The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Breaks $71K! Trump Win Priced In? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

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Mario, can you stop the music? Hey guys, how are you? What's up, Mario? How you doing? Good, good, good. I want to kick it off with, I'm glad Thomas is here as well. There's a lot to discuss. Things are good. Things are exciting. There's more interesting things to discuss than other kind of legal discussion with Scott, macro discussion with Scott. But the first thing I want to dig into is just from a political landscape, which is something I'm covering pretty closely.

I want to go to Dan. Dan, dan your general sorry yeah dan's on stage dan and simon and anyone else on this point matthew's here as well just from a general perspective your thoughts um and the markets seem to be not just crypto just the markets in general are pricing in a trump win uh betting platforms are pricing in the trump win um so you know the first question is do you think we're getting ahead of ourselves because it seems that he's gaining traction in the Trump win. And so, you know, the first question is, do you think we're getting ahead of ourselves? Because it seems that he's gaining traction in the polls, but people like Nate Silver still calling it a toss up leading towards Trump. So the polls are saying one story, even though Trump is getting an

advantage, there's still a pretty, it's still very, very light margins. And there's a whole discussions where, where, you know, a lot of things could sway the results when it's such a close, it's gonna be such a close call. But on the other platform is that polls are generally unfavorable towards Trump. So I want to get your general thoughts on this and kind of move it towards crypto afterwards. If Trump does not win, how do you think the markets will price it? I'm talking again, bond yields, crypto, equities, just across the board.

Yeah, I just want to jump in yeah okay i i think i think the the prediction folder on the underwriting the chancellor trump victory because of what we call new fairly yeah shy talk is dan cutting out for me or everybody yeah i lost them too yeah go ahead yeah dan you're cutting out. I'm just going to mute you when the connection is better. We're just under you. Go ahead, Tom, and then we'll go to you, Dan, after we've had your connection improved. Yeah, so let's take a quick look at the state of play.

So the real clear politics average has about 60% Trump versus 37 or so percent Harris. There's some undecideds in there. If you're looking at BetOnline, Betfair, Bovada, all the betting sites, about 60% Trump, and then the prediction markets also about 60%. Then you have the proprietary models, which is like 538, whatever the hell, they're closer to 50-50. But if we kind of dig deeper into what actually decides this election, that's really those swing states. And the swing states are all materially in Trump's favor. And when I say

materially, I mean that they're slightly advantaged to Trump. But as we sort of feel in the meta, like Trump's election odds are vastly underestimated, but you can actually look in the data and that's borne out. So 2020 and 2016, he was down to both Biden and Clinton across the swing states by something like 1% to 7% in each state, depending on which state you're looking at. And right now, he is up in every single swing state, albeit some of them by very less than a percentage point. But you can see that he won a lot of those in 2020 and 2016. So you can just see how much the Republican vote was underestimated in both those elections. If you assume the same thing this time, it's going to be an absolute landslide in electoral college. So, you know, what does that mean for crypto? I mean, I think like this is the most bullish setup we can possibly imagine,

to be honest. Like, not only do we have all the things that Trump wants to do with lower rates, obviously a very favorable president for Bitcoin, but you have the broader macro backdrop that's just fantastic right now. Somewhat controlled inflation, stimulative policies, not only in the US, but also abroad. An incoming president, whether that's Trump or Harris, that's going to run 5% to 7% fiscal deficits. You couldn't have a more bullish setup right now, in my view. So, you know, all things, and I think the market's pricing that in, you can see that obviously, from Bitcoin and others that are going up, but like the higher likelihood of not only the Trump election, but all these other things that are going on have really been pricing in the markets. Yeah, so the question I have for

you is why do polls tend to not favor Trump? They haven't in 2016 to 2020. I think Dan was just mentioning something about the shy voter that does not want to admit they're going to not favor Trump. They haven't in 2016 to 2020. I think Dan was just mentioning something about the shy voter that does not want to admit they're going to vote for Trump. But is that the reason that they're not priced in, in your opinion? Maybe, Dan, you can kind of comment on that because you dropped out earlier. Yeah, is it better now? As soon as I started speaking, my girlfriend called me. I think I threw it off.

Yeah, I thought it was... So the point I was trying to make is, yeah, what we call a shy Tory vote in the UK where people don't like to admit that they're voting for Trump because if someone polls you, oh, that's who you're voting for. Look, that's not necessarily something that has a conservative slant to their opinion, typically. So I think that is there.

But do you think that's still... Sorry, Daniel. Yes, I do. But do you think that's still the case? Okay. I do still think that's the case. I do. I also think... Who are the people that have called on these polls? I think that kind of shows that way. I would imagine that the actual odds are somewhere between the polling and the poly

market type odds. I was kind of remiss to admit to Ram when Ram was saying the other day that he thinks the poly market is a much more accurate gauge of sentiment. I agree with some people at the time saying, I know this is like overseas crypto gigians are just going into it. But you know what? I think I've changed my mind on that. I think it is more reflective. If you look at the early voting numbers in places like Pennsylvania or whatever, Elon Musk has really helped get that vote out. And you look at the registrations, I think it is going that way. So I do think the legacy media itself is trailing where it actually is, and I think that's where we are now. So I think, yes, it's more likely that it's going to be Trump.

So I personally put 10 grand on Trump to win after he did the McDonald's stuff. As soon as he did the McDonald's stuff, I was like, this is over. He's gone. Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Go ahead, Joe. Real quick, just so people understand what polymarket is versus actual polling. I think sometimes people confuse that polymarket is the same as polling. It's not. It's pricing in the wind. So even if Trump won 50% to 49.9, or he got 270 electoral college votes, he would still have,

polymarket would go to 100%. So what you're kind of seeing is you're seeing a divergence here because of the timetable that's left towards the election and not so much what I would say is a full landslide victory. So I'd say just be a little wary on where things are at, but obviously anyone could vote on this, especially the large money that's out there. They have entities internationally that easily could vote and go in and put as much money as they want on this, right? So, like, the Sharps are in there voting pretty consistently. But just wanted to make that clarification for, like, how a polymarket actually works.

So, polymarket is one. I think there's a whole bunch of them. I've got a list of them. So, if you look at polymarket, I think there's a 32% point advantage to Trump. But when you look at the aggregate of all betting platforms, Trump is, oh, it's increasing even further. It's 24 right now. 2626. The betting markets are a derivative market of the

election effectively. So they're always going to be a little bit so that's out or up and down. But I think there are two minutes above the actual problem. So they're always going to be a little bit further south or up and down, but I think they are derivative of the actual problem. So if Trump looks like he has a lead, you'd expect his lead in the betting market to be much higher and the other way around. I think that's fair to say, right? Yeah. So I'm not sure that question is for Joe or myself. Yeah, no, absolutely. That's exactly how it works is you're going to see,

like again, if Trump wins 50% to 49.9, his polymarket percentage is going to be 100%. Right. And so you would think like, oh, it was a tweet with the chart we do on a regular a regular basis we did one on polymark i think yesterday day before um and then we we're doing one now on the aggregate of all betting platforms but it does show trump winning by the biggest margin on both 33 on polymarket and then on which is the crypto one which is why we always like to quote it and very user friendly but there's one that's an aggregate of all of them it's on the website called real clear polling.com. You can click on Bay Lodge on there. And there's one that takes better online bets in B win points back poly market and smart kits. And the aggregate of all of them is a 26 point advantage to Trump. And

you can see if you look at the chart just to just come on just sliding downwards. But the question I have is, you know, Nate Silla, for example, still labels it a toss up, a lot of people do. I do, you know, I still, I'm in, I'm in the same cap, but I think that betting platforms are more reliable, you know, people vote with their money, you know, anyone could say, I'm going to vote for that person or the other person. But when it comes to them, I not vote or, or change their mind.

But when you're putting money behind your opinion, I think a lot of these big funds do a lot of analysis, and they leverage all the polls. And they also, I think they're a lot more, they're early indicators in the polls. The polls are a bit lagging in my opinion, but when something major happens, the polls will take time to reflect like a big event that Trump did or a big endorsement that he got. It takes a couple of days for the polls to kind of factor that in and for the news to spread across the board and to be able to conduct a poll the betting platforms will kind of try to calculate that as quickly as possible so what i'm seeing is that the betting platforms are earlier indicators than the polls and the polls follow through and it goes to my question though is that how big of an impact and

dave want to get your general i'll see a few heads up so let me get thoughts tom dave and i go matthew dave tom just on what i've said so far before going into crypto and what a Kamala win would mean for crypto. But let me go to Matthew. Go ahead, man. Hey, good morning, everybody. Just a quick note, when you think about how Trump might be viewed or how people might be viewing the election, look at DJT stock too. It's up about four times, three times over the past three months. And so this has gone from $13, $12 a share to over 50 today. And it was halted today, I think twice, because people just keep pouring money into this worthless stock, betting on the fact that he's going to be a winner. So there's one example of people sort of pricing this in right now. From a prediction market perspective, I think it's a

garbage kind of way to look at it, because you don't have any... Nobody has come up here and said, what if people are actually voting for Kamala and hedging their bets with a Trump pick? There's a whole... Because you've introduced money into this, it completely obfuscates a lot of the way that people think about this. And I don't think there's any clear way that you could opine one way or another just based on the way people are putting their money and allocating their money where they're actually going to vote. I think they're two completely separate things. Sorry, I could tell you. Yeah, I think we're going to find out. I think this election will

determine how accurate betting platforms are for predicting anything, really, including elections. But Dwayne, Tom, and Dave, where do you guys lean on this? Matthew, I did say that on this show a few weeks ago that people are people I've spoken to on Polymarket are actually hedging with Camilla Betts but I don't think, it's not as fun to talk about that story so

in terms of Camilla Harris is that my pronunciation? Camilla I don't know. Whatever, man. Whatever. Yeah, yeah. So in terms of what this means for the markets and price action, so I just retweeted a chart here. Mary, your team could take a look. So if we... Because I'm kind of handicapping that Trump's already won this thing, which is

maybe a bit too far afield, but what's the next order thing we need to worry about? It's the Senate and the House. So Republican odds in the Senate have ticked up precipitously, particularly in Ohio. And that's really important because Bernie Moreno would be unseating Sherrod Brown, who chairs Senate banking, which has a ton to do with crypto policy, as I'm sure we've talked about plenty of times here. So the Senate could flip a public in, really important. The House is still a toss up, it's kind of leaning Democrat. But if we get a sweep all red of the presidency, House and Senate, historically, that's been enormously bullish for markets the preceding two years when these guys have been able to enact their legislative policies.

You also layer on the fact that the six-month period from November to April, every kind of year, whatever you want to call the rolling period, is the most bullish for markets. I mean, you have the Santa Claus rally, you have what was October and November. For broader markets, eight out of every 10 November to April periods over the last 10 years has been higher by about 7% on average. So we have a lot of really... I usually don't sell like an Uber bowl if you've listened to the show before, but it's just such a good setup right now. I can't be more excited for the market right now. Yeah. What would it mean in your opinion, Tom, if Kamala does win, how much of an impact do you think we'll have on the markets,

especially crypto? I think we're overstating the negative impact that we'll have on the crypto markets in your opinion. I think you see an immediate sharp sell off. Now, whether that actually is meaningful in the long term, I think people are overstating that. But I think the sell off in the short term would be really sharp because people are pricing on the longterm. I think people are overstating that, but I think the sell-off in the short term would be really sharp because people are pricing on the Trump one. I think you can see it very clearly in markets. Dave, Dwayne. Yeah, thanks.

Yeah. Yeah. I think no, I think no one really knows in regards to the actual polling and the polling data, because I'm, I think it could be the fact as well that I, things have been overcompensated on the Trump side. We're not really sure because of a lot of the polls that have come out. So if you look from since, I guess, since August, there's been about maybe 80 percent, not 80 percent, pardon me, but 80 polls that have come out that are skewed more to the right. So it's hard to really say what the actual outcome will be here. I think it'll be overall on a longer term basis. It's positive overall for Bitcoin as well as gold. If we look at the amount of uncertainty we have right now, VIX is up, gold is up, silver is up, copper is up. So just overall, and with consumer confidence coming out today, and also consumer

confidence being cautiously optimistic and fairly high, I think we'll have positive outcomes either way. I do agree with some of the previous speakers here that Trump victory would be more positive for Bitcoin in the sense that the investors overall are more skewed to the right in that respect. But I think it's very too close to call. We really don't know what the actual outcome is going to be here, especially when we break this down by demographics. In some cases, Trump has lost support. In some cases, Harris has lost support. And they both have gained ground in different demographics as well. So we'd have to look at the population of those particular demographics

as well to sort of try to figure out what the outcome is going to be. Dave, I would love to get your thoughts on this. And I'm going to dig into the metrics of us breaking 70K, but a lot of the metrics kind of a bit surprising like retail so far from being where um where we would expect it to be at these levels but we'll get into that afterwards dave want to get your thoughts yeah i do want to talk about the market because this uh the last 10 hours or 12 hours of market action has been insanely long-term bullish but we'll go through that in a heartbeat but But, you know, there are a

couple of points on the polling. You asked some questions. This election is unique and people don't, they're missing something that I'm actually mind blown that people are missing. The polls are almost certainly underestimating Trump. And the reason, I'm going to explain. The single most largest demographic difference in this election to any other election we've ever seen is male female. Period. Nobody disputes that Kamala is that is as it has lost across every demographic male support all across the board. And we know that that is true. Now, ask yourself a question. Man and wife, man, boyfriend and girlfriend sitting together, a poll calls. Is the male going to admit to voting for Trump in front of a female who is a Kamala supporter? The answer is no. And I don't understand how people don't understand this. I mean, I've been married for a very long time. Now, my wife and I are both in this relatively similar politically aligned, you know, which is, you know, kind of in the center of all this. But, you, where you have people who really have very passionate opinions.

And that's what creates the shyness. And I haven't seen it talked about. I don't know why, because it's obvious. I mean, there's nothing misogynist about this. This is just a simple statistical thing. The other point that people should know that you should understand, Mario, is when there's a national poll, in order, because of the electoral college leaning, I think Scott Rasmussen said 2.2%

was the, Kamala has to win the national poll by over 2.2 to win. And anything under that is a no-hoper. The reason polymarket is where it is, is because the national polls are now within 1% one way or the other. And so that's why you're seeing the smart money betting the way it is. And yeah, you can dig down individual races and you can get right down to it. And a lot of people do that. But if you're ADD like me and you want to understand where things are, just look at the national polling. And the national polling is a hell of a lot closer than it was Trump versus Biden. In fact, it's closer than Trump versus Hillary. And that's the key metric. So that's just from the polls. That's just data. That's just numbers. As far as the market's concerned, you ask about Kamala and Trump. And I think this is really

clear here. If you ask what's the impact on the crypto market, the reason you know the market is starting to price in a Trump win has nothing to do with the price of Bitcoin. I personally think Kamala will be very bullish for the price of Bitcoin. I think the fact is she will be very unbullish for companies trying to support Bitcoin self-custody or DeFi on Bitcoin or anything else on Bitcoin. But the price of Bitcoin, given the amount of spending that will happen, given the fact that Larry Fink already gives people a vehicle to buy Bitcoin, I don't think it's Bitcoin. Look at Doge. Over the last, you know, the fact that Kamala refused to go on Joe Rogan and go down to, you know, go down there, the fact that the news flow has been positive for Trump, you see Doge dramatically outperforming everything else

over the last, you know, over this rally. And why is that? Is that just because they named the Department of Government Efficiency with Elon Doge? I don't think so. But I do think that it's a Scott who's not here this morning, often says the proxy for altcoin and potential rally in the altcoin market is Doge and that's what gets a lot of retail guys going so the fact that you see that running i think that is far more due to the the election than the bitcoin dave i have to disagree okay cool and that just on that doge port like the reason it's named doge and that's absolutely the reason it's running you know bitcoin dominance it like hasn't been this high since march of 21 right systematically like that's just a blip on the radar systematically the rest of the market will be shrinking against bitcoin

you know for for at least the next quarter uh as you know if if they if trump does get and he starts building, is building people are building position in Bitcoin, right? People are building on Bitcoin. And it, you know, you're going to see larger funds coming into Bitcoin, more ETF. Joe, I understand that. But we were talking very specifically. So let's just be very specific. I am not speaking to the relative value of Bitcoin versus alts or anything like that. That's not what I'm talking about. The simple fact is Kamala will 100 percent be more bullish for Bitcoin dominance than Trump. And if you dispute that, then I don't really understand. to hear how a how how someone who literally is for DeFi isn't better for altcoins than someone

who quite literally is against self custody. I almost feel like Bitcoin is is almost like a runaway train, right? Because a 10% increase in Bitcoin at a 1.42 trillion market cap, you know, how many altcoins is it going to take? How many meme coins, you know, how many slurps is it going to take to build up that and get to that point of market cap? It's just a numbers game. The rich get richer. And Bitcoin is now moving so far and away ahead. You know, once American Express and Visa and some of these people start to get hold of this, then there's like block space wars. Like it's going to be all of that. That's not the point. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying. I think that Bitcoin is a generational 10 to 15x opportunity with, you know, with within at least

a 50% probability of that. I've never seen a bet that I would put my chips in the middle of the table and more than Bitcoin right now. So this is not me being bearish on Bitcoin, but I'm merely making a simple statement. Following two decades of statistical arbitrage trading where it's clear. Mario asked the question, if you're trying to position a portfolio for the election, what's the Trump trade? What's the Kamala trade? The Kamala trade is Bitcoin dominance, massive Bitcoin dominance. It's a great play on that, 100%. The Trump trade is find projects that actually can create economic value within the alt universe

or that have a community that could create economic value out of it and bet on that. Now, Bitcoin is clearly one of them. I'm not saying that alt will outperform, but I am saying that it won't be. That's the dynamic that I'm not saying that alt will outperform, but I am saying that it won't be that. That's that's the dynamic that I'm talking about. Sorry, I think in terms of big numbers, it's like if a Democrat gets elected, gun sales surge. Right. It's not because guns are going to be more available. I think that's very analogous to what we're saying here. If Democrats get elected, gun sales surge immediately

because of the fear they're going to clamp down on them. And I agree. Kamala will clamp down on roughly everything, I guess, aboard, but she'll clamp down far harder on crypto and altcoins. Bitcoin will still be above it. So it's not necessarily that it will be good to Bitcoin, but it will be better for Bitcoin in comparison to altcoins. I think the point that David's trying to make.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I agree with you. I would, you know, I would say I would probably wouldn't want to be holding Brett, right. Or a utility token, you know, on the day, you know, if Kalama ends up winning, right. Like, you know, but at the same time, you know, Bitcoin is just far and away so? Like, you know, but at the same time, you know, Bitcoin is just far and away so big

that, you know, the dominance could continue to creep up, even if there are 50x's available, right, in the rest of the altcoin market, which of course, there will be forever. Yeah, I'm just looking at the some of the metrics as well, Dave and, and, and Joe, anyone else could jump in on this one but a lot of metrics show that retail is still far from entering the market so let me open up the document again but the first one there's like an indicator about blockchain center shows uh the the the sky as they call it outpoint season index and it's currently at 29 which is almost at the lowest been in a very long time lowest it's been this year almost and what it was

last time we broke I think 70k it was earlier this year in January this year it hit as high as 75 we look at the metrics as well from

the download the Coinbase app downloads for example it's at a I think Coinbase is ranked at 400 and something last time we broke

70k it was ranked at let me see what number is here broke 70k it was uh ranked at uh let me see what the number is here and so in march it was ranked at 20 and right now it's ranked at under 500 is that a positive thing that we're you know we broke 70k twice this year the first time it seems retail played a much bigger role outcomes were doing a lot better this time it's retail hasn't even entered is that a positive thing that means there's a long much longer way to go and it's a lot more sustainable dave matthews seemed to be giving

100 percent of orgies yeah i mean i i tweeted it this morning you know mario the fact is that you've seen you know a 12-hour move and it was yeah there was a little bit of a a little bit of jitteriness on the way up and it it obviously, a buyer came into, this looks like a buyer comes into the market with a limit price and the market doesn't go far beyond the limit. And it's classic climbing a wall of worry, kind of, you know, sustained spot led kind of buying. The funding rates never jumped.

Liquidations for a move of this magnitude are small you know we've seen these moves where people get you know see a news story and it gets hyped and it's and it runs five to ten percent and then falls back you know 60 to 70 80 of that or all of that right away this is a totally different type of market action this is what you see in bull markets anyone who ever remembers uh because you don't this is not really the way it's been in crypto, but certainly if you, I remember the internet bubble really, really well. And you would have three, four, five months in a row of action of two, three, 4% rallies, followed by it holding that rally through the day. And the next day you'd lather, rinse lather rinse repeat you know that sort of action

where money flows are coming into a market is very different than just a speculative frenzy of FOMO now I'm not saying we're not going to get to FOMO we will but I think FOMO does that mean but does that does that mean that when we get into FOMO stage we'll be we'll be hitting much bigger numbers that's what I think much bigger Mario I sat here yesterday and I sat here yesterday four thousand dollars ago and said i'm not worried i don't know that it'll happen before the election but i mean i still think that that when we get to fomo we're talking you know it's going to be 200k or more that's what i think although you'll get fomo before that obviously yeah look at google's google trends as well and matthew i'd love to get your thoughts on the book i'm a little bit i'll let other people talk i mean i i just think that if in fact the election goes the way that polymarket is suggesting

it it will unshackle a lot of people i still think that there is someone made the point yesterday when we were talking about microsoft and how you know that you know they're being forced to consider putting it on their balance sheet but they're not really going to do it. Right. I think someone made the point that there's still perceptual career risk about investing in crypto. A Trump win eliminates that, particularly if you get a sweep and you end up with the Loomis bill or some some watered down version of that going live. That is not remotely priced in. That's all I said yesterday. You know, on Scott's show and on your show, I said basically that is not priced in. That's all I said yesterday, you know, on Scott's show and on your show, I said, basically, that is not priced in corporate adoption, US sovereign adoption, because what will the rest of the world do? Right? You know, these things are not

pricing in the market. And so this is just the beginnings. This is not the end. I mean, the end looks very different than the beginning. The beginning looks How are the Yeah, DB Matthew, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. I see your emojis flying through and afterwards I'll dig into the ETF inflows we haven't talked about it much I'm not sure if Scott's brought it up enough but how big of a role that's playing in the market's performance but Matthew DB I'm guessing you agree with Dave's position yeah definitely agree and I was just actually going to point to the

inflows as well because I've kind of got this thesis that the inflows of ETFs have really just been an inventory move by these institutions to hold on to assets until they get broader retail adoption. Retail's broke, you know, basically, like you don't have people who are able to have disposable income, you know, be able to allocate to these assets. We haven't seen it or we haven't seen interest. You know, I go ask wealth managers every day, do you have people who are interested in this? And they say, no, they don't think it's legitimate. And I agree with Dave that a Trump win legitimizes that it makes it okay for people. It gives them permission to do this and take a little bit of extra risk. And I think with some, some watered down regulations, people are going to say, well,

this is all we need to now go full bore and try to add as, as we need to. There's also the age-old reality of volume precedes price, right? So what has happened with the Bitcoin ETFs over the past two weeks? In the past two weeks, we've had a significant flow of inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs that have approached the March highs and even some of the January highs, uh, specifically with, with BlackRock's product, Bitwise's product and the like. Um, so when you have that scale of, of inflows at some point, price is going to, uh, find, um, new, uh, new spots. And so here we are at, you know, 71.8, closing in on 71.9.

You know, sometimes, you know, sort of the age-old realities of market structures still mean something. So volume precedes price. Just a quick note on the election stuff and polymarket and some of those predictive stuff. Again, I try and simplify things. I think that the polymarket reactions are fairly closely tied to the fact that Trump leads in now all of these swing states in terms of averages of polls. So take a look at the averages of polls across all the swing states that Real Clear Politics follows. And he's up now. All of those are red.

And so, you know, unless there's a significant breakdown of something or a new manufactured October surprise that finally is the one that sticks, you know, markets do a good job of predicting outcomes. I don't think there's... Jerry just hit a new record on PolyMarket literally in the last hour or two. He's now winning by 34 percentage points instead of 33. Not a big difference, but still worth mentioning.

But I want to dig into another thing. And since Joe is with us, before we go on to Simon and back to you, Andrew, is just looking at altcoins as well. They don't seem to be doing well. Why is that just waiting for the elections? Like let me read out here a tweet by crypto choreo. The chart this chart is incredible in 2024 dozens of VC back tier one projects launched were invested in many some not

too happy about this. A handful of new matters created hundreds of projects and finally 1000s of meme coins launched. But Bitcoin dominance just keeps going up not only existing projects couldn't gain market share from bitcoin but even combined with all the new launches not only bitcoin dominance didn't go down but it actually went up only shows how weak most alts have performed this year this is probably the consequence of bitcoin becoming an institutional asset through etfs and defy uncertainty but in 2024 you should have really been an expert in narrative trading to make money and anyone other than narrative traders probably lost money. Now we did not lose money.

We're doing pretty well, thank God. But it definitely didn't do as well as we would have hoped considering that we're very heavy on the VC, but on the utility tokens, obviously we're pretty big on the meme coin side. So I want to get your take on this, Joe. In my opinion, I'm still extremely bullish. If anything, we're seeing a bit of movement. That's probably something Scott does not talk about, but we're seeing a bit of movement but that's probably something scott does not talk about but we're seeing a bit of movement on the utility tokens if anyone goes on crypto rank we're starting to see projects do well you know we've invested in a few projects that launched in the last few days i think we've got one launching while we're doing the space i don't know the name of it but this year as we speak as we're speaking

now so a lot of these projects are finally launching um my take on this joe is that if there is a trump win that might trigger a a rally with outcoins or utility tokens and meme coins. People get a lot more risk on. And obviously, Kamala Wynn will probably do the opposite. So that's my take. I would love to get your thoughts on it, Joe. Yeah, I mean, you're going to need to change the title of the space to Bitcoin Break 72 here in a second. But, you know, and a lot of people, Mario, don't have your soapbox, right?

And, you know, that you have almost like an accelerator type platform, you know, that works for a lot of different projects, because a lot of projects, it's about marketing. But there's a couple different reasons that you're seeing what's going on. One, you know, I kind of always say, we almost have too many entrepreneurs in Web3, right? Like how many more, how many more layer ones do we actually need right and if some of these people actually consolidated their efforts you know and took some of the money that they got and you know started to build out a larger ecosystem and said hey i'm gonna go learn under this project that's actually far and away like i think the bitcoin ecosystem is

a good example of that right now it's like you know people launching all these different layer twos on bitcoin and then they're just going to go to zero after they suck up a bunch of liquidity and burn a bunch of retail investors. But I think that the crux of this, and yes, you're right, it could change it at this next election is right now you're seeing and you have seen over this year, basically just people launching meme coins. Because if you state that your project has no value, it is worthless, there is no utility, it does nothing. That's, that's okay. And then there's no, there's, there's basically no repercussions for launching something like that.

Right? If you say, Hey, I'm trying to innovate and build and disrupt this sector, you know, with this utility token, that's going to work with this application that's going to do this thing, you're now in a gray area, right? And a lot of a lot of founders who have potentially raised capital, especially in the United States, where a lot of the engine of this is, have just decided to go do something else to work in AI, or to take the money that they originally raised on web three, and go do something else with it. And so we've seen a brain drain on the industry because of the regulation. And so, you know, basically, what's left is the crypto casino and all this DGENs here saying, And so, you know, basically, what's left is the crypto casino and all this degens here saying, I think, you know, that this meme coin is going to go through the

roof or go see it's Maximus is the next thing. And so we've just kind of been stuck and you have the hardcore people that are still here. So yes, if we do see some legislation go through that allows for the app layer to be built, which is the hardest layer to build in this industry. And that's why a lot of I would say lazy entrepreneurs lazy entrepreneurs go build L1s and L2s is because they know that they can just go raise a bunch of capital from some of the top firms, because those are the things that move up, and there's instant liquidity in the market. So I'm really hoping someone that's been trying to build that layer, that we get something to move here, because it's impossible, and it's very hard, and it burns a lot of people out. And so it's

only like the most rugged of the rugged entrepreneurs that are still still here building on the app layer. So sorry for the long rant. But that's my thought on it. Matt Merrick, I just know what Joseph because it's it I think it's a very profound point that he's made. The real profound point this is I'm going to channel ran now is if you have a meme coin, and you're trying to build a community, and this is on a channel ran now, is if you have a meme coin and you're trying to build a community and you're trying to actually get people involved and to build upon it, you are not allowed. If you want to go to U.S. investors, you cannot offer any economic incentive whatsoever.

Under a Trump administration, you will be able to offer economic incentives and differentiate something that matters. And so I think that's where new money comes into the altcoin market, but it's not the same as you're currently looking at. And I think that Joe made that point very, very well. It's something Nick Carter has did a pretty lengthy thread on and a bunch of other people did as well, that meme coins will need to adapt. And buying a meme coin is like buying a Beanie Baby right now. It doesn't mean it can't go up. It can. It doesn't mean that it might not always be considered valuable to people, maybe. But the reality is, is styles come in and out. If on the other hand, you get a share in the Thai corporation as Beanie Baby

going there, it's a different story. And, and ultimately, markets will reflect that right now, I think, you know, you have this DGN casino, which is cool, but you're not getting a lot of new money into it. The new money is is having real investors come in. And that requires this. So I do think that it's a seismic change. And it's that's probably the biggest single impact of this election, whether or not we'll get that or not. Whether we'll get that whole meme coin out coin boom, or whether we'll continue being a Bitcoin only bull run. Is that what you're saying? Well, sort of. I think that you could have a Bitcoin only bull run and you could still have a degen casino where people buy in and trying to

build communities hoping for the ability to monetize that community. But remember the internet bubble. I mean, I know I'm old, so I'm sorry about this. But this idea that eyeballs equals profit. Eyeballs only equals profit if you can channel it into advertising revenue, aka monetizing. So you get people who buy meme coins because they think that it's going to become really a cool thing. Well, they got to be able to monetize it. And right now there is literally no way you can sell a meme coin to a U.S. investor with any part of monetization. And to me, that's always been the key thing that needs to change. Yeah, DB, I want to get your thoughts on this as well. Dwayne, Matthew, just a general talk on how the market will look post-November 5th under Trump.

And not only Bitcoin, just the entire market as a whole to be on our coins me coins db yeah i'm of the same mindset of dave and i think joe that's according to who wins that's how the market's kind of going to move and push more towards the alt sector with a trump win i don't i'm not expecting personally a a massive alt run or anything immediately, primarily because, well, there's still no retail. I like to follow the search trends and the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, all these search trends are way, way down. And I know some people like to point out AI might be taking that, but there's been studies showing that AI really has no impact on search trends, especially Google. And if we also think about four years ago, at this time of the cycle,

people were being given checks at this point, and they had lots of free time, lots of money. So I'm not really expecting what we saw four years ago, the same type of cycle. Long-term bullish, near short-term, just I think we might trend up slowly. Let me get Matthew, Dwayne, your thoughts on this. I definitely think that you're going to see a much, you know, a considerate focus on BTC,

as it's still the very beginning and tip of the funnel for most of these people. If you're going to look from a retail perspective, you might see some good opportunities and some of the higher level meme tokens. But the people who are down in the trenches, the DeFi trenches of folks, they've been here for a while. They know the game. It's not necessarily new capital. So I really think you'd be focused on some of the top alts and Bitcoin in terms of overall allocation over the course of the next, maybe call it 18 months. Yeah, I agree. I think most of the inflows are going to go to ETFs to Bitcoin, because that's really what's top of mind awareness for people, especially with the conversations around politics

and the election, because both sides are trying to make a viable, you know, basically a viable run and a viable point for Bitcoin. So I think that's what's going to really garner all of the attention. And I think retail will fall off of the altcoins to a certain extent. I mean, you can contrast this with any other sort of commoditized sort of sector, even with like gold, gold miners, silver miners, et cetera. So the larger uh you know the like the larger side will get all of the attention and eventually that will trickle down but i don't

think that's going to happen until you know say six months a year or even further out yeah uh simon i want to ask you a separate question i was going through all the different tweets uh you got here uh elliot trade says btc soaking up liquidity from outs, as in as is tradition before the fabled golden bull. I agree with that. I agree with that take us about saying the same thing is just let me read what crypto UB said it's a spot and chill market until Bitcoin dominance comes down. Spot and chill sorry, spot and chill in out points that are showing clear relative strength and not flinching when Bitcoin

does anything but grind up. You want your spot bags to barely flinch or recover quickly and you talked about so so in other words i just think that i'm pretty bullish i think and let me get ak up as well get his take on this and i'm trying to just the reason i'm asking these questions see how we can play the market you did mention something just important just for the audience like when i say you know we're really going heavy on these utility tokens we don't invest typical like a traditional vc we do but we're a lot more conservative with pure investment generally what we do is we prefer to incubate projects so we get a big percentage of supply that's been our second fastest growing department the marketing one is something we've been doing since 2017 so we work with projects on

marketing and media and coming on the shows and working with our marketing team and investing so we write a ticket with and we work with every client we write a ticket for uh very rare we just write not very rare but relatively uncommon where we just write a ticket because the market is still pretty dry and liquidity is hard to come by so that's the it's an important disclaimer here and john glad you made it because not everyone has that same position that we do uh but simon i want to ask you more first ak oh he's not up yet i mean he's glitching for you and before Simon, I want to ask you more. First, AK, oh, he's not up yet. I mean, he's glitching for you. And before AK comes on,

I'll ask Simon more from a geopolitical perspective if there's anything we should pay attention to. AK, is your mic working? Hey. Hey, bro, yeah. Sorry, I missed the last, I don't know, couple of seconds. No, it's all good.

What we're doing is we're just talking about how the markets will look like moving forward. Post-November 5th under Trump and the Harris. The consensus right now is that Bitcoin is going to do well either way. Probably will do better under Trump versus Kamala. It will reach all-time highs quicker. More importantly, where the market will differ is

what the rest of the market will do, whether we'll have that altcoin bubble or that altcoin rally or bubble and meme cause whether they'll do well or not. So that's where I think it would differ. Obviously, Trump will be more risk on versus Kamala. But what's your take on the markets? I totally agree with the consensus, I think, of the panel here. The elections are the and of course, the winner is the big deciding factor with Trump being more on the bullish side. Mario, I'll tell you, I got out of Bitcoin probably a couple of months, three months ago, when it was kind of seeing some weakness.

And I think that really it put in a great kind of point of consolidation in the 50s and now in the 60s, and we're seeing a breakout, I still am not fully convinced. I think that 76 and 81K are probably the biggest tests that Bitcoin needs to go through. If we break through on those with major strength, that being the election or the run up to the election, and then there is kind of a disappointment, that's going to be the top there for another maybe few months of consolidation, my opinion. But if it does break through with some major strength, Bitcoin is going to around 120,000, in my opinion. So I will put this on your show. Last year, I got on your show when it was 36 or 37. And I said, it's the start of the bull run that went to

70s. I got out at 63. And I've been idle for what, six, eight months now. So this is the second chance it's going to have a go at it. Major, major catalysts are incoming. So I'm excited to see what happens past 81. Beyond there, man, it's going to run in super price discovery mode. If Trump is extra bullish, they start doing treasury moves. I mean, the possibilities are endless. Nobody really knows for sure. But what I can kind of put my reputation behind is that this thing is staying forever. And the 40s and the 50s are pretty good buy-in zones. BlackRock isn't going to let this thing drop to under 30k again. Let's just be honest, unless some major, major catastrophe happens in

the world. And that's my opinion. It's a major inflation. It's a major hedge against inflation, by the way, Bitcoin. And with the currencies and what's going on with the stock markets at all time highs, there's going to be a breakaway where Bitcoin will distinguish itself maybe beyond certain ties. So this is my take. I'm very bullish, even though I've been sidelined for a couple of months. I appreciate it. Simon, your general take, it's probably always the same, but maybe kind of asking a bit of a tougher question.

Simon on stage, there it is. Has anything changed at all? And how big do you think the election will play on the market's performance in the next 12 months? Yeah, I think, you know, short term, the election is a big deal. That's why the market's moving right now. Yeah, we have our normal trend. We are still in the cycle and Bitcoin is performing how it's meant to perform. But the reality is, is that, you know, Bitcoin under Trump brings a lot of possibilities for America and America is a major market in Bitcoin, crypto and the whole market. You've got a Bitcoin strategic reserve asset possibility that can trigger a game theoretical scenario under both events. Like, let's say that for some reason it doesn't get through, then other countries will see that as a strategic opportunity to flip, you know, the global south with the global north. And I think that game is going to play out. Alternatively, Trump can bring that strategic

reserve. And that will, you know, bring all of the countries trying to catch up and put some Bitcoin on their balance sheet and make sure that they can keep up. Because it's a it's amazing thing. On terms of Trump as well, obviously, his family have launched the World Liberty Financial. It's been a bit of a flop. But the point is that it touches every part of crypto, in which case you don't just get the Bitcoin play. What was the flop? Sorry, say that again. Well, it was meant to raise 300 million.

I think it's on 14 million so far. So it's deeply underperformed. 14 or 14? 14. 14. It raised 1.4 million? 1.4. 1.4. Yeah. far. So it's deeply 1414141414 million at one for one for yeah, Liberty only raised 14 million 14 million. I thought I saw like a 700 million market capital launch. Yeah, the the economics are awful. It's a really bad design. But Simon, on the world liberty, it's important to understand

because I agree with everything you're saying. And I don't interrupt too much. But the problem the world liberty, it's important to understand because I agree with everything you're saying and I don't interrupt too much. But the problem with world liberty is it's under current U.S. laws, which make it a accredited investor only, very restricted with lockups, etc. case study of why the US needs to enable rules that allow crypto to actually flourish here, as opposed to the what the current law set. So now that that's how you know, with capital letters, that Donald Jr is going to be whispering in his father's ear, Dad, you need to fix this crap, because we didn't raise 300, you know, almost $300 million was stopped from our fundraise because of these idiotic laws. Yeah, and that's the story that will have to be spun from here is that we couldn't raise the money under a Biden administration. And therefore, we need a new administration. Now, the point of the project is that first, you've got the Bitcoin story, which was what he presented at Bitcoin 2024.

But it actually touches three major areas in terms of that project. And the first one is stablecoins, which is going to be the most important regulations to come next after the administration. The other part is that it's self-custody because you do have to connect a wallet in order to participate. And therefore, you get one of the most important part of the DeFi ecosystem. And the third part is they're actually doing a token sale and the token sale is flopping because they're making people upload all of their accredited investor status. And it's just too much to connect your wallet and have to do all of the proof of assets, proof of income and all that type of stuff. And at the end of the day, it's a governance token.

And so this touches upon the SEC. So in summary, with Trump, you get every single part of the ecosystem, stable coins, DeFi, Bitcoin strategic reserve, game theory globally, trying to keep up with the US or trying to flip the US. And then you also get the SEC securities. And so it's all tackled. Once all that's tackled, you know, there's excitement at the other side of it. And that's the point with Harris, there's nothing going on. It's American black men ability to have financial inclusion by supporting their ability to buy crypto. So the World Liberty hasn't listed, has it? No, it's a non-transferable token.

So you've got to be an accredited investor if you're in the U.S. It's a REGS, which means anyone outside U.S. And the tokens are non-transferable within one year. And the token economics are bad. Okay. And someone who talked about their their fdv being pretty high was that you yeah i mean i i i when they did their launch or proposed launch date i i just looked at that screener and i seen like a six seven hundred million dollar market cap it seemed like that was the launch, had some liquidity there. But I haven't looked since.

I'm going to take a look now. Yeah, can you check it out now? That's what it looks like. Tom, not sure if you know anything about World Liberty 5. I don't want to. I mean, it's a Trump meme coin, right? Like this thing is going to trade, you know, with a beta to the Trump election outcome here.

Like that's what the play is. Like if we think this is like a real long-term DeFi project. It's going to be non it's going to be non-tradable for a year so you won't see a market for a year yeah but okay if trump gets you're right totally right but if trump gets elected that's what it's going to play as i i don't see this as a viable project by any means um it's an awful project yeah um sorry Yeah, just to finish off the thought. I mean, actually, sorry, go ahead. You go ahead and I'll jump back in. Thanks, brother.

There's multiple pools. I can see a USDT pool that's trading here. So WLFI against USDT. That's $73 million market cap. And then they also got a few other pools that are Solana and ETH wrapped, but those are pretty small market caps, almost embarrassing. So I don't even want to mention it.

Yeah, so they've already got an SEC case that he needs to come out the other side and make sure it doesn't happen. Yeah, I mean, just zooming out, like what is Trump like? He likes people who kiss the ring and praise him, like checkmark for crypto, because he's so much better than what they've given us to date. And he likes making money.

And he hates government regulation. Like that, that is like the perfect setup for the asset class, right? In the next few months, if he gets elected. So yeah, I don't, I truly don't understand that people who are rooting for Kamala Harris in this industry makes makes literally zero sense to me. But the other thing about the project as well that is quite interesting. The reason it's flopped is because you'll know this Mario, but most people they won't dream about launching a

project until it's fully front loaded with VCs. And then they launch the final amount. It seems like the family didn't figure that one out. And this is what a fair, you know, a normal launch looks like when you don't preload it with all the, the VC money up front. Yeah. I was just trying to find a coin as well.

I couldn't find it. Okay. But all good. Let me, let me get into the discussion and change the topic. Lumos, are you there? Lumos, are you there guys Lumos, are you there, guys?

Yeah, we're here. How are you? How are you, man? Good, man, good. We're talking about projects Utility Talk is now doing as well. Then I look at your guys' website. You've got OKEx Ventures, Hashkey, Polygon, QCoin Ventures, Gate Ventures. You've got all the exchanges investing.

Not sure what you're listing. Comm3, sorry, you got who else you have that I have the bigger blockchain coin investors don't know these guys. But you've got all these big names about NGC as well. So you've raised a favorite, how much have you guys raised? Absolutely. I mean, it really depends where we look at things from. I mean, on an equity perspective, we're looking at about 14 million total between rounds, we're looking at about 14 million total between rounds we're

looking at about 30 million already with the note cells that we've been having which is all part of the efforts going towards our road to mainnet but really it's an it's a bread and butter for us to be able to fetch all the details down to being able to have what's not only the first prover network and verifier but really being able to what's connecting all this new partying but we're seeing. Right. People used to be talking about protocols. It's almost like people are talking about chains at the moment. Right. So being able to provide some of the technological innovation from our side and shed some of the light about how we believe we could be providing some insights on

connecting different layers and into the best possible means and ways for our clients is really what we're trying to do. Some of the best case scenarios that we can really bring on the table is how with our close partners at Polygon and what was the inception days of their ZK architectures, their CDK. We actually took that outside of the initial intents and purposes of an Ethereum ecosystem and actually provided that for a great use case for one of our clients being Merlin Chain, which was reaching, I mean, we're seeing some of the big TPLs reaching far into the billions on their case scenarios, right?

So being able to see how we can change the storylines of these clients, of these companies, is part of the driving motivations of us to be able to... Let's dig into it. Let's take a few steps back. Let me just dig into it let me geek out a bit first the ai narrative is getting a lot of traction um just for the audience something that we're i know everyone's been talking about the ai hype the ai bubble um i i think uh the the adoption is catching up to to the hype relatively quickly much faster than previous

uh narratives that gain traction you know if you compare things to the metaverse, for example, even Web three gaming, and the AI is doing so so pretty, so damn well, including in decentralized AI. And we're scaling our involvement in that space. Today has been today last couple of days is focusing fully on our AI incubator, which is not even related to Web three, obviously, we do Web three AI projects. So I'm going to enjoy this conversation and geek out over and try to understand what you guys do, Alvaro. but let's get into the basics um and i think i'm

gonna be pretty selfish with my questions where i try to learn for a personal level which i think the audience will appreciate let's start with the most basic question what is lumos trying to start explain it to someone that's very you know has basic crypto and ai knowledge and then we get into the technicalities a bit afterwards absolutely yeah. Yeah, I fully agree. I mean, there's a lot of traction and hype going on in terms of what the applicability of this is of AI. And some of this is actually something that we're seeing with our own compute layer. But just to bring things down to the basics, what we're doing at Lumos is that we have been building blockchain solutions for our clients. And we have been in the forefront of what's the research and development in the front of roll-ups

and different architectures. Specifically, a lot of focus on the ZK side of things and how you can connect these roll-ups. Because a roll-up that's not connected to any base layer is nothing else but an ecosystem or an environment on itself. What we're aiming to do here...

So just go ahead, just explain what a roll-up is as well. I don't want to get into that basic. A roll-up is the next stage in terms of development from my point of view in terms of what many of the companies and applications or protocols should be looking into for their products. Why? Because it's merely a concept about how you want to structure your product. From my point of view, a roll-up, yes, most of the people see it as a blockchain in itself

because of the raw methodologies and how we can compare things. But it's nothing else than an environment which meets the demands of a certain set of actors, in this case, a company or a product that wants to be promoting a certain set of products or features. It could be larger TPS. It could be lower latencies. It could be a complete set of customizability. It could be a great ecosystem which is focused on memes. It could be a GameFi ecosystem. It could be a complete set of customizability. It could be a great ecosystem, which is focused on memes. It could be a GameFi ecosystem. It could be anything. So it's just a way to scale a blockchain. It's pretty much it for whatever. It's a way to scale a product.

Why are blockchains there? Blockchains are there to be able to provide value to people and to be able to provide certain set of products essentially up to a certain set of means. So those roll-ups are essentially means to a purpose to be able to bring these products to the next level. And this is exactly what we're seeing with more application-specific ecosystems that Those roll-ups are essentially means to our purpose to be able to bring these products to the next level. And this is exactly what we're seeing with more application-specific ecosystems that are coming up. Payment ecosystems, more AI-based ecosystems. There's different ecosystems emerging. But essentially, it's becoming from the problem statement that many of the founders were seeing.

I want to build a product. I want to change people's lives. And suddenly, I have to commit. Like if this is a football match, Real Madrid or Barcelona, Ethereum or Solana, why do I have to commit in that set of way? Why can I not focus on my product in itself and eventually see what my clients, what my users are interested or may benefit on seeing? And this is something that I can create in a more, let's say, customized environment where suddenly I'm putting much more of the rules than the ecosystem or the blockchain in itself

that last comment you made where i'm putting the rules rather than the ecosystem or the blockchain itself can you expand on this but before you do just before because that's i don't know what you mean by that but just before you so it's actually what happens when you kind of roll up it's just a scaling mechanism without getting into exactly how it works for the audience because i think it's not as interesting for people listening to this because actually just roll up a whole bunch of transactions and settle them on chains it's one of the most successful scaling uh solutions in the in the industry um you can expand on that but can you can you expand on your last comment that you've made absolutely in a very simple way i'll put it in simple terms as an example if a protocol wants to build a product on Ethereum at the moment, and they would like to implement something like a gasless transaction, there is all sorts of limitations.

You cannot put something on chain without gas. Well, in the case of a rollup or a customized environment, you're setting the rules for the sequencer in terms of being able to actually onboard certain transactions onto what's the sequence of that roll-up that will be printed down to a base layer. So without getting too technical here, you can change parts of the game that as an app developer or as a CEO of a startup that is actually looking to create user attention, user retention, different features that you're not able to create within a specific blockchain or ecosystem,

suddenly you can. And that's why a lot of the more sophisticated products that are building in blockchain are suddenly thinking and talking much more about their ecosystems, about their chains, because that is nothing else than the sandbox environment for them to be able to create those products and to be able to improve those products. Well, let's take a step back. So essentially on your website, the first thing you have is modular compute protocol under it you have zk and ai and more so you have two of the cooler two of the coolest things in in web three right now ai and zk rollups um but the first thing is modular compute protocol can you expand on what a modular compute protocol is which kind of explain what lumos is in simple terms to be able

to connect those rollups those sandbox environments you need computing power there's capacity that is needed because otherwise you're drifting on your own. Basically what's happening is that those sandbox environments are allowing for all these features to be implemented for the founders. But you still need to settle down to a base layer, like Ethereum, like Bitcoin, like Solana, like whatever it is, right?

So we take charge of all this process in the background. That compute layer is nothing else than a decentralized environment that we are launching together with this whole community, together with all the infrastructure, together with the nodes that I was just mentioning, to be able to create all the technicals

behind what is connecting the roll-up to Bitcoin, what is connecting the roll-up to Ethereum, what is connecting the roll-up to... It's like the technical layer. So you're saying the technical layer that kind of links all these different ZK roll-ups to the L1 they sell along, correct? Correct. To try to give a comparison partially out of ignorance is how the internet is being interconnected together, how DNS services are working all together.

There's a way that you have to connect the internet together. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of different Ethernets. So in order to remain on internet, you need to have those communication protocols. This is exactly what we're solving with our compute layer. Why? Because it's actually utilizing that computing power, which is not only put by a centralized party, but by decentralized parties, including all the nodes that are participating into basically what is the generation of zero knowledge proof computation that is translating this into connecting a rollup down to a base layer. How we do this, it really depends on a case by case basis with the different clients

and the different architectures that we adopt. There is hyper chains, there is super chains, there's orbit chains, there is CDKs, there's many different architectures. To put things in simple terms, this computer layer is essentially connecting the different roll-ups the different ecosystems the different sandbox environments that i was mentioning down to the different base layers that are so important for the for for interconnecting the whole uh ecosystem as a whole together whether it's the bitcoin ethereum or the more renowned ecosystem that i was mentioning yeah so essentially it's like a foundational place. Like you're building the infrastructure

that we talked about for the past, whatever, since 2015 now. You're going to allow... And I'm going to give you one more piece of information that's going to make you have a lot of sense, right? How this started is because we were intrinsically motivated in helping these ecosystems mature. And initially, what we were providing is, have you heard about modularization all these times in the past year,

it's been quite a common buzzword, right? Modularization has been one of the keys to be able to reach this level of composability that we have at the moment to be able to piece things together and reach to a product that at the moment is basically achievable but was not before being able to get to this point was great but there was no proprietary architecture that we would be putting from from our place so essentially we could be looking at things like providing a coffee shop but not being starbucks right you can be having a coffee bean provider you you can be having a mug provider, and essentially not having a proprietary architecture. What we did by research and development was essentially this computational layer that

is connecting everything together is implemented not only a sustainable business model for the whole idea in itself, but also being able to actually siphon things into a way that actually provides value to the architectures that we piece together with all these different teams that have been working on the architecture such as the polygons, the zk-syncs, the etc. etc. I was just mentioning. Does that make sense? Yeah exactly, for both AI applications. So where does the AI aspect come into it? Well that's the thing, our computational layer is not discriminating about which architectures or which kind of computation they want to do. At least we don't have that level of sentience.

What we're intending to apply this computational layer is not only towards ZK. Next levels of maturity that we want to be applying this into is potentially into AI agents and the training of these, for example, or the different protocols or applications they may be arise from that intersection between blockchain and Web3 and AI. Akai, I see your hand up, go ahead man. He just kind of answered my question, but it's excellent to see obviously

what you guys are doing with the ZK roll-ups. Alvaro, I was gonna mute you, but if you can move away from the kids, that'd be great. Yeah, go ahead, Akai. Thank you., I'm just going to mute you, but if you can move away from the kids, that would be great. Yeah, go ahead, AK. Thank you. I was really just going to ask, you know, now that you've put together this hub here to be able to accelerate a lot of, you know, the complexities in L2s, are you guys going to be looking to give any of the newcomers any kind of grants or programs or anything that really assists them in being able to get through some of these computational complexities? Well, we have a lot of clarity on this, but you're touching one of the defining points that I'm actually looking into ourselves right now.

Since our road to mainnet is translating into a foundational basis for us to be able to not only support different roll-ups, but be incentivized on looking at our architecture being adopted over there. It's not going to be our partners that we typically connect with our clients to be able to look at these incentive alignment, which is something that we have done in the past. Basically, all these different roll-up environments eventually seek to align incentives with these different partners in some way. We will become one more of these as well. Why? In order for us to be able to subsidize what is the adoption of these initial rollups that would be adopting our architectures and all the subsequent applications as well.

I mean, the AI agent situation would be one of the recurring applications that I could see potentially arising within the next year as soon as that point. But it depends on the different mechanics that we may see arising between the intersection of AI and Web3 as well. But being able to provide a foundation and support on the implementation of these and the fermentation is something that we want to see as well.

I love your passion, man. I fully support what you're doing and you're bridging in a very, very important gap in our ecosystem. As Mario has said, this is like something that's been looked for since 2015. So kudos to you. And like I said, I love your passion. Thank you so much. I think one important point to be mentioning here, and I call out also on other founders, is versatility. I mean,

ZK is one of the architectures that seems to be very promising for the past several years, and now reaching several points and milestones of maturity is delivering but also from our standpoint that versatility of how you can apply different architectures this is exactly how roll-ups have been opening an opportunity i can just tell you a few years back this concept was not did you just cut out you just cut out man i'm going through yeah can you hear me oh you're back yeah yeah go ahead yeah uh this concept was not unknown right when i speak about concepts like polka dot when i speak about concepts like cosmos the multi-chain concept was already there there was just too many limitations in terms of being able to deploy all these ecosystems in a in a robust and scalable manner

that was not really allowing for this to come into fruition so even from our side from our stance um i could tell you that my development in the education of this is that I could tell you 2023, 2024 early, I was very hardcore only ZK. I'm starting to understand that there's a lot of opportunity on the intersection between an optimistic approach,

but reaching faster finality. And this is for the more tech savvy on the challenge periods with ZK. I wanted to dig into the whole... Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to... There's a lot of more technical questions I wanted to ask,

especially the robotics as a service aspect of it. It's kind of the best way to describe what you're doing. But, you know, the last four minutes, I want to talk about the token side of it. You've got incredible backing. You've raised a shit ton of money. You've got an incredible community. For first, thanks for having us on your cap table.

I appreciate that. But second, can you talk more about the token launch? When is that planned for? What exchanges do you have to deal with? Kind of give us a bit of information on the tokenomics. Yes, in terms of tokenomics, I'm going to start with some interesting alpha points. Look, the community that has been hardcore Lumos

for the past two years, that has been there with a one-year long test net community that has been hardcore Lumos for the past two years, that has been there with a one-year long testnet, that has been there with the different campaigns and the community that is yet to be onboarded up to today is going to be considered in a very special way. Then when we're looking about exchange engagements, we have incentive alignments on the cap table with several one of them. I mean, I can connect certain dots, but we have not alignments on the cap table with several one of them i mean

i can connect certain dots but we have not really been making any announcements on the listing so far all i can be mentioning is let me let me connect the dots let me connect the dots let me do the dot connecting for you so essentially i'm gonna have to do that i'm speculating here but you got no i don't know i'm not saying anything you've shared with us because i don't know i didn't look at what you shared with the team on your website you've got okay x ventures you've got q coin i'm just speculating here i'm genuinely speculating qcon ventures okay x ventures gate ventures so you've essentially gate has been doing really well recently surprisingly um q coin i haven't looked at their performance recently okay this is one of the top tier exchanges let's say number two after

binance right now and so you've got three top tier exchanges that are on your cap table um so these are dots i've just connected do you have any other exchanges on your cap table that are not on your website that you're allowed to share publicly? Not at the moment. Within the next three to four weeks, we will be having some light being shed on this. Binance Ventures, I guess. Binance Labs. Please don't put me... I'm just speculating i'm allowed to speculate as much as i want that's you are right you are cool man but that's a really impressive

cap table but yeah go ahead sorry to interrupt yeah it's it's look uh the best way i can put things is that this road to mainnet is happening within 2024 this road to mainnet is happening before christmas and this transition is to be happening in a duly manner. We do have a requirement for our token to be live in order to be able to have a successful road to mainnet. For the more avid listeners, I think this is a lot of hints to be given. We will be sharing a lot more details in terms of the methodology and the different steps that we will be taking over the coming weeks as well in our different channels. Yeah. Love it. Cool, man. Look, I've just messaged the team.

I try to understand how involved we are. Cause I love what you guys are fucking building. I love the backing that you have, the team that you have as well as going through it before the space. So really glad to have you on the show. We'd love to do more together. Not sure if you're aware we're going to pitch live on the space but look we do have uh again not sure how deep our involvement is but i want to expand as much as possible um on the um so i think it's too late on the incubation side we do have a few um

um you know pretty high profile projects so that are working with our incubator we had some successes there but our marketing department is the one that's growing the fastest so anything we could do to help you guys would love to do that i think what you're building is very technical uh but it's also very important a lot of people might not understand the discussion that me you and ak had earlier but i think it's foundational uh for the space to keep growing um so anything we could do to help um i'd love to i'm really happy to have you on the stage and and i would love to uh to have you on the stage again man but congratulations on what you built for anyone that wants to check out lumos uh check him out the profiles on stage um or the name is in the title alvaro as you were

there since the early early days are you a co-founder or just coo in my case it's a coo it's it's almost a co-founder position i couldn't't get there in time, but I've been in touch with my co-founders for plenty of time to, you know, essentially for about one and a half years. Go renegotiate.

You're a really good speaker. Go renegotiate a better deal. Say, guys, look, I did a really good job on the Crypto Town Hall. People love me. I would like to renegotiate our deal. I know I came late,

but I think I'm a co-founder as well. But otherwise, pleasure to have you, man. Thanks a lot. Good luck to you again, bro. Appreciate it. For everyone else, it was a great discussion today. We'll see you again tomorrow.

Hope we will break all-time highs before November 5th. We could do a whole celebration space then. Otherwise, enjoy your day. Thank you. Go vote. Kamala or Trump just vote. Bye, everyone. Thanks.

Let's go.