The Pomp Podcast - Why $1.6 Billion Is Flowing Into Crypto RIGHT NOW | Mike Novogratz & Kyle Samani
Episode Date: September 22, 2025Mike Novogratz is the Founder & CEO of Galaxy. Kyle Samani is the Chairman of Forward Industries and the Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital. In this conversation we talk about ...the $1.65 billion fundraise they recently did, how big these treasury companies can get, why they love Solana, tokenization, plans for the company, risks, and how they are going to generate shareholder returns. ======================Check out my NEW show for daily bite-sized breakdowns of the biggest stories in finance, technology, and politics: http://pompdesk.com/======================Simple Mining makes Bitcoin mining simple and accessible for everyone. We offer a premium white glove hosting service, helping you maximize the profitability of Bitcoin mining. For more information on Simple Mining or to get started mining Bitcoin, visit https://www.simplemining.io/======================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.======================TimeStamps:0:00 - Intro 2:00 - Raising $1.65 billion for the largest Solana treasury company 5:12 - Explaining market cap vs price of token 6:10 - Why volume is so important for a public company 8:27 - Forward launching tokenized shares on Solana with Superstate 9:23 - How big can altcoin treasury companies get? 14:13 - Crypto entering Wall Street and plans to create value 20:28 - What are some risks? 26:47 - Is the 4 year bitcoin cycle over? 30:36 - Advice and how to think through investing in crypto
Transcript
Discussion (0)
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
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episode. 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. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a great
episode for you. We've got Mike Novogratz, the founder and CEO of Galaxy. And then we also have
Kyle Simani. He's the chairman of Ford Industries, and he's the founder and managing partner at
Multicoin. In this conversation, we talk about a $1.65 billion fundraise that they recently did
for Ford Industries. What's going on with these treasury companies? What is their plan with the
Solana-focused treasury company? How is it going to work? What the risks are? And how are they
actually going to generate shareholder returns? That and much more. Here's my latest conversation
with mike and kyle solana at this point is the fastest now listen there's a big debate you can
say okay ethereum's got level twos on top of it and listen this will be debated right there's
there's never a a uh declared winner before the race finishes uh we think uh solana is in the lead
in terms of speed and processing and has a great shot at at being a winner how do you guys think
about uh i think solana's market cap is like two times higher than it was last cycle but the coin
itself is uh about all-time highs you got a stake yeah like how do you get your coins yeah so explain
this a little bit like what's happening there all right kyle and mike uh this is a big day for you
guys um you guys have made a bunch of announcements kyle you guys raised 1.6 billion dollars to create
the largest solana treasury uh company in public markets why solana and why'd you raise so much
money it was 1.65 billion pump uh thanks for having me here off to a fast start all right uh
let's hit it um yeah look we got to meet mike and the novo team and galaxy team excuse me and and
the jump guys and we all kind of looked at each other as a few months ago and we were like there's
an opportunity here to knock this out of the park so made made a deal happen between the three of us
um the reason we're doing this on solana is because we all believe solana is going to be
the world is the world's most performant blockchain um that's clearly true today you
look at all the usage metrics performance trading volumes all that stuff it's all there ultimately
uh we believe that we're going to settle not only securities markets globally on solana but
commodities fx derivatives you name it we think there's an opportunity to truly move uh off of
tradfi rails and off of nasdaq and izzy and on to internet capital markets you just want to
completely take everything off of the traditional rails and you think you can put it on solana
yeah i mean look like we have newspapers we have paper and today newspapers are what one percent
of news being read and 99 is on the internet it took 25 years but same thing's going to happen
you think it's possible what's interesting the head of the sec right paul atkins paul atkins
came out and said i want markets to move on shane i was like did he actually say that rewind do it
again like paul atkins said he wants markets to move on shane that's a radical departure from
where we were with gary gensler uh and so if markets are moving on shane and i think this is
I'm not going to move on Shane overnight.
It's going to take a while.
We tokenized Galaxy stock.
We're tokenizing Ford.
We announced it today.
You know, volumes start slow until they get into the DeFi channels and then they'll go faster.
There's going to be a big fight on what exchanges security tokens can trade on.
Once that all gets worked out, they're going to trade over blockchains.
What was unique about bringing Jump Capital into this?
Like, there are three or four guys in the world that are A++ at infrastructure, right?
Jump, Citadel, Jane Street, Tower, jumps one of them.
And when it comes to infrastructure in crypto, jumps a one-on-one.
And so, understanding what is necessary for high-frequency trading, for transacting thousands, millions of transactions a second.
And let's get real clear.
when AI starts transacting, and it will, when we have agentic, both traders and agentic shoppers
and agentic everything, sending stable coins, they're going to happen over blockchains. And so
partnering up with Jump in this thing and saying, hey, Solana, at this point is the fastest. Now,
listen, there's a big debate. You can say, okay, Ethereum's got level twos on top of it. And
listen, this will be debated, right? There's never a declared winner before the race finishes.
uh we think uh solana is in the lead in terms of speed and processing and has a great shot at at
being a winner how do you guys think about uh i think solana's market cap is like two times higher
than it was last cycle but the coin itself is uh about all-time highs you got a stake yeah like
how do you get your coins yeah so explain this a little bit like what's happening there yeah look
so all of these networks have permissionless global consensus and bitcoin you have the miners
obviously very famously a lot of them are publicly traded um and proof of stake networks like
ethereum and solana you don't have to have all this heavy mining infrastructure uh the simple
of it is you can take your coins let's say you have 100 coins and you can click a couple buttons
on the screen and stake your coins and once you do that you'll earn uh the kind of headline rate
of inflation which today on solana is sorry headline rate of yield excuse me which is roughly
seven and a half to eight percent and so seven and a half percent in eight years basically doubles
you you you can almost consider that the risk-free rate of solana that's you know not a perfect comp
to u.s treasuries but pretty close for for understanding all right so you became the
chairman of this company uh ford industry how do you guys determine just whoever had more hair or
i'm already the ceo of galaxy and you know out there uh it takes a lot of energy to try to
keep the, the, listen, the, the key in being a public equity, and I've learned this both the
hard way and I'm starting to learn it the easier way. And the key to being a successful dad is to
get volume in your stock. And there's a magic formula that no one tells you and you still
don't know. Some stocks get it overnight. You're like, how did they get so much volume? Why volume?
because volume is energy volume is people caring about your story right think about the biggest
stories in the world apple everyone cares about apple they launched a new phone you found an
opinion every guy in the streets got an opinion that's why it's got that's why it's got volume
and with volume often comes price volume comes volatility and that that creates energy and so
why kyle is because he loves fucking solana and we thought he'd do a good job he does love solana
We thought he would do a great job of bringing energy to our stock.
But listen, this is the challenge for all treasury companies and for all public companies.
And I look at Circle, they, overnight, because they launched at a perfect time,
they gave a lot to retail, they've got a really simple story, right?
We're a stablecoin company in a world where stablecoins, right?
We just had the Genius Act passed.
And overnight, they're one of the highest volume stocks in the whole crypto space,
if not the highest volume like i'm jealous you know my job as ceo of galaxy is to bring people's
energy to galaxy and the same thing with ford we need to bring because if if not listen we have a
bunch of assets we think we've got the smartest team around on how to stake them on how to create
defy yield and how to do other smart things but what we really need is volume because with volume
comes more selling and and then more assets coming into the system and you listen tom lee's done it
in bnmr brilliantly uh sometimes it's lightning in a bottle sometimes it's a strategy but the only
thing i think we can add is energy energy telling the story energy bringing people into the tent
energy for awareness of why we think this is an interesting place to put your money all right so
you guys are going to hold let's say billions of dollars of solana uh you're going to stake it i'm
assuming um that means you're going to get seven eight percent uh off of that that's free cash flow
what else are you going to do? Yeah. So this morning, actually, we announced some news.
We announced that we're tokenizing our stock using our partner, SuperState,
natively on this line of blockchain. And as part of that, we actually negotiated an ability to get
equity in SuperState for basically being their flagship customer.
Forward Industries is not laying out any cash for this equity. We have said to our investors
publicly, and I've talked about this on Twitter and other podcasts, that we're going to use our
reputation, our scale, and our willingness to do interesting things to negotiate creative economics
for our shareholders. We've been live for two weeks. And today we announced our first deal
that effect. We've got a whole bunch more in the pipeline. But being able to use our scale to
actually get better economics, we think is a phenomenal way to deliver shareholder value.
And how big can these things get, right? Like we obviously seen strategy, we see meta plan,
we see some of these, you know, really large companies, but how big do you think that the
altcoin treasury companies can actually get i think they can get a lot bigger than they are now
uh i was skeptical to be fair when michael strategy started michael saylor started it
you know micro strategy i was like okay i got it it's bringing people that couldn't get into
the space but when the etf came out i was like well why and michael did an amazing job of creating
energy around michael's micro strategy created all kinds of different avenues to open the aperture of
of people that would look at his stock from the converts first to the preferreds uh and when you
think about why treasury companies have worked better than a skeptic would have thought they
would because there's a ton of skeptics around treasury companies and i was one the amount of
people that have access to fixed income and equity accounts is so much greater than people that have
already set up crypto wallets and for right this moment in time right now with with the fed cutting
rates with a government that can't seem to stop spending money uh a perfect narrative for crypto
with equities at an all-time high gold at an all-time high crypto at an all-time high
opening up the aperture bringing money into the space it's happening through these treasury
companies. And so when they trade poorly and they start trading to discounts or flat, it's bad for
the overall crypto market because that's where the buyers have come from. And so we watch that
carefully. But that was part of it. And so again, this debt can be a whole lot bigger than it is
today. But predicated on that is us doing a great job of convincing people there's value added with
this team and a bull market it's hard to make a much bigger and a really bad market today's episode
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think that you'll go and you'll buy other uh solana based uh treasuries like we just saw the
uh recently strive announced that they're buying similar um there i know there's other solana ones
out there would you buy other ones if they're trading at a big enough discount of course you
it yes and not only solana ones but any asset it doesn't matter if our stock is trading at 1.5
someone's trading at 0.7 there's a creative transaction for both parties and let's say in
that scenario let's just say it's another altcoin treasury that's doing that would you go and try to
buy it and then sell their coins to buy more solana or would you hold on to their coins or
like how do you think through some of the nuances forward industries as a slot of that okay so you
like go raid other altcoins should they fear kyle simani i i would call it it's an accretive
transaction for both shareholders you sound like a public company ceo already all right perfect um
when you think about uh solana in the public market there is that yield you guys have done
a pretty good job in capital markets at galaxy do you see an opportunity to start uh with bonds and
things where you can actually pay and have that uh liability because you're able to drive the actual
yield yeah i think listen you know and and hats off to michael saylor because he gave a pretty
good road map first you got to establish yourself as the dominant player so that's role one for us
uh be the dominant player be the apex predator and sell a lot of debts uh be able to raise capital
just through equity i'm laughing because we've all known each other for a long time now
the fact that we're now talking about like the crypto industry assaulting public markets and
being the apex predator and the verticals i know there's wall street guys like these fucking guys
right like they've got to be like i spent my life as a wrestler so that you just think that way
it's a physical sport but i do think that i mean the essence of this point is that you guys are
essentially using what is something that's native to this new digital world and you're essentially
arbing the fact that wall street will give you a bunch of money if you can then turn around and
pay them yield back that you're able to generate in the digital world like there is this very
interesting uh symbiotic relationship but you want to establish that you can raise capital
and lots of it and then you take the next step so now let's put some data you don't put that
much leverage on the thing but there's plenty of leverage you can put on i mean like i mean
just you could put seven percent leverage on with knowing you're going to get that seven percent
back just in yield right and so there's a level of leverage you'll take and you know if you if
you build a good enough story uh then you can maybe do what michael does and raise raise preferred
like that's a genius move uh it took michael four years more maybe four years uh and what was
interesting about micro strategy it became its own community like these work if they become
communities you think about what the core value prop in crypto so far has not been utility it's
been community right you're part of the xrp army a lot of people don't use the xrp blockchain but
they really like the coin right what does what does it mean like the coin mean they like they
trust the community to to to hold their value that's what it is and michael saylor created
community around micro strategy which was different than bitcoin people are micro strategy
guys they like it they in and out performed and so the job is community like that's what creates
the value is there is there a world where you guys are so successful in the public markets that
actually takes away capital flows from solana like could that could it uh become this like
fragmented capital flow no but this brings if you think about it the thing of like was micro
was micro strategy good for bitcoin or bad categorically good oh of course michael
saylor deserves two kisses and a hug uh he might not take that well he but why because he brought
people into the Bitcoin ecosystem. He bought more Bitcoin than anyone else. That's energy
into the ecosystem, right? I mean, in lots of ways, this whole crypto thing is about who can
bring energy into those ecosystems, right? It has been a narrative business until recently.
It still is a narrative business. It will change in the next five years to a performative business,
right? To utility, right? We're starting to see it already in some ecosystems, but we're really
early right i talk about agentic ai using stable coins it ain't happening yet you know it's going
to uh it's not happening we're not buying our us open tickets on a decentralized ticketing space
we're buying them through ticketmaster still like and so as we have this revolution go from
narrative to utility like what does that mean well when we have more and more stable coins
operating on blockchains that's going to take money from bank deposits by definition even
though they're not allowed to pay interest they're going to pay interest they're going to money
market funds here and stable coins here and they're going to instantly uh transact and so
you'll be able to have in your wallet your cash or your or your your what you normally put in
checking and savings earning zero at jp morgan earning four and a half percent or whatever the
the Fed funds rate is, and use it to buy stuff. Well, so as bank deposits go down, what goes up?
Where does credit creation come from? You're going to see private credit tokenized. That'll
be one of the first big uses of real world assets. And banks are going to be replaced by
stable coins and private credit. And you're going to buy private credit and tokenize for them.
uh like that's gonna happen is it gonna happen next year no it's gonna start happening next year
right you saw figure went public with a big freaking nice multiple congrats mike agni
uh right he's tokenizing private credit uh galaxy is going to get into tokenizing private credit
we've done some small uh examples of it already uh but as those things happen they're going to
happen over blockchains and we think solana is going to be one of the blockchains that gets
the lion's share of the financial market stuff because it's kind of tailor-built for financial
markets what do you think yeah your original question was like you know how do we interplay
with solana itself and i think to mike's credit this is extremely uh positive sum you know i think
the other thing that's hard for people to appreciate is you know if you look at bitcoin
there is no bitcoin foundation um just random miners and whatever around the world um if you
at ethereum and solana they both are stewarded by these swiss-based non-profits um and they act as
swiss non-profits um we actually live in a very uh symbiotic relationship with the solana foundation
now um we are the largest u.s largest salon of doubt in the world but also the largest one in
the united states and so we are now in a position to basically engage and work with u.s capital
markets, U.S. regulators, to further advance the interest of Solana in the United States.
We see other DATs, too, in other regions. There's ones in Asia and the UAE and other places.
And yes, they are our competitors, but they are also accretive for Solana.
Forward Industries is never going to be the leading DAT engaging with UAE or Middle East
jurisdictions, regulators. We're not going to be that in Asia either. We're going to be that
in the United States. That's where our bread and butter is. And so there's this very healthy
dynamic where we have this Swiss nonprofit that stewards this credibly neutral, permissionless,
open global system. And then you have these capitalist enterprises on top who are out to
advance the interests of Solana, but also through the context of driving value for shareholders.
How do you guys mess this up? You raise a ton of money, you're buying an asset,
you're driving the yield, all that makes sense. Obviously, if the price goes down a lot,
that wouldn't be fun, but still you'd hold the assets, it would still yield, whatever.
like how does this blow up it doesn't blow up like the downside scenario for our dat and for all
that's is that at one point this beautiful lovable likable crypto bull market comes to an end
and we're like oh you love this one this one is uh not really uh kicking off yet no but i this
this well listen we've all made we're all a lot richer than we were a year ago uh anyone in this
space if you're not you should just quit the space and actually become like a sower or something i
don't know uh like if you have not made money in the last 12 months uh you don't deserve being the
crypto business um but at one point bull markets end who knows why they run out of steam the fed
pivots and says i'm like we can't cut rates anymore like this was crazy we shouldn't have
been cut in the first place like there's all kinds of scenarios where the bull market ends
and in a bear market these things trade back to parity or even to discount a book and
you just write it out yeah it's not it's there's opportunities to do there like we're an asset
manager right kyle is the chairman of a company with 1.7 billion dollars assets uh that's a lot
of assets uh galaxy's managing those assets right now uh there's a board that thinks of strategic
of things to do. There's ability to raise capital privately. There's ability to raise capital through
ATM in the public markets. And so you do well like any other company would do. It might be boring
for six months or a year because you're, you know, less ability to bring in new capital.
But it's still a substantial company. One of the reasons, and we debated, we wanted to start
bigger is because we want it to be substantial. Like, a $1.7 billion asset manager is a big
enough company as is. We expect this to become a $10 billion asset manager. That's the goal or
higher. But if we got timing perfectly wrong and we were stuck here for 18 months through a cycle,
it's not the end of the world. There's not a disaster scenario for this.
Yeah. The other thing I want to flag, Pomp, is this is a publicly traded permanent capital
vehicle. And ultimately, it's going to be up to the management team and the board to make
capital allocation decisions to drive long-term value for shareholders. We're really fortunate
between Multicoin Jump and Galaxy to have probably the three groups that are the most
long-term oriented around thinking about Solana. I was very fortunate to meet Anatoly and Raj,
and I led the Solana seed round back in early 2018.
We have bridged the Solana team
when they were running out of money way back in the day.
We are one of the most active investors
across the Solana ecosystem today.
I think we've invested in 25 or 30
different Solana-based teams.
And we have a very long-term view
on how this stuff's going to play out,
how value is going to accrue,
how market structure is going to change.
We're placing all these bets,
have been through Multicorner now as well
through Forward Industries and guiding that.
And at the end of the day,
when you judge us in five years,
the primary thing you should be judging us by is did we make good capital allocation decisions
given uh the knowledge base uh of the of the core teams here between multi-coin jump and galaxy
uh i feel pretty good that we're gonna be able to navigate this well and knock it out do you have to
outperform solana for it to be a win right like i think that we think about this strategy didn't
outperform bitcoin people be like i should have just bought bitcoin yeah they outperformed i
think is like a big driver the north star for ford industries is sold per share so yeah we think
about soul as the as the denominator and we should be able to just buy the staking alone
um but listen there's lots of galaxy does a good job we will uh listen there's lots that goes into
this uh if the soul price itself doesn't go up it's not as fun you know just being you know
doesn't mean it's a terrible business no it's not a terrible business at all and if you didn't
believe that in five years, the sole price would be substantially higher, you shouldn't be
participating in the sole ecosystem. We're in three years, right? I mean, listen, there's plenty
of trading opportunities, but like we are long-term bullish this space. I would not have
taken Galaxy public if I didn't think crypto would be more relevant in the world in five years time
than it is today. Will you sell Solana if let's say you think that the market's going to go down
or you see some other reason?
Or is this something where you're like,
we'll never sell once we buy it
and then there's other opportunities we have?
Yeah, we're not here to play hedge fund trading sole USD.
We think about driving value to shareholders
in sole per share terms.
Yeah.
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slash pomp go check them out at zappobank.com slash pomp today do you guys think the four-year
cycle's over for crypto in general or do you think that like end of this year there's some
sort of top and next year is back into a bear market it's a great question i spent all night
thinking about it don't worry so do i of course the market got the living shit kicked out of it
today right uh so i guess we should have sold it listen these are very hard calls um we are moving
into a world where we've got central banking independence really a question we've never had
that in my 40-year career in wall street and so depending on who trump picks as the next fed
governor it could kick off a whole freaking mega cycle right we throw some of my independence into
the end of the toilet and crypto's going a lot higher right and so the political situation makes
that prediction harder uh the fed just cut rates they're going to cut at least one more time
probably two more times uh is it strange they cut rates when the stock market's on an all-time high
gold is on an all-time high crypto's on yeah it is there was political pressure some uh but they
also wrestling with this thing we never had to think about before, which was AI, the great job
destroyer. And it's going to destroy jobs. You can see it already, especially young people's jobs,
high paying ones. And so what AI does to this world, if anyone thinks they really know,
they're out of their minds. It's so complicated. And so there's a lot more uncertainty in macro
than I've ever seen, which makes calling the top of the cycle much more difficult.
The other thing I would add is Mike just touched on executive branch, Fed independence.
But I honestly think what might end up being the biggest thing when we look back in 20 years is Congress.
And we just passed the Genius Act a couple months ago.
Stablecoins are now recognized by the United States Congress.
I think we're going to get the Clarity Act passed hopefully in the next couple months here.
Fingers crossed.
I was in D.C. last week talking with Senator Scott and a bunch of others on some of these issues.
and uh and then of course we have chair paul atkins who announced project crypto and he said
unequivocally uh we're going to move u.s securities markets on chain it's with that backdrop it's you
know i think probably the right historical comp to think about here is the telecommunications act
of 1996 and when congress passed that act and president clinton signed it that is really what
laid the groundwork for the internet to grow it gave companies the confidence to build fiber
for guys like Cisco to build all the routers
and the infrastructure for Intel to build all the chips
and all the memory and all that stuff
for Microsoft and all the software makers
to make all the apps.
And I think the Genies Act and then soon the Clarity Act,
when we look back 20 years from now,
it's going to be pretty obvious
that that was the watershed moment.
And so, yeah, we just feel incredibly excited about this.
I'd say the last thing I would say is,
there's like, I think 6 billion people
have a smartphone today in the world,
something like that.
There's 8 billion people on the planet.
Obviously, that'll get to $8 billion here in the next few years.
And Google and Apple were never going to add native support for stablecoins in iOS and Android
until stablecoins were fully blessed federally to be legal.
That's happened.
I don't know when Apple and Google are going to enable stablecoins as a first-class citizen in iOS and Android.
But at this point, you can kind of assume the probability that that's going to happen is 100%.
Maybe it's in 26.
Maybe it's in 27.
Maybe it's in 28.
I obviously don't know anything about their timing.
But, you know, we've got David Sachs as crypto czar in the White House.
Guarantee you he's been calling folks at Apple and Google and telling them, hey, guys, this is a matter of U.S. interest to promote the growth of stable coins around the world.
Build this into iOS and Android as a first class primitive.
Were you trading when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 happened?
I was a macro trader in Asia.
Do you remember anything that's noteworthy?
you know i was i'll tell you a funny story i was uh i was trading the thai bot
asian interest rates s&p so pretty much macro focused on curry currencies and interest rates
derivatives and my mother called me up in late 99 and i made partner at goldman sachs
congratulations feeling good i was rich for the first time in my life and i was feeling like a
middle-class kid. My dad was in the army. My mom's like, all my friends own Amazon. And you didn't
tell me about Amazon. And everyone on the street's making money on Amazon. And I'm making nothing.
And I'm thinking on the street we lived on, the biggest Amazon position was probably $2,000.
But I was like, geez, I did miss the entire internet. And so I decided I was not going to
miss the Chinese internet. And I made a huge investment in a guy named Micah Truman.
Dumb idea. Coke bottle glasses, white guy, spoke perfect Chinese. And he had all these
email addresses 20 million chinese internet email addresses there was only 30 million chinese
internet users at the time and uh of course that went to zero and i thought to myself uh later i
was at goldman sachs in our office one floor up alibaba was coming through tencent all the great
chinese internet companies were getting started right about there i could have like
put a hundred thousand dollars in six of them instead of six hundred thousand dollars in one
and probably throw a dart at the dartboard.
I think I hit the only zero.
They all actually exploded up.
And so I've always come to the conclusion
early on in these moves.
Like when I started in crypto,
I was in all kinds of ecosystems.
I still think, don't be so arrogant
that you're going to know exactly how it plays out.
Spread your bets a little bit.
This is going to be a wild,
I think Kyle's 100% right.
This is going to be a watershed moment.
And up until now, crypto has been a story.
It's been more than a story in that Bitcoin is a store of values and stable coins overseas are a big deal.
But broadly in the U.S., it's been a story.
And we're going to go from story to rebuilding infrastructure.
And that's going to happen in the next two to 10 years.
And as that infrastructure, as things move on chain, things are going to change much faster.
think of a company like Pump.Fun, which runs on the Solana blockchain. That thing exploded. They've
got a great token. I was talking to the founder at a party my son threw. The guy's 20, 21. Good
dude. And I'm like, you're the pump guy? And I was like, what's the next iteration? And if you
think about what meme coins have done on the Solana blockchain is they gamified in lots of ways
attention well where do most kids spend all day on tiktok in reels and instagram and you watch
you're going to gamify reels you're going to gamify tiktok you're going to gamify all of it
uh you can have instant tokens on every freaking tweet you do uh that stuff
millions and millions of transactions i i don't know if pump's going to be the one who does it
someone else's uh again solana blockchain perfectly suited for those those use cases
but as we move into a more digital world where everything is also gamified because you're seeing
that happen like i just think the utility case for blockchains and then that case for bringing
people into the community so like oh i build on this and that so that's like utility plus
narrative as opposed to just narrative and that's going to be the big change i want to add something
about you know live streaming i think it's a super underappreciated element of these systems
um so one of the taglines of solana is internet capital markets uh we certainly believe that folks
at galaxy and jump to as well and i think this this kind of live streaming example that mike
was just talking about with pump kind of illustrates that most people look at you know
with pump throughout anyone can go on there do a live stream create a token engage with your fans
and your followers and it's a wild time people have a ton of fun and i think most people probably
people who are listening to the pomp show probably look at this and they're like i have no idea what
this is i don't know how to make sense of this and i think the way i help people try and understand
what's happening is to think about entertainment finance um entertainment finance 1.0 was jim
kramer like he was the first uh and he figured out his formula and look you you are now to your
own version of that um different kind of entertainment right different different style
you've got roaring kitty you've got dave portnoy you've got all these different flavors of it
um and much in the same way that we went from with media where there was just you know five tv
channels to now you've got social media where anyone can have a twitter account or an instagram
account um the same is happening with these content creators and now asset issuers um and it
is it is really the forefront of entertainment finance and so when people look at this i
encourage you to try and really think about like how is this evolving and uh it's actually
incredibly exciting to see what happens when you can unlock finance as a true first-class
internet native primitive and it's really all happening on salon we can launch a meme coin for
every pomp episode no we can't do that and we can't and then like all right we're we're kyle
and no regrets interesting or not or does this thing fucking tank or people start if this if
the episode goes viral the meme coin goes up but then like the thing about meme coins is very few
have long-term longevity, right? A few have, right? But there's a way that people get to gamble
or speculate or gamify their concept of what's going to work. And that makes them feel good,
right? And in a world where AI is going to replace a lot of other jobs, that consumption
is valuable to people. Now, you could argue, is it great for society or not? I'm not making
that argument i'm i'm arguing that it's happening it's happening with sports betting it's how my my
my son and his friends who are all like 27 year old knuckleheads and they're the perfect age for
this stuff they don't watch a sporting event without like 19 bets on it and that's become
commonplace across america didn't exist on that way didn't exist when i was young yeah we just
rooted for our damn team uh now you're rooting for you know each field goal and each touchdown
and he, you know.
Hit the coin flip.
Well, yeah, the coin flip is a big deal, you know.
But we're moving to where we're gamifying lots of stuff.
And so this ecosystem of crypto,
I mean, and Solana literally tailor-built for this,
is, again, I think we should tokenize Pomp episodes.
Where can we send people to find more
about foreign industries?
So our Twitter handle, you should go there,
F-W-D-I-N-D.
You can also go to sol.forwardindustries.com.
That's kind of our core website
with all of our Solana stuff.
And of course, follow Mike and I on Twitter.
We're both very colorful characters there.
All right, guys.
Thank you so much for doing this.
We'll do it again in the future.
Pom, thanks for having us.
Love you.
