The Wolf Of All Streets - BTC Bloodbath: Market Crash Hits $61k | Crypto Town Hall W/ @UltiverseDAO

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

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How's it going, Mario? Hey, bro, how you doing? Good, man. How was the show yesterday? It was long. It was really good. I got a lot of comments behind the scenes, which I've been getting a lot,

which is why do you have certain people, person X on the show, blah, blah, blah. Is it John, SEC John? Yeah, we had John Reed Stark on yesterday. And yes, he admittedly is long winded. And every time you get an answer, it has 17 names of people you've never heard of. And I think he's aware of that. But also, I think it's incredible.

People critical. Go ahead. I would say it's incredible to get his perspective. In my opinion, like, I don't care how someone feels about crypto. I interviewed Peter Schiff, obviously, last week. We know that John, who, by the way, is literally best childhood friends with Anthony Scaramucci. So it's not like we're telling him anything he doesn't know here. You know, I find it really fascinating to hear

about the inner workings of the SEC from someone who was there for so long and has mixed opinions on their sort of actions. But what happened yesterday was every time I tried to pivot away from him, you know, he speaks quite a lot. I would call in another guest and they would ask the guy a question like for, for literally like two hours, every time I tried to go away, the guest would whoever else I called on would go on and be like, John, I have a question. And 45 minutes later, you know but I thought it was a very good space. I thought a lot of great insights, you know, and, and like I said,

I ran it for almost about two hours because I personally felt it was interesting. I just find it really funny when like, I get messages behind the scenes. They're like, this guy's so angry. He's old. He doesn't get it. Why would you platform him? Well, because I like angry old people who don't get it to give us another perspective. Just a question on the markets as well. Did you discuss the markets yesterday or just an SEC versus crypto discussion?

We started and then very little, actually. I see Chris Inks is here. And so I don't even think we got to Chris and that he left at some point because we were going to talk about that. And then I started with John and we never kind of got off it so I'm excited that we have Lucas, Chris and Peter here because all of them have a great sort of market insight obviously Lucas from into the you know from into the block on chain analysis Peter has presented his cases over and over again for technical analysis and Chris has a very measured view so I think we'll talk more about that today. Yeah, I'm just looking at the markets as well.

I'm looking at the agenda for yesterday and the agenda for today. What are your thoughts on the markets? Obviously, we're seeing a lot of the gains for this month are raised. We're seeing ETF outflows. Not much hype from the Hong Kong ETFs coming in. That's not unexpected. Yeah, exactly. I think we had the numbers when we discussed it. The numbers were expected to be low.

But your thoughts on the markets before going to the panel? Yeah, I mean, I think we're ranging. And people get very scared at the range lows, naturally. That's why there is a support and resistance on charts. It's because of the human emotions of the people who are actively trading these assets. I don't love consistently trading around $60,000 with sort of minimal demand here. I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually broke. But my base case that since mid-March... Broke, broke. Hold on. Downwards or upwards?

Yeah, downwards. Either way. But listen, you're still above support here. So there's not much to talk about unless it breaks and you start closing, in my opinion, daily and weekly candles kind of below that 60 area. But my base case, and people are probably tired of hearing it, but since mid-March, I have said, listen, I thought the market had topped. I think the ETF hype and inflows for that moment were going to slow. We always get this low liquidity sideways chop after the halving. It's the same with the election cycle, which aligns with the halving. It's the same with the global liquidity cycle, which aligns with the halving. And I just expected that we would have a really boring and choppy four to six months. So I can't say I'm right. We're only a month and a half into that

thesis. But it certainly was the top when I was saying it. And, you know, there was just too many coins being launched and not enough money to keep them afloat. Oh, on the TGE side, yeah, token launches obviously were pretty good. More on the meme side even than the TGE side, right? But you can see it anecdotally, right? I mean, you guys, ibc is heavy investors you like to get into everything that's meaningful you know i'm not saying like you're not flipping

meme coins i'm saying but like when a project's launching you like to at least have it on your desk right you're very passionate about that you've got to notice that there's so much less of it now than there was a month or two months ago. And like the OTC deals that were coming across, it was like three, four, five a day. Now it's crickets, right? And most of the things that people funded in February or March, certainly in March, are probably down or barely afloat, right? Yeah. So it's interesting. On our front, we're pretty heavy on VC investing and working with projects. We get projects on the show, et cetera, for tokens, which is kind of investing, but in kind media services rather than cash and then investing capital on a pretty much daily basis. So we're pretty aggressive. And me and Scott kind of joke about it behind the scenes.

We're also – and me and Scott kind of involved in a lot of the same things. So that's on the pre-launch side of things. We also obviously work with meme coins. We kind of expand into the meme coin space and we do a lot of OTC deals. So projects that got good volume, we like the product that already listed either this year or last year or in the last bull market. If we like the project, we come in with like, hey, we want to do an OTC deal at a discount with a vesting period and we'll do like a partnership for media. So this is kind of the strategies we do. And what we've seen on those fronts is on the TGE side, things slow down drastically.

And a lot of VCs have started delaying a lot of investments, which is just so weird how fucking emotional we are. That's right. Because like, how much do you believe in your project if you're only willing to launch it with like the perfect market conditions? But yeah, go ahead. I mean, I get it because that's, mean that's just reality right when there's hype something launches it does 100x when people are when people are depressed even if price is only like a few thousand lower it launches and does a 100 you know like does a 1x for or 2x for investors and then by the time they vest it's like uh uh writing it down to zero yeah look the thing that's that's weird in crypto is like two projects all else being equal i say they do

the same thing one launches in a bear market and doesn't have like that crazy number of x's another one launches in the bull market has those x's the product is the same the team is the same etc the one that had those x's has a high likelihood of succeeding because the chart determines people perceive the chart as a as a as a as an indicator of a project's health and and and how good a project is so if the chart looks good at launch somehow that means the product is better even though it's not true um and we've seen this all the time it's like we look at a business the product is great the metrics are great the team is great but then the team looks at the chart like yeah mario the chart is dead i'm like yeah but everything else is good that means the chart should you know should reach that

mental value that we're seeing among other indicators but crypto doesn't work that way and i think the charts play a much bigger role in the project success it's like every project every startup becomes a public company um but like you know we're still aggressive like we're kind of taking the risk we think this is an opportunity to kind of do more otc deals because things are discounted to invest uh in private deals more because we're getting better deals because VC investing kind of slowed down. Project launches are delayed, which is great. It's like, no, they're delayed so we can have good terms, et cetera. And then quality projects, we're going to be talking to Altiverse, which is a great example of those quality projects.

But quality projects, we don't give a shit when it is, the middle of a bear market and the peak of a market um projects that take a certain criteria and we're investing the way um so that's on the otc side on the meme side you know again i'm not here for the we believe that meme coins kind of have long-term potential um and that's where we're going yet we're getting more not as much as ran you know launching his own meme coin but definitely get a lot more active in that space and we still i don't think our thesis changed how's that point doing it's just a crazy rush i don't know i don't know how gummi's doing yeah but you can see but you can you can see but but my point is okay go ahead yeah no i was gonna say like i was gonna give a shout out like when you when i see someone that i

that puts their brand behind a coin and then they care about their brand uh because their incentives like brand doesn't want to be associated with a failed project so he'll do everything he can to make sure gummy's a success i i bet like i'm not investing in gummy but that would be like this is a bet i would make there so i think even if gummy likes to it dropped no i don't think you can say invested i don't think you can say invested in gummy in the same sentence. And that's nothing against him. But investing in meme coins, those terms should never be utilized in the same sentence, ever. I'm happy to put my neck out and I'm happy to put those two terms together.

I think there's meme coins that are sufficiently decentralized are a valid investment. Obviously, the most extreme example, what was it? SHIB raised $10 million privately to build out the ecosystem. So, yeah. It's not a meme coin anymore. I would be confident. That's the thing is,

we've talked about that to death. But yeah, I think that there are some that cross the chasm where we should use a new definition for them if they actually try to build something. But they're backing into that and that's very, very few. They get to such an extreme market cap, treasury is so big they literally have to do something

yeah but let me let me go to to kyle is here as well kyle and i've got a great panel here to discuss the markets kyle you know you're in a similar world as me scott and others um your thoughts on the markets you know you guys have a launchpad paid ignition you have vc master ventures so you know arguably even more involved than we are considering you do have a launchpad paid ignition. You have VC master ventures. So, you know, arguably even more involved than we are considering. You do have a launchpad as well. What's your thesis like? What's your strategy like? How does the market look for you?

And I'm talking about the meme coin side, which you've been very vocal about, but also just startups, VC investing. I want to start off with your uh comment about the charts like um i was looking at a couple of these um you know binance launches that were really hyped uh that we actually we did the live coverage of like portal and pixels and stuff like that like those charts do not look good it's literally on from day one it has just been nothing but down only um which is which is exactly what you don't want to see and this is why on this on these spaces and very publicly this entire year i've been very um outspoken about this uh low float high fdv kind of uh game that people are playing where you do get these crazy x's on launch and they're

perceived like yeah you everyone everyone listening to this will perceive it as a successful launch when it does it because it's got all these X's on it. Right. But then it's not sustainable at all because you have this massive inflation and VC unlocks and advisor unlocks and KL unlocks and team unlocks. Hold on. So the one you know, for example, portal has an unlock at TGE, which TGE was pretty good, and then an unlock at Big Cliff.

Mario, your internet's terrible, buddy. At least for me. Okay, yeah, thank God that was mine. I was just saying, no, no, I was just saying, is it good now? Yeah. No, you're glitching like crazy. It sounds like Max Hedrum. Yeah, that's right. All right. Pixels has a one-year cliff. Portal had a TGE unlock and then a big cliff.

So there isn't this aggressive VC investing. And I just think the same way you can get like fucking 100x on these projects, 30%, 40% down shouldn't be a surprise, Kyle. Yeah, I think that if you look at data, you'll see that the more sustainable launches are things that are typically done through more fair valuations at launch and just better distribution. So like LBP models, for example, they might only launch

by the time that they're done with LBP and then for example, they might they might only launch with like, by the time that they're done with LBP, and then they go in a DEX or a SEX, they might only do like a two or three x, but those things have like much better looking charts, for example, than a lot of these really heavy VC backed, you know, like I said, like low float, high, high FTV, that's just not sustainable in any circumstance. But um, yeah, so how we're seeing the market right now is, it's, yeah, it's, it's very uncertain right now. And, and, yeah, you do see a lot of OTC deals. And a lot of uncertainty, I think that there's a lot less appetite for risk on the table right now. People are just kind of... Kyle, can you explain to people who may not know what you mean by OTC deals

and why that indicates anything about risk? Yeah, I think, well, like we were talking about, so OTC is over-the-counter. Essentially, when there's interest, it's kind of like secondary, it's essentially secondary sales of tokens to people that are interested versus like, if I want to buy a large amount of tokens in a project

and I don't want to, and there's not a lot of liquidity in the market, I don't want to affect the price against myself by buying and having a large, large slippage or like a large percentage increase. If I buy a large amount, I can go directly to the team and ask them to do an OTC deal for me for maybe some sort of discount. And maybe I could offer them some, some value instead.

And and yeah, maybe they often come with like some sort of cliff investment schedule. It's kind of like a, like you would do a primary deal where you get a SAF, but this is kind of secondary market where you're getting a discount. And usually some projects are interested in doing this, especially if they need money. And a lot of projects care a lot about the launch.

Like Scott, you were saying before, not because they don't prepare ahead of time in my opinion often enough like they don't oftentimes they're not raising enough money so they're counting on a big launch with low with with low sell pressure this is why they usually lock everyone up and don't allow a lot of uh liquidity or float on day one, particularly in supply, because they plan on market making this and selling into a big pump and building treasury that way. And so this is why a lot of projects have been delaying or prefer to launch in a good market. I think that we have such a short term memory in the cryptoverse that we don't really tend to remember the launches as a measure of success beyond maybe a week.

No, but I think – so just sorry. I just want to jump in on two things. I've got complaints about my internet again. The first one is on the OTC side, just to be clear for the audience. So what projects do is they've got all these tokens in treasury and they want to bring in investors. So they do a lot with KOLs. So they go to KOLs and they're like, hey, we'll give you a discount of whatever percent OTC with a short unlock schedule, one, two, three months, six months, depending on the project and the discount. And then they ask for media, for marketing in return. So we get obviously a lot of these offers. Scott does that

as well. I'm sure Kyle does. And we also do specific deals privately. Now, there's kind of two types of projects that do these OTC deals. Some of them that just don't give a fuck. They just want to raise as much money as possible. And they don't care much about their token price. Others that generally just, it's just a smart way of doing marketing. I think you've done right. It's a very smart strategy. And I think it works in a bear market and a bull market. And I think anyone ignoring it in a bear market is just at their own detriment. You could just get better terms. On the VC side, but Kyle, on that question there, is it the project's fault that the markets, like if a project flops when they list, it doesn't have those many Xs, it will impact the project long-term because that's just a sentiment in crypto. So it's not

a project's fault if they're looking for that early pump because like in crypto, that early pump shows demand and it shows like the project has a good solution. So I just don't blame the project for looking for that pump. Now, obviously it has to be done in an ethical way, not like a very, very tiny little flow to get a massive pump and then downward pressure then. But if you have something like Pixels that gets that pump because there was a lot of hype and they have a one-year lock or even Portal and others, and I think most of the Binance projects are pretty careful with that. I just don't think that's a bad thing. I think this is just the way crypto is. And it's just different to like a project going in and having like a 20% unlock for VCs dumping on retail.

That's unethical. You've got to differentiate between the two. Yeah, I think that it doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the products. Unfortunately, it has everything to do with the perceived perception of the quality of the products. Unfortunately, it has everything to do with the perceived perception of the quality of the product, meaning that how many KLs and influencers do you get on the product? How much how much? How much you paying them? What kind of what size bag do they have? And how pretty can you make your website look? And

how much social media following can you buy in order to be perceived as a good project? Because I can tell you that a lot of these ones that are perceived as good projects that launch don't have the tech built yet. They're nowhere close to delivering on what they promised to deliver. And they don't even know if they can actually get there. Like to a lot of these like cross-chain interoperability kind of things that are just like, like, you know, taking people like Sergey

and chain link, you know, seven years to build or whatever. And we're these guys are coming in promising that they're going to be able to take game assets in one game and put in the other, which is a solution that I've been trying to figure out forever. You know, out of nowhere. So like, it is it is that unfortunately, our space is plagued with this, with this kind of smoke and mirrors and new shiny object thing. And if you want to play the game, you play the game. And that's that, you know, where attention goes, attention, like money flows, right? And that so there's two ways to look at this thing. And it's one is what is your investment appetite? What is your risk profile? And are you looking for making money and trading the markets? Or are you looking for placing long-term bets?

What's your strategy now? Are you still doing private investments? Are you still doing OTC deals? We are. And time being aggressive, but we're still doing them pretty aggressively. I love OTC deals because they tend to have a shorter,

like you just have, you're not going to be locked in for years. And I'm very wary right now of any project in the private side. If you see investing that, like, it has to be, it has to be incredible. I have to, I have to love the thing and be willing to do to hold onto it through a bear market. If I'm going to be considering a 12 month cliff at this point, I'm just considering because it's going to, you know, that I'll start unlocking in the bear market likely or close to it anyway.

So, but I'm still, it's still aggressively deploying into a lot of things right now, like a whole bunch on both the LTC side and the NBC side. Yeah. I mean, do you remember Mario? We would have these conversations in the bear market and people come on and say, we'll never repeat the like insanity of past markets. People learn lessons, whatever. All I hear and all I see is that like human greed is undefeated and we're going to continue to repeat these ridiculous insane cycles at the detriment of retail. And I mean,

it's hard to be excited for retail. I understand like we can sit, you can sit up here like in the glass tower and talk about the access that some influencers have to OTC or presale deals or whatever. But like you got to remember that the 99% of the people are buying these things on hype at the launch and watching that chart pattern that Kyle just talked about. Yeah. Well, it's horrendous.

Thank you for describing Commonwealth, our project, the first fund ever for retail opened up today, actually, if this is like, my whole objective was to try to bring access because yes, you me Mario, you know, everybody else like we're privileged and we get access to deals like everyone doesn't get these OTC deals. So how do they participate? They don't get VC access? How do they participate? So we thought about creating something like Commonwealth, which would allow Commonwealth to act as a as a

whole, like one of the most powerful K wells in the space. And we proved that out with the free fund where we did something like in two weeks, I think it was 1.6 million tasks our community did for different projects that were participating in this free fund, just to demonstrate the power of what a collective could be as essentially almost a KOL to get access. And so now after two and a half years of building and working hard, we actually today, now, the first actual main net alpha fund launch, which is describing exactly that problem, Scott.

And I wanted to deal with that head on because Simon's on the show all the time. And Simon was a big to the future. Yeah, that was inspiration for this. Like I was very grateful for big to the future. That's what allowed me to invest in Coinbase, Kraken, Ripple, all these other things. I felt super special as a like a nobody back in 2015. You know, being able to like go onto the website, luckily, I was an accredited investor, and see the fact that I was able to go co invest alongside Pantera and a 16 z and this kind of stuff to go into these like these amazing

deals. And to till this day, there never has been another opportunity like that on the market for your everyday person. And so we recreated that in a decentralized, autonomous fashion. And now I just think it's something super special. Mario, I think we should move to the market based on the guests that we have. Quickly, I just want to give a quick market overview yeah i can hear you i just don't want to oh okay the lag is there or you just want to you're definitely you're good no it's being a dick you want to go to the i want to i want to yeah let's go to the market like go to the markets go to the markets let me figure out

my like yeah i'm just looking at coin market cap. Obviously, Bitcoin 60,912 right now down 1.6% after 24 hours, but down 8.31% in seven days. So obviously, we know that we've sort of seen this dip to the low range. I mean, Solana is down 17.34% this week, down to 128. These are kind of the darlings of the last market. There are a few things actually, surprisingly, I'm looking that are up on the week. TRX up 5%. Wow. And a few others, but basically just an absolute bloodbath here. And we have some great analysts up here. Maybe they can help us unpack what's going on. Peter, you made sort of

this incredible case. You finally released the thesis. You and I were talking about it privately. And you've talked about it here, so we don't need to get too deeply. But you did basically say there's a 25% chance that the top is in, but you yourself are still long because there's a 75% chance it isn't, and you believe that the cycle will repeat. I just want to know if anything with this current price action has changed that at all or we're still effectively in the range so the premise remains before peter answers can i just ask a question because i think we've all been here for many many cycles i know mario's been here for many cycles scott's been here for many cycles peter's been here for many cycles i know carl's been here for many cycles a lot of us have been

here for many cycles is this not exactly how the been here for many cycles. Is this not exactly how the cycles always play out? Even to the T in terms of the months. In May, regardless of whether it's a halving year or not a halving year, in fact, maybe halving years are slightly different. We start getting the sideways chop on Bitcoin. Sideways chop

and slightly halving. For the whole summer. For the whole summer. And every year, we get YouTubers making videos and on those videos they're like this is why you shouldn't be selling in may this is what and the reality is after they all got egg on their face because they should have just sold in may gone on vacation come back on the first of september and gone and caught on to the bull market we should have sold in march though by that rationale we should have sold in march we should have we should have exactly we should have sold in march and gone away which happens every every single time uh sold in march gone gone away, come back in August on my birthday, buy a couple of birthday gifts, and then catch the next spike up. I don't understand why we're so dumb that we get amnesia, and then we think this is the end of the bull market. It can't be the end of the bull market. No, but the difference this time, and I do want to go to Peter,

but the difference this time is that we made that new all-time high early in the cycle, which I think gives people pause as to what's coming. So I agree with you 100%. I've been saying it. That's always been my base case is that we just have a really boring crap summer. But, you know, we did have the ETF and a few other things this time that maybe make it look a little different. Go ahead, Peter. boring crap summer. But, you know, we did have the ETF and a few other things this time that

maybe make it look a little different. But go ahead, Peter. So, yeah, okay, we'll go to Peter. I've just got, look, let me, fuck it, I'm going to ask one more question to Ran, and then we'll go to Peter. And then Scott will probably attack me in the back channels. But Ran, just one question, because we were discussing me, Scott, and Kyle, until Scott interrupted us, rightly so, about our strategy moving forward. We're talking about, you know, private investments, which we're all involved in, working with projects on the media side and OTC investments. And I wanted to ask your strategy moving forward. We talked briefly about Gummy as well and meme coins, but I want to ask your strategy. Like we're pretty aggressive still in, you know, we're not just kind of selling everything and kind of waiting for August. We're

still aggressive in investing privately. We're still a bit less aggressive than what three weeks ago. And we're still doing OTC deals based on the same thesis that history will repeat itself. Are you in that same? I've changed my thesis completely. I don't, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not doing, I'm not doing these early private sales or not as many as before. I'm not aggressive in the early private sale market. And I can explain to you why I'm not as aggressive in the early private sale market. And I'm going to explain to you why I'm not as aggressive in the early private sale market.

I think the market dynamics are changing. I think that retail are starting to catch onto the fact that they are the product and that the VCs, I mean, let's look at Eigen layer. Cause I think Eigen layer, I did a whole show today about how Eigen layer exposed the whole VC scam to,

and I want to go through it bit by bit. I think this is probably a good thing to discuss. So, EigenLayer is one of the most anticipated and probably one of the biggest technological breakthroughs of the cycle. Essentially, what the protocol allows you to do

is it allows you to use your staked ETH. So, when you stake ETH, you're essentially participating in the Ethereum network, right? You are part of the consensus in the Ethereum network. But you also get a token, which kind of says to you, hey, you've staked ETH.

It's almost like a certificate that says, you know, run staked ETH. Now you can restake your staked ETH on a protocol called Eigenlayer and secure other networks. Let's forget about the technicalities. But what this is, it's quite a unique breakthrough in blockchain technology. But to me, it also exposed how the VC game is designed to fleece retail investors

and how the whole thing is actually a scam for retail investors and i'll i'll walk you guys through it the first thing is vcs invest in projects and they get the projects at very early valuation so like you think about eigen layer probably the earlier round they don't disclose the earlier the earliest rounds but let's say they started raising at a 50 million dollar. Then they raised a huge round at a $500 million valuation. Then Andreessen wrote them a $100 million check. And I think that that was somewhere around a billion dollar valuation, although that's not public knowledge. Right now, the first opportunity that the retail investor has to get in is on the current valuation in terms of the tokens trading on the pre-market,

which is at about $18 billion. So already the VCs are on paper up 18x. And this is the first time that retail has any kind of opportunity to get in. Number two, Eigenlehrer created an airdrop. And they said, look, if you stake your ETH with us or your restaked ETH with us, you will get an airdrop, which is amazing. They publicized this and they got a whole lot of total value. They got $15 billion of staked ETH and restaked ETH. they got this was because people that couldn't get into the VC rounds, the only way that they could actually get Eigenlehrer early or for free or for doing something was actually to stake their stake ETH. Great.

Eigenlehrer then announces the terms of their airdrop. First thing they announce in the terms of their airdrop is that like 50% of the world is banned from receiving the airdrop, including Russia, USA, part of Africa, et cetera, et cetera. Now, what they could have done was they could have been ethical about it and said, look, by the way, if you're going to stake ETH in any of these territories, then just know you're not going to be eligible for the airdrop. But they didn't do that. They were unethical. And in being unethical, what they did was they took money from anyone, like snake oil salespeople. They took money from anyone.

When the time came to reward people, ah, sorry, you don't get a reward because you're from the USA, you're from South Africa, you're from Russia, you're from this, you're from that. The list of banned places, I tweeted a map of it, is longer than the list of actually unbanned places. So screw you for staking your ETH, you're not getting the airdrop. Okay. Second thing is when EigenLayer launches,

they've got a 5% circulating supply, which means that you've got a low circulating supply, high fully diluted valuation, which means that when retail buy it, they're going to drown in VC releases, basically. So for those people who are listening and don't know exactly what's going on, generally, when people want to pump tokens, they put a very small supply out onto the market.

They hype the project up. And then the unsuspecting retail investor has to then go and buy on the open market. But because there's such a low supply on the open market the price gets pumped and that's when the vc start offloading their tokens so i'm gonna open to vcs create an airdrop which is pretty much a scam because if you you staked your you staked your your your tokens and in most territories you actually prohibited if you weren't prohibited by the way they have locked your airdrops. So you will get your tokens, but you can't move them. They're locked. Who decides on the unlock? The DAO. Who's the DAO made up of? The VCs and the

founders, pretty much. I mean, not officially, but pretty much the VCs and the founders. And they will decide when the airdrop tokens become tradable. Next part of the scam. Mysteriously, on the day that the snapshot was taken, which is not public information, not public information, on the day the snapshot was taken, all of a sudden, the ETH price starts to go down and big players start to unstake their ETH from Eigenlehrer. Which means that if you were an insider or if you were a VC that invested in Eigenlehrer and you got the inside information, you knew exactly when to pull your ETH out of Eigenlehrer because you weren't getting points anymore. If you were an unsuspecting retail investor, you don't know this. So the VCs basically, once again, deposited the ETH at exactly the right time to earn the maximum number of points, withdrew the ETH at exactly the right time to get the maximum number of points, leaving retail locked up in these contracts.

And now there's a queue of 5,000 people or more to get out of the Eigenlehr restaking. Pretty much, you want to talk about scamonomics? Scamonomics. And the thing is, Eigenlehr is not the only project that's doing this. I'm not going to mention other projects. I'm going to just mention Eigenlehr. But I think what's starting to happen now is that they're doing so much damage to retail investors that the retail investors are actually becoming quite smart. And when these tokens are actually coming onto the market

at these crazy valuations, like Wormhole and whatever else, the retail investors saying, I'm not buying your bags, Mr. VC. And they're not actually touching the token. And the tokens are actually collapsing 50, 60, 70%. That's exactly what's starting to happen now. There's no buyers for these tokens anymore.

So Mario asked me about what my investment thesis is. I would rather get cheap tokens on market where I can trade my tokens exactly as I want to, whenever I want to, then get into pre-sale projects and have lockups. So why would I buy any pre-sale project with a four-year lockup or a three-year lockup when I can just go and buy cheap tokens on the market a month or two months after their launch?

Because there's no retail buyers to actually buy these VC scam tokens anymore. That's what's happening on the market. That's the dynamic on the market. That's why I'm not investing very much in these pre-sales. Why would I take liquid money to lock it up for three and four years? Sounds like a dumb trade did you take part in the solana unlock right no i didn't but there's a big difference i want to and if i can get it the same terms that pantera and then got in i'll definitely do it but there

i know exactly what i'm getting myself into the protocol is on the market i know what the valuation is i know what the tps is and now it's a case of whether I want to pay $65 for saying there's trading on the market at $128. It's a very simple decision. And listen, I agree with you. I've been saying this for a while. You know, I've been bearish for the past month and a half. And because I've been seeing all the shit from 2021, this is coming back again. And basically, VCs are dumping on retail.

And it's pretty disgusting, actually. It's disgusting. It's disgusting. Now the retail is saying, look, we're not trying to buy your bags anymore. Now the VCs are, whoa, hold on a second. You know, like, if you're an insider, you're getting into all the rounds, which is cool. VCs are very good. It's fine if VCs want to get in early before everybody else.

That's fine. That's the rules of the game. That's why they're VCs, right? But where the game becomes unfair is when the VC is getting at $30 million, the project comes to market at $20 billion. The retail investor has only got a chance to buy in at $20 billion. The price is manipulated because of a low fdv and in eigen layer's case the vc tokens begin to unlock on day one and the public's airdrop tokens are still locked until the dad decides that it's time to unlock the public's airdrop tokens i mean what a fucking scam honestly what a fucking scam

honestly i want the guys from eigen layer to come onto the space and actually defend themselves because i think that they're doing this industry such a a big disservice and i think that they're doing ether massive disservice because eigen layer was supposed to be the savior for east and you know what the retail investor is saying fuck eigen layer and you know what at the same time actually fuck you honestly and that's what that's the perception of the retail investor that is the perception of the retail investor. That is the perception of the retail investor. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not salty. We made a lot of money by staking our ETH on Eigenlo. We're actually

in a territory that is allowed to claim and we managed to claim some of it. We made a lot of money. I just think that the damage that this game is doing, that this mechanic is doing to this game is going to destroy the industry or has already destroyed the industry and that's why we can't get a pump anymore because how do you get a pump when a token's coming onto

the market at a 20 billion dollar valuations when you want them to pump it to you want you want if you looked at if you looked at athena people who put the guys who put in like i think 200 grand in like a year ago or whatever is sitting at 40 million dollar valuations on that money right now it's just ridiculous like the way this yeah the retail investor must take they must look at market market cap divided by fully diluted valuation on all proof of stake coins if the number is not 60 plus don't touch the fucking token. Honestly, I'm being honest. Because it's just a game. It's the project releasing tokens slowly

to make them scarce so that retailers actually get wrecked. That's what the game is. That's what the fucking game is. The game is hype up your project, release a very small number of tokens. Retailers will buy up your tokens at the high valuation

and then start bleeding in the team and the vc tokens it's a fucking scam thank you ran this is what i was saying before you came on yeah we're moving on uh peter we've interrupted you like 17 times uh i would love your thoughts on the market god i hear you guys talk scott you and and Kyle and Mario, about the stuff you're in. I'm too old to deal with that stuff. It would give me a heart attack. What a boring life I live that I focus on Bitcoin. I mean, seriously, who would have thought five years ago that Bitcoin would get boring?

Hold on, Peter. Actually, you're telling me you didn't invest in Frog with a Hat? Did you miss Frog with a Hat, Peter're missing out I will connect you I will connect you with Panda I know Peter's one of the biggest gummy gummy holders the weed gummy I know Peter's one of the biggest gummy holders I'm gonna I'm gonna introduce you to Panda with a Hat they're launching next week uh Peter you're gonna love just before anyone launches it we're making it up I don't know if there's Panda with a Hat I They're launching next week, Peter. You're going to love Panda. Just before anyone launches it, we're making it up. I don't know if there's Panda with a Hat. I should probably be careful. But go ahead, Peter.

Go to the markets because otherwise Scott will probably block me and run on WhatsApp. Go ahead. I have not ever even staked. I hear you guys talk about staking. I don't even know how to stake. I couldn't stake if I wanted to stake. Quite frankly, I think staking reminds me and all this stuff coming out. I'm just reminded of Internet stocks in 1999, quite frankly, guys.

Hey, Bitcoin is lower than it was twice in 2021, despite ETFs, despite halving. Markets below where we've been before. You know, hey, Scott, you and I first started talking about the possibility that Bitcoin was topping out for the entire bull market cycle earlier in April. You know, I finally put out the numbers that I was mentioning to you earlier in the week. And of course, I've been trolled like crazy. People absolutely won't believe it. Hey, I've increased the odds from 25% possibility. I'm possibly going up to 35%. But I hate turning more bearish when the market's down 5% on an individual day. I don't like getting more bearish

than I was the day before when the market's in a hard down. But I do think it's important for Bitcoin to hold this 57, 58 level. If we cannot hold this 57, 58 level, I think there is a good chance to take a shot at the 30,000 that I put out on my blog this week. You guys want to space it with me like a month ago mario where you everybody let's just go through what happened there i was the only one out of seven people who said 30k was on the cards everyone is like 100k only but i do want to say is vinnie we're not at 30k so almost almost at the time you're like i was right but we're still at double that right now um i and i still disagree i just think again i'm the worst at making those predictions and whenever someone asks me my ass is so dumb and simple it's kind of similar to scott's it's like whatever happened before will happen again history will repeat itself just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy

and vinnie and do you disagree with that thesis and if history does repeat itself just like what's the lowest we can go if it repeats itself to the T of what happened in the last cycles. But every cycle is different. The problem is we use very few data points to predict forward based upon what happened in a few cycles, right? Everything is different. The inflation rate has dropped massively over the past two or three halvings. The current halving hasn't even had a dent in the inflation rate, like number of coins in circulation. It's a waste of time even talking about it.

Like when I was around for the previous halvings, like 2016 halving, that was a huge inflation cut, right? And then so we saw the impact immediately. Miners getting less coins to sell, et cetera. The spike six months later, et cetera. The current halving is anemic. It doesn't really make a difference. So I think this time is different. And I think Peter is 100% right.

We've had the ETFs. I mean, even yesterday, the Bitcoin was spiking to 64K because of the Hong Kong ETF. And look at the results. It's dismal as fuck. Like there's nothing there. And so everyone's getting a little ahead of their skis here. Let me tell you something, and I'll repeat this again.

Bitcoin is a risk-on asset that is a liquidity sponge, and it basically tells us how much liquidity is in the market. And because the markets are forward-looking about six months, Bitcoin has had a run-up now because the markets were expecting this huge deluge of liquidity to come out because of cutting rates seven times this year, whatever bullshit story that people were telling you in November, December, which I disagreed with.

And now we're at a point now, we aren't going to get a rate cut this year at all. Probably nothing, right? Maybe even a hike. For the first time, I actually agree with Vinny. I actually agree with Vinny. We're not getting a rate cut. We're not getting a rate cut this year. And it is. It's just a function of liquidity.

Yeah. If only someone had been saying we weren't going to get a rate cut for the last year and a half. Yeah, I know. I think we all have. I think we all have. Yeah, right. Just because you only agree with me now, doesn't mean I haven't been saying that the whole time.

No, the one thing I don't agree with you on, the one thing I don't agree with you on, the one thing I don't agree with you on, I don't see a rate hike coming. I do see no rate cuts, but I don't see a rate hike coming. I think your thesis around the fact that we're going to get a rate increase is, I mean, I'm going to say it's a long shot. It's a long shot that we're getting a rate increase.

Let me tell you why it isn't a long shot because Yellen today said something very poignant for her. It's like, we have to balance the budget. We can't keep running this deficit. Can you imagine those words coming out of Yellen's mouth right now, today, literally saying we have to balance the budget? This is someone who's been spending like a drunken sailor for three, four, five, six years, whatever. So she doesn't, like she's now recognizing that if they do not balance the budget, they have to raise rates. And that for her is a problem because that's going to cause treasury market dysfunction. So her back's against the wall right now. I don't think that they're going to have a choice.

If I look at all the data that's coming in, I don't think that they have a choice. I think you're going to have to find a rate hike. This time I'll take you the bet. What's the bet? I said no more rate hikes, but the next move is down. I'm not going to say... Sideways, sideways, sideways,

and then down. I'll bet you next move is up. Even if it's a small hike, 20.25, I'll bet you the next move is up. What do you a small hike 20.25 um i'll get to the next moves up what do you want to bet what's the best they get a friendly bit there's a friendly best i don't know whatever you want i mean vinnie has to if you win iran if you're right vinnie has to buy gummy and tweet about it no no no you have to tweet you have to tweet that ryan is is the best crypto trader you've ever met. And the best crypto investor you've ever met.

Jesus, that's worse than buying gummy. That's pretty harsh. Yeah, that's right. I can't do that, Ran. Sorry, man. Jesus, Ran. That's pretty crazy, Ran. What do you think the lowest will go, by the way, guys?

Peter really says that we could hit 30 K. Peter, you're saying that if we break 57, 58 K, then we could go all the way down to 30 K. So would you say it's more likely than if we break 57? When people are talking like this, you remind me of the people. You remind me of those discussions where we said Bitcoin, there were people going, ah, Bitcoin's going to 12 grand, 12 grand, 12 grand. Remember? I agree with you. And that's when the bull market started.

It's like, please carry on talking. I'm on your cap there, Rand. But Peter, so question to you is that you're saying if we break 57, 58K, then we're more likely than not to hit 30K. That's question number one. And question number two is two questions. What do you think the likelihood is that we'll break 57 58k um i think it's still you know 30 likelihood we will i think we break there i think there's a 50 probability we go to 30 then from there we then enter the real meat of the bull market. I just think people who say, hey, it's repeat, repeat,

repeat, repeat. Sure, things repeat, but sometimes they repeat with a little bit of different cadence. I still think we're in a long-term bull market. Bitcoin, I think, just got too crowded. The trade got too crowded. All the time when we get too crowded,

we see something strange happen. I think we see – The RSI is – We're in a bull market. The stochastic RSI gave you the sign. Peter, the stochastic RSI is worth 80 plus. I mean, you're a chart person. Surely, you know, when we look at the stochastic RSI on 80 plus,

the market is going to pull back. It's happened every single time. Yeah. I do – Kyle, I want you to kind of i wanted to ask one audience question before you go carl going back to the markets and then we're going to get james's thoughts as well uh but just one question to the audience we're discussing earlier the whole vc game which we will not discuss carl i just want to ask a question for the audience while we continue talking about the markets i want to get an idea from the audience first do you enjoy these

discussions like these are the discussions we have behind the scenes you know the over-the-counter deals we do for tokens the private investments you, the kind of the flaws in the systems, what type of projects we look for, etc. Do you enjoy these discussions or should we have them less? So I'm genuinely curious and ask the team to kind of go through the comments. I do want that feedback. But just going back to the markets, Carl, I know you were jumping in. And James, I wanted to get your thoughts on that same discussion. Just real quick, I mean, just looking at the historical patterns anyone speaking scott

is glitching and i can't hear them it's kyle speaking yes kyle speaking oh fuck okay it's glitch i can't hear you kyle so scott go ahead that's okay mario um so yeah each each bull market we have these pullbacks along the way and typically you don't see anything worse than a 40 percent pullback and i think 40% pullback would put us at something like a $44,000 Bitcoin. So I don't see us going to the 30s at all, especially not with the kind of macro environments that that are going on. I think that's like, any and you didn't even really see that in this, these pullbacks tend to

get less severe as the market matures and market grows overall. So I would say that we're probably somewhere toward the lower end of where we go maybe we go another five, 10% lower, which is going to be horrible for our alts. But I can't imagine a world where like, where people who are just frothing at the mouth to buy Bitcoin, I think I'm pretty sure that I don't know, Michael Saylor would find some way to liquidate or like collateralize his whole family or something and and buy the market up um but uh i just i i don't know i can't imagine going that low but this is normal this is very very normal for a pullback like this is just

a normal bull run pullback in my opinion let's go uh james you were jumping in before yeah just uh just one second just one second i said earlier that the rsi the stochastic rsi usually dump when when they when they you know go over 80 they usually spike and the market usually spikes when they go under 20 and today both the moving averages and the stochastic RSI went under 20. So if you're looking for a signal, now's probably a good time to start buying. Add support with clearly sentiment at a low. Go ahead, James.

I disagree with all you guys about interest rates. I think the Fed is likely to cut and do 50 basis points in the first cut. Bit hard to tell exactly when, but it will probably be q3 or q4 and i think people have been falling into a false sense of security about the strength of the u.s economy we could well be heading towards stagflation um so we suggest they might not cut immediately but i think the downwards trend in inflation is very evident it's very much holed up by only occupied rents. A lot of consumerism that was buoying up growth numbers is fueled by debt in the United States.

You know, mortgage delinquencies are the highest since 2011. Things are not as healthy as you think they are. You know, if you look back to 1991, sorry, 1990, the first three months of the year, payrolls were at 246,000 average. So everyone's everything felt great. And then come July that year, we were in recession. So I do feel feel like the consensus is falling into this false sense of security about the health of the economy. And so is the Fed and that way it's more likely to be a 50 basis point rate cut um roast me if you like but that's that's my view yeah that

that makes sense i mean a lot of people pointing to sort of the election time but uh all this still aligns with the idea that um we could be in for a rough very uh very rough four to six months i mean people are in a bit of a negative funk around disappointment with um hong kong and the launch there don't forget you know fun flows that was well why sorry james but why disappointment wasn't that expected like spaces we had and we had some etf experts on on on this show weeks before the launch and and they all said like guys it's being overhyped. Don't expect much inflows. I don't get why now. We're surprised.

That's, this is me just scanning Twitter and seeing people and seeing people sort of saying that they're very disappointed. But I think in reality, it probably will be a bit less, but we're not going to know for at least a couple of days, because there's two plus two settlement on a lot of the trades. And a lot of them are launching today as well. So it's know i don't think we should expect too much and don't start

this year the the bitcoin etf launch in the u.s was disappointing initially the entire hong kong etf market is 46 billion dollars in take all the etfs in hong kong there are 46 billion dollars tiny if you take the the et ETF market in the United States, it's between $7 and $10 trillion, depending on which value. Bitcoin ETFs alone are over $50 billion. So they're bigger than all of Hong Kong. Exactly. So what were you guys expecting?

I'm not understanding. Was the market expecting that all of a sudden Hong Kong would also take $20 billion? No, I mean, I wasn't. But, I mean, ultimately, there's been a very low appetite broadly from Asia countries in terms of inflows into Bitcoin anyway. And I think most of them are just, they're not bound by the confines of a regulatory framework that people in the developed market are. And so, it's much easier for them to just buy Bitcoin direct rather than with an ETF structure.

Okay, that makes sense. Mario, are you back? I'm back, man. I want to talk about Scott with a hat. My favorite topic. I wanted to go to Christopher first, and we've got Lucas as well. We've got a lot of other great minds to get their thoughts.

DC, I wanted to go to you first. Your thoughts on the discussion so far. And I think we're focusing more on the, it's kind of two topics we're talking about, one that, you know, me and Ryan want to talk about and one that everyone else wants to talk about. But it's kind of two topics. It's like the crypto market in general,

kind of a macroeconomic discussion as well. And then we were discussing the DGEN side of crypto as well, VC investments and meme coin ecosystem so getting your thoughts on any of those would be cool yeah um first of all hi guys thanks a lot for having me huge fan of all of you and learned a bunch from all of you all of us he's saying all of i can't you gotta choose you can't just say all of us you'd be honest honest everybody about mario everybody about mario so go ahead dc no but um like being real i think we shot up from like 16k all the way to over 70 so having a retrace um and having a pullback like feels obvious and in my bubble at least people are expecting to reach like 58k so it's probably gonna go lower that's just my

own opinion and the moment we start talking about meme coins and degen plays and all of that stuff it just feels toppy it always is like this has been my personal experience so i don't do ta i don't do any of that stuff i just um check on sentiment, right? Because at the end of the day, it is a PVP game, essentially. So if retail is not there, Bitcoin is saving time, Bitcoin is saving energy. The moment Bitcoin becomes more important than the meme coins and altcoins and protocols that are being launched, and I don't have anything against those, then, in my opinion, it's a good time to buy again. But the moment 90% of the content is meme focused and protocol focused, it just feels really toppy to me at least. Yeah, that's my big thought.

Are you pretty bullish on the Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole? Well, I wouldn't say I'm a Bitcoin maximalist. I'm a time maximalist, right? A time maximalist? A time maximalist? A time maximalist because, well, the pretty simple reason is there is nothing better that we can save our time in, right? Every one of us works. We all spend our energy.

I mean, I don't want to give the Michael Saylor talk. He can do that far better than I. But there is, in my humble opinion, there is no better technology to save our time and then to harness it to a later date. So I'm not that Bitcoin maximalist. The moment something better comes along, the moment we have a protocol or a system that allows me to store my time better than Bitcoin, I'm going to choose that. But for the moment, I don't see any better idea. there is nothing better

on the market at least in my opinion and as benjamin cohen cohen i think um always says with bitcoin dominance we reached like 55 56 i would be extremely careful with aping or deploying any liquidity into altcoins and meme coins to this time around especially. That's just my thoughts. Lucas? Yeah, so from my side I'll start by looking at what hodlers are doing and that is the addresses that have been holding bitcoin for over one year, which in aggregate have over 13 million Bitcoin. The hodlers in aggregate began selling around 50k, 60k, close to previous ultimate highs, and have since stopped selling essentially since April, even though ETF flows have slowed down.

So that to me is a sign of the market recovering some strength. You know, people aren't looking to sell here. It's just a regular retracement of the market. And if you look instead at the people that are active at the moment, we have this indicator that tracks the previous day's active addresses based on how profitable they are. And yesterday, for instance, 87% of the addresses transacting were out of the money. So essentially losing money on their positions, just very high compared to the amount of holders that are making money. It's basically the opposite, about 85%.

So essentially, it's weak hands selling around these levels. And I think the market is just taking a breather here. I don't know if this will last another month, a week, three months. But I think it's a regular pullback. And based on supply concentration, the 55 to 58K might provide some support. And we'll see if it gets below that or not. Guys, I just have a question, Scott, before to christopher um lucas or scott on that one um etf inflows versus outflows i know you you kind of cover that extensively on your show scott and and on the

space and and lucas i'm not sure how closely you follow that but can you guys give us an overview of how it's been over the last two weeks because i remember there was one concern obviously etf inflows were you know great thing for crypto but the only concern that was mentioned uh rarely in the early days because the numbers were just so impressive but kind of being mentioned more and more as as the as we're seeing we're seeing more outflows is that when when there is a pullback uh just the inflows could turn into outflows pretty quickly and uh you know money coming into etfs is is a lot more paper hand than um than than long-term holders is that a concern that you guys share or other speakers that we've had on this show on your show scott share that these etf inflows could turn to outflows pretty quickly

if the market traces they have so i mean but not not to the greatest degree but i mean i think blackrock had a 71 or 72 day run from the beginning of net inflows, and that stopped last week. We had, I think, 52 million net outflows yesterday. These aren't huge numbers, but I mean, we've said sort of from the beginning, I mean, if someone can buy something, they can also sell it. So, the beginning, of course, it's all inflows outside of GBTC because there's nothing to sell from those. And so yes, I think there's a paper handed aspect of it where people who buy speculatively see it go down and sell. Although I would argue that the bulk of ETF buyers don't even check the price like we do on a daily basis, aren't in this echo chamber, and we're just putting it in their portfolio for six months or a

year next time they check. So I don't think it's a huge issue. But yeah, I think we haven't had many huge new platform unlocks yet. The Morgan Stanley's or UBS or Vanguard's and RIA's, it's been really slow, which is fine. But yeah, I think that there's going to be periods as with any ETF, if you ask the experts, whether it'll be net outflows for long periods, net inflows, I think we saw the hype phase we hit 74 000 and now uh you know we're that the etfs will chop sideways just like the rest of the market i mean lucas he asked you as well what do you think yeah so we've seen um about four weeks now of net outflows um in hundreds of millions, which is relatively low compared to the 40 billion plus that it's an aggregate here. And I think the first quarter was really like pent up demand from institutions that were

really eager to get Bitcoin, but didn't want to go get around the custody issues. And now that they've gone through that test, essentially the next quarter, so this quarter, probably May, June, we should start seeing more of the traditional institutions embrace it. And as Scott alluded to, like Morgan Stanley and a lot of those big brokers should begin ramping up their operations to offer this to more clients. And if that's the case, I think we should see the bull market resume shortly after. Yes, I wanted to go, Scott, to a different topic here and one I'm a bit more excited about.

And that's, you know, we've got a partner of ours on stage and I want to go through the gaming market as a whole. But I will ask your permission because you're a bit snappy today, Scott. So do I have permission to pivot to that discussion? Sure. No. I want to go through the gaming market as a whole, but I will ask your permission because you're a bit snappy today, Scott. So do I have permission to pivot to that discussion? Sure. No, absolutely not.

Yeah, I know. Dude, do whatever you got. I got to leave in a couple of minutes anyway. So you have at it, buddy. Perfect. Just CryptoTower Town Hall account. If you could please remove Scott from co-host and blocking, that would be great.

You did that to me live in person at Token 2049. Literally, I had to yell into your phone to get on. So there you go. Oh, yeah, yeah. Look, guys, I do want to go to Altiverse, Altiverse the project. So we were discussing about private investments earlier, and I said something. And I wanted to mention Altiverse then, but my mic started glitching. As that no matter what the market is doing, and I was having a discussion earlier with the team.

I think Scott, you'd find that interesting. You're still there, perfect. I think you'd find that interesting because we have those discussions behind the scenes. Yeah. So actually my team, one of my team members that leads the whole private investment side is like, Mario, what's our strategy now with the market slowing? So two weeks ago, we're seeing projects doing a 10X on a daily basis. Now it's rare to find anything doing more than a 3X at launch. And I told them like, guys, the thesis stays the same. Obviously, we've got to be a bit more careful in investing in projects that the risk is too high, just considering the risk is not mitigated by that initial pump we're seeing in the markets and things are slowing down. So we're being a bit more conservative with investments, but whenever a top tier project

comes in, something that Binance Labs is incubating or listing on Binance Launchpad or OKEx listing or Pantera, etc., are investing in, these are indicators. And beyond looking at the technology, looking at the team, looking at the tokenomics, etc., I'm just benching basic metrics. These projects, we're going to invest in no matter what. I don't care if Bitcoin is at 100K or at 20K. That doesn't change. And Altiverse is a good example of that like the guys are just uh going through your list of investors i know that you guys are being incubated by binance labs you got sequoia idg and amoka okx ventures as investors and you you guys are a perfect example of a project

we're more than happy to invest in i don't care where bitcoin is at two reasons first because of the project itself and the backing that you guys have. Second, because of the narrative as well. I've been bullish on gaming for a really long time. But the first question I wanted to ask you is not about Ultiverse itself. It's more about as a project listed, like we're talking about you guys and you're sitting behind that mic listening to us and you're in that, I wouldn't call it VC game, but you're in that model that has flaws, but also has potential as well. I think that adding that early liquidity to a startup, if done right, could be a positive thing. So I want to get your thoughts on the discussion we had earlier, because you've been on stage for

a while. I'm not sure who's behind the mic. But just for the Altyverse account, first, appreciate being a partner of the show and letting us join your cap table. But second, would love your thoughts on the discussion. What are your thoughts on that VC model? How's the interest? How's the appetite? Are people just jumping to conclusions like, hey, like Ryan was saying, the VC model is dead. People are waking up to it because it's flawed.

And I think it's just too early to kind of jump to those conclusions when just two weeks ago, we were in the same place. We were in the last bull market. Altiverse, I just gave a whole speech introducing you. Please figure out a way to unmute your mic. Altiverse account, unmute your mic. All right. Great discussion, guys. This is, you got to figure out how to unmute your mic. Their head of community is coming up. I can see. Ah, okay. Perfect. So Moonlight is their head of community.

Maybe no one can speak on the Altiverse account. So where Moonlight, and by the way, Scott, while waiting for Moonlight to connect, did you hear what I said earlier? Because this is exactly the discussion we're having. It kind of gives you an idea that we haven't, like, a top-tier project will always be top-tier. Like, while Ryan was talking about how Portal or Pixels, I can't remember, using these example kyle was using these examples of projects that didn't do well and i look at i looked at etherfire and check portal portal coin ether pixels coin these are binance launchpad projects that we invested in and we did their launch etherfire is another etherfire still above their

ideal price despite market conditions and let me check pixels and portal pixels had no unlocks pixels is uh yeah a bit lower about 23 percent lower than their ideal than their listing price not their ideal price it's still significantly higher than the ideal price so i think just jumping to conclusions there but let me let me go to the um i'm so sorry yes we have two people using the same account oh good oh good can you hear me now i did yes i was trying to make sure yeah fix your fix your mic if you don't mind just because i want to hear your answer really carefully about the market in general because you guys are part of those top tier projects um i can i can speak on your behalf

and say there's more capital that wants to come in and invest then you're able to accept and you have to turn down a lot of capital um so it kind of what are your thoughts when you heard the discussion earlier that that vc model it is broken i agree with that but it's just people are waking up to it doesn't work as it did before thank you for the question and thanks for having us today and obviously uh for your mic your mic your mic man we can hear you but just your mic is very echoey and shit so So is it better now? Much better. Yeah, go ahead. Yes.

So again, thanks for having me today. Thanks for having us. And it's a very interesting question. I was actually tweeting about this. From us, I do believe there are different priorities, especially if you want to build a business on Web3. We kind of need to put community as a priority. Yes, but at the same time,

it doesn't mean that we should have a PVP situation. We are forced to create a trade-off scenario between different backers, especially talking about the funding round. There are different windows. They always have good options on board new backers, whether it's VCs or KOLs or community members, as long as the fair valuation

based on the stage or the user or data or product status if needed. We don't need that many funds to really run the business from now, but we do need the backer to support, to allow people to save some time to do due diligence.

What lockups do you guys offer your VC investors? Typically, we have six months cliff, six to 12 months in terms of the places invested in. Okay, so this is kind of for the audience. This is the type of product I'm telling you. Top-tier projects, it is different now to previous bull markets in the sense that top-tier projects are not shy of putting big cliffs. Because I understand the downside of getting big unlocks in the early stages because that's just retail ends suffering, depending on the obviously certain, you know, the float and the FTV, the valuation. But going back to, so obviously we discussed the concept, just kind of a simple question.

Are VCs still approaching you to invest? Despite you guys, I think you've closed your round already and you're not too far off from listing, correct me if I'm wrong. Are VCs still approaching you to invest? Is there still that appetite that we've seen previously? Yes, we are still receiving a lot of offers to jumping in because, as you mentioned, gaming is a direction that we believe in, not just for this cycle,

but will be there for many cycles. It's been proven success on Web2. Exactly. Something I've said in previous cycles, I said, like, I think gaming will be the biggest on-boarder of users into crypto, into Web3. I think it's pretty, it takes a lot of audacity to say that,

but I do believe that. So kind of concluding, you're still getting a lot of interest even now, despite market conditions, yeah? That is right. Exactly my point. So tell us more about you, man, and let's go back into Alteverse itself.

Let's start talking about what Alteiverse is briefly and the narrative as a whole, because I want to discuss the narrative before discussing Altiverse. Of course. Thank you. So, Altiverse is a one-stop web-free gaming production and publishing platform. We are AI-driven. That means we're trying to create a reach and ecosystem where

gaming is not just interactive and involving experiments, but also a deeply personalized journey that will integrate with the web3 vision of decentralization user empowerment and innovative economic models try that again so essentially so you're more than just a game so it's just a decentralized game a web3 game correct but where is the ai concept coming because you call yourself an ai driven gaming platform can you explain that a bit further because you're putting two very hype narratives ai and gaming into one um but i don't understand really what it means

of course so we actually more than just a gaming platform itself we integrate ai in terms of the infrastructure level of empowerment to enable our gaming DApps with AI capabilities from different angle. From the recurrent stage, we already trained AI NPC to provide the immersive, unique experiments for the user to have this only way to explore the possibility for the interaction of the game. But for the next stage, ultimately, we will have this what we call the SDK. We help other games that publish through us with AI capability,

including the UGC tool. We will help them to provide AI features. So you're a platform that leverages the AI to make it easier to create games in your platform? To have the user experiments, not just creating games. The game will be depending on the gaming studio itself, but they will have AI part with our ecosystem. Okay, so can you explain when you say user experience,

how does AI, just for a gamer, just basic non-technical discussion for the audience, when you say a better AI-driven experience, what does that mean for a gamer or non-gamer joining to play a game on your platform? Of course. So when people play the game, they can have this vocal

adaptive gaming experiments with each player. That means when they interact with the AI NPCs, they will be creating generally new content. They have new activities or new performance or preference when they play the games. All this will be trained and learned through the AI Oracle and help to predict and to change direction the how the game involving a lot of time okay so hold on so you leverage your story sorry to interrupt you because i'm just trying to really understand it so essentially leverage ai to to kind of adapt the game to the behavior of the player so to kind of get so first what i said is correct before i kind of dig deeper? That's right, yes.

Okay, so essentially I'm playing a game. Let's look at a game. So I'm, you know, fighting monsters in a castle. As I play that game, so you're saying AI kind of studies how I'm playing that game to determine how the game improves or the next levels within the game. So I will use this way to describe your question or answer. The capability I have will help us to really generate the content. So it will be a dynamic process.

That means the game will evolve and offer a new challenge, new task, new scenario, and new narrative. That's cool. Okay, I get it. We are already able to provide that right now already. So, for example, we have this game called Terminator City. We train the AI NPC

with a worldview of Aldiverse and we set up a particular task that only has end goal. And the user, we have the free chat mode

so they use their own determination to find out the crew by checking to the AI NPC. They have unlimited possibility depending on the way they talk to the AI NPC and then they find the crew by check to the NPC, they're on limit possibility depending on the way they talk to the

NPC and then they find the crew by themselves. So it's like a... And just an NPC, can you explain what an NPC is for a non-player character? Can you explain what that is for the audience? The NPC? Yes. It's like a non-playing role. So in the past, it's like character in the game, there's no control by the player. Okay, so essentially what you do is you leverage AI to see the player, human players, the way they're playing it, and then the NPC will determine, it determines the NPC, the non-player characters, the characters within the game, their behavior evolves through AI based on the behavior of the player themselves correct that is right yes

okay and then where does the decentralization concept i want to kind of dig into the so i'm kind of first i'm digging into the game itself which is i'm it's fascinating and then the next thing i want to do is is i'm pretty selfish in how i ask these questions which i think the audience kind of relates to it is i want to kind of dig into how you've raised the money who your backers are and can i give the audience an idea of why, for example, we invested, how we look at projects and certain indicators. But first, can you tell us more of the decentralized aspect of it? So if you're leveraging AI to make the game experience better, but why does that concept

need to be decentralized? Is it just a whole Web3 gaming ethos of having a token to improve monetization, to allow it to be decentralized in terms of having DAOs in how the game evolves and monetizing a user experience, allowing NFTs for in-game ownership. Is that the use cases of decentralization? Absolutely, yes. But moreover, we do believe that because AI can empower the users, play a more important role along the process of the game, that means when they are more engaged or having a more important role along the process of the game. That means when they are more engaged

or having a more part of the game that is in terms of just owning the NFT with a utility version, as well as be engaged with the game production process, that's aligned with the spirit of the Web3 decentralization of the ownership by the users.

So they're not just the consumer, but they're the active engager and the core creators. Interesting. And now for the project itself, now you guys have a pretty stacked cab table. We've got some big respected VCs that we trust their due diligence and we've spoken to before joining your cab, before becoming investors as well. You've also got Binance Labs. Were you incubated by Binance Labs and they are one of the investors not necessarily okay

not incubated they've invested okay cool and obviously binance labs considered a top top tier investor along with sequoia and and the rest ggv idg animal coax um the question i have for you is do you guys have any centralized exchanges or launchpads confirmed yet? This is the kind of question I cannot say. It's just how it works. But obviously, that would be the goal for now, with a stage for TGE. When is your TGE plan? When is your token listing?

Very soon. I just can't say that. This is a rule I cannot say, but it's very soon. Would you say in the next month or two, or later than that i'm being too too optimistic here so and there are two sort of parts of this answer first of all the timeline will be q2 we have done all the things we need to do we have this uh agile farming sort of engagement event on march we have this platform called alti pilot and we have this upcoming ongoing golden chip ownership, which is initially acting as a community round.

And by the way, the TPC amount is at 3,000 ETH right now, almost 100 million already here. And after that, that means we will one step from the TGE. But there's some market condition. I hear you guys talking about the sentiment and all these things happening. We kind of will make adjustments because of the market conditions, but we are there very, very soon. Yeah, does it matter?

So when you have, what valuation do you guys raise at? This is public knowledge, no? I think it's on crypto, right? Yeah, it's public knowledge, yes. Okay, yeah. What valuation do you guys raise at? So our previous round was close at 150 million, but there's the same valuation we offer to the community for this ongoing NFT sale. So it's 150 million as well. Okay. And then why are market conditions so important? We've discussed this already.

Essentially, the performance of the launch does impact um the community sentiment and the future of the game just like an ipo for a public company is that a fair statement it is a fair statement yes it definitely a fair statement okay and you've raised all the money you're looking to raise are you still raising privately uh we are not raising privacy and actually you've closed money for the community run it's a way to to give back to the community so that they have the same term. I think you guys talked about the VC back games, all these kind of issues. So we offer the same valuation, but a better term without a cliff to the community so that they will know we are a community-driven project instead of just VC back. We see it play a huge role along our progress but at this stage i guess people have a different

risk tolerance or they were zooming out for a longer term return in terms of short-term return so you did raise you raised 5 10 million uh two years ago and they did another round february this year for another five million is that is that true and i think binance lads led the last rounds and animal because leading the current rounds that is true yes okay and then the one you raised in february closed um pretty quickly yes it was closed pretty quickly all right man um congratulations on your raise and i appreciate being on the cap table last question i have for you is like the first any other mentions of what altiverse what you guys are planning etc for anyone interested in the audience and learning more and then kind of getting your thoughts on web3 gaming in general i think we haven't talked about it on this show

for a while scott's pretty thankful for that i think but i want to get your thoughts on web3 gaming is it getting too saturated do you still think it's in the early stages do you think it will continue it will lead this current bull market um because you you guys obviously have both narratives ai and gaming in a way. Yeah, absolutely. Well, from my angle, there's a few sort of three parts I want to share with that sort of answer. First of all, so for us as a Web3 project, there are different aspects. We are NFT, you have token, there are different players, play a role in this. And so in the longer term, the idea is we're building this platform

that we will serve in our participants, especially the holders as our priorities. We'll continue to create value and benefit to all the users. That's sort of a statement number one. And secondly, in terms of gaming, it has already proven successful industry. There's no further validation needed,

but the new way of blockchain, of the distribution, including the incentive model, will make it more equitable and successful. Especially we have the ownership that empowerment each players, not just a player, but partially own the project itself.

And with integration AI, we definitely add significant value to the entire ecosystem, which means we believe this combination will bring far greater value than the individual players can contribute alone. So ultimately, all this value will reflect on the success of both the games and the platform, and so you can reward the holders throughout the appreciation of the tokens.

Yeah, man. Congratulations on the success you guys have man. Cool. Congratulations on the success you guys have had so far. Appreciate allowing us to invest, especially coming in at a time where obviously a lot of capital

is chasing you guys. Congratulations on the backing you have and what you've built so far. It should be an exciting journey. And for the audience, I hope you enjoyed

this discussion. I think we kicked it off for the first half talking about kind of a behind-the-scenes discussion, things that we talk privately and calls me, Scott, Ryan, Kyle, and others. It's like about the markets, about the investments, all these over-the-counter deals we do. And again, let me know in the comments if you want more of these discussions, DGEN discussions. And then we talked about the market. We had some great minds debate on how low we'll go and what could happen next and whether history will repeat itself and whether

it will be the same as previous cycles. And then we had a great discussion with Altiverse, pretty heavily backed, top tier project we're invested in, who's partnered with us on the show. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed the show. I appreciate all for joining. We'll see you again tomorrow to again predict what will happen in the market. i can promise you if the if the candle's red tomorrow everyone will talk about yeah we're going to go lower if the candle's green saying yeah the bear market is over we're going to hit all new all-time highs just wait and see um appreciate you all joining altiverse thanks a lot for joining bye everyone