The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Flying! Memecoin Season Back? w/ @subsquid | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

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Testing, testing. Can you hear me, Lloyd? Sure can. How's it going? Hey, man. How you doing? No complaints. You know, we're so back. So I'm happy. You have a lot of spare time. You do know that, yeah? It's like every week you're changing your profile photo. No, you said that last time. It was the same one as last time you said that there was a bear and now there's a dude but yeah you've only you've only you've only changed it

once yeah um but i mean that's not where most of my time went anyways yeah i still like to to use it to make fun of you matthew how you doing doing great uh good morning mario hope you're well the market so the team is um it's just funny i'm looking at my team we've got like probably eight or nine biz devs at ibc and um they're all just it's just fascinating to see their mood their emotions change so quickly literally two days ago they're talking about how you know what if the market never recovers and should we know what should we do? Should the strategy be the same? And now they're talking like we're fully back. Everything's full steam ahead. And that happened all within 48 hours. All it took us for whatever, a 7% pump in Bitcoin. Let me see the price now. So it's

just fascinating to see how people react to a drop or a spike in the market. It never changes. So we would be keen to discuss this. react to a drop or a spike in the market. It never changes. So we'll be keen to discuss this. What are your thoughts about this, Matthew, before we kick off the discussion? Chris is here as well. He can give us a bit of technical analysis. It's been awesome to see. I think the whipsaw back and forth is something we're really used to seeing, especially when we see different kind of, you know, I want to say inflation expectations or numbers that come in, I think because they're sort of riskier assets, you're going to see them have

a little bit more volatility than standard ones. Certainly, we've seen a little bit of a breather, I think, kind of coming into the day, but it has been great to see some of these other, I feel like there's liquidity pulling from some of the meme stock, stuff that happened earlier this week with like GameStop and AMC. Maybe some of that's like flowing back into crypto. But, you know, I play the long game. So all this is great to see. It's just as long as we're not at zero, it's a day that's a W for me.

Yeah. Is it just a sure thing in everyone's opinion that the reason we see the markets react as they did is purely because of the CPI data coming out? Or is there other factors that are playing a role right now? Your thoughts, Matthew, and then we'll get some technical analysis from Chris. I think one of the most interesting things about finance to me is that everybody always looks for a reason that something happened, whether or not that had anything to do with it. Like I could have said that because I wore pink shorts on Thursday,

the market went up, but that's just because it's my own perspective um i i don't know that there's necessarily anything but i'm happy that something like the cpi can't cause a move like that of course in the same respect it could cause the same move down if it didn't come out the same way so um i just take it with a grain of salt yeah and i think it for any trader correlation is always causation um scott can you hear me yeah i hear you man i was having trouble getting on how was your show today i'm still i had yago on so always really interesting you know uh when i went in doubt or the market's boring just call on yago and talk about bitcoin but uh as you know he's you know since you and i are partnered on my youtube channel, he's starting a new show actually on Saturdays. And it's the first show on my channel that's been

like recorded and edited as opposed to being YOLO live. So it's really, really good about, you know, Bitcoin, building on Bitcoin and sort of separating the wheat from the chaff, knowing what's vaporware, what's really important interviews. So like, you know, I think it's really important right now to talk about everything that's happening on Bitcoin. And it's just not my core competency. So he's my favorite person to talk to about it. So as you know, we're bringing him on. So I can't wait to launch that on Saturday.

Yeah, we've had him on stage a few times talking about the Bitcoin ecosystem. But what are his thoughts on the market? How bullish was he? He's a bit more, I seem to be a bit more pragmatic than others yeah very long-term oriented yeah i mean listen if you take a step back from the move yesterday which is whatever like yes it's great but i think we all fundamentally know that it's basically below 60 or above 74 and everything else in the middle is details in my opinion um and chop so you know i think we tried to zoom out and say, well, yesterday was a great move. But let's talk about what's really happening. Let's talk about the fact that the guy

who built and launched iBit for BlackRock is becoming the CEO of Vanguard. Let's talk about all the filings of Susquehanna and Millennium and these huge allocations they've made to the spot ETFs, $2 billion a billion, 500 million, right? I mean, behind the surface, regardless of what's happening with price, all the things that like people said we were nuts for believing might come to fruition are quietly happening, you know? And so I think we just talked about how, regardless of what happened today,

we're kind of exceptionally bullish on everything that's being built, both, I guess, surrounding Bitcoin on Wall Street, but then at the ground level. And I don't know if you saw, CME actually announced that they're exploring listing Bitcoin spot, not just futures. And that would just be absolutely mind blowing. Can you just elaborate? Ryan is here as well. We could talk about his show today. But can you elaborate on the point you made as if to give anything below 60,

anything that's not below 60 and not above 74 is just not, all that matters is below 60 and above 74. Everything else is just noise. Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at, generally, if you look at charts, you establish a high and then the next meaningful low after that tends to create a range. And we've been ranging. And when we talk about sideways price action or chop, it's usually trading within that range. And the 60-ish

area is like $60,700, I think, technically, is somewhat the bottom of that range, depending on what exchange you look at it on. And then if you take that a step further and look at previous cycles and halvings, you expect this long accumulation phase of low volume, low volatility in a range for many, many months after the halving. That's what we've seen before. It doesn't mean we'll see it again. That's why even 2 months ago, I was like, I wouldn't be surprised if we see 4 to 6 months of extremely boring and people losing their damn minds. And we're already 2 months into that and people are losing their damn minds. But if you want to get really bullish, you got to get above that high that was set. So even 72,000 right now is the same to me as 62,000 or, you know, 2000 above the range low or 2000 below the range high.

It's all effectively sideways when you zoom out. And Ran, what were you, what was your topic covered today on your show? My topic on my show was what's next for Bitcoin. Really? No. I can't. i thought so so we talk about meme coins today because i want to get your thoughts on that so can i actually a couple of things the number one is that i mean i spoke to a lot of people who actually missed this pump because a lot of people basically phoned me and said look i missed the pump should i get in if i

missed the whole pump you know it's amazing like how they got FOMO in one day anyway so that was the first part of my show is like what do you what do you what to do if you think that you actually missed the pump second thing that we spoke about is I don't know if you noticed but when we when the market recovered funny enough the meme coins actually went down and AI was the top recovery so there was a and i think that i think that i nailed why it actually happened i'll tell you why what my thesis is my thesis is that meme coins are amazing when there's no fun in the casino when there's no fun in the in the big casino right in the big like if if the vc coins aren't moving and let's call let's just for for a second just call the coins quality coins versus not quality versus meme coins right and i know

that that's not a great description but let's just use that description so when the when the bitcoins are running and the whole market's running then you don't need to trade the meme coins that actually have no value to actually get your dopamine hit but when the when the real market starts running then people are going hold on if i'm getting the dopamine hit in the in the real market why must i why must i trade the meme coins and i think that's what we saw yesterday that there was like a big move of money out of meme coins into solana near um and all those other coins right and so why because people said look if you know like you know if i'm if i'm if i'm getting it at home why do i need to go look for a chick on the side you know what i'm saying it's only if you're not getting it at home then you go

and look for the stoop on the side so that's i think what it is in times when you like let's say like you get you got like equated back to your home life right if you if you uh in your home life you like for an extended period you're not getting it right so what do you do you go outside to go and look for the thrall. So that's the same thing. It's the same thing. There's, other than that as well, there's an article I sent in our group. I'm not sure if you saw it as well, Ryan.

The one that says crypto trader turns $3,000 into $46 million in one month as pepper price soars. I don't know how the fuck he did that. Yeah, yeah. But there's one thing that the article talks about is that meme coins are quote a symptom of a disillusioned generation which is something that's been that's been referenced before for other things it says the success of meme coins can be seen just like punk rock as a symptom of disillusioned young investors who have not seen opportunities afforded to their parents who have seen opportunities afforded to their parents disappear by printing tokens out of thin air and pumping them to billion dollar valuations these creators are showing the these creators showing the absurdity of our current financial system our fiat system do you think that people's distrust in the fiat system and disillude that

new younger disillusioned generation do you think they play a role in the meme coin frenzy or that's kind of a stretch well i think they do i think i think they do and i think like the more bored they get and the more um you know the boredom is not boredom like if it was sideways boredom it would be it wouldn't be a problem but the problem is that it's sideways boredom with slightly down and that's like it's like death by a thousand cuts it's a very painful long death and so the thing is that in that you try and you try and look for the savior, for the lifeboat. And you think that the lifeboat is I'm going to put $300 into the Pepe and get $200 million out of it. You know what I'm saying?

So I think that's the thing with meme coins. I mean, I don't think meme coins are going to die. And one of the things that I spoke about on the show, said look you know trump agreed or biden agreed i don't know who agreed to to debate too but let's just say that um that they agreed to do a debate basically they basically told us that between now and the 27th of june and specifically on the 27th of june there's going to be a meme coin frenzy on the Politify meme coins. That basically gave us the memo. They sent us all a memo and said, look, 27th of June, get ready for meme coin mania.

That's it. Dave? Yeah, I think that if I could give one public service advice for two listeners who trade, understand what you are trading. When you're trading meme coins, with the exception of one, which I agree with Ran on, which is Tooker, but you know, because there's actually that's a little bit of a different animal. The fact is you're trading what is an ultimate momentum instrument. And people need to know what that means. So there are quantitative trading firms,

lots of them, that trade momentum as an indicator. When momentum decreases and in meme coin momentum stops, it's like, for those old enough to remember the old Bugs Bunny or Roadrunner cartoons, it's like you run out over the cliff, the cloud fades, you see that you're above the ground and all of a sudden, kaboom. When you're trading momentum instruments, understand what you're trading and understand what happens when the momentum stops. And if you don't understand that, you got big problems. And, you know, it's like that's why Scott always makes the comment that Doge was what got people into crypto. It's because it's the ultimate momentum instrument. People see that flywheel and they want to be on it and then once you're on the flywheel then of course you're looking at other stuff but i think that's really important to understand and so what we call boredom in bitcoin i call range boundness the reality is it i feel like it's range boundness

is gathering strength a meme coin which gets range bound for a while is probably more likely to break to the downside because it has it has there's unless there's a cat but do you think but it's a separate question dave do you think that could that momentum and i'll give you the mic again i don't want to go down this path but do you think that that like as the right side it's just a given that the political meme coins will do well between now and the debate and then on the day of the debate uh there'll be a massive pump but do you think that narrative that like that meme coins will always do well based on whatever narrative is gaining traction whatever's on the news that will continue throughout this entire cycle i think it's possible i mean it look it i can't speak to the price of

the actual coins but i can tell you that the number of eyeballs that will get looked at and content around it sure of course you know and by the way uh shout out to ran for the appropriate use of the word stoop i always find funny when you know it's the best analogy that i could think of it It's the best analogy that I could think of. I think it's freaking awesome. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think meme coins are here to stay, but I think that, you know, the fact, I think meme coins were getting a disproportionate share of attention.

And again, I think why, you know, I just analyzed myself and I said, look, why am I in the meme coins? And the reality is that I was in the meme coins because the other coins were just boring. The quality was boring. And so I went to play meme coins because I still needed to get my fix, unfortunately. I think that's pretty much the reality of of a lot of people right yeah i mean i think i think that like you could probably look in history and correlate degenerate gambling with you know being disenfranchised and all that stuff but really i think for me like people who have been

through a few cycles i think what they're realizing is that having a product in a space where there really aren't that many people using products is not that bullish. It's much more bullish to say you'll have a product soon because once there's no one to use it, that's problematic. And then they look at the last cycles and they're like, hey, wait, maybe it's more bullish just to have nothing but hype. Right. Like sell the sizzle, not the steak at all. you know, what happens to things that actually projects that are actually working on developing something in a space that we're just not quite there for adoption is almost just like, well, I'd rather get hyped up about, you know, a cartoon frog or something, because maybe, maybe that will run. And maybe the end is like, well, forever, as opposed to a product that might launch, and then we're all just trying to sell it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think so. I get it. I just think for me, to be honest, this is casino, Like, honestly, honestly, honestly, meme coins are fucking casino. I think, actually, I'm going to break it down.

But to your point, meme coins are the like most degenerate game in the corner of the casino because the casino is much larger about meme coins right so i think number one it's casino but number two it's it's i'm gonna i'm gonna use a very bad line here but but let me just say it anyway so it's it's casino with a purpose okay so like when i say casino with a purpose like if i'm playing slot machines and i'm sitting in vegas and i'm pressing that button repeatedly i'm playing with no purpose right just spin spin spin my purpose is just thrill thrill thrill meme coins represent something and specifically represent being part of a community so it's like if i buy if i buy tramp or mugga or bowden then i'm i'm gambling with a purpose i almost feel like like like i'm not gonna buy like i don't buy meme coins that I don't relate to. And I think probably a lot of people here also do the same thing.

So it's like when I gamble meme coins, I get two things. One is I get gambling. And two is I get like this gambling with a sense of purpose, which is like I'm gambling and at the same time I'm part of a community and then I'm also part of another community, which this community that jumps from from from from meme to meme to meme and that's the fun of it so it's like i think that's the that's the magic that's the thrill of it i think i think i agree i think that just uh extends beyond meme coins sadly but sorry so if you agree why don't you join us scott why don't you start trading meme coins, sadly. But yeah. So if you agree, why don't you join us, Scott?

Why don't you start trading meme coins with us, please? I've got some good ones for you. It's not about, hold on. No, no, no, it's not about trading. I want Scott to launch his own meme coin. We've got to talk about it. Can I just say something? Can I just air some of our dirty laundry here?

Can I just air some of our dirty laundry here? I'm sorry to do it in front of- Share your own dirty laundry here. Can I just air some of our dirty laundry here? I'm sorry to do it in front of... Share your own. Share your own dirty laundry. Not our dirty laundry. I'm going to actually... I'm going to be transparent and open and honest

with the 4,535 people that are here and now alive. And say that, you know, part of this partnership that we have here at Crypto Town Hall, it's me, Mario, and Scott. We have a partnership here. And a part of this partnership that we have here at crypto town hall it's me mario and scott we have a partnership here and you know as part of the partnership we we sometimes

sell sponsorships and i'll never forget the day that the first sponsorship was sold for a meme coin how like mario and scott got hives they got like they they needed to they were like what the hell are you doing you can't think of a meme coin on Crypto Town Hall. Fuck, nobody should be catching meme coins. It's an allergy. We should never, ever do it. Now, if you post a meme coin in the sponsorship group, these guys are like, can I get an allocation?

Is it just a sponsorship? Not me. Is it anywhere? That is, maybe the other guy. That is definitely false. One more word from either of you, and I'm posting screenshots. One more word from either of you, and I'm posting screenshots. That's it. Bro, hold on a second.

Nothing died. One more word. One more word. I'm all in. No. I'm all in. Just so you know, I'm all in. So there's no need for something I'm hiding.

I'm all in on me because i'm but you were the one who gave our sponsorship man david such a hard time oh i went crazy no no i gave on crazy absolutely you went crazy and you were like david how the hell can you put meme coins on crypto it was early today if you just phone mario with a meme coin allocation five seconds later his whole team are onto you like rashes, bro. Like fucking, can we get more? Where can we get more? Can they be part of our other spaces?

He's like Dave Chappelle as Tyrone Biggums for like a free meme giveaway. So just to kind of make an important point though, is that I think it's important for an asset class. I wish we saw this earlier, but we were the same with IDOs. So when we had token launches in 2017, ICO Box was the biggest consulting firm. IBC was the second biggest.

We never took a token. It's one of my biggest mistakes or invested in any of these projects that we launched or that we worked with. And that was my biggest mistake. And I'm like, these are scammed. They will never last. And I'm like, holy fuck. Okay, they're actually very interesting a very innovative way to raise capital and it can be done right despite all the scans now i think the same applies with nfts i was late to the nft game because i like that the pfps not nfts in general pfps i'm like these are

that's fucking bullshit like just a picture 10 000 of them suddenly it's an asset class and then obviously later here i am with my crypto punk and then uh and then meme coins the same i never thought i was like this is bullshit there's no way that's gonna have value and i'm like okay i think to be honest a decentralized community i'm glad you can admit it now what i think you should do i think you should phone david the guy who sells our sponsorships and i think you need to apologize to him about the way you you you you you you know the way you guys look apologize the guy the guy i don't i made it up with him every time he has a meme coin project that wants to work with us i'm like praising the fuck out of him don't worry he's a happy man right now yeah you know i think

i think to be honest i think to be honest like um i think that's a big lesson for people and the lesson is like you know sometimes the craziest ideas like i i'll never ever ever forget the day that crypto kiddies launched in the ethereum blockchain craft i'll never forget how angry everyone was how i like how people said oh this thing is designed for the future of finance and then these fucking guys are crashing the whole network with a cat with these stupid cats what the hell's going on and today nfts are like one of the most important asset classes in the world and they will become even more of an important asset class so i think maybe you can't dismiss these stupid ideas because sometimes i don't think you can i think you can dismiss i i think once again and we've talked

this to death so i i hate to do it again but i think we need classes of meme coins i think there's the there's the meme coins that launch and are dead 24 hours later and everybody's like in in the washing machine, just trying to, you know, play hot potato and get from one to the other. And then there's like Doge. Doge isn't a meme like that. Pepe is not a meme like that. Tooker now is not a meme like that. Let me help you with the framework. Let me help you with the framework.

Hold on. Let me just give you guys a framework. Okay. So the framework is as follows. Every single crypto project must have three things. It must have technology, it must have community, which I call know, or by doing crazy IDOs or by doing all that kind of shit. And then they try and build casino by building applications, which are dopamine extracting or dopamine creating applications. That's the life cycle of every crypto project. The better that you can, if you have technology,

then the quicker you can build community and casino, the better your project will do. Meme coins come from the other side. And they say, look, they launch with casino and community, right? So they launch with casino and community because meme coins are fucking casino. And communities form around the meme coins that actually speak to people and influences and stuff like that. Then if you analyze all the meme coins, what you'll realize is that actually there hasn't been a single meme coin that has survived multiple cycles unless it's pivoted into technology. Doge was a dog today it is potentially a payment platform that is going to be integrated into twitter

uh um uh shiba was a dog but then became a layer two with i don't know what they built but they built amazing technology flow key the same thing so So I just think it's different entry points into the same race. So I think a lot of these, if you can build community first and then you can then build technology into community, great. I have yet to believe that any meme, actual meme, will remain relevant as a meme for more than one cycle or even for as long as one cycle so like let's put this dog with hat very cool but five years from now i don't think dog with hat's going to be cool so unless they can transform dog with hat into a casino into a technology into a dex

into an ecosystem which harnesses the power of the community, I believe the meme will die because that's the nature of memes. Memes generally don't live for long periods of time. Memes are very short-term things. The smart memes will… Yeah, I was going to say, just one thing on that point. I think memes are a way… I think it's really well said. Memes or IDOs are just a way, pre-sales or launching a meme through a fair launch.

They're just a way to kind of get the basics to build something of value. And I do want to point out one thing as well. Like you said earlier, getting the allocations in meme coins. I think allocations in projects make sense. But meme coins shouldn't have allocations. They should be fully decentralized. So I'd usually be skeptical. Obviously, there's always exceptions. But I'd usually be skeptical of a meme that has an

allocation taking an otc allocation we've talked about before we won't talk about here and again just for the audience like we talk about the things i think not many people do we talk about openly um we try to kind of talk about it here we don't have many group calls me around and scott we haven't had one for like months now um so we do it here we have these discussions here which is good for everyone listening um and then the last thing i want to say is that the the um you know i talked about how we were concerned about token launches then we kind of warmed up to them i saw the value nfts are the same and now meme coins but don't dismiss the fact that there's a fuck ton of scams especially in 2017 when it came to these token launches these pre-sales now there's a process there's systems in place to kind of

avoid those and be able to spot those nfts when nfts first came in the scams were just just flooded the the the asset class and then it matured and it became a much better asset class with the value add a lot clearer and i think the same thing with meme coins like i think initially and still till now it's just a fuck ton of scams and we cannot dismiss that um and it's really hard to find those gems um within all these scams so just kind of want to point that out i think the safest way to get involved is for a meme coin at a certain market gap that's already matured that's well distributed that doesn't have a bunch of wallets that hold a shit ton of token supply

um so that'll be it'll be my thoughts there but i'll go to the other thing i think we need to look at the other thing i think we need to look at is um ai so i think very it's it's a good time to start looking at it you said but you said you said you said a while remember you said a while ago and i know you change your mind depending on the market what's your stance now on ai because last not last we spoke about it but a couple of months ago three months ago you talked about how we're before the launch of uh whatever the the image ai one so yeah was it somo so yeah um yeah before the launch of somo you talked about how we're 70 percent uh of the way through the ai cycle do you still think that's the case so i think that i think that 90 percent of the crypto my thesis remains exactly the same 90 of the crypto ai players are absolute

garbage but they've got the tide carrying them and the tide is the the the outside ai narrative which will just naturally lift the crypto ai narrative so like you know nvidia results uh the fight between google apple and microsoft to own the AI world, launches of ChatGPT4, 4.0, ChatGPT5, Apple AI. All those things are good for AI. And when the tide of AI rises, people are going to run to crypto to see if they can get into crypto AI. We've analyzed a lot of these AI protocols. And to be honest, the ai protocols are absolute garbage like to be honest barring one or two of them which i'm which i've got very high conviction on i don't see any of

them succeeding but you know what i'm here for i'm i'm here for a good time not for a long time and that that's how it is you know like i'm i'm i'm gonna be here and i'm gonna i'm gonna while while they're going is good i'm'm going to surf it. I'm going to surf the wave. Scott, you want to go back to some important news? Go back to the important news you were talking about earlier. I think the guy that launched iBit is now the CEO of Vanguard, among other news. We kind of touched on the CPI data again, how big of a role that's playing in the market's reaction, the response. Could it lead to the market continuing the current rally and breaking 74K, which I think you said is an important resistance level?

Well, I mean, listen, stock market is at an all-time high, right? So, like, you can be bearish. You can look at the economy. You can say this makes no sense. You can fundamentally think that there's indicators that things are about to crash, but nothing's better for a trader than a blue sky breakout at all-time highs. And that's what we've had here with stocks, right? So if you believe in the correlation, but you should generally be bullish on all things.

And the dollar is rolling over seemingly, including Bitcoin, obviously. But like I said, I think Bitcoin is sort of, I've always believed it's largely uncorrelated, idiosyncratic asset. That's the beauty of it. And we have a lot of things that are fundamentally happening under the surface that I think are extremely bullish. And I don't see how you could be generally bearish on Bitcoin right now. Let me ask you one more question before I know you want to go to the panel as well.

But the question I have for you is, when do you think retail will get into crypto? Because we've had your rant on that. When Doge makes an all-time high or NFTs, even like the low-end NFTs start to sniff like some price action to the upside. Listen, I've said this a million times. We had the theory that a Bitcoin all-time high would get all the mainstream adoption and everybody would come rushing in. And that didn't happen because last cycle, people weren't buying Bitcoin as much as Maxis would love to tell you. They were buying Doge because of Elon Musk and they were buying the NBA Top Shot and then other NFTs.

So when those things come back, that's when your average underwater mainstream person who thinks this entire space is trash will start to pay attention and come back in. I'll let you go to the panel, man. And I've got a lot of smarter people here. Sure. I mean, I would love to hear anyone else's opinion on that exact topic. I mean, Dave, you kind of hinted at it earlier. And I would love Chris's opinions on the market.

But, yeah, I really think that that's what's going to bring it back. I mean, Chris, how are you looking at the market right now? We obviously spoke on, on YouTube yesterday. Yeah. Can you hear me? I can. Oh, okay. Good. Good. Um, yeah, you know, uh, same thing I've been talking about, you know, for the last two months. The range, you know, does appear to be accumulation. We had that drop down to 56 and change down there, which printed what we would consider a spring. We had a lower volume pullback there on May 10th, which was Friday, which led to a little bit of sideways and then this breakout here this week. So, I mean, you know, this was a good breakout yesterday. It was a big candle. We had some volume on it, went through the end, it closed up there above the daily pivot, which is what we were

looking at, as well as that local descending resistance. And so, I mean, for me, there's very little here to say that we're going to drop down and make new lows To me this looks like you know, we've got all-time highs coming doesn't mean it happens tomorrow, but I think If you're waiting for lower lows, I don't think you're gonna get that at all Really and I think a lot of people are gonna be doing And then they're going to freak out when it hits that, um, that, that all time high area. Uh, and then they become conflicted and then you'll have some that'll try and chase and you'll have some that'll be scared to get in. Um, you know, it's just, it's just the same thing we normally see, uh, when we've got these ranges, you know, again, as we've talked about when you have that extended move up and then it then it goes sideways. At first, everybody continues to be

bullish. And then the longer it goes sideways, the more they start considering that. And they start getting scared and all the bad thoughts start coming in their heads. And, you know, they're there. You know, on social media, their, their echo chamber gets louder and louder about how it's the top and it can't go any higher and here's all these reasons why but like you said you know again stocks all time new all time highs

and you know if you believe in that correlation with crypto and stocks and what not then why would you even consider that crypto top would be in there I think we've got a lot higher to go honestly yeah Joe you had your hand up before you even consider that CryptoTop would be in there? I think we've got a lot higher to go, honestly. Yeah.

Joe, you had your hand up before. Yeah, my hand was because of the AI is kind of involved in the area. Yeah, Joe, on AI, because we talk about different narratives, we talked a lot about meme cores, but we haven't talked about gaming for a while, which I'm extremely

bullish on. We had Robbie on stage yesterday from Anamca, the CEO. He's always here. I want him back on stage just to talk about gaming. I just think, again, we're forgetting about one of the narratives that's getting the most users into crypto, actual users into Web3. But in terms of AI, decentralized AI, are we getting ahead of ourselves, Joe? Or is the use case already there? How far are we for decentralization to start having an impact on AI? Yeah, I mean, look, nowadays, it's not really the – it's not what we call the normal AI play, like the large language models. That's kind of been built, right?

And the way people kind of have to think about it is think about it like uh cloud storage right you have this machine that you can rent and pay that will process basically what's called a right which is you know how it distributes the data and how it gets better data that's what we're starting to see now um very slowly that's kind of actually what creates the usage. Because then you create like how you're going to feed this AI the information and get out positive results. And that's where I think the excitement is. And whoever gets it right, I think there'll be a lot of winners for very different things. And you see like huge advancements.

You know, that's actually what I'm working on. And it's not so much a race to build the best AI anymore. It's more of a race to build what's called RAG, R-A-G, for the AIs. And that's where you start to see more and more projects pop up now. Subscript, and then we'll go to Dan right after. Hey, guys. Yeah, just coming back to, I think, Mario speaking about actual users when it comes to gaming.

In general, I also see a lot of people diving into the Web3 space and gaming, and I personally, I'm a diehard gamer. However, I'm not sure if actual users is what is key to the adoption of Web3 gaming, because are those actual users also actual gamers? Because most of the gamers I know, they're not really happy with the Web3 gaming space. And it's often seen as like a place where, yeah, it's just like play to earn. So people basically just form these games to get some monetary benefits out of it,

instead of actually playing for fun. And when I grew up playing video games, we played those games for fun. And the mass adoption of video games came because they were actually fun and people just liked being entertained. So I would like to actually see the Web3 gaming space shift towards

not play to earn, but actually play. And then maybe you earn something. And I think that's happening. Yeah, I think that's happening this cycle. And I was going to earn, but actually play, and then maybe you earn something. I think that's happening. Yeah, I think that's happening this cycle. And I was going to say, when Joe was talking about AI, it kind of reminds me of the conversations we had last cycle about metaverse. So my feeling is that AI is one of those things

where it's a great narrative, but we're a cycle early on really seeing it happen, which I think is fine. And I think, you know, Ran was kind of alluding to that same idea as well. But gaming, I think, is one of those as well that's going to happen right now. Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna really, later in this cycle, because we're investing the heaviest in gaming, by the way, SubSquid, good to have you on the show. Me and Scott are both invested, so we going to talk to you in a bit appreciate you partnering with us um i'm purely invested i think scott is invested as well

but um uh yeah just going back to gaming i'm gonna scott i'm gonna give you all anyone that was down in gaming i'm gonna give you the finger later in the cycle because we and obviously if it doesn't yeah i'm not doubting it just for the record i'm actually on board for this one yeah i, I know. I'm not doubting it as well. I'm just curious to see how it turns out because I would love to see. I'm not giving you the finger subs. We're invested, so you have my tokens vested.

But I'm saying anyone else, just because I'm a big believer, and obviously if it doesn't pan out, you can clip this part and then play it later and laugh at me. But I know Dan has had his hand up for a while. Dan? Yeah, I just wanted to chime in on a couple of things.

Regarding retail coming into the other coins like Dogecoin or whatever, if you just look at the ETFs of four months, we've had $30 billion flow into the ETFs. That's more than the entire market cap of Dogecoin. That's more than the entire market cap of XRP. I know not all of that is retail, but in a way, some of it is people buying it on behalf of retail. So I still think that Bitcoin is the biggest play. It's just so far away, it gets eclipsed. There's a lot of fun. I had some fun this week playing with some meme coins, whatever, GameStop and dumb money whatever you know it's a little fun to play on the side but in terms of um really investing it's not really

what i focus um but in terms of people saying that you know the top is in or we can't go much higher um i would you know pay a little bit of lip service to what people say you know to say people listen to coldplay and vote for the nazis um you look at Deribit, there's call options all the way up to $300,000 for March next year with an active market. To buy a call option at $300,000 for next year, you're paying like $1,200 for that. To even buy a call option at $100,000 for March next year, you're paying like an $11,000 premium on that call option.

So clearly there is real money out there that thinks it's going higher. I would say look where the money's going rather than what people are chattering on Twitter. Yeah, I agree with him. And I think a lot of people have pointed to the barbell strategy, right? Bitcoin on one side, memes on the other, and nothing particularly performing very well in the middle. Go ahead, Dave. Yeah, I think that there's a couple of important nuggets in there. The fact is, as I was saying before, if you're doing the barbell strategy, it really means you better be good at timing. With Bitcoin, if you're really good at timing, awesome. There are people who can do it, and that's great. And look, my firm has a lot of clients like that that are timing intraday moves, and we've seen

quite a few of them already today while we've been on this call. But for the average investor, it's really understand that a very small number of days make up most of the price appreciation in Bitcoin. And so you don't want to miss those if that's what you're in. The meme coins are the polar opposite. Yes, it's true. The vast majority, a very small number of days are where the price appreciation happens. That part is true. But because of the excess volatility, if you're left holding the bag, there's a reason they're called bag holders. Essentially, when you're trading momentum, understand your trading momentum. That's really a very important point and people don't get it. But what we're seeing here is Bitcoin stuck in a range because there's an undercurrent

of buyers who aren't letting it fall to the level that, and it wasn't all that long ago and Vinny's not here, so I don't want to get in an argument with someone who can't defend himself. But when Vinny's bearish takes a week ago, we're like, oh, well, we're going to drop back down to the 40s or the 30s or whatever silly thing he was saying. And I'm sitting here saying, I don't think so. But then again, I'll say the same thing to people who think that we're just going to ramp up immediately because there just isn't that catalyst right now. So understand trading. And I think Chris and I agree completely where the upside downside dynamic looks. But it's very different trading an asset like Bitcoin that has achieved some sort of critical mass and ones that have not. Yeah, I want to.

To be fair, Vinny did say he was playing devil's advocate. Yeah, Vinny was playing devil's advocate that day when he said, everyone's so bullish, let me just play devil's advocate. No, no, no, I understand that. I have a lot of respect for Vinny. That's exactly my point. I'm just saying. But it was interesting on that day how everybody started agreeing with him. And it was like, okay, well, look, I'm not trying to make short-term trading predictions.

On a long-term basis, I've never been more bullish. But on the short term, I'm not really willing to say anything because there's a lot of cross-currents. Yeah, I want to go to SubSquid. Dima, before we dig into SubSquid, and by the way, just for anyone in the audience, we're investing in SubSquid. It's been a lot of VCs have been recommending it for me, been recommending that we get involved. But I wanted to ask you a quick question, Dima. You were on one of our

meme coin spaces a long time ago, correct? Or I've got you confused with someone else completely because you do have the same NFT PFP. So you could be someone else. There are 10K of those.

Yeah, we're very similar. I don't quite remember actually being in that space. There are Miladies there. Yeah, I know Miladies. I know we had one of your guys, one of the influencers, Milady, influencers on our stage,

but I don't know why I thought their name was also Demos. That's why I kind of linked it to you. But yeah, man, I want to dig into subscript first. I appreciate you bringing us on your cap table and having Scott involved as well. Can you just first explain, the way you've explained it is that Substitute is a decentralized query engine

for on-chain data and at petabyte scale data. Just want to simplify it for the audience. Before getting to a petabyte scale data lake, what is a decentralized query engine? What is a centralized query engine? Maybe let me first explain the audience in general like very easily what indexing in general is and then maybe dima can go into a bit more detail into the nitty-gritty so i think most of you guys know indexing indirectly from google and yahoo so if we go back to like the early 90s you know know, the era of the World Wide Web,

probably a lot of people here in the space are also from that era and witnessed it themselves. I didn't, but I know. Did SubSquid drop out? No. Oh, I thought it was on my end. Yeah, you're talking about Google.

Yeah, I just got called. Yeah, all good, all good. From NBC right now. I'm so sorry. All right, all good, all good. But from NBC right now. I'm so sorry. All right, all good, all good. They're probably asking, easy, easy, easy. They're probably asking for an allocation. Just block them.

Exactly. We're done. They're listing, I think, tomorrow. We'll fuck them for allocation. But just, yeah, you were talking about Yahoo and Google explaining what indexing is. So basically what we see nowadays with the search engines, what Google and Yahoo are doing is actually they're indexing the World Wide Web and they're making it accessible for us to actually kind of query and search for websites. Well, the blockchain is different, right? We don't search for websites here, but we still have a lot of DApps and applications and all of these apps need to get access to the data of the blockchain. So similar to how Google and Yahoo index the internet,

is that we index the blockchains and make this data available for developers. And that's just what I wanted to point out at the beginning for everyone to understand what we're actually doing before we dive into the detail. So I can understand when you say you index data on the web. Obviously, we all use Google. But now, I don't know if anyone still uses Yahoo. I don't know if it even exists, yahoo.com. But when you're saying, just make sure you're typing a bit loud

so it's easy to hear on the mic. Maybe you're checking if Yahoo exists. I'm checking as well just in case you're wondering. Yeah, you can still have it. You can still search on Yahoo. But when you say indexing data on the blockchain, can you elaborate what type of data and indexing for who exactly? I would give this to Dima.

Dima, tell us. Yeah, so basically whatever you have... Dima, if you could... Let me do you a favor. Can you get the mic a bit closer to your mouth so it's a bit clearer? That would be good. Is it better?

A tiny bit. Hello? Is it better tiny bit yeah i think it's getting better yeah i'm not sure can you hear me by the way i've searched yeah it's good now i'll let you fix it by the way i just searched scott melker on yeah yes man can you hear me all right man so we got to fix this you got to jump in by the way I didn't google it it's called Melker and the results are a lot more entertaining than Google

it's probably all about like DJing in New York City the saying it's a lot more interesting while we fix D-Mark because I know he's having an issue I want to go back to that question when you say indexing data on the blockchain what type of data and for who Subscrit, while we fix D-Mark, because I know he's having an issue, I want to go back to that question. When you say indexing data on the blockchain, what type of data and for who? So the question, it's actually pretty easy to answer.

It's actually for every DF. So it doesn't matter if it's a DEX, if it's an NFT marketplace, some kind of NFT protocol, or any kind of DF you can think of. Everyone needs access to the data. And just think about like your favorite wallet, for example, and just imagine you open up the wallet and it takes 20 seconds to load your balances. And this is actually what indexing is about,

getting like making this data available and easy to see. And actually in almost real time, right? Nobody wants to wait seconds to to actually see some kind of information from the chain on your favorite e-app and this is what indexing does so we we build a software development kit which just makes it easier for people to build those indexers and then on top of it or actually below it we have this data lake so we replace the rpc nodes for everyone who doesn't know what an rpc node is for forget about it anyways it's basically a node where you can get data from the blockchain

and these nodes were never meant to be data sources but people just use them conveniently we replace this we archive all of the data from the blockchain over 150 chains at the moment and with the software development kit people people can build the indexer, kind of like an API, and get access to this data and then implement it onto their favorite D app. And it's really use case agnostic. So we have wallets, we have marketplaces,

we have DEXs, which use us. We have games actually also, especially when it comes to gaming, like the performance is important because for example, if you want to trade some items, it has to be in real time. And all of these things actually come down

to the fundamental infrastructure. I want to dig into your token launch, by the way, because you've got a pretty hype token launch. You've got a lot of backers, a lot of investors that we know. And you're doing, I think, with CoinList and others. We'll dig into this a bit later. We'll kind of do this that last part,

and I'm sure Scott has a few questions. But Dima, SubSquid answered the question pretty well. I'm going to let you add anything to it, but then my next question will be like, what are the other solutions that exist right now and how does SubSquid differ? And then where does the token come into place? Dima, are you there?

Okay, let me try. Yeah, I'm here. Yeah, we can hear you, but your mic is pretty shit. Like SubSquid's mic is better. You sound like a goldfish. I don't know, like in an aquarium or something. You do sound like a goldfish in an aquarium. I like that.

I'm going to use that with more guests now you sound like a goldfish outside the aquarium but still a goldfish let me dima just for your sake i think you fix the mic i'm going to continue going back and forth with subsequent just so the audience can hear properly and subsequent i'll ask you the same question is like what does it differ like what are other solutions out there where does the token come into the place and then later the discussion is going to Where does the token come into the place? And then later, the discussion is going to be about the token launch that you have

and more about token launches in general because I think it's a discussion I always enjoy having. I think the audience would like to know more about it. Like, are VC-backed tokens doing well? What exchanges work well? What is the market like now?

Me, Ran, and Scott have been debating it for a while. So it'll be a good discussion later. But let's go back to the point of your solution and how different are the solutions. Yeah, that's actually pretty simple. I mean, probably a lot of you have heard about the graph. If not, the graph was, I would say, the first indexing protocol for blockchain. And the graph kind of really became popular, I think, in like the DeFi summer,

basically like in the last cycle. And that was also what the graph was built for from the ground up, right? It was built for these, let's say, more or less simple DeFi use cases. And the main difference and actually why we've built Subsquare back in the day is like we started in 21 in the Polkadot ecosystem. And yeah, nowadays Polkadot, I think it's struggling a bit, but this is not the main topic today. But there was no indexing solution for Polkadot because the graph is specifically designed for EVM chain.

And that's how everything kind of started. We needed an indexing solution for another project. Then we started building subscript. We noticed a lot of projects actually used it. And that is when we went out and VCs approached us. And since then, we've been growing and scaling. And we also now support EVM. Actually, also just recently added Solana data, which is a completely different stack.

It's super performant. There's a lot of data. And due to the high TPS, it's super difficult to index this. And yeah, I think that is how everything happened. And obviously we've learned a lot from the graph and a lot of their mistakes also when it comes to tokenomics,

but in general, more or less from the architecture. So the graph has this like really monolithic approach, whereas we have like more modular architecture and recently like we've had a lot of these narratives around modularity we had this in mind like four years ago it's pretty funny how now all of this stuff comes actually into play and much of the different architecture we have we're just like almost 100 times faster in indexing and why is this important? Think of your own team, like you have a team of engineers.

And now you have something you need to debug or like something you have to rerun. And then actually with the graph, it can take days, if not up to weeks, because it indexes so slowly. If you have to resync the indexer with subsequent, we're talking probably more about like minutes, maybe hours at most. And this saves you a lot of money in the production environment. You talked about moving to Solana. Like obviously there's a lot of hype there. How hard is this to build on each subsequent chain as they sort of become either more popular or gather more TVL or adoption? You mean how hard it is to add support for a different chain?

Yeah, here and you just kind of alluded to it was very difficult to, you know, sort of go over to Solana. So can you do this? Yeah, so answer this question is an interesting question. I will dig into the token list. Go ahead. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'll answer this interesting question pretty quickly. It's because of the virtual machine. So as soon as we support a specific virtual machine, for example, like EVM,

then we can add support pretty quickly. I would say maximum 48 hours to 72 hours to add a new network if we get the endpoint. With Solana, it took us over a year at Sync Building. And we actually started building Solana support before all of the hype came up as well. So it just launched now recently, but it took us a year to develop. I've got a question for you, man, about the token listing. All right, this is going to be the cool part.

So just for the audience, an update on VC investments. It's becoming more realistic. So, you know, just a few weeks ago, about a month, month and a half ago, I don't know how long it's been. You know, we're seeing ago about a month month and a half ago i don't know how long it's been you know we're seeing tokens on a daily basis do a 10 20 exit listing so it just is going crazy and we're very active in investing as well we're still pretty active investing maybe in a couple of projects a day and but back then it was probably a three to four a day and say yeah about three to four a day um and just because the risk was a lot less. Now, things have slowed drastically, despite the market being pretty healthy. And we're seeing quality projects sitting at a 2x,

at a 3x, which is, I'd say that this is, I like it to be somewhere in the middle, 10, 20x is pretty high. But a 2, for some top, top tier projects was also shockingly low. It's like almost bear market levels, which was very surprising for me. I don't think that will last for too long. We're still seeing some successful listings. But my question for you, Subsquid, I think you guys are listing this week, if not tomorrow.

Correct me if I'm wrong. How is the process like? I know some of your VCs or partners or launchparks maybe told you a delay listing. We'd love your thoughts on the markets. And how did you guys create so much hype? You know, you got 200,000 followers on Twitter. You got some top tier VCs.

How did you get to the stage? Okay, those were like multiple questions in one. Let me answer the latest one. But they are interesting questions. They are all interesting. Yes, of course. Super interesting. Thank you.

So first of all, community is key. This is something we've been building for years. And yeah, you mentioned the Twitter followers. I think we have over 700,000 people in our community across all of our different channels. And also recently, we had a points campaign, and I think over 1.5 million people joined there. Let's maybe take all of the airdrop farmers away. Well, then maybe it's still 500K people. So community has been key, even though we are considered to be an infrastructure project.

The listing processes in general are super tricky and it's very narrative driven. So every cycle you have certain narratives. I think this cycle, it's all about the BTCL2s, liquid staking, restaking, even AI for some reason. Like exchanges really love AI because I think they're really focused towards retail. And here I think it really just comes down to having a great product, having decent traction, and then trying to convince exchanges to list you. When it comes to launching and finding the right date, this is pretty, pretty difficult. And what we figured out, I think there's almost no perfect date. It's so hard to time everything that at one point you just move forward.

And if we look at the traditional stock market and compare it with how crypto markets are, I just hope to see that the crypto markets at one point will behave similar to the stock market. Meaning if a project launches, for example, Google again, and it's good and it's a quality project or company with a lot of clients and it's growing, this kind of reflects on the stock market, right? But in crypto, this is not yet the case. As we see with, for example, with a lot of clients and it's growing this kind of reflects on the stock market right but in crypto this is not yet the case as we see with for example mean coins or other projects which literally just launched two months ago and go to an exchange and suddenly pump 20x um so when it comes to our listing obviously everyone has to do his own research i don't want to give any financial advice here it really uh it's hard to predict where this token will end. If we compare it to the graph, I think there's a

lot of upside potential, especially if we compare it to the graph during their prime time, which was in the last cycle. I think they topped at like around 9 to 10 billion FDD. Not 100% sure though, but around that because I was one of the persons buying it at the peak because I was so bullish on them back in the days. Unfortunately, they didn't really deliver and that was I think also one of the key reasons to go with Subscript. But yeah, I mean, it's really hard to predict the market at the moment. Who are the exchanges that you're listing on and who are the launchpads, if any, that you're working with?

So we've worked with CoinList since last year. So we first launched a testnet with CoinList. I think we were the second project to do that ever. And that was the biggest infrastructure data testnet we've ever seen in the Web3 space, which we didn't expect to happen, but was pretty successful. So over 70,000 of these indexers have been deployed to our network or to our testnet. And just for everyone, this cannot be done by like the average airdrop hunter. Why? Because you have to be somewhat technically sophisticated in order to actually code and then deploy the indexer. So this was

a major success for us. And then later on, we always wanted to give the community something back, either in form of an airdrop or in terms of a public sale. Personally, I am more of a fan of public sales. Why? Because when I get an airdrop, the first thing I do is, okay, are they on one of the exchanges I use? Can I sell it? And then I sell the airdrop and whatever i go and eat pizza or whatever i buy some other coins from the money but if i'm actually invested if i spent my own money on the project then really the point where i want to sell these tokens again is completely different

i'm more attached to it especially if i've been a community member for a long time so for the coinless public sale we already whitelisted, I don't know, I think like over 20,000 people from our community. And then in total, I think around 40 to 50,000 people went through the KYC process and everything. So it was pretty successful. Who are the last question? What exchange are you listing on? Oh, yeah. And the exchange is so far, what I can publicly announce right now, it's going to be Bybit, KuCoinGate, MEXC, and CoinList. And we're working on more stuff. And, yeah, time will tell.

Nice. Cool. Cool, man. Last thing, when's the listing date? It's tomorrow at 8 a.m. UTC. I thought so. Yeah. I thought so. Cool. Well, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Thanks for allowing me and Scott to join your cap table. And it should be an exciting listing. I think it was a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for allowing me and Scott to join your cap table. And it should be an exciting listing. I think it was a great show as well. I loved the discussion earlier between me, Scott, Ran, and the rest of the panel on meme coin season. I love it. Who did the... I hate it.

I'm not going to teach you how. But it was a great discussion and it was a great partner as well on the show. It was a really top tier project having SubSquid on. So it was a good idea, Scott, to bring him on. But it was a great discussion and it was a great partner as well on the show. It was a really top-tier project having SubSquid on. So it was a good idea, Scott, to bring him on. But yeah, I think that was it. Scott, anything else? I think that's it. We'll run it back tomorrow.

Cool. See you tomorrow, everyone. And we'll see SubSquid's performance as well. Bye, everyone.