The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Flat, ETH Falls, Alts Rise! w/ @gameon_hq | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

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Trying to work through the glitch here, getting everybody on stage, working on it right now. Both myself and Mario actually in Austin, Texas today. Mario and I had one of the funnier dinners in history last night. That was so Austin typical. I think he's sleepy right now, even though his face is up here. But we went out to dinner with two of our friends. Mario said, I'll go out to dinner with you if you find me a really nice restaurant so because he's mario and so i had a reservation like 45 minutes later we went to this thing they wouldn't allow us to do like the price fix chef's menu

unless all four of us did it so we convinced the other two people who had no intention of doing it and it ended up being like a four hour thing where they brought out like, you know, 15 bite-sized courses. We're absolutely starving and eventually just walked out before the last four courses. And I paid the check and we went and he got DoorDash. That was the night that we had last night here in Austin, but I'm hoping that consensus has a better, bigger and better things in store for us starting,

starting today. Any of the other speakers, any of you guys out here right now? Fred, DB, Dan, Thomas, anybody here? Scott, I am about to get on a plane. I'll be driving the second half of this, and I look forward to buying you a drink tomorrow at the Hilton. And by that, I mean asking what you want and going to the open bar and getting it for

you. I'll take that. I was going to say, I think I might be buying those drinks, but if I'm the one throwing the political fundraiser, then maybe it's me that's buying the drinks. I don't know. But yeah,

he's friends talking about the fundraiser we're doing tomorrow night for John Deaton from six to seven 30 at the Hilton for anybody who is here. You've been following along, you know, that quite a few of us are very passionate about John's Senate run and obviously him unseating the head of the snake, Elizabeth Warren. So Fred, that's awesome, man. I'm glad you're going to be there. That's going to be a lot of fun. Any Zach, are you here? I feel like you would be here.

I would, I can't make it this year. Cause I'm traveling all of June and it's too much. Yeah, I hear you. I hear it's going to be good. Any of you guys at Consensus last year, I kind of joke about this, but it was the most bipolar situation being in a bear market in Consensus last year because it was dead. We had maybe a third of the people that we had had the year before at consensus. Same, I guess, was with Bitcoin Miami last year. I think it cut down about 66% in audience. You guys remember, it was a depth of bear market. But right before consensus, effectively, it was when the SEC came after Binance and Coinbase. And it was just utterly hopeless. I don't think people necessarily

remember the feeling before the SEC started actually losing in court a bit when it felt like Gensler was all powerful and crypto was literally done in the United States. So nobody went to consensus. And I'm not kidding. 30% of the booths were either bankruptcy attorneys or accountants. If you're at a crypto conference and every booth you walked up to is somebody who's trying to help you through your bankruptcy, you know you're pretty fucked. And I'm assuming this year, it's just going to be a bunch of PFP, NFTs again, because we're back in the bull market. It was also consensus with the Doquan subpoena, right?

Where they got him at the top of the escalator. Oh, is that? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was rugged. Yeah. I mean, it was? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was rugged. Yeah. I mean, it was just depressing. Dead. You could have full-on played a football game on the floor of consensus last week and not

even hit anyone with the ball. It was bad. So I think that the energy is going to be spectacular, actually, because we have the perfect storm for a big conference in the US this year. A lot of people are coming. I think there's actually excitement about crypto in the US again, and prices are good. And so I'm very hopeful that this is going to be absolutely an amazing conference. So Fred, just drop me a DM when you get here, man. Maybe we can link for a drink today too, because we've got a really awesome space right across from ConsenSys that'll be kind of open the whole time. So hit me up about that. But I guess now we have to talk about the actual market here. Bitcoin flat, ETH falls, alt rise. I haven't really seen alt rising to any great degree. DB, what are your thoughts on the market here in general?

Besides just boring as hell? Yeah, I mean, that can be the thought that's my thought too it's funny though that it's boring when like we're in the 60 000s exactly after the having who would have thought just uh what six months ago that uh this would be boring and this would almost be not depressing but yeah just what it is and yeah hopefully we're going into uh maybe a minor altcoin cycle that's what some people are saying. I don't expect any blow off tops or any major altcoins going parabolic anytime soon. But they're looking good comparatively to BTC and ETH.

And yeah, just kind of going sideways and waiting to see what goes with the election. Because I think that's going to be the really deciding factor on the markets the next couple of years. Yeah, I mean, my base case still remains, even with all this news that we just fall into the normal four-year cycle and have a really boring summer, and then it gets exciting again in the fall. I've been saying that since March, so I guess I'm two months into being somewhat correct, but it's still a long stretch to get through the summer. So I know a lot of people are expecting more fireworks maybe this summer. And we will have the actual launch of the Ethereum spot ETF, you know, in the coming month, month and a half.

So maybe that could be some sort of catalyst. Dan, go ahead. Yeah, sorry, I'm not in the US for consensus. I'm back in Singapore, back in Singapore a couple of days ago. I want to kick off a little bit of discussion about a point I was just bouncing around my head. in the US for consensus. I'm back in Singapore, got back in Singapore a couple of days ago. I want to kick off a little bit of discussion about a point I was just bouncing around my head. The US ETFs, the E-TTFs are going to ban staking, right? So I'm bouncing around an idea in my head and this is my friend. Do you think we may see potentially a company in the US that is already listed that will take ETH on board on the treasury and stake it and become the micro strategy of ETH. We have that. That's one potential outcome. Yeah, I don't mean to interrupt. So it's not in the US, but it's in Canada. A friend of the show, David Towle, he comes up here all the time.

It's actually something he and I kicked around. He has a public company in Canada, very small, obviously not as large as a micro strategy that he has converted into effectively an ethereum holding company that stakes they're raising now they already have a bit of aum but so i mean it's not happening on a micro strategy scale certainly but there are it is on people's minds and actively uh already in action at least on the Canadian traded company. I think not just that. I get that. No. Sorry, go ahead.

I was going to say, I think any sophisticated company, whether it's a company or a fund or like a pension fund or something that wants to allocate a serious amount of money to ETH, like for that reason, they're not going to buy the ETF. I'm like pretty bearish on the ETH ETF. Because if you know what you're doing, you'll absolutely agree. I bet that stands next point. Yeah. So yeah, there's a, there's a couple of things. Um, so yes, I hear you on the Canadian stuff. Uh, I was speaking specifically about the U S,

um, because yeah, no, Canada did, there's the ETPs that have been around in the Scandinavian and all that kind of stuff. Uh, and you have them now in Hong Kong. Number one, my question was, will there be a company in the US that's us listed? It will be that number two, might they be a dormant company that's listed in the US that someone takes over and does that? And then my third point was, what would stop a company listing as a managed fund, right, not a passive managed

fund, and call himself, you know, active digital markets investor, and then doing exactly the same thing. Right? I mean, I don't really know. I mean, the SEC would then have to go out of their way explicitly to stop this rather than passively not allowing it, right? Yeah, I think that's, I think it's somewhat inevitable, to be quite honest. And I think we'll see people sort of also doing what MicroStrategy does, maybe with sort of being de facto indexes. Like maybe they buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, right? And that becomes their balance sheet.

I think that's all coming. I think, Mike, to your point, I just think that Michael Saylor has laid out the playbook too clearly. So whether you believe in those other assets or not, there's somebody who does and wants to, I think, capture that spotlight and the idea that he had. I think it's inevitable. Yeah, sure. If I just may chime in before we let Tom say. I think the differences between the SEC and somebody allowing it, it's a much bigger hurdle for them to step

in and try and get away from doing that. So I think there's another group. And totally, yeah, I agree. And it's gonna take, it's gonna take away from all these funds that do it. Because if you can hold the ETH, but you can't stake it, you know, you're giving up three, 4%. That's nonsense. This is why I think the ETH, ETS, when they can't stake it, you're giving up 3%, 4%. That's nonsense. This is why I think the ETH ETFs, when they're approved in a trade, they will trade much lower volume because this is a massive handicap that can be armed away. But yeah, I thought this...

Thomas, I'll see you after. Yeah, I mean, really, before Thomas goes, Dan, that's not an uncommon sort of sentiment right now that maybe the Ethereum spot ETFs actually are bullish for Ethereum spot and less bullish for the ETFs themselves, because maybe this increases institutional awareness of ETH, which is non-existent right now. And then they go, wait, I can actually just buy this stuff and stake it and make a yield instead of buying the ETF. So very well could drive people, I think, in that direction. It's very different. Why isn't it an obvious spread trade to buy spot ETH,

fake it and short the ETFs? I think that seems exactly this. This is my next point. Yeah, that's my exactly next point. If someone does that, then all you do is you buy the fund that stakes it and you short the fund that doesn't stake it and you capture the three or four percent yield. Interestingly, isn't that... Sorry, Dan. Isn't that, you know, the, I guess they're not calling it a stable coin, synthetic dollar, Athena. Athena, Athena. Isn't that partially how their business model exists for yield? I think there's a few factors, but to my understanding, not shorting the ETF itself, but I think they're doing the carry trade shorting. I'm trying to remember how they were doing it. It's easiest to short their perpetual futures.

I think they're shorting the perpetual futures, buying spot and staking the spot, and they get our opportunity there and spread. It's just the classic cash and carry trade. I don't think they're shorting the perpetual. I think they're shorting actual futures contracts, like dated futures, and gathering the yield in between, but then also getting the yield on the staked ETH. So it's sort of the carry trade with an extra bonus of staked ETH. So that's definitely coming, Dan. I think you're right. Both of you guys, I think you're right. Thomas? Just to chime in, Big Digital, guys, does that ethereum staking they're trying to be the mass uh micro strategy of uh of ethereum btbt is the ticker united states traded i think so there you go get it on robin i've got to look

into that i'm gonna have to look into that. I'm going to have to look into that. Yeah. Thomas. Oh, someone said about, you have like, I think they're called RIC rules, like registered investment company rules. So you can't just be like a publicly traded basket of securities. Although I suppose if Ethereum is not a security, you could have that. Someone said something about having just like a actively managed us listed company but you would run afoul of like yeah yeah but ethos ethos now no longer a security i think like there's not an argument anymore yeah however if they're staking it like if the company is actively staking it does that turn it into a security's offering vis-a-vis their shareholders

like that's a separate staking as a service right staking as a does that turn it into a securities offering vis-a-vis their shareholders? That's a separate... Staking as a service. Right. Staking as a service, which we've seen, obviously, the SEC attack Kraken and now actively Coinbase for. So yeah, I think that's a much bigger question. It's really interesting because MicroStrategy obviously has Bitcoin just as a treasury asset, right? With an existing business model of software for corporations, maybe it really is different if you add ETH as a treasury asset, but then stick it. Would that be a change? Even if it's still just on your balance sheet is effectively your cash? I don't know. But I guess it doesn't matter, right? Because if you were a public company, your shares are registered securities with the

SEC. And so, yes, buying your equity is a bet on your efforts of the company in stating the ETH. But buying your equity is a bet on your efforts anyway. Yeah. I think they could totally do it. You could hold a commodity. You could hold, for example,

Saudi Aramco might hold a whole bunch of oil in their down sheet, which is clearly not a security. But they could loan out claims on their securities. I'm sorry, loans on their oil for others to short whatever. Then they would effectively make a yield on the oil that they have, which is at no point, I guess, is that going to become a security unless the lending part becomes a security. I don't know. But that is, you're lending out a commodity and getting a yield on the quantity you're lending out. I think this whole idea of staking ETH as a security

is absolutely indefensible and is going to fall apart very quickly. Yeah, I think ETH is going to be fair game to your point. I think that is that the SEC is done with that with ETH, right? I think like staking ETH products, the SEC is still going to trade as a security offering. But the more I think about it in the context we're talking about here, where it's a company that is staking ETH and then the yield goes to its shareholders, that should be 100 percent fine because now you're using ETH as like capital and the company is exploiting that capital for the benefit

of shareholders. And that's what every company does. Right. And you can have a publicly traded company that, as you said, the stock is a security and they offer a yield based on their efforts. Yeah. So, so then what stops you as an American company holding shares in the ETF of the Hong Kong company, which is a security and the Hong Kong ETF lends them out. So the Hong Kong ETF rate

stays and returns a yield and pays it out potentially as a dividend. It's the rule of Thomas. You have a limit on what percentage of your market cap can be securities that you hold, but that would not apply if it's just ETH. Okay. Yeah, cool. Okay. securities that you hold. But that would not apply if it's just ETH. Okay. Yeah, cool. Really interesting. So I guess my idea of a basket then is further in the future, unless they simply just hold them as treasury assets, right? I mean, but there's going to be... You could go under the limit of Solana, whether or not Solana is a security,

and then you could have a bunch more ETH on top of that. Right. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Oh, interesting. A really interesting conversation. I'm curious, Thomas, can you give us some bankruptcy updates? I can try. I'm driving through the mountains of Italy, so I'll try. But if I get bad, y'all just cut me off. Like in terms of reception but uh yeah i mean everything's humming along i mean celsius is i guess done and so is voyager i think people are still scrambling for either second pay amounts or if anybody purchased claims payouts and then offsets for the clawbacks for retail what's the status there though yeah not not not that i have a personal vested interest as a Voyager creditor or anything, but yeah, what's, what's the status there?

Well, they made a, they, they, they settled the, the preference that was a big hold back. They were holding a bunch of capital, about $450 million. They were holding back in the state for the FTX preference, which was settled for, I can't remember a nominal amount, a million bucks or something. Basically, it's because FTX was such a high recovery on a dollarized basis that you can't go after that preference. So that was a win for Voyager and probably the right solution because there were a lot of cross claims, promises that were broken on both sides

of the aisle between two entities. And it's unfortunate to see, like, you know, we see creditor on creditor warfare, like the people that really win are like the lawyers, like their creditors rarely win. I think that was a good outcome. I have no idea on timing. I don't know if you've heard anything from the in-state professionals.

Very little. I mean, it's incredible, the lack of informational flow. Yeah. Yeah. The only thing that they're allowing us to do and i i share this just so you know i mean we they're they're letting creditors transfer claims even though in the plan it doesn't allow for it uh just because they feel like it's helpful to creditors

to be able to sell their residual claims if they want to um so that was sort of humming along celsius uh i'm pretty sure all of the clawback offsets were sort of, um, I'm sure the word would be ratified, but sort of, um, went through and people that were had holdbacks because of preferences got their shares, but I don't think they got their cash yet, or at least we haven't. Um, and then, you know, the big story, I guess FTX is humming along and, you know, the plan came out. I don't know if y'all talked about it on the show,

but then the updated plan. I think there's still a lot of ironing to do. I tried to express this when I was in lower shin, but these are draft plans. They're going to change a lot. And so we saw the add-in that they're going to do payments. And they increased, they finalized the IRS settlement

and then they increased the payout the irs settlement and then they they increased the payout numbers a little bit based on that um and also uh they said that they were going to try to do stable coin payments um so that was good to hear um those kind of basics i mean there's some probably some other color but i don't think basics in the uh i think i mean the two things i'm kind of excited about for ftx or you know just the one i learned about that magic eating position that they have apparently they have a pretty sizable magic eating position where they've invested at a very low valuation at like 10 million dollars and which i'm not sure what the valuation is now uh i was hearing a few hundred million dollars um which is just more cream for creditors. And then also their K5 SpaceX investment, which

I guess, was it in the news that SpaceX was raising? But I guess the valuation now is $200 billion. And I think K5 invested somewhere like 20, 30 billion. So that'd be a 10X for... Yeah, that'd be 10X on, I think a few hundred million dollars. So it could be another billion, 2 billion for creditors. And it hasn't really been widely reported. There's not a lot of color around it. We don't have visibility on what K5 really did. We just have like, I think press reports about how much they invested in and what number.

So this is just like tea leaf stuff that I've been hearing from people and what I've been able to verify from different sources. That's great for creditors. Great update. Thank you. You and I will forever share the bond of how lucky you got by not buying my voyager claim and how unlucky i got by not being able to sell you my voyager claim i think it's 100 well i mean think about it right though hold on now i mean actually

it might come to exactly what you were going to pay me what was i going to pay you 75 no i think we were at like 65 for people who don't know the story, a friend of ours, I won't name names, mutual friend introduced Thomas and I said, Hey, I just sold my Voyager claim to a guy selling them for like 65 sold for 65 cents on the dollar. He introduced me I was literally like walking around the streets of on vacation or something trying to get it done. And as Thomas and I were getting closer to like finishing our negotiation, FTX collapsed. So did how much I know. And so, so he got lucky for not buying it. And I got very unlucky when it like cut basically at half in value

overnight when the market absolutely took a complete dump. So, but yeah, I think, I think now, I mean, we got, so listen for people who don't understand the numbers on these

bankruptcies, when we say a percentage, it's a percentage of the value at bankruptcy declaration, not now. So it's like I got paid 34%, 35% back on my Voyager claim, but that was with Bitcoin pegged to $19,000 and Ethereum $1,100, something like that. So if those coins had still been my account now, you're looking at we really got paid back current value 12% or 13%. It's nothing. Yeah, the opportunity cost loss is pretty big. I mean, that's why some people sell their claims, frankly.

They decide they'd rather have direct exposure versus the claim. And it just depends on the price you can get. But we were bidding early. Remember, Binance was going to buy, was going to pay. I can't remember. Or no, sorry. It was FTX. No, FTX.

When you were offering that, FTX had their offer and then they collapsed. And then Binance came in and that collapsed because of Gensler. Right, right, right, right. Well, but I think they were offering $72, $74. And we were like, okay, this is basically merger arbitrage. We'll offer $60, $, depending upon someone's account balances and potential preference exposure. And so, you know, it just goes to show you, I mean, everything you do,

even if, you know, you're a specialist in something, you can get burned because, you know, you don't know what you don't know. Yeah. And I guess, but to your point, if we got, you know, 35-ish percent last time, there's a fighting chance I've heard that there might be a 20, another 25% of, of course, guys based on the bankruptcy value coming back, which will put it right around 60. So, uh, well, you should have gotten 35. Let me do the math for you. You got back 35. Yeah. There's another 35 to 40 coming via this preference. Oh, that's larger than I heard. I'd heard it would be more like 25.

No, no, no, no. It'll be much higher than that. So you'll probably get back somewhere in the order of 70, low 70s. And then the residual, the last delta that you're missing is the three arrows claim. And the bankruptcy expenses. I mean, they spent hundreds of millions just going through the process with, in general, and with FTX and Binance. But yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a of millions just going through the process with, in general, and with FTX and Binance. But yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a few hundred million dollars of leakage. But you could be looking at recoveries in the 80s for your claim. Maybe even in the 90s. It depends on what that three-year-old's claim. So, again, if you took a dollar, you got back $35. You're probably going to get back another $35, $40. Let's just say 65, 70.

And then that last 25 cents, um, ish, because there's some leakage for the last, you could get another 25 and a three arrows claim. So. Do you think they would let me do a cage match with a Suzu and Kyle for my, the remaining claim karate combat or something? And the proceeds go to creditors done. Oh, I would actually, I would do that. I've met them.

I've met them. They're not, I could just, I'm talking about me fighting them both. And maybe throw an Ehrlich. Honestly, throw an Ehrlich. I'll fight all three of them. I don't care. That's the only, that's the only karate combat fight I would take. They keep asking me to do these karate combat influencer fights.

I might do those though. If it can't be actual paid. But no, that's actually a pretty decent case, even though of course, you know, when you know that it was in tokens rather than dollars and everything's up three to four X, it's still brutal, but that would be a great outcome. It's brutal, but yeah, it's still a decent outcome for where, where it started. Yeah. Does anybody...

So pivoting off of that, we haven't really gotten a firm date for the Ethereum spot ETF launch. I think we're looking at potentially July at this point. Does anybody have a deep feeling on what that means for likely market movement? I mean, for me, it means more boring and sort of the base case. But is anybody now at this point on the panel expecting big movement in the market this summer? I guess that would be a great question. I mean, Dan, DB, what do you guys think?

I'll just jump in. Look, I keep monitoring the ETF inflows on Bitcoin. I'm a big Bitcoin guy. I hold very little other than Bitcoin. But even yesterday, the ETF inflows were more than the daily issuance. If you keep acquiring more than the daily issuance, at some point, this cold spring has to pop, right? So yes, I'm still irresponsibly long on Bitcoin. I would imagine, yeah, it's going to go gonna go i think as the regulatory um regime in the us keeps um folding more and more into crypto yeah i think it's gonna go up ethereum unless so

but one thing about ethereum is the fact that they've uh disallowed the uh etf stake it is the exact opposite of the sec's mandate right because what Because what you're doing, and also delaying, so they've approved it, but they haven't signed the S1 yet, which means the ETF is going to go live. So, you know, your Joe Blow retail can't buy the ETF yet, but everyone knows it's going to happen. So they're just, you know, cutting people out. They're making retail, you know, securities investors lose out on the upside of everyone knows it's going to be listed, but you can't buy it. It is the exact opposite of what the SEC's mandate is to do. It's to protect retail.

They're cutting them out of this comp before it gets listed. It's ridiculous. Yeah, absolutely. Anyone else? Thoughts on that? I see Andrew's coming up. I'm sure he'll have some. But yeah, go ahead, DB. early this year, but what happens after the having? It's this, exactly what we're seeing,

kind of just kind of boring action, a little bit of retracement maybe. And if anything, I might expect another 10 to 20% retracement this summer, but nothing major or too exciting leading into the election and all the money printing and whatever is going to happen. I love listening to you Tuesday morning withave and mike just going back and forth kind of battling out over what's going to happen which direction it's going to take but it's it's a i think uh dave's the one who said it's inevitable it's going to happen that the uh elections coming they gotta print money the economy's just in a place where they have no choice at this point. So it's just going to be a boring summer. But maybe six months or so later in the year, it should pick up just like typical cycle.

Yeah. October. Fred? Yeah, I was just going to say, I have a little bit different take. One, I think the high probability thing with Ethereum not being a security is still the way to go, but I wouldn't count the SEC out. Again, we're in a different situation where we have this time lag between the registration statements and the S1s that are all getting filed there.

The SEC hasn't reached out and said, hey, we want to dismiss the lawsuit you got against us, Fred, for whether Ethereum is a security or not. I mean, they're heavily disorganized. So I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't yet read anything into that too much. But we still got some stuff going. And I think that there could be something going on this summer, could get a little more action in the market than what, you know, I was predicting, just because we've got in the last week, you know, President Trump going hardcore on being pro crypto, and we've got those debates that have been moved up to end of June. So if we kind of start seeing that movement in Congress, and at the presidential level, that could kind of kick things off a little bit earlier, we get that ripple ruling sometime in

July as well, that, you know, we could be could be a couple of months moved up from you know I think a lot of people thought the timeline was for this this bull run sorry having mic issues every once in a while we glitch on here and you hit mic and nothing happens I don't think you guys have noticed that but it's a really wonderful that this platform still doesn't work Andrew any uh thoughts on what's going to happen here? Ethereum spot ETF coming and the inside baseball before we move on to start talking to GameOn. Yeah, I think the roadmap for an Ethereum ETF and what happens after the S1s are signed off on and your live trading is fairly similar to the Bitcoin etf just at a fraction of the scale and

the inflows you're going to see a back and forth associated with will the inflows of the totality of folks um you know that are that are the issuers of the ethereum etfs will they be able to outscale out inflow the out the outflows associated with Grayscale's product? Right. So Grayscale will have the largest Ethereum ETF from the get go at close to 11 billion dollars in the same way that we saw with GBTC. There's going to be folks that are going to sell the shit out of that thing. And so what will the overall potential inflows be on a daily basis? I think that's probably going to be a tougher hill to climb with Ethereum than it was with Bitcoin. But that's just short term, right? So you get a final approval in July, August. It goes live. You're going to see some inflows in the beginning because, you know, they probably have stuff, you know, stocked on the shelf ready to hit. So it looks good, sounds good, feels good.

And then short term, you're going to have an issue with grayscales, you know, outflows. But then I think longer term, you know, there, there's going to be, you know, there, there are going to be inflows on a long-term basis into both of these products because, you know, it's retail wealth management. It's their only real access to quote unquote crypto returns. Those, those folks aren't, aren't, you know, opening MetaMask accounts and aping into Pepe on Sol. Yeah, Bernstein put it at, I think this was, I talked to James Butterfill about it this morning, but Bernstein had it down the road at a $450 billion combined for the Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs. It's a big number. Yeah, over a three to five-year period, I think that's a reasonable number. Yeah. His first take was that he thought it was really high and excessive. But if you look at worldwide products collectively, I think it's $100 billion across all of these. And even price going up Forex with no inflows would do that.

Yeah. There is price and the fact that you're talking about trillions and trillions of dollars of wealth management assets just here in the united states and you get a one to one and a half percent allocation to quote unquote crypto assets and you get to that number very very very fast so all short term it's going to be a you know scratching and clawing uh but long term you know bullish for eth clawing, uh, but long-term, you know, bullish for Ethereum. Yeah, totally agree. You guys, we're going to, uh, we've got a exciting sponsor here today, uh, game on and Matt, I see you up on stage game on guys. Welcome. So we're going to chat to these guys, uh, for, for a bit, uh, dig into exactly what you guys are doing. So I, this is, uh, I wasn't so deeply familiar with the platform,

but you guys had me at fantasy sports because I'm a fantasy sport degenerate literally since, you know, I used to do fantasy football like when we had to pull out the newspaper and look up the stats and score it, score it ourselves and stuff. I'm not going to say that I'm the greatest league fantasy football player of all time. I'll just say I'm the best one I've ever known of all time or that anyone who's ever played against me has ever known.

How many trophies you got? How many fantasy trophies? I wouldn't even be able to build a big enough house if they gave me trophies for my fantasy championships. Thanks for having me guys. It's awesome to be here. I heard you guys talking about Karate Combat earlier. We're actually working with them as well. They're a partner of ours. That's a nice organic segue there. Yeah. They have the fight tomorrow night, I know, in Austin here.

And then Singapore, they're setting up for a huge one. I know. So that's interesting because you guys have obviously the you could break this down for me i'm literally asking questions i don't know the answers to it all but see there's a game token right which uh maybe you can break down the token and the ecosystem itself but it's interesting because karate you work with them but they have the karate token which you can use to obviously bet on the fights within karate combat. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, just to take a step back, my name is Matt, I'm the founder and CEO of Game On, and we're actually a public company in Canada.

I heard you guys talking about public companies in Canada earlier as well before. But what we do is we're a next gen fantasy sports company. We work with some of the biggest leagues in the world, like La Liga in Spain, which is football or soccer. We work with Karate Combat, who we just mentioned, a crypto forward fight league. And then we also work with the PFL, who are the second biggest MMA league after the UFC. And for all of those guys, we launch next-gen fantasy games that are built on and powered by Web3, built on Arbitrum and powered by the game token. So the difference between the game token and, say, the karate token is the karate token is very much used for kind of voting and governance

with karate combat as well as kind of betting style games where you can, you know, like they call it up only gaming where you're kind of betting on the fights. What we're doing is building more of a live fantasy game where first of all, you're buying playable versions of the athletes. So, you're buying playable soccer players, playable karate fighters or PFL fighters and then you're using them in the fantasy game so you choose four players depending on how they perform in the match or the event every kick takedown knockout score goal pass assist all the different stats that you would typically monitor in a fantasy game you earn points rewards tokens rewards, tokens, tickets, VIP experiences, all that kind

of stuff in our games. So it's a very complimentary experience to what Karate Combat has going on. And it's kind of the next generation of fantasy sports that really through blockchain and crypto and Web3, we're able to provide true ownership, interoperability, and next level type of rewards than your typical fantasy sports of yesteryear. Are you going to do football? American, sorry, the American version. Yeah, I mean, look, I spent 10 years in America where I fell in love with American football and fantasy football.

And I'd love to do a deal with the NFL. I used to work in professional sports. That's my background. I spent time at the Brooklyn Nets and the NBA and New York Islanders and the NHL. So a lot of my former colleagues and good friends are at different leagues now. And one of them in particular, I'm not going to call him out, but he's at the NFL. So I'm going to have to go do a deal with him at some point for sure did you meet jay-z when you were with the nets i didn't know no i didn't unfortunately

and and the nets were horrible the nets were horrible when i was there they were winning like 12 games a year and i was trying to sell sponsorship against that or it wasn't fun but i mean working at the arena the arena was nice and being able to walk in and watch an NBA game whenever I want was nice. But yeah, there weren't many games when I was there. Yeah, very cool. So is the token actually launched yet? If not, is there a date for when that's going to happen and what should people expect there?

Yeah. So we just announced this week, actually, that the game token launches on Monday at 11 a.m. UTC. And this week is what we're calling game week, actually. So this is kind of part of the festivities where we've got a bunch of stuff going on, joining a bunch of spaces, got a bunch of live streams happening. Later in the week, we have a live stream with Harvey Martinez, a former La Liga legend, where we're going to be doing some cool stuff there with Arbitrum, Harvey, La Liga, giving away something special on that live stream as well. There's a bunch of other stuff.

We're giving away a bunch of game tokens in anticipation to launch on Monday. So if anyone wants to get in on that, go to gameon.app forward slash game where you can enter that. We're giving away 25,000 games. So we've just got a bunch of stuff going on this week, having a bunch of fun, and then the token will launch on Monday, 11 a.m. UTC.

Why Arbiter uh you know what uh we the product team and technology team uh wanted to build there we do have uh and then really wise you know they just wanted the the benefits of of ethereum just you know in a more scalable way which is obviously the layer two narrative and we that's why we wanted to build there. Once they did choose to build there, I went out and did a deal with Arbitrum. So we're one of their grant partners. And they've been awesome since then. So not only are they financially helping us build in their ecosystem, but opening up a bunch of doors as well.

But Arbitrum's been awesome. So is the game itself, I know it's specific to each sport, but it seems like there's a general sort of structure for the actual fantasy games. Is this for like brand new entrants into fantasy who have never played before? Or is this like more hardcore? You know, because I always go back to fantasy football as context.

I think there's a million people who play like a league with their friends, you know, and they maybe don't even check their lineup on a given week or something. And then there's the people who got more into daily fantasy and you have to more actively set a lineup each week. And then there's the people who go even further and start doing, you know, prop bets on individual stats and things like that.

Yeah. Now this is kind of some somewhere in between daily and, and a season long. So our, our fantasy games are match based um so you choose a match uh if you have if you own a player avatar which is an nft uh of a player that's in that match uh you gain access to it you unlock it and then you choose four players to to play for you so it's just four players you don't need like a full squad or or you don't need

to do a bunch of research just four players and then you play fantasy for that specific match or event you win or lose and you go on to the next so it's not a season-long uh fantasy it's not even weekend long it's just match-based which makes it a little more conducive and frictionless for for the everyday fan as well as the the hardcore fan so obviously you're in the first iterations of this, you're launching the token. Like what's the grand vision for what this will look like, you know, years down the road? So, yeah, I mean, the La Liga game,

La Liga is the first game that will go live. It's in closed beta now internally. We'll be in public beta in the off season of La Liga for the Euros for the summer. And then you'll be able to play fully in August for the next seasons. And that's really our first game launch. And the game token obviously launches next week. We'll be part of that as well.

So you get instant utility and functionality within the games. But, you know, our grand vision is to work with every big league in the world. And I'm going to be tapping my network to be able to do that. I'd love to work with, you know, the likes of the UFC, the NFL, the NBA, and do what we're doing for them, similar to what we're doing for UFC. But more importantly, we want to onboard the masses to Web3 in a context that they're familiar with. and we believe we can do that through a vehicle like fantasy sports not just a a vehicle like fantasy sports that they're familiar with but also all the important onboarding rails that makes it really simple

where they don't even know that they're that they're buying an nft they don't even know that they're touching the blockchain but the blockchain is providing those benefits rewards the ownership the interoperability that traditional fantasy sports can't allow for an example of that interoperability for example uh la league is in the off season right now right uh or it just has gone into the off season you might have a bunch of players that are that aren't going to earn you rewards for the next three months so by spending a little bit of game token, you might be able to temporarily transpose your players to other players of leagues that are active. Maybe even not even a football or soccer league, but maybe it's a UFC league. So just for that few months, your La Liga players become UFC fighters and earn you rewards uh during that time

and that's the type of um benefit that interoperability and blockchain and uh can provide and that's the type of experience that especially the gen z and millennial sports fan uh wants they don't want to watch passively anymore i i can i can watch a an nfl game three of them back to back on my couch passively but that next generation of fan doesn't want to they want to own play and influence the content and our fantasy sports sports platform can do that because of web3 yeah i only care about nfl football in respect to my fantasy team yeah all right i think that that's become a major trend yeah all right so i'm gonna go after nfl and then we'll get you onto the uh

yeah then i can just dominate we can get a uh oh yeah we can get maybe a crypto town hall uh league and competition going on just so that i can humble all of the 5 000 people that are listening or even better once you you actually... I lack confidence. I lack confidence in my fantasy sports abilities, but I'm trying to be humble. Yeah, well, look, once you actually accept the fight in karate combat, we'll actually be able to have your NFT avatar

in our games. So you might actually... I'm 400 years older than every other person in crypto. I used to box in my early twenties. I hit the chest one time and thought I was going to die for like three days in my boxing career. And I was like, wow, this kind of sucks. And now I'm 47. So it seems like a 47 year old guy with kids. I don't really need the ego of like fighting another influencer personally.

I don't see the upside. I played rugby all my life and still i couldn't get in a ring or fight someone i don't want to get punched in the face i mean i've been i mean i look like i get punched in the face every day but uh you know and it just i just like i said i don't really understand why you would uh want to do that at my age unlimited downside and almost zero upside but but maybe you maybe, you know, the right person, if I can fight Gary Gensler or something, I'd do it. So, so I, we know that with web three in general,

you said the most important thing, by the way, that I love, which is that it's completely abstract. All the blockchain aspects are abstracted away. Yeah. Right. Cause I think the problems we've had with a lot of these things in the past is that you have to like explain crypto to someone as a barrier to even get them involved. You just have a fantasy sports app here. And that's what's happening in the background. I think that's kind of the future mainstream adoption for crypto. But still, when we get into Web3, you know, community is so essential.

So like, is there a community aspect to this as well? Or are you, you know, just kind of you to this as well, or are you, you know, just kinda you go, you play your fantasy matches and, you know, move on. Yeah. So, um, you know, we, that's a hundred percent true. What you said, like we, even at the, at the core, when, when we're describing what we do, like we're a fantasy sports company, we're a gaming company. We're not a blockchain or a crypto company in the same way that we're not a cloud company because we use AWS, right? Like, we're a fantasy sports company, but we're infusing it with Web3 and we're using Web true to that at our core. And that's what you'll see in our experience as well. We're a mobile first app that when you download,

you'll barely even know it's Web3. And yeah, there'll still be a community component and we're still not alienating the crypto Web3 crowd, right? When an app is kind of in pre-launch and it's not here yet, we do target that crypto audience you know our discord has over 30 000 people in it now our x is uh over 130 000 people

and that's mainly a crypto audience because they will speculate you know they will um get involved they'll get involved early uh whereas the traditional fantasy sports or even broader gaming community will only buy something when they can play it. So we have two kind of marketing funnels. One is that Web3 crowd early. And then when the games go live, we start targeting more of that Web2 audience. And another game that's done this really well, and we kind of try and follow what they're doing is NFL rivals with mythical games. You know, they've got a game, a simulator NFL game that millions of people are playing without even knowing that they're touching the blockchain.

And they've done it really well. Absolutely love that. So let's say that, you know, we're going to wrap in a minute. Any like final thoughts, any things you want people to point to, follow the Twitter account, be aware of moving forward. No, I'd just say, yeah, follow the the twitter handle it's there in the in the in the heading here game on underscore hq um get a get amongst game week with us we've got a bunch of stuff going on if you want to get your hands on some game tokens i head to game on dot app forward slash game

and yeah thanks for having me guys i appreciate it awesome yeah i'm in the glitch here again with the mic button god matt thank you so much man i really enjoyed that uh hearing you break that down like i said something i wasn't so deeply aware of um so uh excited good luck uh obviously with the launch and uh let let me know when you come to a sport that i actually understand i've done i've done a bunch of fancy sports. All right, guys, that's all we got. We'll be back tomorrow, same time, 10.15 Eastern Standard Time. Thank you to all the guests. Give them all a follow.

They're only here because we like them. And a bunch of you, I guess I'll probably see you today in Austin. Thanks, everybody. Bye.