The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Hits $100k! What Now? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

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So I'm just having a look at not only the price of Bitcoin in the rest of the market, but more importantly, you saw a tweet by Bitcoin News. I didn't know that. I'm not sure if you knew this, Dave. Putin said, who can ban Bitcoin? Nobody. Powell said, it's just like gold, only it's virtual. And then Mayor Adams said, we should not be afraid of Bitcoin. And obviously you got Michael Seller. That's all in the last 24 hours. Is that correct? I mean, yeah, it's funny. Well, Adams is funny because I was at a conference a few years ago where he and Mayor Suarez down here in Miami were talking about Bitcoin.

And they were trying to one-up each other. And then FTX happened. And we haven't heard him talk about it. So it's not really surprising that he would crow. The Putin one was really interesting. And Powell is actually a bigger deal than people realize. So just for by way of history, going back to Greenspan, even Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell have all effectively said that they don't give a crap about

the price of gold at these levels, meaning that gold doesn't threaten the U.S. dollar. So Powell making the statement that equating Bitcoin to gold as opposed to worrying about the banking system, etc., more or less says that from a Fed perspective, at least from his perspective, there's no reason to fear anything in particular until Bitcoin gets to at least gold's valuation or more, which has kind of been the working assumption anyway. But hearing him say it, I think it's a big deal. Yeah, the Putin one really surprised me as well. That probably surprised me the most.

Has he made comments about Bitcoin previously? Positive comments about Bitcoin? I haven't seen it, but who the hell knows? Other people might have heard it. Yeah, so talking about all these different comets, Bitcoin crossed $100K. How important is this from a psychological level? So one argument that a lot of people are making is that this is what we needed for retail to get into the market. Now we'll see headlines everywhere saying Bitcoin at all-time highs, Bitcoin breaks $100,000.

I was looking at some indicators earlier that show that retail interest could be starting to finally come in. Let me try to get the metric. Retail numbers picking up. There's an intercryptoverse put out a post. Let me see what the metrics that they used is. So Benjamin, Benjamin Pohn put it out. And then that's YouTube views. So putting YouTube views since July, and it's the highest it's been since the last bull market.

So his screenshot includes from 2019 until today and it's at 4 million, I don't know over what period of time, but 4 million views, YouTube views for crypto shows. And if you go back to January 2019, it was in the thousands. That's insane. Now it's at 4 million. And if you compare this to earlier this year, when we saw obviously crypto, we saw the rally start, it was below, let me see. Okay, so earlier this year, it was $2 million. In the bear market, it was below $1 million. When we broke all-time highs mid this year, whatever it was, June, July, it broke $3 million.

It was below $4 million, and now we just broke $4 million. So could we finally be seeing the retail market pay attention and start to enter? And by the way, I've had two friends in the last 24 hours that went in and bought Bitcoin that don't know anything about crypto. I asked that question, tried to do a quick straw poll this morning, and I'm not hearing a lot of it. I mean, I've had, yeah, I mean, I've had a few people reach out to me today, obviously. But the real question, and it's funny that we're getting, and I'm curious what you think about it, is how many people are once again calling for exchanges to list Satoshis or bits or some smaller increment of this, kind of like the whole stock split notion in retail stock trading, which is absurd for a bunch of reasons, but it doesn't matter. I don't know if that matters. I do think that it's interesting that people buying iBit don't look up and see, you know, you can buy 100 shares of iBit and it's still a hell of a lot less than

one Bitcoin. And so I wonder how that dynamic is going to play. I mean, frankly, it's silly because you can obviously buy smaller units, but it does seem to make psychological sense to a lot of people. Yeah, let me read out some headlines and I'm going to read out a tweet by Pompliano to get everyone's thoughts on it. So BBC, Bitcoin hits $100,000. What's next for the booming cryptocurrency? Reuters, experts react to Bitcoin $100,000 milestone. Financial Times, Bitcoin hits $100K as Trump era hopes grow. New York Times, Bitcoin price surges to a milestone, $100,000.

So is that what we're looking for, Tom? Tyler, I see you're giving a lot of love hearts. Is that the, as Pompliano says, $100,000 is a psychological milestone. Every boomer is waking up to headlines tomorrow and then going to buy some Bitcoin just in case they were wrong. Welcome to the next phase of the game. Absolutely, Mario. This was a milestone. It was a mental barrier that had to be broken.

And it's drawing mainstream media attention. And it's also drawing hate from tradfi people like Peter Schiff, who have constantly been putting down Bitcoin. His tweets this morning are incredible. He is just on a rant. And he's trying to suggest that this is somehow all because of government manipulation. And that somehow the government has opened the door to this when it's quite the opposite. We're finally seeing and exposing that the government has been suppressing the growth of this asset class. And we're now seeing the potential. So yes, I think it is a huge milestone. And it's a barrier

that once it's passed, I think we're going to see 100,000 in the distance. And we're going to quickly accelerate from here. And let me go to Tom, you had your hand up earlier as well. Yeah, I mean, my mom shot me an email this morning and quoted the 100K Bitcoin from Bloomberg and said, you predicted it, Tom. And I said, thank you, mom, I did. And I think a lot of people are getting the same thing, right? They get those emails in their inboxes

and they're saying like, oh my God, this thing hit 100K? Like, I'm getting text messages from everyone too. I mean, this is a big, big thing for people. And this is what's going to cause the FOMO for them to start buying in because price leads narrative, not the other way around. So this is like the great justification. A lot of institutional investors are going to need to put this in their portfolio. And they're going to start to back into the fundamental actual justification points that we've talked about for so many years. But the price is going to be the

first justification point for them. And 100K is is a big big number that they can't ignore so so before continuing tom um the next thing i'm going to do for the audience is that we're going to look at what that means for the rest of the crypto market what does that mean for all the different arts what does that mean for all the the dino coins that was pumping it over the last few days and of course going down that uh that chain what that means for you know vc back projects you know nTs, altcoins, and meme coins as well. But going back, Tom, to what you're saying, so now 100K would be the new resistance level, I assume. And then what happens next? What do you expect to happen over the next few days and weeks before the inauguration? I still think Ethereum is due for the mother of all catch-up trades.

We saw a really big short squeeze actually ahead of this Bitcoin run over 100K, and I think that's going to continue for Ethereum here. I think once it hits 4,000, we're going to skyrocket up to the next level, which I think is like... Why is Ethereum lagging, in your opinion, despite other coins like Solana? Yeah, it's the barbell mindshare. It's the barbell mindshare right now. It's, hey, the Bitcoin trade right now from the majors and from institutions and from Bitcoin Reserve, blah, blah, blah.

And then it's meme coins. I mean, you've seen meme coins absolutely pump across the board. And not just because some are listing on Coinbase, but because they're the easiest form of tokenized attention, as we've talked about ad nauseum. So, like, once we take a breather here, I think that's when Bitcoin and even Solana has actually lagged recently, right? Start to play this catch up mode as folks start to kind of rotate some of those gains out of Bitcoin into these other coins. But Bitcoin's going to lead like it does every cycle. And then we're going to start to see all these others kind of play out. And I think it's going to happen in short order here. You already saw it on Ethereum. And I actually bet if we didn't have this round number of 100k on bitcoin that we just hit ethereum would have played this catch-up trade actually already

dan before dan goes in i was going to ask you talking about solana the white solana doing then i'll let you fix your mic while you're fixing your mic i'm just gonna ask tom one more question and i'll go to you dan but i just need the background noise. Tom, why is Solana doing so well? Why did Solana break all-time highs a few days ago? Yeah, same reason. I mean, Solana has just been capturing the mindshare based on, I mean, Solana still is where most of the meme coins trade. It's where all of the fun narratives that we're talking about, like D-Pen, decentralized science that we've been talking about, decentralized AI, are all playing out on Solana. So the fundamental

use case and long-term bull proposition for Solana is still there, and it still trades at one-fourth the value for Ethereum. So very, very long-term bullish, as I've talked about here many times. And it was fundamentally undervalued for way too long. So the catch-up trade for Ethereum and Solana versus Bitcoin

is going to play out over the next few weeks and months, I think, in my opinion. Dan? weeks and months, I think, in my opinion. Dan? I think there was a time where Bitcoin is the primary asset and Ethereum was the network. It's done now. If you want to have a network where you can trade shapecoins, it's Solana. I don't think, I don't think with room's going back, it's kind of like, if you have, if you want an asset, you buy Bitcoin. If you want the network where you can trade shitcoins, it's Solana.

Go ahead. Let me, let me just respond to that. Cause I think that's sort of a joke. Um, like if you look at the actual fundamental value of assets that are traded on top of Ethereum right now, it's in the hundreds of billions. And even if we exclude stable coins, and what the fundamental value of these tokens are is the value of the network traded on top of it. And then you have to own the token to actually fundamentally defend the value that is on top of the network. So if you think that BlackRock and all these others who are launching tokenized treasury funds and trading in enormous amounts of size on Ethereum are just going to fundamentally flip to trading on top of

like Bitcoin L2s or Solana. Like, I think you're just being completely short-sighted. So like, this is the kind of stuff that people like to say on Twitter, but it's just like fundamentally not true if you just look at any of the numbers for actual dollar value. I don't think they're flipping. I just think they don't care about the secondary level. I'm not sure what that means. If you just look at the value that's actually traded on top of these networks,

the token has a clear tie to the value that is on top of the network. And if you continue to think the biggest institutions are building on Ethereum, which they are, from WisdomTree to BlackRock to any big financial institution is building products on top of Ethereum. And the simple reason why Ethereum is valued because of that is because if you have, let's call it 100 billion, 200 billion, 300 billion transacted on Ethereum a day, a week, a month, or a year, you need to hold the ETH token to defend the network. Because if I hold a certain number of Ethereum, I can actually have that as an attack vector to attack the fundamental value of the transactions that are happening on

top of the network over that period. So you need to hold Ethereum and it needs to be more valuable. You have a one minute answer to my question saying, why would people do that? I mean, you have a one minute answer to the question saying, so how does the network, what happens? You have a one or two minute answer to the question saying, how does the network where happens you know one or two minute answer to the question say this is happening let me let me go to Alex I just want to get your thoughts before getting to a Solana versus each debate just the markets in general and then what does that mean for us a lot of people obviously don't understand how it rotates you know because goes up first

the rest of market follows but then getting expected them Alex why a Bitcoin is doing if they're wondering why because we first, the rest of the market follows. But then can you explain to them, Alex, why Bitcoin is doing, if they're wondering why Bitcoin is doing so well, but the rest of the markets are correcting after the last few days of coins and dino coins and altcoins rallying? Yeah, so I think this is just a reversal of what we saw for the last week or two. You know, the last, basically, Bitcoin was dominating in the run up from 72, Joe 99.8 thousand. We then, it kind of stalled out in the high nineties while we had that huge fricking cell wall right at a hundred K.

And I think people kind of got a little bored of waiting. And so they spent the last week or two. You saw the post Trump, like dino coin affiliated trades that people were rotating into and then i think a lot of people are predicting as soon as i actually i think you really saw the market reversal a few hours before um the before bitcoin broke the number but basically i think that was just a lot of dollars sifting back to bitcoin people seeing the cell wall was breaking down um and rotating back out of some of those hard into bitcoin um in terms of like what happens next on this um i think there's no question a hundred thousand

psychological wall and that it's going to lead to a bunch of media coverage um i think we go it's you know i don't know i i'm not sure exactly how the, the very short term dynamics here, but I think the key dynamic when it comes to read on this cycle is that the long time, you know, the pattern. Oh, fucking internet here. So I can hear you're back now. You're back. Yep. Okay, great. The longer that the numbers hold and that the cycle continues, the more that retail comes back.

I think especially after 2021, again, a lot of people got burned by, you know, these very fast hype cycles and things going hard. And so I think you've got a lot of people who remember that, even if they weren't personally burned by it. And they're going to sit back and wait and look. And every day that it looks more stable, that more institutional buys in, that the prices hold and look more consistent, the more those people are going to feel left out. And every day, a couple more of them are going to come in and a couple more of them are going to come in and a couple more of them are going to come in. And so I think just the number one thing is the longer that we can keep this cycle going, the more stable things look, the more that retail comes back and that just keeps the cycle going

longer. Let me go to DB, your thoughts on the, and then we'll go to Mike afterwards as well to kind of balance it out. Not sure, Mike, if you can balance it out today, but let's go to DB first. Yeah, I couldn't tell who was speaking there, but he's spot on. It's just a psychological number for sure. It's just like the 50K. When it blasted past 50K and it's held around 54 to 56,

that's when everyone started contacting me and retail started coming in. And I see the exact same thing happening. But then we saw about DB. We saw retail, you talk about earlier when we broke 50K, when exactly? Oh, the previous cycle. Before it went to 64. Okay, so the 100K is the only psychological level in this cycle.

And that's the psychological level that retail needs to start getting into the market. Correct? Well, yeah, so far, that's what I'm already seeing. I've got people contacting me and you listed, what, half a dozen articles from primary Main Street media. So yeah, the attention's coming. It's going to be there. And just like whoever was talking, people are going to slowly start trickling in. They're going to see this number and it's going to hold if it holds.

And they're going to uh start slowly getting in and once it continues to hold at this range that's when the the altcoin cycle starts and it starts trickling to others i have to agree with i think it was dan who said the that solana and some of the other high performance chain has the mind share and i'm not bullish on ethereum it's going to go up but overall i'm not a fan of Ethereum. Why is that? Because of the way it's built. L2s are a giant mess. There's no interoperability. You look at someone who uses the entire ecosystem and they have five different versions of Ethereum in their wallet, which is a giant mess. And the only saving grace for Ethereum right now is base.

If Coinbase didn't build a layer two on Ethereum, Ethereum would be dead right now, in my opinion, or it'd be on its way down. Dave? interesting about yesterday is when Trump made the announcement about Paul Atkins at SEC commissioner, that's when the market started to take off. And it's for good reason, actually. Actually, first, Ethereum rallied before Bitcoin did, but eventually Bitcoin obviously took off. What is not well understood by people is the complete, how incredibly hard. It's like trying to run all the entrepreneurs in the United States, trying to build better UX, UI for Bitcoin and Ethereum and everything else for that matter, have effectively been running with lead weights chained to their ankles. And having someone like Paul at the SEC pretty much guarantees that that's not going to be the case. And so when you think about it, when you talk to, you know, your aunt

or your mother or your cousin or your doctor who doesn't know anything about Bitcoin, and they say, well, cold wallet, how do I ensure the custody? How do I make sure that my wife who doesn't, isn't technical can understand it? know all the issues you know how do you spend it you know i had i put people on the strike yesterday to show them some things but you know the entire experience now companies will have no issue with being banked and will be able to move forward and don't underestimate that as to why uh any crypto project with utility is waking up to a much sunnier day. And the markets are obviously taking advantage of that or taking note of that. By the way, there's a video that I'm sure most of you, if not all of you have seen already,

the Isaac Miller video, where he does the same clip, repeats the clip. Okay, I found it now. I'm just going to retweet it here. It's a clip of him in 2013 where he looks at his screen. He's like celebrating that Bitcoin hit. Make sure the number is correct before I mention the amount.

I think he hit $100, I think he said. He says, yeah, Bitcoin is now up to $111. And that was 2013. It's an all-time high and it's continuing to break. I've seen it break three times today. He's like all excited that it broke $100. Again, it was 2013. It's an all time high and it's continued to break. I've seen it break three times today. He's like all excited that it broke a hundred dollars. Again, it was 2013 and he does the same video, recreates it. It hasn't changed.

It looks exactly the same. I've retweeted the video, by the way, anyone that wants to watch it and I'll pin it at the top. And it looks exactly the same in the same location. He put laptop out, probably the same screen and saying the same thing. Look at the price at exact time as well. And look at the price at a100,000, which is fascinating. Anyone that's been there since the early, early days, it's crazy that we actually got here.

The things that we said we were crazy to believe many, many years ago ended up materializing to a pretty crazy level. Remember, guys, like Putin said today, no one can stop gold. Sorry, no one can stop Bitcoin. You got the New York mayor as well gloating about his Bitcoin holdings. We've got Powell comparing Bitcoin to gold. Obviously, Michael Saylor shilling Bitcoin on TV. And I think Michael Saylor put out a target.

Not sure if anyone saw that as well. He put out a target of how many trillions they expect Bitcoin to reach. Let me see what it is. Michael Saylor. Okay, predicts $280 trillion Bitcoin market by 2045. So anyone that thinks that's crazy, which I'm sure a lot of people, even people within the space would think that's crazy. Just remember, people thought where we are today was crazy about a decade ago.

But just going back, DB, I'll give you the mic and then we'll get Mike's thoughts on everything as well. DB, go ahead. We'll go to Mike afterwards. Yeah, I just wanted to add to what you were saying. And this is still the beginning. Trump hasn't even taken office yet. The regulations and the clarity haven't even begun yet. So this is truly the beginning.

And it's going to be a wild ride, I think. Yeah, Mike, your analysis of what we're seeing today? I defer to Dave Weisberger. He's been nailing it. The only thing I have concerning is, you know, from a gold standpoint, it's legitimizing the fact that the digital version is taking over. You just can't hold gold anymore without digital gold in that space. The key question is, we all know that a lot of this is by the rumor. We all know this is things that a lot of people have been looking for for years.

And the key focus yesterday, I hope some of the, I think some of the prudent investors are doing what's normal, say, taking some profits. And now it's just a question of Bitcoin converting 100,000 resistance to support. I think it might take a while, but to me, the next key resistance is around 130. And it's just a question of how and when it backs up. But overall, the bottom line for me is this is a raging bull market. The world changed in November 5th. Markets buying into it and $32 billion of inflows are kind of hard to mess with in ETFs.

Paul, it's a pleasure to have you as well. It seems everyone is bullish. Your thoughts are obviously it's hard to not be bullish today, but maybe give us an analysis of what that means for the rest of the market and where that liquidity would flow afterwards, Follis. Hey, Mario. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I mean, look, it's needless to say the market's in a super interesting position right

now. Something I was just looking at a few minutes ago is the Google search analytics for key terms like crypto btc bitcoin solana they're all approaching either new highs or coming close to new highs which is a fantastic indication i think of where uh retail mindshare is and something that i said on one of one of these calls about a month ago or maybe slightly longer was that 100K BTC was the line in the sand that we needed to surpass in order to draw new retail in, draw new capital in, in a way that we hadn't seen up to that point in the cycle. So it's a very exciting time for altcoins in particular, I think that we're starting to see, and I just did a video on this, actually, we're starting to see the early stages of a proper alt season

in the market right now. And I know a lot of guys that I've been having this discussion with are saying things like, oh, but my alt bags are already 2 or 3x off the lows. They're already pumping. XRP just did, you know,

a 3x or 2.5x like all season has already happened and i actually think that the the best is yet to come and while that is certainly true i think the best is certainly yet to come if you if you remember how wild things got at the peak of 2021 you had coins like uh like storage doing like a 2x on a Monday and then another 2x on a Thursday. You had Doge doing like 10,000% in a month. So, I mean, things can get quite wild before they peter out. I think that definitely the signs are in the market now that we're starting to see some of those rotations. We're starting to see a drop in BTC dominance, which is a fantastic indication of where money is flowing in the market.

Obviously, charts like Others, which is the crypto market cap besides the top 10 coins, coins like Total3, which is the crypto market cap besides BTC and ETH, look fantastic. They look primed for new all-time highs. And ETH BTC finally showing some strength. So I think that the market is right on the precipice of something great when it comes to altcoins. It might not happen tomorrow. It might not happen next week. But certainly, I think we're setting up for a very, very bullish Q1 and some very interesting rotations happening in the altcoin market. Yes. So Tom, I want to get your thoughts on a couple of things here talking about altcoins. I just pinned a post that I put out earlier today. So most of you know that we do these

countdown shows. We used to do them early in the first half of the year where we had hype projects, especially ones going on Binance Launchpad. We do a space 30 minutes before listing, talk about it, do some price predictions, et cetera, have fun. And then they list live on the space and see how many Xs they do. It's kind of bull market mania type thing. So we used to do those countdown shows for the top tier projects. And we stopped it obviously because ICOs or IOs, whatever you want to call them, VC backtalkers stopped performing the way that you'd expect them in the bull market. And then today we did, so the first ICO after Bitcoin broke 100K is a project that most of you probably know Xion.

And we did a countdown show. Obviously, we're invested in that. And we did a countdown show for them. First one I do in like six months, over six months. And the project from pre-seed does 9,595X on pre-seed, now settled at about 40, 50x. It listed at over a billion dollar, it hit over 2 billion, two, two and a half billion dollar valuation at launch. Now it's back down to between one and $2 billion.

Very well backed project. But the reason I'm bringing it up is that these are the returns you'd see in the, you know, the, I'll close back those micro coins the vc back talkers you see in the bull market as the liquidity flows downwards from the from bitcoin all the way down to the uh to these uh speculative assets um now it's too early i think this project is an outlier it takes a while and maybe a question for you tom if you look at previous cycles how long does it take for the liquidity to flow from bitcoin to vc back projects and do you think meme coins could again suck up a lot of that liquidity as some people speculate meme coins are 100 sucking up that liquidity

like if i have 5 10k and i'm offshore outside the u.s like do i want to punt it off in a project that may or may not give me my liquidity in 6 to 12 months? Or do I want to punt it off in like a new meme coin that I heard someone has some insider knowledge on? Or is that some sort of cabal that helps me get some edge that I can gain really quickly? Like we are in a very much big gambling market right now. Now, when will this rotate into broader coins in terms of like all coins? I think there's going to be a number that we see go up in the next like two to three months but it's going to be in particular

sectors so like if it's already happening in deep end for example like grass is a great example peak which just launched about a month ago is up i think about 5x from their launch um and even like the legacy tokens yeah yeah a number of those already uh you're seeing now decentralized science tokens kind of pump a little bit so like these narrative tokens that you can tie some sort of fundamental quote-unquote value to i think are gonna start to do well all the stuff in the middle like i don't know if like d5 is really going to be super sexy like yes hyperliquid did fantastic but i think that's just because it's a fantastic product like the broad uh swath of like d5

projects like social projects like all that stuff in the middle that vc funded for the past year or two super bearish on but stuff that like has some actual utilities some really cool use cases and things consumers are going to adopt i think we're going to start to see that rotation in the next few months here. Yeah. But do you expect meme coins to continue stocking up the liquidity as they have in the last six months? Do you see that liquidity start to rotate? So a lot of the people that made money from meme coins will rotate it into these utility

tokens and we are seeing that overlap. I talked about it, I think it was yesterday or two days ago, I talked about the overlap on the AI side where these AI meme coins are starting to build that utility. So I want to start to see that overlap between meme coins and utility tokens yeah so i think it's going to be in a different way because retail in the past cycle really didn't have access to meme coins or even in the last few years like now that they're listed on coinbase and these other major exchanges it's so much easier to buy them you have a much bigger pool of liquidity to work from so i think they'll suck up some liquidity but but not all of the liquidity.

The more interesting point though, is like whether we buy the next like dog, cat or whatever animal, insert your animal here, meme coin trend. I think it's like the broader trend for these meme coins is have some sort of like really interesting marketing campaign, which is the meme coin first, and then back into the utility later, which you've seen with a lot of these AI coins. So like zero bro, like goat, um, bully a bunch of these others. Like, I think that's actually where more of the capital and interest is going to lie and like, Hey, okay. Meme coins were kind of funny, but like, Oh, these meme coins kind of do something. Um, particularly in the AI side, like let's grab a few of those. So it's going to hurt a lot of like the quote unquote mid caps that I mentioned earlier.

But I still think there's a ton of room for like the select all to particularly in like deep in and AI and DeSci and all those that actually have like some cool use cases. Yeah, what's fascinating is I'm just looking at our

so we incubate utility tokens as well as meme coins work a lot of meme coins as well. Now I was just going through some of our portfolio copies and it seems meme coins and I looked at coinMarketCap, looked at the category of memes. I'm surprised. Alts didn't do well, but memes are just pumping. Our portfolio is fucking killing it, but they're all micro tokens. But even the blue chips, Dogecoin is up 11%. Sorry, 5% last 24 hours. SHIB is up 2%.

Okay. They're not up as much as I expect. GOAT is up 4%. The AI Prophecy Act 1 is up 9%. So why are meme coins performing well while altcoins are not performing well? Because I would have expected both memes and altcoins to perform well as Bitcoin pumps. And then the others, the risk assets would follow. Tom? Sorry, I wasn't sure if that was for me uh it's it's 100 gambling right now 100 like you're seeing people make 10 to 100 x's in overnight uh you know time frames like you don't get that when investing

in like new projects we're in the complete speculative mania phase for meme coins that's certainly like hawk 2a last night is a that's crazy maybe a great top signal for meme coins because like you need a few of these like really big rugs or crashes that are super public for people to be like all right maybe and it's happening if you're in the trenches behind the scenes all the time but like until like retail kind of sees a few of these and they're like okay maybe this is kind of stupid maybe i should actually buy something that i can kind of tie some value to um so i think that's gonna happen pretty soon because we can't just keep having this but that's where that's where we're at right now and that's why you're not seeing a ton of interest in the other stuff as much as you are in mean coins yeah for anyone

listening hack tour launched yesterday it's a very hot project and we don't know what happened but it was a viral um viral event where they going up what to i don, and we don't know what happened, but it was a viral event where they're going up, what, to, I don't know, I don't know if they hit $100 million, and then just went down like 60%, 70%, 80% or something. The project says they were sniped, and the snipers sold it. Others say it was insiders. But the drama there is it's kind of showing the mania. I want to say this is a top signal. I think this is just like the beginning of the real mania phase of the bull market uh but alex and uh carlo go ahead yeah i was gonna agree with carla maybe and after alex

maybe carlo would love to get an nft update as well we haven't even talked about those but i heard uh two days ago someone saying they're doing well alex yeah i was gonna say i think tom was around with like i i was actually also gonna bring up the hot to a thing because i think that is one of the big dangers for it is for the industry as a whole right like i said earlier bitcoin stabilizing you're gonna bring retail back in headlines about like dumb like that happening is exactly what's gonna make people feel like nothing's changed on it but i think fundamentally yeah the reason you see meme coins still doing well is like they're still an interest from you know a lot of attention and money went to them over the last few years because it was the thing that you could do but people like it they like

the speculative gambling um but i think the deeper we get into the cycle the more that attention will turn back into projects that people really like and kind of tying this back to the conversation was going on earlier of solana versus ethereum like i am i would say i'm definitely much more bullish long term on solana versus ethereum i don't think ethereum goes away tomorrow or anything and i think a lot of the financialization uh project focus will happen there this is what i've really been seeing is like you see blackrock and you and the folks who are looking for maybe some of the straight trad five system connections to be doing it on Ethereum

because it's sort of the most oldest stable asset that's also programmable. But the reason I'm bullish on Solana is that builders who are looking to build other companies, you know, non crypto companies, but want crypto rails and crypto capabilities, those people are building on Solana, like it's not an accident that you're seeing all of the D pin and D side. And again, it's like random companies that want to handle payments cross border, all of those types of kind of web, you know, what we might call web to builders, who just want to integrate crypto, but don't want to build a crypto company. Those folks are all choosing Solana. And I think that's indicative of something and where kind of the market and building is going to be

going in the longer term. Hello? I don't see momentum cooling in the short term on meme coins because they offer something to a generation of young people that no other asset class in their mind can offer, which is the casino and the chance to make huge gains. And as long as they see other people making huge gains on the one in a million meme coin that's launched they're going to continue to play in that space and take those risks and there are there are use cases for meme coins they're definitely fantastic for building a community around attention and the attention economy so i don't see that going away but i think it will it will modify with respect to nfts we're seeing the cycle play out as predicted we're going to see a massive transfer of wealth from crypto gains into high net worth nfts board apes were neck and neck with bitcoin as to which asset class was going to reach a hundred thousand punks have

spiked we're seeing fedenzas selling at high prices again. It is inevitable that people are going to take their profits and they're going to plant it in high value digital art because they see it as a safe store of value, especially when it comes to the iconic pieces in digital art like the X copies and the Beeple's and the Fidenzas and the punks. So I don't see that trend slowing down. I think it's only going to continue to go up as we see all season kick in full effect. Yeah, I'm just looking at Punk's. The floor is up to 175K, it's up to 44 ETH, which is not, you know, it's relatively steady. I think it hasn't broken 200K.

Has it broken 200K at all since the last cycle, Carlo? No, I mean, we've had some outlier sales of very rare punks. But what we're seeing, which is which is a good sign is we're seeing new owners of punks. We're seeing a lot of big wallets that held a lot of punks that originally claimed them that are starting to sell them. And we're seeing new holders come in. And that's because we've got people who are getting into crypto and getting massive gains who want a punk it is it is one of those iconic things that you want to hold because it represents that you succeeded in crypto so you're going to see more people who are who are lavishly wealthy in crypto games want to display their gains with a crypto punk let me go to um

forest uh sorry follows a question going back to the market everyone's very obviously euphoric very positive is there any any events any uh potential uh uh uh events that could happen in the future that could change the tide turn turn the tide and make it more bearish? Because obviously everyone's waiting for the inauguration. Trump seems to be delivering on his promise of being pro-crypto. People don't believe there'll be a Bitcoin reserve in the US, according to Polymarket. But is there anything specific that you'll be on the lookout for

over the next few months? No, I mean, someone said it to me this morning in Discord. They said that nothing can stop BTC now from going to 200K and nothing can stop crypto. And I just thought, if something happens to Trump, I think that could put a quick stop in that bullish momentum. But I mean, yeah, it's a very open-ended question and probably not one I'm qualified to answer. I'm certainly not an economist nor am I a macro analyst. But yeah, from a high-time perspective, my view has always been that the fundamentals are such at the moment that the market, it's almost impossible to bet against the market

continuing to go up. And I know that sounds like a bit of a bull tart thing to say. But if you think about something I spoke with Scott about a few weeks ago was how the bull market checklist for this cycle had literally been playing out by the book. People were still panicking and second guessing themselves. We had it was a halving year we had uh chop fish choppy range bound price action for like six months post halving we had uh we have we have had an election with a pro crypto president um we have bitcoin breaking 100k we have uh institutional involvement by way of ETFs. We have an increased

amount of retail interest over the last few weeks, few months, coinciding with those other bullish fundamental catalysts, which potentially indicates new capital coming into the market. We have the crypto total market cap putting in new highs. So there's just so many bullish fundamentals in the water now that even if you look at a chart and you think, OK, this this might be a logical resistance point or this might be a place where we pull back. You're really betting against such a large amount of such a large amount of of fundamental reasoning for price to continue to rise. And I just think it's

a bad bet to take unless we see any kind of further confirmation. So the TLDR now is that effectively, if you would ask someone 12 months ago to outline their ideal bullish scenario for 2024, like what if everything could go right for crypto, what would happen? Literally that has happened, right? We had, we had the halving, we had the post halving chop, we have now pro crypto present, we have a hundred K being breached, like all those things are being ticked, right? And now the next phase in the cycle, I believe, is BTC will either continue to chat higher or maybe even consolidate, but money will start to rotate to altcoins and we're going to see a proper quote-unquote alt season. I really hate that term because I think it's become incredibly charged

lately. But that's the next part of that and that's kind of what I'm looking forward to. That's how I'm positioning myself is for these rotations to take place and for alts to send. Dave? Yeah, I mean, I agree with the bullish scenario. I just think there's two things here. First, is there anybody who does value analysis on Bitcoin who doesn't say to themselves, well, we think that getting to digital gold at a minimum isn't baked in the cake. This is a 5, 6, 7x from here, depending on how you, you know, what is the monetary component of gold and how you measure it. I think everybody thinks that.

And yet what most people do for their predictions, or they actually think they say, well, that seems excessive, because, you know, site that, you know, whatever, it can't happen, etc, etc. And so you end up having innate skepticism, and trading flows being what they are on the on the bleeding edge being led by margin trading, you know, not to trade, you know, perpetual swap trading, you end up with people kind of downplaying the significance. But on a pure value play, if you ask yourself the question today, what are the odds that Bitcoin will, in fact, demonetize gold in the evolving digital economy?

I think you in this room, you'd get more than 50% odds. And we are the market isn't even close to pricing pricing. And so when you think about it from a value perspective, it's pretty easy to see how an overshoot can happen. When it comes to alts, the question is going to be creation of value. Yes, you know, mean coin attention, I get it, I understand it, the total comments on casinos I agree with. But make no mistake, having a regulatory environment where half the world's investable

assets can move into and embrace instant liquidity, embrace open source, which is literally where we're moving in that direction, is very exciting. And we're going to see a lot of volatility. And there's going to be a lot of crap that happens. But I think it's a very exciting time. And so, you know, I wonder whether or not i'm too bearish in my predictions we all know what those have been so that's literally where i'm sitting this morning yes crazy to also imagine back in 2020 the covid crash bitcoin hit below 4k i think it was about 3.6 3.7 uh thousand dollars and that was four years ago now four years later uh a bit more four and a half years later we're at 100k um a question for you dave is um what would the next uh six months look

like if any traders are listening to you now and how would this compare to you think based on what we've seen so far i know we've discussed this many times is how would this compare to previous cycles i'll ask you the same question again after what we've seen post-Trump. Yeah. I mean, it feels a lot like the end of 17 and November into December of 17, things got crazy. We haven't gotten to crazy yet. I mean, move from 90,000 to 100, that's not crazy. Crazy would be a move from 100,000 to 300,000 in 15 days. That would be crazy. But what does that mean for the rest of assets? I mean, it means something like smoking chicken fish becoming the next Shiba Inu,

which would be, I don't know what that is. I think that's like a 500X from here. But I mentioned that one because Raoul Pal mentioned it in one of his videos and I went along. Yeah, you mentioned that in the interview as well. I was interviewing you a couple of weeks ago. That was the one you mentioned.

Yeah, I know. But I'm just saying that's the kind of things that are crazy. What's not crazy is the amount of entrepreneurial capital that's going to get deployed in this space writ large. That's going to be interesting. We won't see that in the trading markets for a while, but you'll see it. You're going to see projects saying,

well, you know, I have funding from here and funding from there. And I think you're going to see a lot of that. You're going to see rails to actually expose the US retail to crypto. I mean, make no mistake, crypto right now for retail is way more expensive to buy and sell than equities for institutions not it's actually the opposite and so you're going to see people filling those gaps there's going to be

a lot of gaps that are going to get filled that's that's really what's exciting and just uh look i looked at the numbers of hack tour that meme point that launched by the me the girl uh hayley i think her name was that had that hawk tour video um went viral. It went up to a few hundred million on the first scandal and then went all the way down now sitting at 23 million. It's a pretty hyped meme coin. It's going to give you an idea of the craziness that we're seeing. And in the meme coin world, which I don't want to talk about too much, but there was about two weeks ago, what was trending is people doing some really crazy and disgusting

shit on Pump Fund live. So they put a coin out and they're like, I'm going to sit in the toilet until my coin hits 20, 30 million, whatever it is, 50 million. Or I'm going to sit in a cage with a collar around and pretend to be a dog literally 24, seven until my coin hits a certain price. And then it got pretty dark. Some people saying, I'm going to beat my girlfriend until it hits that level or when it hits that level or take it. It crazy shit and um and it got worse some people playing russian roulette or something so so that was uh you know we're gonna see more shit like that as we continue getting into the mania phase that was bad now the the pump fun live got banned uh but yeah that's just kind of commenting quickly on

the price action when it comes to umuk2 or the meme coin. Last question I have for the panel is, and anyone could jump in on this one. Alex, I'm going to defer to you first, but anyone could jump in. It's just Paul Atkins. Obviously, has the piece put out a tweet that was very positive. He said, we have a lot of work to do at the SEC to advance free market capital information, blah, blah, blah. I'm delighted that Paul Atkins will be returning to lead the effort.

Having worked for him during his last stint at the agency, I cannot think of a better person for the job. How important is that nomination for crypto? Obviously, this bull run and this new all-time high was triggered by that nomination. But maybe get some thoughts from the panel of how important it is, what that means for all the utility tokens in the US. So any project that raised money, any entrepreneur, any investor that left the US worried about regulatory crackdown, what does that mean for them? Yeah, I mean, I think it's huge, especially just in showing that Trump's not going to rug the industry on it.

You know, a week or two ago, there was a lot of concern that he was going to go back on that, pick someone who was kind of middling in regards to crypto um i think the thing that's great about atkins is that he is a obviously great for crypto he's you know been very clear on that um but he's also insanely credible like the guy has already been an sec commissioner he knows the organization um he knows how it works he's respected by a ton of people across the aisle on it. I think that the statement from Hester Peirce is just exactly what I think the read on it is. And it is just absolutely great for the industry on it.

Couldn't be happier. I think the one thing that'll be interesting to see is, you know, there's reports yesterday that Gensler has been trying to move kind of like some top deputies into key positions who are anti-crypto folks. Seeing how that plays out is going to be, I think, interesting. But it's still there's no question that overall the SEC is much more likely to be in a friendly position or certainly not nearly as hostile a position as they have been. But of course, ultimately, when it comes down to actual market structure and actually getting us to a place where utility tokens have a way to launch and move into a regulatorily stable place in the long term, that is going to have to come from a congressional bill, not just SEC action. Carlo? Yeah, it was a good move to bring in someone

who has experience in the SEC. Okay, I have to agree with Alex. It was a good. Thank you. I think it was a good move to bring in someone who has history with the SEC because we're looking for a reset. But to have brought in an outsider with no experience may have been too extreme. And I have to agree with Alex. I think it was a really petty move and frankly cruel to these lawyers who probably are very qualified lawyers to promote them to these positions, knowing full well that he's leaving. That is something that really should have been reserved for the incoming SEC chair. And to promote these people, knowing full well that the incoming SEC chair may have had his own short list of lawyers that he wanted to put into these positions is frankly, just petty. And I just don't understand the point of it. And good riddance. I'm just glad to see that we're finally going to see regulatory clarity in the space. So I think it's a net positive, Mario. Yeah, don't disagree.

Shahaf, you with us? By the way, anyone that's in Abu Dhabi, you have to hit me up. So I'll be going to the Bitcoin conference. It's my first event since Token 2049 in Singapore. So anyone in Abu Dhabi going to the Bitcoin conference, I think a lot of big speakers, a lot of big names will be speaking there. I'll be interviewing CZ. I think I'll be interviewing Eric Trump as well.

I haven't gotten confirmation on that. But definitely hit us up in the DMs. It'll be good to meet. Let me see who else is speaking there. I'll be interviewing Justin Sun again. I did a virtual interview. Oh, by the way, Carlo, do you see the banana purchased by Justin Sun? You're going to like the interview, by the way, Carlo. Crazy. Just crazy. And then he ate the banana. He ate the banana, but after the interview, I'm way, Carl. Crazy. Just crazy. And then he ate the banana. He ate the banana. But after the interview, I'm like, hold on. This guy is fucking smart.

The amount of PR he got and the planning, what he's planning to do with it, I think is pretty impressive. But, yeah, we have the CEO of Paxos is there. Charles is going to be there. We have David Bailey, obviously, the organizer. We've got Dylan Leclerc is going to be there. Who else? As I said, CZ and Eric Trump. Justin Sun. Steve Witkoff is going to be there. Who else? As I said, CZ and Eric Trump. Justin Sun.

Steve Witkoff is going to be there. Saifuddin. And the CEO of eTorion. So it's just some great names there. If you're going to be at the Bitcoin conference in Abu Dhabi, definitely hit us up. Let me go to Shahaf. And let me get David to wheel here. David, it's been a while.

I haven't spoken to him. Get his thoughts on the markets before we go to Shahaf. Let me get a quick macro update. It's been a long time. We haven't had a macro update. By the way, meme coins are get his thoughts on the markets. We've got a Shahaf. Let me get a quick macro update. It's been a long time. We haven't had a macro update. By the way, meme coins are just going crazy at the moment. I was looking at our,

at our, at some of the obviously smaller, smaller cap meme coins, the ones we work with. And yeah, the main is still there in meme coins. A lot of people thinking the meme coin cycle is over and money's flowing into the VC back utility tokens tokens utility tokens the performance is improving listed tokens out

performance our portfolio has done extremely well over the last couple of weeks it's gone you know we've got tokens we've invested in that dropped 70 80 from earlier this year doubled in price in the last couple of weeks so we're seeing a lot of liquidity there but it's not being sucked out of meme coins meme coins are doing extremely well someone was looking at all our portfolios as we're doing this space. And yes, frothy all around. The only one I haven't looked at enough is NFTs, but that's because we're not doing any work in that space. David, maybe give us a quick macro update, man. It's been a long time. We haven't had you on the show. How are things in the last couple of weeks and your thoughts on obviously getting your thoughts on crypto as we break 100K? Yeah. look we spoke uh this morning on on the finance daily show um

for a while about brian armstrong's statements about uh lawyers from the government um and you know the the the tit for tat uh that that goes on in our government, I think, is at the highest pitch when it comes to crypto. And so whatever is being done now pre-Trump, when Carlo speaks and whoever spoke previously, they're speaking very rationally. And I would caution people to say that what we might see is very irrational to the upside for purposes of crypto, but maybe very emotional when this administration takes hold. And that'll be good for all the crypto investors. But I think there are a lot of very, very hurt people, very, very deep wounds on the side of the crypto folks. They're going to go ahead and take their retribution, both in the form of making tons and tons of money.

And that can help us, but also in terms of grabbing power, throwing people out of power, ruining people's careers. Frankly, I don't think they care at this point. And so, you know, just be prepared for and this bad side is going to get very, very crazy in Washington, D.C. Obviously, the policy and, you know, ramming things through and, you know, immediate moves on regulation and legalization and so on. So, you know, I think people just got to sit tight and be ready for anything that may come. Yeah. And the thing we were discussing earlier, by the way, we're going to talk to Shahaf from Cody here, talking about the price of alts doing so well and our portfolio doubling in size in the last month. Well, Cody is a perfect example.

It's up 104% in the last 30 days. I'm telling you, all the quality alts have just been doing extremely well. But back to you, David. What about the 100K psychological level? Have you – people around you, people you've been speaking to, is that having an impact on retail? We've been waiting for way too long for retail to get into the market. And for that to start showing on the charts beyond just Bitcoin. So I think with respect to 100K, as I said this morning, it's important because it will get news coverage. It's a six-digit number, which is bigger than a five-digit number.

And I think there is something a bit mental about it. But I think people will take notice. I think the more important point is, for us, for folks on the show, I think the things substantively that are about to come are really incredible in terms of cities around the United States and states around the United States going ahead and making Bitcoin part of their strategic reserve assets. That's going to come in full force at the beginning of the new year, I think, with the administration change. Obviously, you know, cryptos are being appointed potentially at the federal level along with a U.S. strategic reserve. And then other countries around the world trying to play catch-up, game theory, whatever it is, FOMO on that level. So I think 100,000 is very important because as Dave Weisberger tweeted earlier today, all of a sudden friends that you haven't heard from for months

are calling you. Yes, people are waking up. People do take notice. And that is always very good for an asset class. Yeah, I appreciate that. And from an economic perspective, so you're talking about from a policy perspective, everything is looking extremely bullish on all fronts. Is there any macro concerns that you might have that could impact the bullishness that we're all seeing? Not in terms of crypto. In terms of the markets, generally, I think yes, because we don't know if rates, first of all, are going to continue to go higher, regardless of what the Fed is doing, the 10-year has come in, but nevertheless, it is still expensive relatively to borrow money, especially on really fixed income or borrowing dependent assets like private equity and real

estate, which continue to languish, continue to go ahead and suffer. And that will go ahead and continue to be hurt to the extent that rates don't come down. The second part of it is, with all that Trump has planned, whether it be tariffs, whether it be spending and so on, whether inflation will go ahead and rear its head again is also out for debate right now. And so on those two levels, we still have concerns around the macro economy. But I don't think any of those things, no matter how strong they may be, even if inflation really starts to go hard, I don't think they stand in the way of crypto. As a matter of fact, I think the narrative around Bitcoin,

particularly if we get another bout of inflation, the arguments that you're going to see loud and proud about Bitcoin being disinflationary will be the loudest that we've ever seen them. And I think it'll get the most credibility and the most ears that we've ever seen. And so, you know, regardless of what happens on the macro front, I really think it's blue skies ahead for the crypto world. I appreciate it. No one could balance, even Mike couldn't balance out the stage today and the bullishness that we've seen, but I think it's very well warranted. Shahaf, how are you, man? I'm great. Thank you for having me here again.

It's a good time to have you back on the show, man, under these circumstances. So you're the first project to come on the show after the 100K. And earlier we did the first countdown space for a project, Exion. It's the other way around. It's us appearing here that actually caused the 100K, don't you know? Ah, okay. Congratulations. I appreciate you, man.

Listen, first congratulations on you being one of the projects, one of the many quality projects that did so well in the last month, up over 100% in the last 30 days. Thank you. On that note, before talking about Cody, maybe give us your thoughts on the markets. You've been in crypto for a long time. So do you agree with the panel?

Do you have any concerns that you're seeing? And what about the discussion of whether liquidity will flow into all these different alts like yourselves? Well, I'm sure liquidity will flow to different alts. That's just the way it works. It has been working in all the previous cycles I've seen since 2015, probably. Look, it's great.

$100,000 Bitcoin feels like a strong base to build on. And you always say that, you know, when waiters and cab drivers start talking about Bitcoin, it's the top signal, but it feels like we actually want this to happen now with the price and the media. And let's see how it goes. I'm obviously very optimistic.

You know, we try not to think about the market too much, but keep our heads down and continuously build you know we have a crazy quarter ahead of us and we'll focus on that maybe give us an update on what's your latest since we've had you on the show i think you're the project that has been on the show the most and i know you're close friends with me ryan and scott what's the latest on your front with cody um we've been uh so a few things right um i think last time we were here we were talking about the cbdc project we were building with the central bank of israel since then we we've applied and uh and we'll probably join another big one so um uh we'll you know stay tuned for that um we

have improved our offering to something called privacy on demand. Right. So essentially, Coty builds a privacy layer for Ethereum, but we've since grown it to support 71 blockchains. So if you are a developer building on, say, Solana, you don't need to change your tech stack. You can just, you know, build a contract that works directly with Koti. And whatever features, whatever data, whatever you need to stay private on your chain will remain private. So we can do that. And it means that we are creating a layer, a standard across Web3. I would say that's one big thing. The other one is that we've just launched an accelerator. Before going to the accelerator, I think you partnered with Pools on the accelerator, correct?

Yeah, you did. But before going to the accelerator, just can you explain a bit further what privacy on demand? So we've talked about privacy. I think everyone understands the importance of privacy, especially in today's world where we're seeing – I was just reading an article about – today my team posted on my account about Chinese government hacking into some US telecom and being able to access messages, text messages and call records from Americans. So then the American whoever, I don't know what organizations in the US, what policymaker said that their recommendation was to use WhatsApp and Signal as better alternatives than just traditional

phone carrier. Kind of gives you, again, just a reminder of the importance of privacy. But the question I have for you, Shafiz, can you just explain a bit further what privacy on demand, how exactly it works for the user? Sure, sure. I'll explain that. But let me tell you that you take it for granted that people understand how important privacy is. Most people actually don't. They think that privacy is anonymity and kind of like confuse it with what privacy actually stands for and why it's so critically important. But we'll get into that. So privacy on demand is like our ability to offer on-demand privacy for enterprises, dApps, protocols across all major chains.

So we have our Ethel too, but we can also work cross-chain with 71 chains. As I said, it means that if you're running on any one of these 71 blockchains, you can use our tech stack. We do that through a partnership with Axelar. So essentially, the technical nitty-gritty of it is that it's based on cross-chain messages but it means that you know you're building on your own tech stick with you know evm svm whatever and you just signal our chain and we do a confidential transaction and kind of like um give you everything encrypted so think of it like a backroom when um to your business that where things can be done uh in privacy and i think

over time this will become a standard obviously because you know any dap is better with uh with privacy and there are some things that you know you just cannot build without privacy uh there's a lot of innovation and i see you know amazing things happen now and um i've been given this allegory which i think is is incredible um think about cards right um if anyone can see your cards then the only game you can actually play is something you know as interesting as Game of War, right? But if you introduce confidentiality, then suddenly you can play interesting new games like poker. So privacy is not just about protecting data. It's about unlocking new use cases.

And we see a heap of these coming our way right now. Can you expand further? I know you started touching on it. Just expand further what you said you started touching on it. Just expand further what you said earlier, the importance of privacy. You don't think people are still understanding

the importance of privacy, a bit too complacent with it. Can you expand on that? Yes. Because I think you've positioned Cody being so many times on the show and obviously the performance

of your project and the investors you have, including me, Ryan and Scott, kind of speaks for itself. You've been in the space for a long time. So we already know code is one of the best solutions out there for um for blockchain privacy but can expand for the audience for investors as well as users crypto users why is privacy so important especially in today's age sure sure and again I think that privacy on a public blockchain is inevitable I think it's just a question of time. So what, first of all, I think we need to define what is privacy because it seems like

it's a word. It's a very bad word because it has different meaning to different people. So privacy by definition is the ability to decide what you disclose and to whom. So privacy, first of all, is a matter of context, right? So you know, this is how lives and business operate. There's a public side and there's a private side to everything. And in Web3 right now, we only have the public side. And this is why privacy is the last missing piece in blockchain infrastructure that will allow it to fully realize its potential, both for enterprise and for users, right? I've just read a recent study from JP Morgan, and the number one

concern that institutional grade, you know, deployers have, the number one limiting factor to unlocking, you know, what is a $21 trillion market is privacy. So we will never have this mass adoption by institutions and by users if we don't introduce this ability to kind of like decide like it is in real life what you want to disclose and what you don't want to disclose. And this is why it's so important and this is why it's inevitable. I don't think anybody thinks otherwise. It's just a question of time and when we'll see these things happen. Yeah, and maybe I've taken it for granted

that everyone knows why Koji is one of the better solutions out there. For people that are hearing you here for the first time, very briefly, what positions Koji is one of the leaders? What differentiates you from others trying to solve the same problem? Sure. So, first of all, you know, it's important to say that, you know, while there are other folks out there, of course,

understanding the importance and building, and we encourage everybody to build. Just the fact that, you know, the cryptography and tech weren't really there or if they were then it wouldn't work at scale for consumer use and we deploy a new implementation of um a technology called goblet circuits and uh which we created in collaboration with soda labs it's a team of crazy uh good cryptographers and you know we we benchmarked it already and posted about it. And it runs about a thousand times faster and cheaper than the alternative solutions out there. And it can run on mobile devices. And we can do that on Ethereum and 71 other blockchains. And what it means,

right, all the tech need to agree there, it means that this is now ready for prime time. This is not, you need to decide if you want performance or privacy, or if you want privacy, it's going to cost you a lot. No, this is ready for all types of dApps out there. And you can build a lot of interesting things with better privacy. You know, DeFi is better. AI is better. Data is better.

Everything is much better when you can add these features. Yeah, and one of our discussions, you not only talked about the necessity of privacy in Web3, but you've talked about how it could lead to new innovations for the industry. Can you expand on that, what you meant by that statement? Sure. So think about my allegory about cards, right? When you add confidentiality then you can do things that you couldn't have done before if everybody sees your cards then you can't play poker, right? So suddenly we have all these

folks coming in with very interesting ideas about the things that you can build with privacy. So we're working with teams that are building really innovative AI agents right now that can train on private data, that can trade DEXs and build vaults for people to copy trade. Where the agent can prove that it's their returns, but he doesn't need to show you the trades. So copy trade becomes a valid business model there. They can actually converse with one another on chain in an encrypted manner, and then just later disclose what they've done.

So all these things become possible. Obviously, everything around data management, the ability to keep data on chain in an encrypted manner without needing to decipher it and work with it opens up everything from healthcare identity, again, AI with training models with private datasets, of course. DeFi, for sure. We are working with a new DEX based on IntentX technology.

That means, you know, it's an intent-based DEX with privacy. So essentially it's, you know, centralized exchange liquidity, centralized exchange capabilities, but fully on-chain. So all of these things now become possible when you have confidentiality. So it's not just about protecting your sensitive matters. It's also about new things that you can build. New use cases. And talking about the accelerator, the what you call the momentum accelerator, Momentum X accelerator. Can you expand a bit further on there for all the creators in the audience? Yeah, well yeah well essentially it's for startups building on coty's privacy layer and we know we want to support the next generation of privacy

focused depth and you've just got actually half not sure if it's cut off for anyone else not you've just cut out um let me ask my team if they can hear you or not. Maybe it could be on my end. Hold on. Can you hear Shahaf? All right, I've asked the team. Let's see if it cut out. We'll cut it short or not.

Team is typing. I can hear you. Okay, you can hear me, but you can't hear Shahaf. I can see in the comments as well saying you can hear me. You can't hear Shahaf from Cody. Well, Shahaf, it's cut out of the mic. I know we've got a few minutes left. We can maybe bring you on the next show instead of waiting here for your mic to work.

I'm not sure if anyone else can hear you. Can you hear Cody? Yeah, he's glitching. All he's glitching all right cool well um give it a minute if you can't join i think it's bullish for everybody kind of giving you a quick thoughts on what we're doing in this space before we end the show on my end um what we're doing is um at ibc so we have a pretty large incubator of vc arm and media arm and crypto and we're scaling really quickly. I think we're almost at 130 employees now. Still investing very heavily with utility tokens. Any investment we do, we usually try to incubate the project as well,

or at least partner with them on the media and marketing side with pretty much every single project we invest in. The incubator has just grown exponentially. So we're incubating a lot more projects and we've had significant success. Some pretty high profile projects that we've incubated that you've probably seen launch or about to launch. And on the meme coin side, this probably is our fastest-growing department.

It's just been insane. I'm so glad we got into that space a year ago. It's just been sucking up a lot of the liquidity. And while a lot of projects fail, some have succeeded and they're doing pretty damn well. Obviously, the largest project I think we've worked with is Brett on Base. We're sitting at close to $2 billion market cap. It's going to give you an idea of a lot of new meme coins that will probably last multiple cycles that are out and innovating. So it's been a pretty rewarding year, exceeded our expectations. Obviously on the non-crypto side, it's been growing, but we're trying to focus as much as

we can on crypto. I'll be going to Saudi, by the way, anyone listening, going to Saudi for one day to interview Prince Alwaleed. I thought it was Prince El okay I need to remember names a bit better I don't want to butcher the name but I'll be going to Saudi to interview Prince El Waleed

I thought it was Prince El Waleed if any of you know him he's called the Warren Buffet of the Middle East I'll be interviewing him on Wednesday in Saudi

but Shaf you're back with us so she's going to give me a quick recap of what we've been up to at IBC so you talk about the momentum accelerator

and this was built for essentially anyone building on top of Cody give me a quick recap of what we've been up to at ibc uh so you talk about the momentum accelerator um and this was built for essentially um anyone building on top of cody you've offered accelerator what does that do offer what type of support you offer grants as well can you expand on that yeah we offer funding uh about 250k per project we offer marketing support, business development, legal guidance, access to engineers. It's a very sweet package. And if you are an innovator, then we want to hear from you. And we've opened up applications at momentum-x.xyz. So anybody can apply.

And what I've said is that I heard today from the team, and I'm not sure that's correct. We need to kind of like make sure that it's correct, but that there is an agent that has applied to the accelerator that has actually took the time to kind of like use the forms and apply. So I'm going to have to look at this. I think it's the world first. Oh, nice.

Well, congratulations on that, man. And by the way, you were at DEF CON because DEF CON, my team told me, privacy was everywhere at DEF CON. Everyone's talking about it. So it's still, I think people would deepen the space, understand the importance. And there's a lot of solutions being created.

The solution that succeeds is going to be fixing a major pain point for blockchain that used to be the talk of town in the last couple of cycles. I think it's being, right now the narrative is being dominated by mainly AI, I'd say, Deepin and RWAs,

but the issue of privacy still hasn't been fully solved. So can you tell me more about, I think you were at DEF CON, how was the experience there and how were the discussions you've had? It's been great. I sat on quite a lot of panels discussing

privacy with Monad, Arkym, and a few others. And yes, of course, privacy is something that everybody talks about because it's an enabler to all the good things that you've mentioned. There is no RWA without privacy. Just not going to happen.

Privacy for deepening is obviously important. For AI, if you want to have interesting data sets, then most of them are private. And if you want to monetize them, then you need privacy. You need selective disclosure. I feel like all these solutions that are dominating the narrative,

they still... We're getting ahead of ourselves because the issue of privacy hasn't been solved. And if that doesn't get solved, you can't have RWA's real-world assets on chain. You can't have proper decentralized AI. So I think your point you're making is that the pain point you're solving is one that's linked to all these different hyped narratives. And it's inevitable. I agree. I agree.

Shaaf, last question. What's next for Cody? Great. So, you know, we obviously are going to start, you know, talking about, you know, the next use cases and everything else that is now coming on chain, introducing, you know, new partners and new things that we're building. Two other big things that we'll start talking about soon. One is our nodes ecosystem. So we've created a new node ecosystem and new hope people will excite we

essentially decentralize something that is working very well on Kodi right now, but it's a bit centralized. So we're decentralizing that and I think it's going to supercharge network participation and it's a very rewarding offer for users. So I expect this to be quite interesting. And obviously, you know, our mainnet is coming probably towards the end of Q1 next year and in between, expect to hear a lot, you know, from the accelerator and all the cool things that we built.

It's a pleasure to have you on the show again. Again, record number of appearances on the show and a friend of all of us hosts. So hopefully you'll be the leader. You'll continue being one of the leaders and be the leader when it comes to privacy on chain. Because if you do become that, it's a very good thing for us financially. And I'll be also very happy for you on a personal level. Congratulations on what you built for all other projects like Cody that are still building.

I think this is your time now to finally get the love. And if you're raising money to get the liquidity that you deserve, I think this is going to be a shift away from meme coins and where that liquidity was to projects that are building in the space. But I feel like there's going to be more liquidity coming into the space and it won't all flow into meme coins. It will flow into the projects that matter. I appreciate it.

Shahaf, Cody. Thank you. Thanks a lot, everyone. We'll see you again tomorrow. Have a wonderful day and congratulations for breaking 100,000. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye.