you know um ai assets whether it's the current you know ones that exist today or we get like a new wave of them you know eventually i i

I think that's, you know, from the perspective of the, you know, speculating on alts, I think that's the most interesting sector to me, followed by, you know, things that generate revenue, like the DeFi protocols that now benefit from the change in the regulatory landscape. We could mention some tickers, but in general, you know, I think some of the large frameworks that have actual contributors and usage are kind of interesting. we had this big run up at the end of, you know, December, you know, I gave back a good amount of gains candidly on some of these things. And I'm now nearing break even on some of the assets that

I've been holding through the last two months. But, you know, I think the deep seek stuff is interesting to me, because you've, you've had, obviously, you know, open AI be closed source, deep seek is open source um you know i think that can spin up this narrative of well you know is open source kind of the way for ai development moving forward um if that's the case then you know what are the what are the second order you know implications of that i think basically the the base compute layer um gets commodified if that's true and then the value accrual goes to the agents specifically or applications if you don't want to use the agent buzzword just applications built on top of these things um that's where the the value uh accrual will will

head towards and so you know for some of these open source uh crypto projects or any other open you know open source you know ai application or agent stuff crypto aside you know they can just plug right into uh they can just plug right into deep seek um pretty seamlessly so for example again i don't want to like show tickers but the largest framework in crypto is eliza um and you know they've just seamlessly integrated deep seek two weeks ago um so you know basically the whatever is being built on top of these things benefits because you know regardless if it's deep seek or open ai it doesn't really make a difference for the um the things being things being built on top. So, yeah, I think I think they're interesting. I think they're kind of the

far tail asset that I'm most interested in. If, you know, Bitcoin is in a strong uptrend at the moment, it's not. And so, you know, these things aren't going to be immune on the way down. They're going to they're going to get hurt like every other risk asset. But I think they're interesting to pay attention to if if, you know, you like to speculate on some of the more far tail stuff in crypto. What else are you excited right now about? I had a position in Coinbase for a while. You had the public miners, the AI coins, you've done a very good job of navigating, I think the last 18 months or so in the market. So what are you excited about now? Yeah. I think it's, I think it's really just those two things at the moment. The AI stuff for sure. And then, like I said,

the stuff that's, that's generating revenue or things that are benefiting from, you know, a shift in, in kind of the regulatory environment and may get uplisted, um, you know, disclosure, obviously Anthony and I's company got acquired by, you know, a company that's, that's based out of Canada and traded on Canada. So I'm kind of, you know, talking positively about something we, we have a position in, but, um, you know, things like, uh, like galaxy, for example, or other companies that are traded in Canada that, you know, didn't get uplisted basically because of this harsh regulatory regime in the

U S, um, you know, that seems like a pretty, pretty good bet. Uh, I think a lot of that's probably got priced in now, you know, and that probably got almost immediately priced in after Trump got elected, but you know, those things can probably keep doing well if the U S, you know, continues to trend in this direction. Um, The other thing that I'm bullish on, but it's tough to speculate on or invest in, is stablecoins. I think it's pretty clear, especially after the US has come out with some stuff over the last few days, that stablecoins will probably keep doing well and we'll probably see further

adoption of stablecoins. Stablecoins benefit the United States because they're buying treasuries. You know, T-bills widely and treasuries and, you know, basically backing the stable coin with that. And then they're able to pocket the difference between, you know, the dollar backing and whatever yield they're generating from the T-bill. And, you know, that's in the United States' interest as well because it's, you know, subsidizing demand basically for our debt. So, yeah, I don't know what this updated metric is, but, you know, Nick Carter did a presentation like a year ago and showed that stablecoins were like the 15th or 16th largest sovereign holder of treasuries. If you basket, you know, Tether, USDC together, you know, I suspect that stablecoin usage will probably grow. Maybe if Circle IPOs, that could be interesting. Obviously, see the valuation in which they launch at.

I think there's probably a pretty good chance that that circle IPOs given the regulatory shift in the U S. So that's something that I'd keep an eye on. But yeah, I would say that's, that's, that's probably it. When you think of public companies, you know, I think most people know that I own DeFi technologies. I own social strategies. I own Hud 8. I have a little bit of Reddit stock from a prior like a private market investment. But what are some of the things that you're excited about in the public markets?

Yeah, again, I think it's like companies that might get uplisted to the US seem interesting from a crypto perspective. Again, Circle seems interesting to me. I was really bullish on Coinbase for a while. I bought Leaps on Coinbase at 70 bucks. And maybe after this, we can get into like some of the mistakes that i've made over the last two years because i think that could be an interesting kind of string to pull down if we have time um but my my bullishness on coinbase has faded a bit because to me i mean there's been a couple issues that coinbase has had generally a good company obviously good people that that work there um but it seems like they've got some pretty tough competition on the retail side with robin hood um you know robin hood's

crypto volumes have been steadily growing um you know i think robin hood's probably got the the you know highest likelihood of kind of becoming like the everything finance super app for people um looking to trade you know crypto stocks bonds whatever um you know they launched this uh i don't know if it was it was uh i think your uh ira you could put in or something just some type of retirement account right that they weren't they're matching so you know it seems like they've got pretty tough competition coming out um from from robin hood so i'm not as excited still generally think coinbase will be worth more in the future um yeah i i think obviously interesting stuff outside of crypto that's not really my my realm of of expertise hopefully we

get some more ai companies that that ipo and uh that'll maybe add to the kind of ai frenzy but terms of crypto it's really just i think um companies that benefit from regulatory stuff um you know circle if they ipo and then i guess the other small category which maybe you could make an argument against now with deep sea um is these like a these bitcoin miners that are transitioning into ai um so i no longer have this position on but i had a position on for a bit i I had, uh, calls on Wolf from like four 50, um, didn't, didn't sell the top, but took them off and like, I think the upper sevens or something, um, and kind of the thought process there, which I think it's still true for Wolf core scientific hot eight.

Um, if, if we have this continued build out of, um, you know, AI in the United States, um, we're going to have to start to get creative with, you know, the data center that we're using for the stuff. And so those companies that are looking to shift into allocating the resources to AI compute, I think those companies can also be interesting. I haven't looked deeply at any of them since I took my wolf position off

like a month and a half ago or so. What do you think the biggest mistakes are that you made over the last couple of years? Yeah, I'm still obviously super young and I'm trying to figure this stuff out mostly like in my apartment by myself i've got a couple smart friends that i have more iq points than me that i try to bounce ideas off of and try to you know kind of help help shape my thinking but um a lot of the mistakes for better for worse i've kind of learned through doing and losing

money myself um i think i think the biggest the biggest two are sizing believe we can go one by one the first is the first is sizing so you know when when you have a position that you feel strongly of it's what you should do is bet big early on in the trend and take risk off as the trend progresses but the natural human tendency is to kind of be nervous about putting risk on at the beginning because it's not so clear because the market hasn't validated your thesis and then you start to add as the the trend progresses um so that's definitely been one thing that um you know i've i've tried to improve um coinbase was a great example i i think candidly you know i i kind of nailed coinbase i've missed on a lot of things been wrong about a lot of

things but i was pretty right about coinbase but i didn't size up nearly enough um and there really wasn't a real strong reason outside of you know kind of just doubting like oh well you know am i so smart like why is it the market pricing this stuff in and it's kind of thinking for yourself and being willing to um to bet bet early on in a big way um the other one i think is probably the most important in crypto arguably is like thinking for yourself um you know i think there's a lot of borrowed conviction in crypto and you know a lot of these like influencers that you follow and you know including myself if you i don't really like using that word but you know these these people aren't like gurus and they don't have most of the time

they don't have your best interest in mind so you know you really need to think for yourself if you're if you're borrowing conviction from even like your friend um who tells you to buy something or whatever and you have no reason why you're holding the thing well you know information can change and that person's opinion can change 30 minutes later um um at you know or the thing just has a typical crypto 60 70 percent drawdown you know before going up over the coming months and then you get shaken out because you have no conviction on the thing at all and you don't really know why you're holding it outside of like your body told you to ape into it so i think thinking for yourself is incredibly important and also you know the more that you

can trust yourself it kind of goes back to the first point um you know then you're able to really develop the conviction to size things up, uh, accordingly and, um, um, you know, avoid, avoid some of, some of the, you know, issues there. Um, I think, I think those are probably the biggest two we can, we can keep it relatively short. I think you're doing a great job. Everyone makes mistakes, but, uh, I think you got not that much, uh, not that much to worry about. And I think most people in the audience are pretty thankful to you for, uh, all the knowledge and information over the years thank you man yeah it's definitely um you know i will say in general like um the market's gotten a lot more difficult over the last even you know six to twelve months

it's just a lot a lot of these crypto native kind of idiosyncratic things that i think you could trade are gone you know not that i was ever really you know executing on some of these strategies but you know like being able to short alts like i mentioned earlier into unlocks like that information is all there and then you get all these weird games now where like you know the foundation and the investors of the project know that the public knows about this stuff and so then there's this like weird psyop 3d chess stuff going on where they try to like get the token to pump into the unlock or they move the schedule so that it squeezes out people shorting it um you know and also there's all this like obfuscated stuff like the team selling otc

before the tokens unlock the tokens even unlock where they hedge it out and all these things so um there's there's there's you know the derivatives data like i said it just it's harder to track this stuff you used to be able to just look at um you know open interest on perpetual futures and funding rates and almost instantly know how the market was positioned going into something you know it was it was like 80 90 hit rate like bitcoins bitcoins trading down open interest is going up funding rates are going up people are buying the dip on leverage we're probably due for another leg down or this the inverse was also true a lot of this stuff is just uh it's it's not so simple anymore because there's a lot more sophisticated market participants

so the odds are like you know if you're if you're an everyday retail investor like me you know you're you're not gonna if you if you know these certain dynamics and they exist the odds are the people that are like you know really really sharp you know at some like hft firm or something trading low time frames or you know just sophisticated like hedge funds in general like they probably known about this stuff long before you um and you know that a lot of that stuff's probably already priced in so um yeah i mean it's been i would say it's been a really tough market if you're if you're trading this stuff over the last two years candidly there's been a ton of dispersion um the rotations have been have been really aggressive i think you know

we're kind of at the point where there's two or three big big assets that have that have done well um and you know if you miss those you're you're in rough shape like i think last year it was like solana um coinbase hyper liquid um and you know a select basket of memes but you couldn't you know if you're trading with 10 15 million dollars you couldn't get size and that stuff so it's it's been a it's been a tricky market man and i think uh we're probably going to see a lot of uh you know people candidly looking to just hold bitcoin at this point because you know i think i think um you know it's been it's been interesting where uh where can we send people to find you on twitter sure um my twitter is w lamenti iii i still am sharing some of my thoughts and such

obviously phone back on doing the podcast but anthony uh anthony asked me if i wanted to jam today and i couldn't say no so here we are and maybe we'll do another one like every couple months or something, but yeah, man, it's been an interesting year. Follow Will on Twitter, everyone. If you don't follow him, highly, highly suggest. Will, thank you so much for your time. You always got great insights. I learn something from you every day. Hopefully other people find this just as valuable and excited to do this again in a couple of weeks. Thank you, sir.