The Wolf Of All Streets - BTC Strategic Reserve Announcement Friday? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

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What's up everybody? Happy Wednesday. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every weekday 10-15am Eastern Standard Time here on Nx. We are joined proudly by the ghost of Mario Nafl. You guys may remember a time when Mario used to speak on the spaces. We used to hear his voice and not just stare at his avatar. He's busy traveling the world, interviewing world leaders about more important things than crypto price today. So I think we'll give him a pass today. Ran, I don't know what his excuses, hanging out with his kids, you know, but you guys get to hang out with me. I guess you can accept that as your consolation prize.

And with our amazing panel that we have here every single day. And man, this volatility is absolutely wild. Obviously, you know, Sunday, one of the best days we've ever had in crypto Monday. I think it was the second worst day we've ever had. And then pumping right back up above 90,000 today. We were already up in the high 80s kind of floating around, which is where we are now.

But in case you missed it, seemingly the reason, since we always need one, right, for everything that happens in Cribbidoe, but seemingly the reason that we had sort of this mini pump this morning again was that Howard Lutnick made some comments about the reserve. This was the quote. So Bitcoin is one thing. And then the other currencies, the other crypto tokens, I think will be treated differently, positively, but differently also said that there will be a very clear announcement on the structure of the strategic reserve, a Bitcoin strategic reserve, he said, which President Trump wants that will be announced at the summit, the White House on Friday. So that's the title here. We have very clear news, apparently coming on a Bitcoin strategic reserve and seemingly the altcoins will be structured

differently and maybe not a part of that reserve. Listen, we know that this changes every single day. We know that when Lutnick speaks, it's not the same as when Trump necessarily speaks, but seemingly we're going to get a lot more clarity on this reserve in the coming days, specifically on Friday. As for that White House crypto summit on Friday, guest lists slowly being released. Michael Saylor, David Bailey, Matt Wang from Paradigm, Exodus CEO, JP Richardson, multi-coin capital, Kyle Samani, World Liberty Financial co-founder, Zach Witkoff, Sanlink co-founder, Surya Nazarov, Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong, Vlad Tennev from Robinhood,

Krakens CEO, Arjun Sethi, a lot of heavy hitters in the industry being invited to the table for Friday's summit. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it. Apparently there's an event afterwards as well that a lot more people will be going to. I saw a list today that seemed like it was not necessarily real, had all those names, but also CZ, but I can't imagine that necessarily CZ

is gonna be a part of that. But I guess that list is ever increasing since it's only been a couple of days. Some great representatives of the industry that will be there. So, I mean, let's start here with the whiplash, I guess, in price, but also whiplash in narrative around the reserve. Because I think that's the story right now that's largely driving prices, but also largely has people really confused. on Sunday, obviously on Truth Social, Trump said, XRP, Cardano, Solana, and now Letnik sort of backing off of that and saying, get coin strategic

reserve. Anyone in the panel have specific thoughts on this? Just raise your hand or jump in and let's get the conversation going. Yeah, you said it well, Scott. It was quite the weekend, just a wild up and down ride. I will say one of my favorite parts was the hour in between Trump's two tweets where Bitcoin and ETH Maxis were just going absolutely insane, thinking that they possibly weren't going to be part of the reserve. And the timeline on crypto Twitter was just hilarious. Until he of course came out and clarified that, yes, of course they're part of this. So that was fun.

And yeah, just wow. What a week of weekend of up and down. Also disappointing though, I must say, it just it seems like so much manipulation. and we see that people are showing the person that went super long right before the announcement, went short right afterwards. I think someone said he's up over 3 million or maybe it was even 30 million at this point. A lot more. Yeah, just for clarity. So the first trade was long Bitcoin and ETH with 50X leverage. It was on hyper liquidity deposited

4 million. He or she, excuse me, deposited 4 million and made about a $6 million profit on the long, but then kind of more head-stratchingly went short Ethereum massively right at the top with 50X leverage. So for anyone who doesn't know and leverages, good, I'm not going to teach you. But if you do, you know, a 50x leverage short means a 2% move in Ethereum would have liquidated them entirely. And by the way, they doubled down with their profits, apparently. So took that long, took everything and went short. And now I think that account sitting was sitting at about 80 million off of the 4 million. Wow. On the short. Crazy.

Yeah. So either a crazy gambling degen or someone that had insider info, which most likely the latter, which is a shame that it's happening and the markets are still so small, the entire market gap of the space is at a point where manipulation can easily be done to those numbers. But here we are. Hopefully we get some interesting and good news on Friday. I'm not holding my breath on any specifics or positives, but we'll see. I think it's positive to be furthering the conversation in general.

And, you know, we're obviously a fickle community and people want everything now, but this is making real progress. I think even the fact that there's a roundtable on crypto happening at the White House this Friday, to some degree, still is in the camp of promises made, promises kept. They're continuing obviously in the right direction here. Go ahead, Dave. Yeah, I think that you know the

taking a step back is kind of important here and there was a interesting tweet- this morning. From somebody who basically showed the chart of twenty twenty. Post Paul Tudor Jones you know having making the first proclamation of any major traditional financial you know personality that Bitcoin was the fastest horse and we're looking at whatever. I know, I remember that time very, very carefully because I managed finally within a month or so of Mr. Jones making that comment, being able to set up 401Ks, which at the time was really, really hard to do a checkbook IRA, whatever, and

putting some money into Bitcoin. And it took months. And if you look at the chart, there was a Bart Simpson pattern, blah, blah, blah. It's actually interesting if you overlay that with where we are now for the previous n number of months, it looks very similar. And so someone who's a chartist who I actually respect said, Oh, no planet is as possible. Because what happened after that was Bitcoin tripled. Now, I actually think that's my base case, although not necessarily

quite as fast as it happened in 2020. Because Paul Tudor Jones was one thing, we still had a hostile administration, there was China banning it, there was all sorts of things that happened in 2020. We now have the administration of the United States of America, not just the president, although, you know, who knows, you know, what he really thinks, and not just his family, but the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Treasury, the HHS Secretary,

the Vice President are all Bitcoiners, all own Bitcoin. Or well well, if they maybe they divested I don't know, but they all owned a Bitcoin and understand it and we're having a roundtable at the White House. Now do we do I expect anything to come out of this meeting to be particularly bullish? No, actually expect people in crypto to get their hopes up and to be a little bit disappointed. But at some point all it will take the spark that needs to happen, is effectively one more large pool of capital deciding to allocate because the supply just isn't there.

Most of these moves are on relatively low volume until derivatives get involved and then the volume spikes because it's people trading with themselves. And you know, that's the up and down thing. So it's really important to contextualize what's happening here. I don't see negative, there aren't really headwinds here. I mean, the headwinds are the crypto. The headwinds are macro.

Well, macro, let's talk about macro. Macro is massive tailwinds. I mean, I heard your show with Noel this morning. And Noel, who I dearly love and is awesome, loves, does not want to get into hyperbole. But when you hear, she made the statement that Germany is giving up a little bit of their fiscal discipline. Understand, Germany is the European Union's parking brake. They are the only country in all of Europe that doesn't have a massive debt to GDP, well

maybe there's some smaller ones, I don't know, but of the big ones, that does not have a massive debt to GDP and has had a central bank policy of effectively, you know, being worried about inflation. Now obviously because of the Weimar Republic they still have memories, that's the reason. But if Germany is going to start loosening the financial spigots, then don't tell me we have a bad macro situation, because that is a signal in a world

where everyone goes into competitive evaluations, that is the signal of liquidity spigots turning on. If in fact this morning's employment report is true and trueflation, which is seemingly accurate are true, the ISM stuff, these surveys don't really mean as much as the actual hard data. If it is true that we are going to have liquidity spigot, that we're going to see weakness due to the employment report, et cetera, that Bloomberg and other people think are going

to happen, the Federal Reserve is going to act. I mean, they may take a couple of going to happen, the Federal Reserve is going to act. I mean, they may take a couple of months to act, but they will act. So no, I don't think macro is, I think macro is actually quite constructive, is I think the point. Amit Bhandari Yeah, I think on that macro piece, it's constructive in certain ways when it comes to future liquidity, but obviously, we're seeing weakening in markets. Scott, I saw you post the job report miss 50% down of expectations. There was also a piece that was released that IRS refunds are 32% lower on average this tax season. And we've got January

data showing consumer spending fell for the first time in two years, largest monthly decline in a year. So overall, I mean, I think we've got a lot of economic pressures. There was a great post by Chris Patel. I don't know if anyone saw that. But basically saying that he anticipates rates are going to fall faster than people are assuming

because Trump is sort of forcing the hand of the liquidity spigot, right? He doesn't want to refinance the rate at a higher rate. He wants to get the tenure to come down. The only way to do that is this all over the place, tariff pressure, short-term pain in the markets, and I think, well, you know think Fed pivots based on economic data, not based on the market and not purely based on inflation metrics, although they've had their target. So I think we're seeing quite a bit of economic data

that's showing slowdown, the predictions of the recession are getting higher. I think all roads lead to liquidity being turned on. I mean, I think that then the secondary question is, where are where's retail going to be at with actually having the economic resources to participate and how much of a slow grind is that going to be? But I think obviously institutions were still seeing more high volume accumulation on Bitcoin

pretty strongly. So I mean, I think things are looking good, short term pain, long term gain, but we haven't seen these kind of economic factors in quite a while. David. Yeah, I was going to make a simpler point, which is that the macro outlook is anything but clear. And I think for me, that's important in terms of, you know, adoption of something new by people that have yet to be involved in crypto. crypto. I was talking a little bit this weekend on one of the spaces that was formed because of Trump's tweets that I think traditional investors, the larger ones, are going to need to see divergence between traditional assets and crypto to the point where they can't avoid it. So, you know, this past year, equity markets were strong. So, you know, if you did what you normally do in terms of long short equity, you probably made 30 something percent. The fact that, you know,

your local crypto manager made 60 percent or 70% last year, I don't think does anything in terms of moving you to, you know, absolutely have to go ahead and invest, you know, in the asset class. And you know, this, you know, when, when your book that exists, your investing book that exists is doing things that, you know that you need to react to and need to be on top of on a, I don't know, even a minute to minute basis or at least half a day to half a day basis. Your ability to go ahead and focus on another asset class, some burgeoning opportunities is thin. I mean, your're just, your bandwidth isn't there

to be able to do it. And so I think, you know, the macro picture maybe just either becoming clearer or, you know, the market, you know, having well-digested the fact that we have a very different administration here and we're gonna need to go ahead and have a different playbook in terms of how we go ahead and trade or how we react or the volatility.

All that needs to go ahead and be, I'd say, settled before there's this major uptick in investors screaming for crypto, um, you know, adoption in their books. So much to unpack there. Uh, and then David, I think that the main point you're making is that markets hate uncertainty and we have boatloads of that right now. Right. I mean, it's just that, uh, very hard for anybody to be confident in what's coming next, which makes if you view Bitcoin as a risk on asset, very, you know, very tough to sell in this exact environment.

Yeah. And I think that people that are thinking about crypto and trying to make, you know, rational decisions about it, you know, the things that happened over the past couple of weeks, whether it be with Trump and Melania coin, whether it be with by bit, whether it be with Eric Trump, you know, shilling, all that stuff doesn't, you know, go ahead and give people who like, you know, predictability and sanity, you know, the warm and fuzzies. And I think that, you know, again, I'm not saying the assets can't run higher prices won't explode. I'm not saying any of that stuff is very well may be. And, you know, certainly I'm positioned for that, you know, no doubt, but to expect that people and by the way, this goes also for the strategic Bitcoin reserves that are being you know proposed at the state level you know to expect that legislators who you know who have very much a CYA attitude and getting re-elected and so on you know gonna go out on a limb for an asset, you know, to be the first or to be a revolutionary or pioneer, you know, he just can't go ahead and expect.

I mean, I hope, as does Cynthia Lummis, that one of these 19 states comes through in terms of adopting Bitcoin onto the balance sheet of the state. But you know, it's certainly in this environment, it makes it makes it harder for that to go ahead and happen. And I think once they go ahead and vote it down, you know, the chances of it coming up again, you know, very shortly on the heels of a vote down, I think is unlikely. I think it's going to take some time. And so, you know, it's it, the environment is what it is. There's not there's not much we could

do about it. But I think you need to be honest about what the environment is. I think legislatively, the Bitcoin Reserve and reserves in general have been a challenge so far. So to your point, just so people know, I think five states have rejected it, including Wyoming, of course, which is where Cynthia Lummis is from, the senator who's proposing the Bitcoin strategic reserve for the Senate. That said, maybe those five were outright going to reject it anyways. And we do have some that have moved past committee and do have at least a fighting chance. And likely, it's only going to take one if that's going to happen. But Lum is kind of throwing her hands in the air

and saying, listen, this is gonna probably happen at the state level, tweeting for people to, you know, reach out to their senators and Congress people to explain Bitcoin to them. Clearly right now it's a challenging environment to get something like this passed, but I still think it's huge news that's on the docket. Brian, thanks for joining.

I saw you in the audience and gave you the quick invite. I would actually love your take on this sort of whipsaw of the reserve, right? Obviously you're a Bitcoiner, have been close to politics and probably watching this interesting times for you. Sorry, was that for me? It was, it was. Okay. All right. Just making sure.

Yeah. You know, like you like people have been talking about like with the states, you know, they haven't been able to pass the Bitcoin reserve. Lummis is having a hard time getting co-sponsors for her bill. You know, I guess we're going to have to wait till Friday and see what Trump announced. But I really don't think it matters in the long run. I come from traditional finance. I was an institutional equity broker for over 20 years and I did some channel checks over the last few months with my former firms

Just asking them why they haven't Added like the Bitcoin ETFs to their platforms yet And these are firms like Merrill Lynch Edward Jones, Steve Nicholas, Raymond James, you know, Wells Fargo advisors You know that you know, Wells Fargo advisors, you know, they control trillions of dollars of assets for their clients. And the number one reason I got was that they're not a year old yet.

And their compliance departments won't add a fund to their recommended list or recommend a fund unless it has a one year track record. And so that's coming up here this month in March you know the ETFs have been around for a year so I think there's gonna be a huge opening with traditional finance over the next few months where these traditional firms these advisor firms are allowing their clients to actually to buy the Bitcoin ETFs. And I think that's gonna be a huge pool of capital coming into the space.

So the reserve to you right now is not the main driver of the main story. I agree with that, by the way. No, I mean, the reserve would be nice. But you know, I just don't see Trump selling our gold reserves and buying Bitcoin. And I don't see Trump like taking, you know, taking on more debt to buy Bitcoin. So I guess the question is, where does the money come from to buy the Bitcoin? Yeah.

And yeah, that I mean, that's my biggest question. Yeah, I think to some degree, there was the notion that we would stop selling, United States would stop selling what had already been effectively confiscated from Silk Road and Bitfinex. Although the Bitfinex coins, which got to be Simon, Bitfinex is 100,000 coins, roughly. Is that 100,000? I'd say the Bitfinex was 119,000 and then 100,000 were recovered. Yeah, so about 100,000 as it's holding, I mean, those are probably going back to Bitfinex at some point. I mean, those are their coins, but taking whatever we have, transferring

it, moving it from department to department, putting it on a different balance sheet and calling that the reserve, but that doesn't work as well with Solana XRP and Cardano, which the United States isn't necessarily holding. But Brian, I think that I agree with you that there's a vast ocean between, hey, let's keep the Bitcoin we have and call it a reserve and actually putting it in a budget item to buy these things. Yeah. Our first step is to stop selling our Bitcoin. Hopefully that hasn't happened. I've

been sending FOIA requests to the government agencies for, I just looked at it the other days, back in 2021, asking what Bitcoin do we own? Trying to get a summary of how much Bitcoin does the US government actually own. And no one knows. You know, the only agency that answered were the US Marshals. But the FBI wouldn't answer. The DOJ, the Fed, the IRS, the Treasury. No one would.

It was just a complete run around. They won't answer the question. So I think the first question for President Trump to find out is how much Bitcoin does the US government actually own and control? That's interesting. Hey Scott, if I could just jump in quick. The gentleman that was just talking reference, where would the money come from? And a lot of people in the space are speculating that the money could come from the stabilization fund, the currency stabilization fund, some of the lawyers that work at... I completely lost Teddy. I don't know if you guys did, but I can't hear him.

Yeah. Simon, go ahead. Yeah, so as you know, kind of taking a look back a step backwards. So the world has, you know, as a community, we've created this one to punch Bitcoin and stable coins. You know, Bitcoin is allowing everybody to exit the central banking system with their savings and stable coins are allowing people to send digital dollars or digital fear as they get more traction around the world, which is competition to what transactions you make through your bank. And so those use cases are not going away and they're only going to grow because all of the problem with central banking and banking. And so the governments around the world have a choice. Their choice is we can allow everyone

to do it without us, or we can jump on the gravy train and also be a part of it. And that's kind of the friction that we're experiencing right now. So the state or at the federal level, whether it happens or not does not impact us in the grand scheme of a few Bitcoin cycles. However, if you want to accelerate it, and we want governments to be able to recalibrate because of these

grand macro changes that were happening right now, I don't think everyone's quite realized that the world changed when America won the war against, sorry, Russia won the war against America, and now EU are deciding whether they wanna take the reigns on. That is a new world order, and that is what we are experiencing right now. That has both geopolitical macro impacts, and we're trying to get to that recalibation without going into World War III. And that's

kind of what we're experiencing. And so where everyone sits, what country, what treasury departments and what central banks do and what financial institutions to adjust to that new reality, and whoever's first lost lost is the global game theory game that we are experiencing right now. The application of Bitcoin plus stablecoins has different implications for the different blocks in the different regions. America is leading the way to take the charge and say, this is how we can use it. But whether they do or whether they don't

doesn't stop the fact that this solves a very real problem for competing jurisdictions. And that's the game that we're kind of sitting back on watching right now. But either way, whether governments do it or not, the fact that you can now send digital dollars and digital fiat currency over a blockchain rails, the fact that that might be coming to Bitcoin on lightning, and the fact that

Bitcoin is just getting stronger and stronger and stronger, that's not changing. David? Yeah, I think the most important thing that I'm anticipating is frankly the statement out of what happens on Friday. The folks that I, over my career, have invested money for, both in my distressed fund and then now my crypto fund. I've been high net worth, family offices, people that are a lot like Trump in the sense that they've had a really tough time getting away from their

traditional financial products, certainly their love of real estate and bricks, bricks and mortar, I mean, and, you know, recognizing and then investing in digital assets. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with folks that I successfully ran money for in turnaround, distress, event-driven situations that just, this does not resonate with them. Even though they love the jockey, this is just not for them.

And for them, I think, to see a guy like Donald Trump go ahead and make a pivot on a national level, on a national stage, and international stage as well. A guy who they see as being very much like them, going out and taking a bunch of resources, assets, existing or otherwise, you know, from the United States and going out and channeling them towards digital assets, it's going to do a lot for them. And frankly, to go back to the point made earlier about wealth management platforms, you know, the folks that have gone out on their own, despite their wealth management

platform not offering crypto, you know or crypto you know investments and you know being a bit more daring earlier on look there's a bunch of folks that I know that were involved in the likes of Voyager and Celsius and just got incredibly you know jonesed up by crazy return profiles and then got utterly burned but But then there are other folks that have been playing it slow and steady all along the way when it came to digital assets. And they've done well, but that's a really small minority of people. There are so many people that have yet to go ahead and adopt. And like I said, I think Trump's statement, the White House's statement,

that the entire, you know, gathering statement, since it's going to be a small group, you know, going ahead and saying something meaningful at the end of what happens on Friday, I think is going to go, you know, is going to be the most impactful. Hopefully it says something, you know, really bold. something you know really bold. Yeah I think that we should get a lot more clarity. I think I trust that Love Nick knows where they stand right now. I don't think we're going to get a clear Bitcoin strategic reserve but I do think that we'll get the ball advanced and I think that that's what people are looking for. I think just what makes everyone hesitant at this point is that you had Trump for the first time say crypto reserve on Sunday and truth social you saw what price action did and the entire thing retraces a day later that's going to make people very gun shy to trade on news like this regardless

in my humble opinion. Scott, regarding Lutnick, can we talk a little bit about the story that came out of the journal profiling Jeremy Allaire versus the founder of Tether and kind of where Lutnick is going to spend his political capital in the White House with regard to Tether and frankly, you know, USDC being more transparent, wanting to go ahead and IPO its shares, being an American footed company. Where do people think if that shakes out, does it matter where that shakes out and how long is it going to take to either? I think that people on the stablecoin side are looking more to legislators to give us clarity there and less to Lutnik on that.

Obviously, he has a personal interest. I think now what? Canter Fitzgerald owns 5% of Tether. I don't want to be wrong, but something like that. And obviously, they custody the bulk of Tether's assets, to my knowledge. So he obviously has a vested interest in Tether at least being allowed to exist in the United States, which some of the legislation, if the worst sides of it happen, could disallow. So you do have this sort of very private battle that was happening in the background for a long time coming very public with Jeremy Laird obviously firing shots and saying that Tether would basically have to be registered in the United States using United States banks. But Circle could also be left on the outside with some of this more aggressive legislation

if they try to push towards literal federal banks or federally registered banks like State Street and Bank of New York, Mellon and Goldman with their stable coins and USTC could be on the outside looking in as well. So I don't know it's even a winner between the two. Rationally, I think the two should be on the same team for crypto incumbents versus, you know, what's likely coming with Wall Street. Dave, go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, the most important point and the good news is, is the administration gets it. David Sachs gets this point. And so it doesn't need people like Simon or I to talk about it. But there is a massive difference, positive difference in favor of the general methodology of stable coins, both USDC but certainly Tether, vis-a-vis the idea that banks should be the only ones who run it.

And that's because our banks are fractional reserve banks and have way more risk without things like the FDIC to prevent runs on the bank. Well, frankly, we know, and the Federal Reserve having a howitzer of liquidity to prevent them. We've already experienced bank runs in the last few years that under normal circumstances could destroy them. Why would you say that banks are safer than an audited entity holding US treasuries as their assets? I mean it's nonsensical and the good news is is the administration understands this nonsensical. So the real question is just educating the legislators and how the sausage gets made. It's a process. And so the real question is going to be what's going to be the rules?

And then you have to ask yourself, well, okay, assuming the rules are you have to be audited, you have to hold US treasuries or equivalent, is Tether going to be capable of handling that? And the answer to that is almost certainly going to be yes. Whether they have to, it depends on how much control or where it is, working with Cantor or other firms, they're going to be able to do that. I thought the Wall Street Journal article

was sort of a hit piece. And you know, it's one of those things that we know that the Tether FUD has been there for years. And quite frankly, six years ago, seven years ago, a lot of it was probably true, but it isn't now. And so the real question is, is it gonna be a Binance-like kind of thing where it's like, okay, you're allowing us

to see what you're doing all is forgiven or not. But you're right on the legislative part. The battle, we know what the battle is. It's banks versus a newer financial system that isn't fractional reserve. Now, if Caitlin Long were on this panel, I'll speak up for her, her comment would be, yeah, and that's why not having Custodia Bank as an approved Federal Reserve Master account was so insane. They would have been the only

non-fractional reserve bank. But do not lose sight of the simple other fact. We want people to hold US treasuries. Scott Pescent's goal is to lower the long bond. Yield is not the price, right? He wants the price to go up, wants the yield to go down. Getting rid of the kind of stockpile that Tether has would be a really bad thing. Do not underestimate that effect because I suspect

that that's driving a lot of policy behind the scenes. Does that answer your question David? Didn't hear me. Simon you had your hand up go ahead. Works for me, sorry. Sorry, no it's hard. It's hard to provide the mic when you're driving. Go ahead, Simon. Yeah, no worries. It's important for everybody to update their narratives. And I'm not saying that because I'm a shareholder in both Circle and Bitfinex and Ripple Labs, these launchers, stablecoin. But the so Bitfinex has been sorry, T for a long time has been publishing attestations and has been cussing their assets through third-party regulated custodians. Now they just announced that they've brought on what they think is the foundation for able to meet the audit requirements and personally

again nothing this is speculation they were waiting for a number of years when problems existed. We know that they bootstrapped this network from 2014. And we know all the problems that they had and all the holes that they had and all the problems that happened in the past. But the audit, I think, now is set a number of years by which you can audit where the processes were fit and proper to pass an audit and also have an environment by which an auditor is willing to take on the risk of, let's face it, probably the most high profile audit in certainly our sector, but also the numbers are touching a company that is more

profitable than Citibank and some of the largest banks in the world. And so it's a lot of risk for an auditor to take on, but I think now is the time to meet those requirements and there's enough known about our sector and industry for an auditor to be able to do that. So I do think it gets solved. Now, this is a battle that I've said this before, but you need to be really careful. Particularly from the circle side, if you're using your lobby pressure in order to say tether shouldn't exist, that means that by definition, a stable coin needs

to know and stop US people using their stable coin, which means that you would break stable coins and all the efficiencies and everything that has made it such a game-changing product. And so the regulations are absolutely vital and crucial and expect like we're talking about the most powerful vested interest in the world that we'll want to see to the table. This is the battle of a lifetime to figure out what stable coin regulations are going to look like. And if we think the Bitcoin strategic reserve and just getting Trump in and the crypto lobby wait until you hit the vested interests in stable coins, that goes to the very top at the Federal Reserve level. It does. And the point that was made before, the biggest risk to Stipp by Dave, the biggest risk to stablecoins,

ironically, is the banks where they custody the assets. I mean, we saw Silicon Valley Bank, obviously, custody of the assets. I mean, we saw Silicon Valley Bank, obviously, the weekend when we didn't know if the Fed would come in with the bazooka, had $3 billion of USDC at risk. And we saw USDC effectively DPEG in lots of question marks as to what their future would be. And Palo Arduino at Tether very clearly stating that when they started to comply with MECA regulations

in Europe, that the biggest threat to Tether was going to be how much of the reserves were they were being forced to put in cash in banks in Europe that are fractionally reserved. So it's a really... Yeah, but this is, this is by the way, I mean, talk about the Custodian story. This is why I had to leave the UK in 2015. Because when applying for a full reserve bank at the Bank of England, they did absolutely everything to make sure it wasn't actually possible. So we had the identical experience that Custodia had at the Federal Reserve because the biggest risk, which is ironic, and I think Dave pointed it out, the biggest risk to fractional reserve banking is full reserve banking, which is actually significantly better consumer protection and also a better route for government to raise and have their finance. So you literally have the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England and the

central banking network being fully exposed for the fact that they're not really needed anymore. And that is a Bitcoin story. That's what we took on. We did not take on the banks. We took on the central banks and stable coins are taking on the banks. Fascinating Dave. Yeah, I mean, Simon and I on this issue are a hundred percent on the same page. I think it's really helpful for people to understand.

However, why this is. Fracture is our banking, we talk about it a lot. Basically, it's a business where you put deposits into an account that you know is risky to loan out to other people, it's a lending business. Banking used to require that because that was, that's what the savings loans do, that's what a lot of banks do.

It's a perfectly valid business model, but it is not the same business model as I put my money into something that is invested and safe and I know and I can then use that money to transfer around the world and to be part of a better method of monetary transfer. Those are two different businesses. Now, we in the United States and in England and a lot of other countries have combined them, but there's no need for them to be combined. It's just historical. And frankly, the risk products, the risk profiles say they shouldn't be combined.

So, yeah, we use fancy words, fractional revert banking and fully reserved dollars. What we're really talking about is there's no need for banks that are engaged primarily in lending and risk management to be the arbiters or the holders of assets for a payment system. They need to be able to participate in the payment system, but they don't need to be the holders of the assets. And I think it's a very basic thing and it requires education and legislators need to

understand this. Too many people ignore why things exist the way they are and just kind of assume them and that's what's happening here. And so, you know, that's how this fight comes down. But Simon's right. I mean, you know, look, I worked for Citibank, you know, for a few years after they bought, you know, the Sol solids with Barney. I understand where this is coming from, and you're right.

This is going to be a big fight. There's no two ways about it. I just want to move on to one more topic before we jump to Buzz. Robbie, since we have you here, there's some news, I guess, around Ethereum. One of the stories was that one of the whales and institutions that I think was the largest Genesis creditor, like 140,000 Ethereum or something, sold 40,000 of those Ethereum over the last two days, had a few people eye-opening. But on the flip side, seems like the Pectra upgrade looking like it's in testing going to be exceptionally smooth and a pretty big advancement for Ethereum. How are you guys sort of framing Ethereum right now

and that ecosystem moving forward since so much I would imagine of what you've invested in and looking at is still built there? Yeah, definitely. I mean, Ethereum and the general EVM ecosystem, we have a lot of exposure there. I think Ethereum, we love it for everything it does and for the incredible community that's there. And I think I didn't make it to Denver

myself, but I heard good things from all my colleagues and friends who went. So I think Ethereum is very much alive and well. But if you've been in the Ethereum ecosystem long enough, I think the one thing you know is just don't pay attention to the price because the price never seems to index precisely with all of the activity and the great things that are going on and being built there. I think one other comment I might make as we've been talking about regulation and the Bitcoin strategic reserve and all that stuff is, I think it's very hard for legislative change to be affected. It's much easier to have talk and make promises and things like that.

But I do think one legislative area where we have seen tremendous progress that should not be underestimated is what has happened with these SEC enforcement actions. So everything from Coinbase and Kraken to to Yugo Labs, frankly, and the fact that we have now seen, I think, pretty much, I don't know of any of the enforcement actions that are still remaining open, so to speak. And that is actual legislative change. And I think that's something that we can all be really pleased about for our industry as far as the US goes. Totally agree. And I've continued to say, I think those are even bigger stories than the legislative

side, because it just allows people to actually innovate and removes all the barriers. I saw also today the Cumberland, Dave, you and I were so, you were so angry, Dave Weisberger, about when the Cumberland SEC suit came. I remember us talking about that. Well, that was dropped as well. And then Robbie, to your point, dropping Yuga and OpenSea and Consensus, all of these, I mean, without legislators having to say so, it seems like NFTs could come back without fear of them being securities and all of these other things.

Completely. We have clarity on meme coins. So listen, like we can't predict, I guess, what the cycle will look like and what will be adopted. But we now know that at least all of those things can be, right? Yes. And I think also the appointment of Brian Quintez back to CFTC where he was before, I think is going to be a fantastic addition to the team because the time that he spent in the meantime at A16z working together with a lot of Web3 projects

I think has really opened his eyes as to what we're trying to build. Robby, question for you. With Danny Ryan founding Etherealize, do you think that that could really help ETH with its institutional adoption as well? I do. I think, honestly, ETH institutional adoption at the moment, from what I understand, is held back by one main thing, which has been lack of regulatory clarity, which has been the advantage Bitcoin has always had because it has never been in the same crosshairs. And so I think, yeah, absolutely. I think once we start to get a little bit more of this regulatory clarity than ETH, I don't see why ETH shouldn't be valued in accordance with the size of the community that builds there.

Yeah, I think a lot of the non-technical community just asks when marketing. That's definitely something to point to as the founding of Etherealize. So I appreciate those thoughts there. But we do have a sponsor today. It's Mentabuzz, previously Edge In. So Mentabuzz, do you want to go ahead and just give a bit of an elevator pitch on what you guys are building? Just kick it off.

Yeah, no. Look, thanks for that, guys. I mean, when I first started building this market with my team, I thought the whole entire market needed an enema. Now I feel like it needs a Xanax. It's like a bad junior high relationships, the ups and downs. I'm just encouraging us as a builder to really hone our focus and build the future, not be constantly paralyzed with speculation.

Look, in my reality, what I see the entire AI market, it's moving to a desperate need for structured validated data. And so we have a chance. And if you guys can focus with me, I think we can see some really cool stuff, right? Look, Big Tech, they built billion dollar legacy empires off of your data.

Lambos, like these guys buy islands. And it's time for us to take that power back. Your posts, your connections, your entire network, it's called first and third party data. And today it's worth over $450 billion a year in revenue. The analytics and tools AI built on top, 89 billion. So AI, it's worth trillions, and the biggest tech multiples are going to be built on your data.

You own nothing. Social data tyrants, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Missouri, they steal your data, information, they gatekeep it, sell it back to you. This is enough. Mintibus is the revolt. You can claim your public profile, you gatekeep it, sell it back to you. This is enough. Mintibus is the revolt. You can claim your public profile, you correct it officially,

you stake your data on our existing network, and in return, we help you organize it, update it, clean it with the network, and claim your rewards and earnings. Basically, own a piece of the network, and that's what we're doing. We've got over a million profile pages index that users use every day. It's got a hundred million data points connected to it all contributed

to this network. It's there over a million visitors, hundred thousand, eighty thousand active users. We have an AI agent in beta. And so here's our bet that we want you to take with us. The next AI boom is going to be this next type of business intelligence revolution. It's all going to be built on your data. Instead of making big tech richer, you can stake your claim. The more data you stake, the more mintibus grows and the more value you control. So if you hate Crunchbase's UI, PitchBook cost, LinkedIn life coaches wrecking your feed, this is your chance to be early in something and take power back when these platforms are really at their weakest.

We can crumble these data empires. So get on the bus, minter bus, and thank you guys for me being able to interject a little bit of my vision and mission in life in the company. I got to say we do a lot of these AMAs and that's one of the best elevator pitches that I've personally heard. I think it's great to showcase problems that we're all familiar with, right?

Everybody sees those life coaches on LinkedIn and has those issues with crunch base. So I really appreciated that. That was good. And then even the cheeky tagline of get on the bus. I loved it. Yeah, I mean, it's laden for collective mind, but that's a little bit too,

it's a little bit too high level for me. I like to be at the bar, not the wine bar. So how long have you guys been building this? So we've been at it about two years. I mean, we did over 200 different interviews of analysts at different funds and founders and everything. And it was really kind of this labor of love for me.

I've been a builder for 20 years. So part of this is really building, it's solving a problem for me as a founder or investor or team member of all the different roles I've had. I just always wanted this data easy. And the frustration is it's just getting harder and more expensive because they don't care. I mean, there's truly a difference between shareholder value and user value.

And the problem is it's all our data, not theirs. So I really wanna leave this as a legacy product. And why is after two years of building, why is now the time for a token? You know, this was always kind of a struggle, right? You know, do we tokenize? Do we not? When I look at the market, there is a big advantage of being able to allow attribution,

remittance, and reconciliation with your datasets. I think Web3 infrastructure is perfect for that. With AI agents emerging, this is the only way you can scale this type of data, right, and to be able to really truly reward the users for that. So it's a perfect mechanism to just distribute value. And so I feel like if we wait any longer, we'll be left behind. Now is just perfect timing. The market needs a place for reliable validated data.

You need a place to be able to store and stake your data somewhere to get it cleaned. Nobody is doing this today. If we do this right, it'll change everything. Who is the application for? Who's your ideal customer? doing this today. So if we do this right, it'll change everything. So who is the application for? Who's your ideal customer? Like I assume it's sort of like a dual-sided marketplace. Yeah, data is like a Rorschach. This is really funny. I mean, if you go to our datasets and

you do business development, Mintibus is for you. If you do ecosystem development, you get developers that are in different ecosystems data, so it's easy for you to start thinking about how to build your ecosystem. If you're a hiring person or recruiter, it really does replace the need for platforms like Misari Data, Crunchbase, PitchBook to some levels. But as more users join, it strengthens the graph because they're claiming their own data, they're adding additional data points to it. It really is a truly contributory network.

And how does the token fit into things? What's the utility for it on the application? So what we're leveraging the token for is for you to be rewarded. So a user comes in and they claim their profile, they stake their data, and that begins a validation process. Once that data is validated, it's shown as more true to the network and it drives more earnings. You are rewarded tokens for that, for staking, claiming your data. And then once we earn that it's a distribution mechanism. We're allowed to distribute up to 25 percent of the data earnings back to the network. So we use it as a distribution mechanism as well.

There's probably a lot of people tuning in that love the aspect of being able to earn from their data and own their data. So when they're potentially going to the application, how do they know if they're gonna have valuable data or if they're gonna earn, how can they use it to generate some income? Well, it's really like the mechanism of us understanding how to earn is really simple.

So there's some data on the network that is clickable that creates conversion today. We have users paying already today, right? There's APIs that we have big customers like Circle that use it, that we understand what data is more important to them. So the network itself is already an earning network. So we look at which data is being used the most, and that's what determines how we distribute the rewards over time.

It's a fair marketplace and we're not meant to try to do anything like create burnings and stuff. We just have a simple buy mechanism so that you can earn off of it. I think one more thing that's important to bring out is your network is also part of your data too. Your followers, your friends, whatever you want to call it on these different networks, you've built that.

Right now, if you make any one person upset, you can lose your whole entire network. And we know your network is your net worth in this industry. If you don't have the ability of the connections, we're solving for real problems for you to be able to have, hold, and manage your entire business network over time. Right now, it's more important than ever that we do that. So it sounds like it's not just an application where, hey, I'm Dave Weisberger who's up here on stage. I have a huge network and I can make a profile and monetize on that data, but really anybody listening in can

help, can benefit from signing up. Absolutely. Hey, Dave. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's the biggest part of it is, right? A lot of people, we have these huge networks and we'll move from one market to another and that network follows us. Those earnings never go to us.

They go to the people that own the very tiny part of the value of the network, which is the technology. Sorry to cut you off, Dave. No, you're talking about the nirvana that people, one of the two or three underpinnings of crypto that going back since the beginning, how the entire notion of Web 3. I mean, and, you know, lots of people have been trying it. I'm just curious how, you know, being an inbred skeptic, I love the idea, I think it's incredibly important, but how do you incentivize it around there, and how do you get the entrenched monopolies and call them what they are to play along, or do you just have to create, you know, outcompete them? Look, I think

there's a few different things that are important. One, you can outcompete them not in like the giant networks, but you can outcompete them in the small, right? If you think of like how we structure our data is based on tags and it's broken down into, you know, what part of the tech stack does your organization fit into, what ecosystem do you belong to, who do you sell to, how do you sell it? Those tags, we could index any market that way. We focus on, hey, let's get all the ZK startups,

founders, investors, and you can win in a village in the small because you focus on being useful, and then people in that graph want to contribute to the usefulness of that graph. So, competition-wise, it's there. In an overall model and business model construct, people pay for data, right? We already know that, we understand that. We've carved out and we have our money flows, direct to Treasury. That's all. We will be sharing that publicly with everybody.

This is a method where people earn money off of the data already. It's just simply like writing the smart contracts and living up to what you say you're going to do. Right? Dave, do you have any comments on that? smart contracts and living up to what you say you're going to do, right? Dave, do you have any comments on that? I mean, yeah, I guess you have to see how it all develops. Look, web three in every, you know, whether it's all the parties you used to go to in Miami and you, you know, you talk about it, people talk about the difference between web two and web three is web three is ownership of your own data. And you know, it's a trite thing. But you know, it's, it's real. It's very, very real. The issue is individual data doesn't have critical mass, and therefore,

you don't have the ability to do it. So you have to effectively digitally unionize is maybe the best example I can think of, you know, is the only it's very hard to to conceive of how to do it. I mean, maybe it's UX UI. I think that, you know, if Robbie were still up here, he'd probably opine on that. But to me, what you're tackling is incredibly important. It's literally the place where the rubber reached the road in Web Two versus Web Three. So it's I guess he's got to wait and see and how it gets delivered and how it gets accepted. Well, David, I'd love to open up our analytics and stuff on the back end and even show you kind of

how the platform works. I mean, anyone could go to mentibis.xyz and see the platform, right? It's there, it's live. I feel like it's a POC. We have about 5,100, 5,200 contributors of the million to the million visitors. Those contributors, I'd say 70% of them claim their data on the platform or they have their data added, then they claim it and they say that this is ours. That's one mechanism that I can show. Then they earn the points and then instead of them paying 15 bucks a month for a tiny app, it's simple, they use the points.

We tested to make sure that we could see the value and we know which data points convert to paid versus just viewed all that other stuff. That's what we're building the model up on instead of just talking about it and having that debate. We're trying to prove it out over time. It makes for an imperfect build, but if you're passionate about it and you keep driving forward, I do think there's a model in there.

My background, I came from Bell Labs where I was building large telecom business models. So I believe in the model and that the model is true. It's more about making sure that the architecture, the smart contracts live up to it and that people trust us over time. You, sorry, go ahead Dave. I was just going to say it makes sense. I understand that. Sorry, go ahead, Dave. I was just going to say it makes sense. I understand that. Earlier on in the show, you said one of the magic words that's been a hot point over the course of the last six months,

and it was your AI agent. I think it's called M-Gent, right? Oh, yeah. A lot of what M-Gent was, was us just pushing out and understanding how our data would interact and it's allowing us to start to engage with the community and move it. We had a lot of success early on. I think about 45 minutes we went up to 675,000 market cap. That to us was an understanding proof point that, yeah, the Mintibus token should exist, that there is a market for this type of validated data out there. And so, I mean, we're excited about that.

Right now, and this is, you know, we'll make this announcement, and I guess it's now a good time, but the revenue that we generate from Mintibus has started buying back that token, right, as part of the methodology methodology because we just wanted to test and understand. And what role does the AI agent actually play within the application? So it works three different ways, right. The first thing that it does is it delivers alpha in any way you want. Hey, can you give me a list of investors in, I'm on ZK for some reason, in ZK startups in Hong Kong, right?

So being able to answer alpha questions like that based off our data sets are really important. The second thing that we're gonna be introducing into it is the ability for you to upload your data spreadsheets. So any of your old spreadsheets, any of your old data outside public's information lists, all of that stuff into the agent and it'll transform the data and allow you to

stake it on the Mintibus platform. Then it will also allow you to earn points based off that data. So it allows to make it, makes it easier for the user to add in, stake that data to the network. And then the third thing that it will be able to do is, it will be allow you to kind of shift the points

that you earn with your data set and move it to either Mgen or Mintibus token itself, just to make it easy for the users to be able to leverage the data that they are and you know and the tokens that they earn over time. Have you had a significant interest from like the web three marketing angle for this product like the thing that comes to mind is just how cumbersome it can be to get KOL lists and contact information for KOLs and in regards to Web 3 marketing. Has that been a big vertical for you guys yet? A lot of this is, I focused on one enterprise customer for us and they're amazing. We have had a lot of marketing agencies that come. And so we'll be giving access to kind of the back end. It's more of a advanced mod position for certain cities

and certain representatives in certain cities for the next wave. And that's where you kind of want to be. That's the sweet spot for the data. We just need to make sure that people are respectful and responsible with it, right? I think of us as being a steward over time of this, and so grabbing this, you have to be sensitive and smart. So in that regard, what is next for your community and product roadmap?

So look, I, you know, for me, like we've been constantly iterating. We've got a million pages live. We have groups list live. There's a lot of things that I'm going to be like holding off for the next iteration. We're going to start releasing a lot of different polls, not because we don't have things we want to build out, but because we want to create this sense where if the community says that they want something on Telegram, a certain data set, a certain product feature, they also get to see us deliver it. And that's how we want to build trust over time.

Based on a couple of conversations with some launchpads we have right now, we're looking at a TGE early, between the 17th and 22nd of March. We've been at this for a long time. We just have a lot of indicators and signals that the timing is right right now for us. And so we'll be moving on that right away. So you guys will see and hear a lot more of us

banging the drums on that in the near term. Very cool. So that date was March 17th, you said? Yes. Awesome. And how does your product compare to traditional data platforms in terms of privacy and user control?

We, there's two things. One, we have all similar privacy and user controls as competitors, Masari Data, Nansen, all the way up to some of the bigger boys like LinkedIn. Everybody takes your data, they sell it. It's all just clever ways to get access to repurposing the things about you, all the things. Our intent is to take the tools that they use and use it against them, and give the power and ability of that over time. If you get enough of the network validating the datasets that we have on the network, that gives us the ability to pull all of that revenue away from them.

It's the refinery and the actual data lake that everybody talks about that they need to have, but they don't want to poke at LinkedIn or any of these other large providers that have the access because then you don't get to build your network. But we've got enough of the network now in

Rhythm that I don't think we have to be worried about them anymore. We just have to push it and build better. Very cool. Well, I commend you for what you've been able to build thus far. I mean, it's two years of building. You don't come across projects that build for two years, and then launch a token quite often in the space, especially ones who can speak as eloquently about the problem as you can. I care a lot about the problem and I've tried to do this in a way where I don't have to

give the value away to a bunch of VCs or a bunch of insiders. I want to give the value back to the people that are actually on the platform that use it, that need it every day. Right? That's the only way a platform like this works. It's been very hard with the current market going up and down and left and right. This is not my first rodeo. It's not my first round. It's not my first network. I hope it's the last one. I promised my. It would be right. I think you're right. Yeah. You know, I'll always get the bug, but I do.

I like, look, I care about everybody. That's that's an actual builder that gets frustrated with data. I do not think my platform is perfect. It's far from perfect, but we don't have enough engagement with you as a community to build to that. The more you actually throw into this, um, the more return that we'll get for us all over time. All right. I to that. The more you actually throw into this, the more return that we'll get for us all over time. All right, I appreciate that. Well, there's about 4,000 people who are tuned in right now. How can they help and how can they get involved? So, one, sign up to mintibus.xyz.

One, sign up to mentibus.xyz. Join, if you don't see your profile, that's okay. The system will start pulling that data together for you. Claim your profile right away. You'll get rewarded for that in the next iteration. It will do an NFT drop or something very soon for all those users that you'll be able to convert and won't just be pedantic or pandering. So if you sign up, share, talk about the mission, talk about the value, give us about two weeks

after the token launch when we're putting this to work for the new product, and then judge us harshly, critique the shit out of us. This is your data, right? This is your data, your network. It should be your earnings. It will be your keys over time. That's it. That's it. Hold me accountable and let's go. Cool. So sign up, check it out. For anyone tuning in, click on the Mentobuzz profile there. Give it a follow.

Any final words for us here today before we wrap up? Build. Don't panic. Don't listen to what everybody's opinion is of the last like 35 seconds. Oh my fucking God. Just build and it'll be okay. Yeah. Building certainly takes away the stresses of the market going up and down. Sunday, I think it was Sunday when Trump made that reserve announcement and we go up however much we went up and down. Sunday, I think it was Sunday when Trump made that reserve announcement and we go up however much we went up and then retrace the entire next day. It's like if you're just building and not staring at charts, it's just noise. So I appreciate

you for joining us today. Everybody have a wonderful Wednesday and make sure you give Mentobus a follow there. So thanks for joining. today. Everybody have a wonderful Wednesday and make sure you give Mentabus a follow there. So thanks for joining. All right, thanks guys. Take care everyone, have a good day.