The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin 2% Away From ATH. Why? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Crypto Town Hall is a daily X Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in crypto and bring the biggest names in the space to share their insight. ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/    ►► OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $10,000!  👉  https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL  - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets    Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor.  Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Kyle, long time. How are you? Yeah, very good, brother. How you doing? I'm excited. We haven't spoken in a while, man. We haven't spoken in a while. What's your take on the markets? It's actually going to be a cool chat between me and you. Since we last spoke, I think it was in fucking ages ago. I don't remember. In Singapore, we've spoke very briefly, like hi, hi, but kind of went into detail months before that probably so how's uh what are your thoughts on the market this year obviously we're in a lot of the same things you know we work a lot

with the utility projects uh we've got a launch pad we both have vcs um yeah so so your take on the market in general so i think it's interesting um know, I think the market timing is pretty spot on with prior four year cycles, almost to the day. You know, and I actually on my YouTube channel, everything said that by the end of October, we'd be back at all time highs. We're pretty much there. And my bet for the end of the year is 100 grand on Bitcoin. And but, you know, that's. But that is what is needed for liquidity to come back into all of our pockets to make us feel rich again enough to kind of pump that into the secondary market, into new tokens launching, and to really have you know these kind of this kind of banana zone bull market that's coming and i do think that you know january will be the month that things really start to take off i think that those of us who have been in this seeing sideways

markets for like seven eight months are going to feel relief to see bitcoin go you know to 85 90k but i think that the retail will start really pouring in come back in january and then we have this like 12 months of euphoria and really good times um i i do think it's an interesting and different market though than we've seen in the past where you know uh especially with the you know, Murad coming out with his super viral meme coin super cycle presentation, where essentially your, you know, his proposal was just kind of being quote unquote tech alts

and, you know, putting a lot of attention on meme coins that are, you know, tokenized communities and essentially discouraging a lot of people to even pay attention to tech alts. And so, you know, what I've been trying to work on is focus on is like, how do we bring attention and communities back to tech alts and, you know, bring the attention back into people building really cool stuff,

which is I think why a lot of us are here. You know, some of us are just scared about money, but it'd be cool if we could make money and help really cool disruptors. Yeah, I think that presentation was just so unfair. First, I think he's a great guy. I think we'll have him on the show soon. I'll have to confirm. But he's a great guy.

And I really enjoyed the presentation. I think the way he's looked at MewCoins is accurate. But the way he's kind of dismissed out coins, he kind of put me in cause at the same level was very unfair. It's very different from building a community where the price is only designed to go up versus trying to create value, whether you succeed or not. Me and Ryan had a whole debate on this, but your thoughts on why meme coins and, you know, my incentives are blind and bold like we have an

incubator accelerator which is a big focus of ours we do a lot of marketing and media partnerships and investments on a daily basis with you know almost 400 projects this year alone and then on the meme coin side we have a whole incubator and we do shows for meme coins as well so we we're involved in all aspects i don't care if liquidity keeps getting sucked out by meme coins, but I do prefer that, you know, I'll get the liquidity they deserve, the attention they deserve,

which I think they are. Recent couple of weeks have been good for our coins again. And I'm talking about VC-backed projects launching. But, Clara, the question I want to ask you is, first, why do you think VC- tokens did so badly like the year started out so well, we saw all that hype and humans human does Scott says, but that's only it's always the shape of them by

nice launchpad projects dropping 90 95% 80 85%. That's crazy. That it makes you see is literally you you had the you had vc back projects out coins you know out out coins you know you know those startups perform as bad as you'd expect them to perform in in in horrible bear markets yet we're in an incredibly bullish market yeah you know it comes down to that you know what what's happened is the best communities in the world were built inpads came along, and that way the chart can go is down from there as soon as unlocks are happening. Another thing too, that's the most important part of that is that percentage of supply for public sale went from 55% on average in 2017 to something like 5%. And that's even generous on, on average in 2021.

And so really only maybe hundreds of people, you know, just hundreds got into a public sale of a product in 2021 and 2022 and three and four. Whereas in 2017, where the best communities got built, tens of thousands of people got into these community sales. And, and my favorite thing from Mirage presentation, the thing that I think is the most important

takeaway is if you want to have a community, you need to make a bunch of poor people rich. And nobody's getting rich buying a VC-backed tech alt at a $1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $6, $7, $8, $10 billion valuation, it's not even ethically sound as an influencer or a KOL who's filling these tokens to go shill something at a $10 billion FTV that has zero fundamental things to kind of back up that valuation there's zero revenue you're basically just launching main net maybe your tbl comes from a bunch of chinese whales who literally are farming an airdrop by adding tbl to your defi protocol or adding you know uh adding uh transactions on your test net from being these big farming mining farms and literally the the percentage allocated for an airdrop went to these farmers who just took the entire supply and dumped it. Not one retail person. Kyle, I just. Projects.

The community is gone. Kyle, I just realized me and you are not on a call. And we went way too deep in that rubber hole for getting out on a space. For some of these spaces. But let me go back to the main topic is that where the markets are. My connection could cut out if it does just take over the space, guys. But it could cut out and I'll have to join back but just uh going back to the markets in general let me let me go to you kyle and then go to back to the panel we got we got jeff dan simon and dave uh with us on stage

looking in the markets where we were just under all-time highs i think about two percent away from all-time highs not sure what the price is that now looked at it a couple hours ago and um and i think we broke all-time highs in Europe, correct me if I'm wrong. And I think everything is set for all-time highs prior to November 5th by the looks of it. Your thoughts on the markets in general, could we break all-time highs before November 5th and why? Why are we breaking all-time highs? Why is Bitcoin dominance back at 60%? What do you think that the market's pricing in? Is it just purely pricing in? I was listening to Chamath talk about this

on the A16Z podcast, and him and Dave and others kind of concluding that it's essentially just kind of responding to the fiscal policy around the world where money's being printed everywhere and there's the hedges of what equities to an extent, and of course, gold and Bitcoin. Right, I think that there's a couple of things at play here.

I do think that markets hate uncertainty. And the elections, especially one or two months ago, were very uncertain. I do think that it does seem like if the elections are held in a semi-fair way, that Trump will win. And I believe that more and more people are starting to believe this. And that's going to lead to a more favorable crypto environment. But I don't think that that's the main reason, right? Because there still is uncertainty there.

And even though, yeah, I won't get into politics here, but I do think that the main driving reason is because people don't know where else to put their money. And every time in history that the global M2 money supply has been upped into the right, Bitcoin and all the coins have followed suit. And so you have this huge stimulus coming out of China.

I'm not sure it's 100% confirmed yet, but there was rumors of a 10 trillion yuan stimulus coming out of China. I'm not sure it's 100% confirmed yet, but there was rumors of a 10 trillion dollar, 10 trillion yuan stimulus coming out of China. You've got US stimulus, you've got, you know, global European stimulus, Japan, Japan, the global M2 money supply is just, you know, on a skyrocketing right now. Same thing with Tether. And so I just think that these are all the signs, you know, parlay that with a four-year Bitcoin cycle. Also, Microsoft looking to put money, potentially the vote comes on December 10th, whether they, once the tax regulation changes, I forget what it's called, right, but the one where they don't have to mark down their losses. Once that changes, I think in December or something like that, also more companies will likely put Bitcoin on the balance sheet.

The macro environment is insane. Plus, you have all time lows of Bitcoin on exchanges with the US ETFs gobbling up like 10 times the, you know, how much Bitcoin is being minted every single day. Supply shock. The world is about to experience supply shock for the first time ever. We have not had a situation in Bitcoin's lifetime where this inflationary halving cycle has actually worked in a direct way where demand became so much greater than supply that the price had no choice but to exponentially skyrocket. And I do think that we're beginning to see this now. I made a tweet on my account yesterday saying that supply cop is actually starting to take

effect right now. Jeff, I'd love your thoughts on the course that Kyle's making. Yeah, I agree with everything Kyle has shared. I think, as we are all probably paying attention it very closely, I do think the election is the biggest driver for crypto appetite in general. One thing that is noticeable is that it's not just crypto. You see it amongst other Trump basket-esque indexes that the banks are publishing. You might have seen Trump media also reacting pretty violently recently. And so I think people have spoken on it already on this podcast multiple times, but we're now one week away. So it's just materializing with probabilities honing in.

And when you take a step back, you know, there's so much for Bitcoin to catch up generally to other assets, I think, from a relative basis, again, bringing up gold as a proxy that we've talked about many times before. You know, one thing I've noticed that I think is really interesting, and it's one of my favorite signals, is when price goes up for Bitcoin and volatility goes up together, implied volatility, to me, that's always been like a really good short term momentum signal. And that's actually what you've seen since about October 26, right? Bitcoin kind of locally bottomed there around like 66K and the implied vol was around 54. And as Bitcoin's gone up now to 72K, implied vol actually has also crept up and it hit a peak of 61 yesterday. Now it's back down to 59. But I bring up this very unusual feature with Bitcoin that is persistent, which is when

price goes up, vol can sometimes go up with it, which is actually somewhat unnatural in most of stock assets. And then on top of that, if you look at the CME options volume, which I don't read into it too much because it's not the most dominant options trading venue by any means, I think they hit a local high in volume over the last six months. I have to double check, but it was actually a pretty big number. So those things do make me think there is more short-term tactical positioning for some potential explosive moves. Some of this could also be related to microstrategy announcing earnings today. I think there is a lot of money on the sideline here when I look at both open interests and the implied vol on that term structure, where they're essentially implying a huge move, whatever Saylor has to say today post-close. I think all these things are fueling some risk appetite for Bitcoin as well at a

structural level. And then your comments as well, Jeff, on the Bitcoin dominance reaching 60%. Yeah, I think All Eyes to me feels like it's on Bitcoin. I hear folks talking about playing Ethereum as a levered bet to the Trump election, meaning that in theory, it should be better for Ethereum in the regulatory clarity that it should bring to allow further developments that bring utilities to the quote unquote technology thesis. You know, as much as I hear about this, though, I actually, from all the professional traders that I speak to, I don't, at least in my small microcosm of professional crypto traders, I don't see it expressed. Where I do see some exposure is people will actually take that a step further and trade the DeFi tokens, like a Uni or an Aave. Sometimes you'll see people expressing Doge as a levered bet to a Trump win. I think there's some validity to this as well, given Elon Musk's prominent positioning. And then I hear about stocks. I actually hear a bunch on Coinbase and I hear a bunch on Robinhood.

And those are other ways that um people are trying to barbell into some crypto beta um but i don't hear about eth like in practice i hear people talking about it but from my perspective i haven't seen a lot of money put to work on it which is why i think bitcoin dominance continues to uh to exert its pressure and remains high and going with that with that thought process, something I asked yesterday as well as what do you think the markets if Trump does not win, which is looking less and less likely? And how do you think the markets will react to that? One, one

take a kind of take that that inclusive for me, after asking that question to multiple to multiple panelists, essentially, Bitcoin will continue doing really well probably will take longer to hit you know certain targets um but but the rest of the markets would probably do significantly worse considering uh kamala's uh you know very divergent stance on on altcoins etc to trump yeah this is a great question i i think that's also relevant to the asymmetry of the risk-reward versus Bitcoin and Ethereum right now, which is, I did some very rough work on seeing where Bitcoin would potentially go if Trump was elected using some merger art style probability math.

And this is not precise, right? We can't be super precise because we don't know. There's no such thing as like, you know, a buyout price and a floor for which was trading before all that stuff. But imagining a model around it and using polymarket odds and the differentials there to imply the moves to see where that would be. You know, the number I came to was about 92K for a Trump win. And to compensate for that explosive move, given where we were at the time around 67K, you have to imagine a Kamala win would also bring it

back materially down. So I think it came to something in the mid 30,000. Now, I don't think Bitcoin will go to the mid 30,000 to be super clear if Harris wins. But I do think there is that acceleration of price discovery, Mario, as you alluded to, I think it's more likely we'll get to a higher price with velocity with a Trump win. But the inevitability of Bitcoin going higher is obvious. Ethereum, I think is complex. Like, again, I think the asymmetry is a little different where it matters more long-term. I think that the Trump administration could, could allow Ethereum to prosper that that would be much more stringently

delayed potentially under Harris administration. And, you know, Jeff, one thing we haven't talked about enough is in recent weeks and months is just the performance of the ETFs. And thanks again for having someone from Bitwise on stage, your thoughts on the performance of the ETFs. you give us kind of quick recap over the last few

months um what are some numbers reached etc the inflows that we've seen today the total trading volume of the 12 it so 4.7 billion dollars on tuesday and on monday was three billion dollars um so obviously last couple days have been pretty damn good but how was it over the over the last couple of days have been pretty damn good. But how was it over the last seven months? We've had a seven-month downturn, really. I mean, it's been great. I think this past five days in aggregate is one of the most pent-up demand we've seen. Actually, all of October, if you even go back to like the big days we had on like the 16th and 17th they all add up to a pretty explosive move some of this also you

can see is probably related to uh basis trading i think the cme futures basis arbitrage remains in double digits it's actually gone a little higher which makes me think we're going to see more inflows um today. Now, people might think those are not permanent capital, long only duration type bets, but it is one of the mechanisms for which money comes into the ETF ecosystem. And then they discover other features around it, like financing, and they tend to stick around. And once they realize the basis is actually not just the difference between what you get paid on the forward curve of the futures, but also there's like a financing element that you can actually maybe negotiate proprietarily, you'll find

different ways to add yield to it. And you won't know it unless you actually touch the ETFs. So there are generally good trends for those kinds of adoptions to continue to happen. I think the last time I checked, that CME basis annualized is like 11, 12 ish percent. I mean, that's really good. If you're talking about like the millenniums and the citadels of the world that are targeting like risk-free plus five, you know, at the highest end, this is the number that kind of clears the hurdle for more flows. Dan, you've been pretty quiet. Any thoughts on the discussion so far?

You know, let me hop on a second, guys. I'm just getting out of the elevator. All right, I'll come on next time. Yeah, sure, Simon. Yeah, I think it's interesting tying in the Bitcoin ETH story with Trump-Harris kind of politics right now. I think ETH has two directions. One is, you know, if you look at its classic use case is a network for stable coins, a network for like the BlackRock tokenized treasuries

that are offered through the Securitize platform, which is mainly integrated with ETH. So you've got that direction, the institutional direction. You've got the other direction, which is the whole DeFi side and the highest level of smart contract adoption. Now, what I think really comes down to the regulatory side is that if through the ETF, the ETFs are able to stake, then they get an essential stake, as it were, in the governance structure. And I'm not sure how that's going to work between those that own units in the ETF versus the underlying ETH underneath it. So BlackRock,

much like they controlled much of the voting rights of boards, they have the opportunity to control a massive chunk and Fidelity and everyone else and Van Eyck, a chunk of the future of Ethereum. And so in one direction, you could imagine much of the Biden administration, like we've seen, has been hostile towards companies like Coinbase, but very favorable and crony capitalism towards companies like Bank of New York, Mellon, in order to try and direct the future of this technology in the direction of the control structure. However, with the Trump administration, he's obviously going for a DeFi project. He's got his own World Liberty Financial, which kind of says, you know, the different directions and the self-custody here. So I think the future of Ethereum within the largest financial institutions in the US could be determined to some degree, you know, how controlled the future of the stakes become.

And I think a Trump victory is kind of priced into a more decentralized future for Ethereum. And a Harris victory could be a more controlled structure for the stakes of Ethereum. Yeah, just to talk about Trump and Kamala Victor, just to give an update from the numbers here, the polls are obviously leaning more and more towards Trump in Trump's favor. We've got Trump finally, surprisingly edging closer and even overtaking Kamala based on some polls regarding the popular vote. And there's, you know, analysts say that Kamala will need at least a two-point advantage in the popular vote for her to have even a chance at winning the election.

And the betting markets are obviously, you know, the average of all betting markets here, another all-time high from yesterday. Yesterday, it was like a 28-point difference. Now, it's at 20. Sorry, Zed. Yeah, so about a 25, 26-point difference. Now, it's at a 29-point difference when you look at average of all of them. And on the potting market, which everyone likes to kind of use as a benchmark, it's still the same at 34 point difference, which is outstanding.

So that's just a quick update on that. And Dave, any comments? Yeah, a few things. First of all, thanks to Jeff. He went through a lot of stuff. And frankly, there are a few that require some, it should be expanded upon. The most interesting one to me is the only countervailing trend that I think is

worth looking at is the futures basis. And just for those who don't know what that means. So basically, what Jeff is saying is that people are that there are there are natural buyers of some sort, and for some reason, and I have theories as to the reason I want to get Jeff's comment on this, that are willing to pay more for the futures than they should, based on financing about 11 or 12% more than if they just bought spot. And because of that, there are treasurers who are providing that liquidity against that and hedging, you know, basically selling that and buying ETFs. Is it me or is Dave cutting out? Is it my end? Simon, can you hear Dave? Or is it cutting out for you? Yeah, is Dave cutting out? Is it my end? Simon, can you hear Dave?

Or is it cutting out for you? Yeah, it's cutting out. Yeah, you're cutting out, Dave. And let me go to Dan. Dan, I'm not sure if your mic is working now. I know you were going in the elevator. Dan, you there? Oh, so I think Dan's having issues as well.

Unless you guys can hear him. So Dan, Dave, your mic isn't working. And kind of moving away from just the market discussion, which we've gone into deeply, let's move in the rest of the markets. How do you think that will continue? What will happen next in your opinion with touch on meme clones, we've touched on VC back projects, utility tokens, we've talked about how the models.

Those are how the models flawed. Dan, is your mic working now? All right, let me just start removing people off the stage that I haven't technically issued out. So yeah, Kyle, you got the question. So you were talking, last thing you said before I kind of brought it back to the markets is that you're talking about how the model was flawed. We've talked about this a lot on the stage, on the space. Has the model changed for these VC backed talkers? Are they launching with bigger floats and more logical valuations have you seen that shift or not yet um because we did talk about a few months ago binance's letter as well kind of

telling projects this is what we'd be looking for um has that been enough right binance's letter binance letter was interesting it was like a nice step in the right direction but very little has been done since that i think they launched a banana gun which was like the first step in the right direction uh but then nothing after that and it's just being given points and then you know still i think founders are still delusional um like you know just raising money at such high valuations when you have zero revenue, zero real product, it's kind of crazy. Ethereum's effective valuation at the end of the day, if you participate in the ICO, was around $24 million. All-time high, if you participate in the ICO, was 15,000x. It's Ethereum. It was the first,000 X. Right. And so like, you know, this is,

and it's a theory. Like it was the first contract platform in the world. I've had people who come up to me now and say, well, yeah, but like, you know, but like Cardano launched at 30,

you know, 40 million or 50 million or Solana, a hundred million or whatever. Like, it doesn't matter. Like you can't compare yourself to these guys. Right. Cause the competition is fierce.

And, and really like, it's just much more difficult to compete in this especially like the layer one but the point is is that like what i have been doing with founders is i've been talking to them and saying guys do you want a community or not because right now all of the you know favorite personalities kol's retail watch their youtube videos and look at their X accounts. They've woken up to the fact that you cannot morally and ethically shill a high FDV token and say that you're going to make life-changing gains on it. So if you want to build a community as a founder, you need to offer your community what I'm calling an LCO.

Now, this is what we're doing at paid network which is a low fdb community offering essentially i believe this is the only way that tech alts will build true loyal cult-like communities and bring attention back to them and uh so even if they have been raised pretty high from from like i have a couple projects that i'm announcing on a video soon um one of them is koi the last round they raised 125 million dollar valuation they're doing their community around a 10 million dollar valuation and just look how powerful this is right last round from vcs was 125 mil they're doing a 10 million dollar fdv community capping the amount per participant to $100 to $200 to be able to get

in 10,000 or 20,000 people selling 10 or 20% of the supply. And the idea of capping the supply per participant also is interesting because you get a really good opportunity for life-changing gains. You know, this is like, for example, Koi is a fork of Solana. It's cheaper and faster. It was modified highly over a team of sophisticated engineers the past three years

and made for Deepin. And if it just achieves half of Solana's valuation right now, where what Solana is now, not even what Solana will be in 12 months from now, but just half, then that would be 4,200x

from the LCO price, which means if you invest 100 bucks, you made 420 grand. Like this is the kind of stuff that will make true organic cult-like communities excited. And it'll turn tech alts into serious meme coin-like fanatical cult-like communities. And I think that that's what's needed for attention to come back in the right direction. And let me go back to the market tea. Cause we do have another speaker here, Dan,

I think you're with us now. Yeah. I'm sorry about that. You know, Mike is all good. This morning. Yeah. So general thoughts on the discussion earlier.

Well, I just want to go back to the point where the, the macro climate and then the election, I mean, I think when it comes to the price, I mean, obviously we're on the cusp of hitting the all-time high. Most of the conversations, I just had a breakfast this morning over at the Army-Navy Club with a potential likely member of the transition team should Trump win. And they're very bullish on our industry. I think even just the fact that we have Lednick from Cantor Fitzgerald now having these deep conversations, he's going to be very instrumental, you know, in a hypothetical Trump administration. A lot of it's just, you know, waiting until next Tuesday. And I think

we're going to obviously see some price movement going forward. It is interesting, though, you know, I'm not to say, it's not to say that Harris – I don't know if Harris' team, the individual she has currently advising her campaign team, you know, have been fairly strong antagonists to us over the last – certainly last year and the year before that. So it'll be – the notion that things will be significantly changed should she take office, you know i don't see it happening so uh i think the overall market though you know it's going to be greatly affected by next tuesday you're rubbing banding as well mario yeah space is glitching is it good now you're good for now ah perfect perfect cool uh yeah i think it's just having a bit of an issue info we'll have you on on the on the space, kind of getting your thoughts on this. But I think everyone's position is the same.

I'm pretty surprised. Actually, not too surprised. I think with the odds for Trump when increasing pretty much every day, every day that passes, the markets are reacting accordingly. I think we're seeing that correlation, not just with crypto.

We're seeing that across the board, especially with regards to equities as well. But Infra, is your mic, is it working on your end now before I go to Plato? It's having an issue with Infra. Simon, any final quick thoughts before I go to Plato? No, I think, you know, there was just an interesting comment around Cantor Fitzgerald.

Cantor Fitzgerald, the CEO, spoke at Bitcoin 2024 and gave the first kind of, what would you call it, public attestation that all the assets behind Tether are backed. What was it? Sorry, let me just give a context to the audience. I do want to talk about the news about Tether came in a couple of days ago. Can you, already very briefly, can you give us an overview on what the story is and whether there's cause for concern? Yeah, you know, my theory, and again, full disclosure, I'm a shareholder in Bitfinex, so this is just based upon public information. But it's always been known that the teams behind Bitfinex and Tether have always had ongoing challenges with the Department of Justice. They've settled several times.

They had to publish a lot of public disclosures. And from my understanding of both the political side and the shareholder side and the public side, there's nothing new there. It was just a story from Bloomberg in order to try and create the old Tether FUD story. It normally happens during bull markets. It's really clear right now if Tether ever were to unwind, there's a clear path to unwinding.

It's not a systemically risky event at this stage. And Cantor Fitzgerald publicly attested that all of the treasuries are being custodied by Cantor Fitzgerald. And what's becoming really clear to me is that Tether has become a strategically important company to either both the European side and the US side. Andrew here, you know, kind of has a similar theory as well that often comes on our stages as the 18th largest lender to the US government with stablecoin regulations probably to follow. And Trump's project also included a treasury

backed stablecoin. So I personally think it's here to stay, but it's a non-event even if it does need to unwind because the assets are there. So if the government wants the 18th largest lender to have to sell off its treasuries and redeem all those assets, then that's got no impact on Bitcoin. It just means the market goes somewhere else. So I think it's just a non-story now. Dave and Thomas, any final points on this? Yeah, I mean, I think I agree with Simon completely that in the long run, it's a long story. In the short run, I think it's a political football since Howard Lutnick at Cantor is co-chairing Trump's transition team. And the stablecoin regulation that the hardcore of the Democrats want is one that would require banks to be the holders or the issuers of stablecoins in some way. And that's going to get fought over a lot. There could be a lot of bumpiness around.

But that doesn't mean that everything goes to the hills what it means is is there's a slight disruption in liquidity Where as the exchanges around the world? Start offering whether it's USDC or or other stable coins that are evolving To take that central place because tether has the critical mass It's simpler for everybody to use that at the on ramp to, you know, all coins basically. And so effectively, what Simon said is, what Simon said is that the on ramp to all coins has effectively become one of the systemically important lender to US Treasuries, which tells you about the importance of the all coin market outside the United States.

And honestly, if Harris wins, then that market will move even more outside of the United States. And so that importance might increase, although it will take a hit in the short run. So there's lots of cross currents here. It'll be more fun to talk about this next week than this week, because we'll at least not have to say if this or maybe we won't. We'll see. There are plenty of people who think we may not know next week. I personally think we will, but we'll see. Zach, I'm guessing you can't just on that point on Tether before we go to Thomas. Yeah, sorry. I missed the beginning of the conversation. What was the question about Tether?

Oh, okay. Just look at the recent news with Tether and the fact that it was created by that Bloomberg article. I thought you came up on that point. Well, yes. No, I mean, that seems to have been totally unconfirmed. I don't think Palo would be out there swatting it down like that if it were true that they were under serious investigation with something essential from the U.S. government. I agree. The bigger question is going to be when we get so the election matters, but I think and especially the election matters because of Howard Lutnick is an important part of the transition team. Obviously, he's very close with Tether. I think the thing that matters more than the election though is if and when we get a stablecoin bill passed, the draft comprehensive stablecoin bill that we saw is pretty unfriendly to the way that Tether does business. And so I

think that is a much greater concern than like executive action or a DOJ action right now. Appreciate it. Thomas, any final quick words on the markets before I go to Plato? Thomas, is your mic working? All right, cool. I'm pretty excited to get into this conversation. Plato, are you with us? I'm here. GMGM.

Cool. How are you, man? Look, I'm fasting right now, so I'm starving and you guys gamify restaurant visits. So it's like a kind of Web3 foodie network in a way. But what is Play-Doh?

Gamify dining is what you have on your front page and on your Twitter profile. Yeah, I mean, you know, another way of saying it's sort of eat to earn. I mean, obviously, Play-Doh is trying to get all the normies into Web3 without actually knowing that it's Web3. But we try to make in-person dining engaging, fun, and earn some fat points before our TTE. So I would say we're backed by Contrarian Web3 VC funds

and angels, and we've been building and prepping for the consumer narrative to drop. I mean, obviously, I think Kyle kind of mentioned before, a lot of the projects has been building rails. There's just been too many rails and not enough rail carts and consumers. And so that's

what we've been building and prepping for. And we believe the Web3 consumer spring is coming. So yeah, that's what really gamified dining is about. What is it? How does it work? How do you gamify dining? You download our app. You basically check into a physical restaurant,

kind of like Foursquare in the past, but you take a receipt at the very end. And then obviously we're verifying that you actually went there. And so the mission is really getting people into restaurant and dine at their favorite restaurant and earn some points. And so, yeah, that's how it works.

You, you check in, you capture a full photo and capture receipt. And that's basically one of the main event that you do within the app. Oh, sorry. I was muted this whole time. Did you hear anything I said? No, I didn't hear anything. I thought it was me. No, no, I was, I was muted.

The mic is playing up. What I was saying is that right cool so essentially you're using the whole x to earn concept to incentivize people to visit a restaurant all right that's correct so so which is cool so i understand the use case before getting into the tokenomics um when you take a photo of the receipt at the restaurant how do you make sure that that receipt is not a fake receipt or somebody taking you know you know multiple people don't take photo of the same receipt? Yeah, I mean, anything external, you got to make sure you anti-cheat. So that's actually part of our anti-cheating. And so we've, you know, we've trained on, you know, I would say tens of thousands of receipts from multiple countries in multiple languages to basically give you that, you know, to anti-cheat the fact

that people are sharing receipts, right? We've gotten, you know, we've gotten a lot of different use cases and how people cheat. So, you know, I would say right now it's about 93% in terms of accuracy. And then if you try to capture a receipt over a certain amount,

it actually gets kicked to our manual process, which actually train our machine learning model to make our next sort of anti-cheating process much better. So we've built in a way, a looping system to make our OCR process much, much better. Okay. And just before we get, again, tokenomics, I think is a very important part of this, see how it works. But just the whole X to earn concept, can you give me an overview? Because when Play to Earn launched, it was very successful.

And obviously, we had the, what was that token, the walk to earn or whatever, that went viral in the last cycle? I think you're talking about Stepin. Yeah, you're talking about Stepin. Stepin, yeah. I don't know how that's doing. Is that still going well? You know, I would say the app is not where it used to be,

but I think that the projects have earned a lot of money and a lot of fees in the last bull market. They're a game studio, right? They have like Step & Go, Gas Hero, and actually we collaborated a lot with them in the last year or so. And so we've been kind of piggybacking on some of the users that they have because, you know, Web3, tons of bots. And so what we've kind of figured out is a way to get real users is through previous successful projects that actually still have users around.

And so, yeah, Stepin is still around, but, you know, they've morphed into other sort of NFT marketplace, you know, Gas Heroes, another game of theirs. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool what they're doing still. They still have the GMT token? Yes, sir. They still have the GMT token. We actually integrate with their ecosystem where you can buy one of our premium passes,

what we call season passes, when you go dine. You can actually use GMT to buy that within our app. So that's actually the benefit of actually building Web3. So you can easily do that kind of integration without too much lift.

Yeah, I'm just looking at the token now. Not bad, actually. The profit is not bad. It's sitting at $700 million FTV. Yeah. $400 million market cap. I'm impressed. All right, cool.

Good for stepping. All right, so going back to the discussion. So how does the token of extraction work with Play-Doh? I think your token, your ticker is like FAT, I think it was. Yeah, it's called FAT. Yeah, so FAT is all about kind of putting money where your mouth is. So post-TGE, right, our job is to get people get into a restaurant and then to say, hey, I love this restaurant so much, I'm going to stake my token at this particular restaurant. Really what it allows us to do is kind of give community signal which restaurant is really hopping within the ego system.

And then obviously then we actually create a bounty system so that whether it's our team, whether it's the community can go on board that restaurant. So the FAT token really allows us to decentralize a biz dev team to actually acquire and onboard the restaurant. Because obviously what we're trying to do is engage with restaurant and restaurant can engage with our users by, you know, putting ads, putting, you know, what we called restaurant raid quests of sorts so that they can drive more people into their restaurant. So we actually do that right now in Japan. And so we have been growing, you know, 80% month over month in the last four months in Japan, just because those, you know, Japanese folks in our community love the gamification.

They can buy our NFT. They do certain things IRL. They earn our fat points. And so I would say we're actually starting to onboard restaurant in Tokyo. And yeah, we're seeing that network effect actually going in Tokyo at the moment. All right. So how do you avoid the inflationary pressure, the stunning pressure on the token

as if it's a reward token? If you're getting the token because you've visited that restaurant, most people just sell that token to get stables instead. What utilities have you incorporated into that token to allow people to hold it? Yeah.

So we actually help restaurants take payments at a 0.5% instead of like 3% to 5%. And so if you preload money into Play-Doh prepay, what we allow you to do is convert some of your fat token rewards into what we call the dining dollar and where you can actually spend at restaurant. And so what we're trying to do is the tokenomics, it's actually a fixed amount token. It's not an inflationary token where we are actually taking the revenue we're getting from restaurant and actually buying our token and then use that to reward for further reviews,

for further sort of incentives as part of our token economics. So that's, I would say, from our list of advisors, and we've kind of vet this kind of tokenomics out to ensure that I think some of the projects that we've learned from, whether it's Access Infinity and some others that are consumer-based, that took off, but never really sustained, you know, we don't make that same mistake. Okay. Um, from a product market fit, can you give us some examples of, you said it's already

operational in Japan. Do you have some metrics there and any other markets that you use as an example? Yeah, no, it doesn't really work. Are restaurants actually using that? Are people actually using it to make for the food? Are people actually staking it in their favorite restaurant? Yeah, so like I said, you know, I would say a lot of the token utility opens up once we get a restaurant onboarded. And so, you know, I would say right now you as a core team, we're actually investing heavily into a market that the community is telling us where there's network effect between restaurant and eaters. And so that's actually in Japan. But, you know, as we're expanding, we're also actually seeing Turkey in Istanbul is another market. And again, I think, you know, why these different markets, how can we predict it?

We can predict it. And that's why we actually let our community tell us where are the adoptions happening. And so, you know, I would say if we were to build this in Web 2, we will have a very different growth strategy. But because we're building Web 3, it's all about where the community is eating and where the concentration of that community is at. What's your community size? I would say, like I said,

we've been building to prep for the consumer narrative, the drop. And so right now we're over 30,000 users. It's not a lot, but we just started our season one, I would say less than six months ago and so our gamification is built you know sort of broken up into different seasons so each season has different themes and so we're about to launch our season three and so you know again i think our goal is to get about you know a thousand restaurant uh onboarded in a region and the region will likely be in japan uh before uh, uh, early next year. So.

Can you explain more of the gamification aspect of it? I understand the, yeah, you go eat, take a photo of your receipt and you earn tokens, but have you added more, have you incorporated other gamification aspects? Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, we have to get into that. That's actually interesting. I want to hear about that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I can post a Loom video. But basically, at the end of every meal, you can actually do a wheel spin where you can earn potentially or you can win potentially the amount that you capture on the receipt. If you don't win that, obviously, there are other prizes like some USDC, small amount of USDC, some of our fat points. And then we're actually about to launch something with another project where you can win with some hardware like Ledger or Qudas Ring

that's on Solana. Win by doing what exactly? It's a wheel spin, right? So think about after you die. It literally is a wheel spin. Add a kind of gamble fight into the whole experience. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in Web3, people love gambling,

people love winning things. So obviously to further that along, we're actually kind of building some of the feature where you say, hey, you know what? I get a free spin, but hey, let me put a couple of fat points into it and I can get another spin. So there's obviously other things that we're

doing to ensure. But other than that, you can earn other gamification. You can earn sort of what we call, you know, big spender badges. So there's a lot of reputation that you can also earn as part of the gamification. And you kind of think about Duolingo, right? People love kind of that streak Duolingo. We also built that in where you don't have to eat every day, but you're posting something on social, you're posting something, you know, you're referring a friend. All those things are part of what we called sort of engagement where that earns you a daily streak. So, you know, so that I would say that's another aspect that we're, we're, we're doing so. All right.

Um, yeah, I think, uh, you added the whole spin the wheel, but you said there's different seasons. Uh, I thought there was more gamification features within each season. Like I think there was, I think you could really incorporate more aspects of gamification, make it more fun, more challenging, somehow competitive. I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud, obviously. There's definitely quests. Every weekend, we run a quest.

That's interesting. Yeah, like last weekend, I'll post something from our Twitter as well to the Jumbotron. Last weekend, I think it was all about sweets. If you go take our app, go to a bakery, you can actually earn a little bit bonus.

So every weekend we do a quest. In Japan specifically, right now we're running a quest with a ramen place where if you go and you bring a friend, you can get a free bowl of ramen. So if you're a merchant, if you're a restaurant merchant, these quests actually come with real perks that you can actually taste. So these are different quests that we run every weekend. And so, you know, people love to kind of, you know, do fun things on the weekend. And so whether you're normies or web three, it doesn't really matter.

It's all about this. So it's all about gamification. Yes, I think you've kind of tokenizing gamifying something that already exists, existed for a long time, which is going to reward systems for my restaurants that's right and different sorry i got hiccups and coughing at the same time and and um and offerings and kind of gamified that as well um and kind of

kind of aligning the incentives a lot more and bringing it all onto one platform. One thing I always look at whenever someone's building something is other companies that are doing something similar. Is there any competitor, whether it's in the Web2 or Web3 world, that has done this,

that worked really well, that you guys are trying to do it differently or better in some way? Yeah, I would say, if you look at Web3, right, there is one player called Blackbird, where they're more of a loyalty, not a gamification, more of a loyalty. But, you know, they've raised $35 million. And this kind of goes back to some of the points that you guys were making earlier, investor poured a lot of money in, but they have a very much a web two approach where, you know, after 35 million, they only have about what, 60 restaurant in New York city. And I think they just expanded to Charlotte or, or somewhere in this, you know, in the Carolinas,

um, where, you know, for us in the last 10 days, I think it brought on seven restaurant already in Tokyo through our community. And so the pace of us growing is much, much faster than some of these kind of Web 2 with a funny, Web 3 company with a Web 2 hat. You know, so I would say, yes, in Web 3, BlackBerry is to mention. But, you know, honestly, in food, there's been so much food tech that's been coming, coming and going. But I think that if, if four square had the power of web three, they probably will be building Plato. And so I think, you know that, that's kind of the way I would describe it, but you know, food is such a big market that we believe that, you know,

what we're doing is just the beginning. Interesting. And I saw something about coin list. I was just going through your Twitter. Do you guys have a partnership or some promotion with Coinlist? Yeah, we're doing an activation campaign right before our token launch on Coinlist. When's the token launch and on which platform? Before the end of the year. I would say before the end of the year. Which exchanges, launchpads, etc up do you have those announced yet uh not yet um not yet follow us i mean we

definitely have already planned but definitely follow us on on play-doh uh play-doh to earn is is kind of the handle i'm using follow us those things were becoming uh very very uh in in you know right after season three uh which is december 5thth. We'll be announcing that with Season 3. Nice. And you're doing some sort of giveaway strategy with Coinless, yeah? Yeah, for sure. I think they call it Activation Campaign. They call it the Activation Campaign, exactly.

So yeah, if you don't eat out every day, you can use Galaxy. We have some cool things that you can do with Galaxy, but obviously, you know, it's all about the app. You know, download the app,

use the app, and, you know, if you're eating, I mean, everybody eat out on the weekend, so you can definitely use our app on the weekends.

Nice, man. Yeah, I've asked all the questions that I was going to ask about investors. I just saw Rob. I'm not sure if Rob is going to be speaking as well,

but Rob, any quick words? And if not, if you have any specific, just jump in. Otherwise, my last question is about your backers, et cetera. How much have you raised? Token launch before the end of the year, you don't have launch present exchanges,

at least not publicly announced yet. But what else do you know about your investors, your rounds, your FTV, et cetera? Yeah, so last year we raised a pre-seed, like I said, from contrarian Web3 folks that have aped into consumer very early on. Z Prime is one of our anchor in that pre-seed round. We're actually in the process of raising our seed at the moment. And I would say a very modest valuation. I think some of the earlier topics around high valuation,

why VC-backed tokens or projects have performed like a bear market, I think it comes back to most VC-backed are non-consumer, are L1s and L2s, and there's just been too many of those things. And so if anybody wants to learn more about SeedRound, just message us on Twitter, and we'll definitely talk.

But yeah, I mean... Do you have the valuation of the different rounds? Is that public? Yeah, we do. Yeah, we definitely do. So, like I said, it's very modest last year. And this year, it's also fairly modest. So, I don't really want to talk about it here,

but definitely ping us if you're interested. If you want to learn more. Cool, cool. but you know definitely ping us if if um if if you're interested you want to learn more cool cool love it all right it was a good discussion we love what you guys are doing the website is really sleek by the way i love the website it's really sleek really like the website um um yeah uh and the concept makes a lot of sense so i'll be really interesting i'm glad to be um on the cap table so i appreciate you guys allowing us in and for sure being part of your journey it's a great discussion man i know went over time but we'd love to have you on the show again for everybody else if you want to check out play-doh the uh profiles on stage it's also on the title as well and give him a shout give him a follow and uh we'll see everyone again tomorrow hopefully we'll break

all-time high so i can finally put in the title all-time high it's been a long time i haven't put that in and otherwise thanks a lot, everyone. See you tomorrow. Scott will be back tomorrow as well from his flight. Bye, everyone. Thank you. See you, Plato.

See you, Brob. Bye. Thank you.