The Wolf Of All Streets - Chatting to Animoca CEO w/ @DEGA_org | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

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Testing. I saw a speaker. We got to get you co-hosted. Yeah, it's all good. How are you? I'm well. Bro, you're freaking out. What happened to you being able to deal with market crashes and shit? You're losing your shit. I'm not freaking out. What are you talking about? You're freaking the hell out. Or you just think the cycle will be very different to the last one. What are the two?

No, I think the cycle will be the same, but the things that are successful will be different. So what things do you think will be successful this time around? I think that hard to explain because nobody has context. What I've been saying to Mario privately is that I think there's a ton of projects launching and that most of them will do poorly in this cycle because people are wise to the game that we've discussed previously here that it's largely insiders who get in early and people understand not to necessarily buy every single launch with the expectation it will go up and that they've largely gone down so far.

That said, I think, hopefully, that fundamentally sound projects that are not just hype and have legitimate use cases and are building things or have survived since the last cycle could do relatively well. And also, I think that whether we like it or not, there will be continued meme coin speculation heavily, which will take a lot of market share from other parts of the market. I'm not concerned at all about this correction. I've been saying for a month and a half now that I thought it was going to be a very slow, boring and downward summer. And that we would start to see a parabolic into the fall. Also my opinion on those things is that if you look at the past cycle, 2020 was not a huge year in, for all of these new projects.

It was 2021 in a very brief period when things were going absolutely insane on launch and going nuts and then 2020 was actually pretty muted so i'm just trying i don't think it'll be different than last cycle i think people just think we're already in the 2021 part of the cycle and not the 2020 part but do you think so so then my next question will be do you think that that when this cycle is in full steam ahead um so post or whatever end of this year early next year you think that startups so these early project these startups the idos and ios do you think they'll go back to the same game that was played previously um and i would want to point out was played in the

last cycle and the one before yeah but do you think it will continue or do you think that's that's it the game is like this no i think we'll continue i just think that listen i think a lot of them can be fundamentally successful i think that tokens can do quote unquote well but i mean you have to remember that in 2021 a token would launch and it would be a thousand x for the vcs and early insiders who literally funded like a week before right they'd be up a thousand x and then that chart would actually go up for a while before obviously we hit sort of the summer and that's when things went down and never really recovered.

But that happened. But this time you're already seeing they launch and they just kind of trend down. No, so I do want to push back. So they've only started showing that trend down and by the way, you can move topics whenever you like. But it only started trending down when the market, when you kind of started bouncing down from or retracing from the all-time highs. Prior to that, you were seeing a very similar repeat of the last bull cycle, just at a much smaller scale because this bull cycle is much earlier.

I just, that's potentially true but i have not seen things and like i said i kind of expect it in 2025 so it's i'm not like bearish or down i just think that uh it depends on timing and we've talked about that before but i just don't see i mean i see things things launching at 5 and 10 and 15 x's which is amazing for someone who got in early and maybe cashes out their initial, you know, tranche at TGE or something. But who knows what the unvested, the vested tokens will be worth in 12 to 18 months. And there's been very few, I think, where retail have gotten excited and bought in and

price has actually gone up so far. It doesn't mean it won't. I'm just saying that it's a little different. And I think to your point, people just got very excited because Bitcoin made a new all-time high earlier in this cycle. But that's Bitcoin. And this time, a lot of that money is not going to flow into altcoins because it's in the ETF world. Listen, I've continued to make the point, which I think is becoming more valid in my mind with time. I just see Mario disappeared. But we had this idea that if Bitcoin made a new all-time high or if Bitcoin surpassed $50,000 at

the time or $60,000, we'd get this massive retail rush of excitement and the same FOMO from last cycles. And that didn't happen. I didn't even have people in my family calling me and asking me or congratulating me that Bitcoin had made a new all-time high. My theory is that because people in the last cycle didn't really come in through Bitcoin, they came in through Doge and NFTs. So if we want to see renewed extreme retail interest, I think it would be a new Doge all-time high or NFTs recapturing the value that they had at the top, because that's the assets that people are sitting in and they're underwater. And I know we have this topic here. Market is fear.

Is it time to be greedy? Maybe. I mean, we finally saw the crypto fear and greed index for whatever it's worth. We finally saw that drop back to fear after being in extreme greed and greed for all of this time. And now the second we get even a small bounce, what do we see happen, right? Bitcoin bounces a little bit off just under 57,000. Money starts flowing immediately, immediately back into memes and Solana. So I don't think there's really fear in the market if that's what's happening, but maybe I'm wrong. And I was waiting for Mario to come back. He's not here. I mean, it just feels to me like we're still in the heavy speculation phase and that memes

are dominating. I mean, Mike, you always love to talk about signals of frost. There was a Bloomberg article today, actually, that said that something you've been saying quite frequently is that Bitcoin is the canary in the coal mine for greater problems with markets, and that this drop is a leading indicator. Well, Scott, you've been all over it. It's just a classic case. You sometimes just put your finger up and look around and see when you sense too much bullishness. And if you've got good long positions on prudent traders lighten up. And I think that's what's happened. So I do enjoy the headline. But it's completely inappropriate when you have on a one year basis.

Bitcoin is up 100 percent on a year to date basis. It's up 38 percent. This example of how far it went. We have to point out right now we're in the hangover stage of the perfect storm we had a perfect storm for all-time new highs a lot of people like you predicted that we got it and if you didn't sell sorry now we're hitting some of those stops so i look at it completely now this is completely dependent on beta meaning um bitcoin's both broke broke below 60 000 and to me it's equivalent to support the s&p 500 around 5 000 i'll be publishing on that tomorrow if s&p 500 breaks below that support which i think it

will it drops 10 all it does is still it's just revisiting the upward trend line from the bottom in 2020 so it's just a way overdue correction in risk assets. And I think we're going to look back at history and say, oh, that high was pretty significant. And what did it do? It just took all the Fed easing out of the market. So this is part of the worst case scenario, I think, for risk assets. All they're doing is they're succumbing to the high price cure. And the high price cure, as you can see that every day that we haven't had Fed easing, we're not going to have the Fed easing. It comes back to my base cases. I don't think the Fed's going to ease.

The stock market goes down and tells them to, which has implications for Bitcoin. So let's put some numbers on that. Bitcoin round is breaking below 60. If I'm right and we just have a normal bull market correction in the S&P 500, it breaks below 5,000, goes to 4,500. It's like 10% from this level now. That would put Bitcoin close to its 50-week moving average, which is around 40,000.

I hate to say it, but it's just facts. Bitcoin usually trades about three times the vol till the S&P 500. We all know it got way overrated long, and I just updated the latest fund flows. We had total of, since, you know, in Q1, we had a total of about $12 billion of ETF inflows in Bitcoin ETFs. Now we're at about $400 million of outflows for just this month alone. So I think what's happening- We had over $500 million yesterday. Yeah, well, there you go.

So your data is maybe better than mine. I'm just looking at what's on the Bloomberg terminal. So to me, that's the overall. Tomorrow will be the trigger. So here's the key thing I'm publishing tomorrow is if the S&P 500 stays above 500, that peak I'm seeing in crude oil might be less likely. The peak I'm seeing in copper might be less likely. But I think the key risk is tomorrow. Here's my take. And I think what happened is Powell, I think, has already seen the number, the data. They usually does. I think he

hinted at that yesterday. It's going to be a little bit weaker than expected for payroll tomorrow. So if I'm right, I don't know if a weaker than expected number is going to make the stock market go down. But to me, it's all correlated right now. And Bitcoin is one of the best leading indicators right now. It's pointing towards just a normal reversion of a bull market. What's the relationship then in your mind? The Bloomberg article that I read effectively pointed to Bitcoin as a leading indicator because it meant that liquidity was drying up in general. And so if Bitcoin was dropping based on reduced liquidity,

that was a signal that there'd be less liquidity across all markets and therefore it would see a drop. I enjoy that. I have to look at the article from a journalist. I just look at it as an ex-trader. I don't like to dig into details that much because it just confuses me. I just look at price. And sometimes that's the bottom line in everything, particularly when it comes to supply and demand and commodities. Almost always it depends on price. They'll react to price. In this case, it's going down because it's going down and there's better you know it's just the price has gone down it's broken through key support i think now i look at as a trader okay if it bumps up near 60 000 it's probably going to be resistance it gets near 50 000 probably good support but right now it's just that key the

key thing i've been pointing out we've been and you've been all over just that divergent weakness in bitcoin versus gold um which is what i've been worried about and so i'm still bullish gold um and that is we had um as beta made an all-time new high but bitcoin the bitcoin gold ratio did not break above that 2021 high and i think what we're seeing now is the leverage money it really runs this this whole business the leverage money is just saying okay fine momentum's switched to down for now. I'll trade that and see what tomorrow does. But by the end of this week, by end of tomorrow, if Bitcoin's below 60, and we see the S&P 500 creeping below 5,000, to me, I think that's

a pretty good risk off sale indication for the month of May. I think historically, I don't want to quote it wrong, but something like four of the Aprils have been down for Bitcoin. Of course, guys, I'm not saying it's time to panic. Nobody should. We've had all green months since August or September. Eventually, you're going to get a cool off. I'm not concerned necessarily about the Bitcoin price action. But it's worth noting that I think there have been four down Aprils and three out of the four Mays have been, I think, on average down about 13% after a down April. I don't know if that's meaningful or not. Mike, what do you think? For the traders, I have to admit, I used to focus on that. It's on my DI list. I deliberately ignore it. And I appreciate hearing it from you. And that's why I'm just looking, trying to stay away, look more in the macro. And I think if you back off and look at the macro, you say, okay, this had a great rally. Bitcoin had a great, did it have good

reasons for that rally? Yes. Are those short-term reasons gone? Yes. The big picture, sure. Declining, diminishing supply, increasing demand and adoption. I get that. But to me, my radar for pattern recognition has been so high on the S&P 500 rally, this leaving gaps and no corrections. And now we're starting to start the correction since October, which typically means you have a full correction of the rally. That's a technical outlook. And then I look fundamentals fundamentals i've been pointed out volatility on the vix volatility index on the sv500 if you divide by you know the t-bill rate which is another key factor that's pressuring the stock market it's the lowest on a 20-week or 52-week basis since 2007 and then i see plunging indicators from bond yields in china on a macro scale and in a micro scale to me me, this is just the beginning of a correction.

And I see the peak in crude oil. I see peaking in copper. So to me, the whole thing's tilting over. And the key trade that should work good in this environment also is what happened at the same time. The two-year note peaked. It looks like it's peaked at 5%. And to me, that was the key level. Last year, 5%?

So TLT. Well, yeah, TLT. Yeah, a hum and a hum. You know, it hasn't worked yet. But, you know, look how gold looked just, you know, a couple of years ago. And it's broken out. And they're still having outflows in gold ETFs. So it's one of those things that it's the most, it's just one of the worst outperforming indices.

But I look at that yield at 4.6%. And I look over at China at 3.2%, 2.3%. Second largest economy in almost all the other major economies in the world running two or three handles in their tenure yields. At some point, US is going to catch up. And if it doesn't, we're going to show the dollar breaking things, which you're seeing in the yen. That's the key thing I want to point out. The volatility in the yen lately and intraday volatility in the stock market are clearly signs of something big happening. And the risk is we just get normal reversion of risk assets,

and Bitcoin is one of the best leading indicators. I've been trying to find the tweets since we're talking macros from Kobe's letter that was pointing out some pretty obvious, interesting stats here, because we've been saying, I've got it. So we've been saying all along, obviously, the economy is strong. And there's been this sort of beating of the drum that the consumer somehow still remains strong. But this, just reading from his tweet here, Starbucks stock, S-Bucks fell 20% after reporting a 6% drop in traffic. DoorDash fell 15% after reporting a 21 million loss. Netflix fell 10% after reporting a weaker outlook. CVS fell 17% after net income fell by 50%.

Etsy fell 11% after reporting weak earnings due to the macro economy. eBay fell 5% after reporting weaker guidance. So these are all extremely consumer-facing companies that should go up if the consumer is strong and potentially showing some of those same cracks, right? We have this sort of narrative, the economy is strong, what we've been seeing from the numbers from the government. And if you ask your average person, they're obviously don't agree, right?

So how do you unpack that, Mike? I think that's a perfect example thanks for pointing out starbucks i have to you brought back a memory i remember being in the trading pits it was 1990 my wife calls me up she says hey mike have you heard about this new company got starbucks and i she said remember she told me oh i just drank some i felt i felt high i'm like all right i bought the stock that day at five bucks and now i look at it thanks for pointing out but the key thing always remember are leading, data is lagging. And everybody gets the fact that the economy is strong.

We also get the fact it's being driven on completely fiscal monetary stimulus, which is also boosting the stock market, which is boosting the wealth effect and inflation and keeping the Fed easing off the table. The rest of the world is tilting towards recession, particularly in China. And I think these are great eating candidates. But I appreciate you pointing out Starbucks. To me, that's just another indication that the market's not going to really believe it until your first iteration is breaking that s&p 500 index below 5 000 now we did a week ago and

it came back up and you got to see confirmation in markets and maybe bitcoin's already indicating that's going to happen mario you back? I am, yeah. You're heavily in the glitch there, huh? Yeah, I think a lot of other people were having glitches. We're just getting kicked out of the space. I'm not going to go back to our discussion. Obviously, I want you to continue what you're discussing and just kind of discussing the market in general. Because if we go down my rabbit hole, you'll be pretty pissed.

It's fine. I mean, there's so much happening right now obviously the relationship we just discussed of macro and bitcoin but there's so much to look at just in bitcoin ryan go ahead have you sorry so before you go to ryan have you discussed the regulatory crackdown as well we saw what happened with cc and roger veer i've been out of the loop for this yeah when you were here the other day with ryan as well we had a really deep conversation sort of about a very philosophical conversation about the government's approach now to Bitcoin, which is worth, I think, even digging into further. We obviously had John Reed Stark one of the days and talked a lot a bit about it. But I do find it pretty alarming at the moment. It's something

I was talking to with James Murphy this morning, met a lawman i mean you know i'm struggling with the fact that a certain sect of bitcoiners are so heavily celebrating all of these government actions and have been for years right they celebrated when the sec came after coinbase and finance and everything's a shit coin, everything's a security. You know, if they didn't realize that the eventual path of that was the government coming after self-custody, whether Bitcoin was a commodity or not, then, you know, I don't know what to say. But the timing, as you mentioned, of Roger Ver at the same time, I don't know he committed uh tax evasion or fraud i don't know the case as well but the fact that like it's being outright celebrated by bitcoiners just because obviously he was the enemy of even though he was probably one of the earliest advocates and most powerful and voices in crypto and libertarian movement in fact they're celebrating this when it's, you know, Bitcoin that he left the country with in 2014 when Bitcoin was a non-event.

Nobody thought about it. Nobody questioned it and literally renounced his citizenship. This is another signal from the United States government, from the IRS, from we've seen the DOJ, FBI, SEC all come after self-custody in the past few weeks. Clear signal saying, even if you leave this country, renounce your citizenship, we still can come after you, you know? And so like I've mixed feelings on it. I don't really care about Bitcoin versus Bitcoin cash. I deeply care about the fact that the government is making a clear move against self-custody right

now and that in my opinion as we sort of evolve it's becoming clearer that the united states government if you want to own bitcoin is just going to want you to quote unquote own bitcoin i should say is going to want you to own a black rock dtf right and not self-custody it and ryan the question i have for you um and scott was talking to james hackman about this yesterday he called me pretty concerned about the crackdown we're. And Ryan, the question I have for you, and Scott, I was talking to James Hackman about this yesterday. He called me pretty concerned about the crackdown we're seeing. Ryan, the question I have for you is, could that, so for me, I'm in Scott's cap that it's actually the same bull market we've seen previously, same cycles we've seen previously, will just repeat themselves with slight variations. Could this change? Could it be different this time considering a regulatory crackdown? Because you remember, Scott, when we had a debate, me, you, and Ryan, about the best store of value, and you guys were going with gold.

I went with – I think I went with – no, you guys went with Bitcoin. I went with other assets. I can't remember if it was gold. And the reason is I was worried – yeah, exactly. But I was worried long-term about a regulatory crackdown, a global crackdown on Bitcoin. That was my concern. It's been my concern since 2015, like an idiot when I didn't buy Bitcoin. So, Ryan, is that something that could actually change the current cycle that we're seeing from previous cycles? I mean, people are scared of governments.

So when the government takes an interest in controlling an asset at any level, typically a government wins. I'm not in the camp of like, oh, Bitcoin's going to skyrocket 200,000 anytime soon. I think the government is stepping in, trying to take a lot of control. And it's really targeting anyone that has large amounts of Bitcoin. So Roger, if he did not have a large amount of crypto or Bitcoin under his control, I don't think he would have been targeted. BlackRock is acquiring as much Bitcoin as possible. They're acquiring ownership of mining facilities. They're going to start probably stepping in to mining pools. They're going to start regulating any large capacity miner anywhere in the U.S.

And I really believe that any company, person, organization, entity that has anything to do with crypto in a substantial way is going to be under the scrutiny and thumb of the government in this country because the government and thumb of the government in this country. Because the government wants control of the flow of money. And that's, that's just what it's going to come down to. That doesn't make a strong outlook in the near future. But when people start settling in, I really believe the US society has become very much sheep in their mindset. We don't fight back, we don't push back, you know, and the best thing we can do in this crypto revolution is better technology to keep them from controlling it.

And that should be noted really quickly, Mario. I just want to add to that because, you know, in context of also the samurai wallet situation, the samurai wallet guys obviously sort of laughed in the face of the regulators in the United States government, right? They basically like loosely invited Russian oligarchs to use the platform, etc. Roger Ver was an outspoken libertarian who denounced his United States citizenship and never stopped speaking against the United States government.

So Ryan, to your point, on top of the fact that he owned a lot of Bitcoin, which he didn't declare when he left, he also put himself in a position where they probably took advantage of the opportunity to make an example of him. Because he's so outspoken. Who is the US government? I mean, you break it down. You have millions of public workers that have been given a, you know, a purpose in life. And what's their purpose is to enforce laws to make laws and to really kind of put their thumb on the rest of the populace. I mean, these people cannot be happy in their jobs or their lives. You know, it's like, what is their purpose they're not creating anything they're not being uh you know constructive in society their whole point is to control other people so yeah you know

roger bear spoke out against certain you know people in the government and they don't like them so and that's gonna that's gonna keep happening at end of the day, our government is run by millions of... I'm going to step back there. I can't say anything more. I don't want to be in the target. I brought you up on stage. I saw you in the audience, so I sent you an invite because, obviously, as experiencing being a part of the trucker convoy, a leader of that and experiencing some of this, I think, firsthand in Canada is what you're seeing in the United States right now.

Predictable, scary, surprising. I mean, what are your thoughts? Good morning, everybody. And thank you for the invite. I don't know that it's all that predictable. And I think we also kind of misattribute malice to incompetence. There's a lot of that that's going around. the map here just because so many people are unaware of what it was, realized that the government was unable to block it, despite the claims in the CBC. And ever since, I've been able to orange pill so many people in all sorts of demographics that really didn't care about Bitcoin until they realized that people's bank accounts were being frozen and they weren't prosecuted,

even charged with anything. And that really scared a lot of people. And in Canada, I happen to know from a source inside the government, what the media here doesn't want to talk about is we had a $1.2 trillion, $1.2 to $1.4 trillion bank run occurring that week. That's why the bank had to back down, because they realized all of a sudden, wait, there's this other asset that we can't control. And everybody else is getting afraid that they're going to lose their money. Like, for example, where I was in a part of Ottawa, predominantly an elderly community. And the elderly people were going into the bank according to a friend of a friend who works in one of the banks withdrawing their maximum amount of money every

day they don't know anything about politics they're in their 70s they don't care they didn't know about the protest all they heard is bank accounts are being frozen and they freaked out right and bitcoin becomes that safe haven for people who want to be able to opt out of the system or maybe have insurance against the system. And I think what we're seeing is a lot of people in government, I mean, you know, full disclosure, long before the Freedom Convoy, when I thought you can make a difference in politics, I ran federally for the conservatives. So I know many of these people, I know many of our MPs, and all the lobby firms and all that sort of stuff they're not fueled so much by control like they it's dr evil it's fear and incompetence and they don't know what this asset is they're worried about the

global economy collapsing uh they're worried about some of the geopolitical issues and they feel as though okay well we can have this bitcoin thing but it has to be somehow attached to the centralized commercial banking system it has to be somehow there has to be a way for us and i think that's what the lummis that's what the lummis jillibrand proposal is stable coins are fine but they have to be issued by banks right exactly exactly they want all you know they want I think what their goal is knowing how they behave. They don't think they're doing anything evil. They hear about the stories. Look, we know the stories to have kids that went on Robin Hood and gambled a ton of money in crypto. They didn't know what they're doing. And all of a sudden they're down, you know, almost a million dollars. There's one particular kid who committed suicide as a result. Nobody wants to see that. And lawmakers hear from their constituents who don't understand what's going on. They freak out and they feel as though they need to react. So their safe haven is,

let's figure out a way to tie this asset to the commercial banking sector. So there's KYC, there's no illicit funds and all that sort of stuff. And I sympathize with that. I understand what they're getting at. But I think we need to evolve as a society and have something that does allow us to have some privacy in the face of authoritarian governments, because we saw in Ottawa what happens when you get an authoritarian government. And By the way, we're all still subjected to a $450 million lawsuit. We're being dragged through the courts for the next, I don't know, eight years, nine years, however long this is going to take. So we need this. We need something that's going to give us an insurance against, you know,

clown world. Well spoken. Fred, go ahead. Yeah, thanks. I just wanted to dovetail on what Ryan and BJD were saying. You know, I, I do a lot of crypto law stuff. But before I was doing that, you know, I sued the government on multiple issues, multiple facilities, or agencies, you know, based on all sorts of negligence they commit. And the, you know, at the ground level, it's just people running around like worker bees that really have no autonomy. And they kind of know they have no autonomy, but they don't want to admit it. And so it's just busy work. And, you know, I can't get a settlement for over $75,000 unless they go up to their next level. And then that person, they have a round table discussion. And then if I want to settle for more, they have to go up to

another level. And the point I'm making is that you don't get any real decision making until you go up five or six levels inside the government. And just to get up to that level takes six months, you know, to even have that meeting happen. So all these things where we saw the targets with all the lawsuits have now worked their way up to self-custody is something that's been generating for probably, you know, three, four or five years. And now they're just getting the mechanism of government to work through, work its way down and really get the attack going. So, you know, that's why all of these other lawsuits of taking the offensive. I know you were talking about it on your show earlier this morning is so important.

And, you know, one thing that always boggles my mind is I don't understand. I mean, I get where everybody in the crypto space is coming from with that libertarian bend. But why oh, why didn't, you know, somebody who had 10, $15 billion in Bitcoin buy a couple Congress people, so we didn't have to worry about all this? Hilarious. Taylor, go ahead. Obviously, you're working on policy at the digital chamber, chamber, you're in Washington, maybe you have a bit more perspective than just our theories. Well, certainly, maybe not. You know, a lot of theories going on here. A lot of folks, you know, are operating in that black hole type space where nobody really knows what's going on.

There's a lot of legislation that's, you know, being pushed through. And a lot of people feel very emotional about these issues. They see a headline, they're not educated on the subject, but they have somebody trying to push them in one direction and they'll easily follow. So that's, I think, part of the problem is, again, to everybody's point, the lack of education to prevent people from falling down that cliff and going down those rabbit holes, whether it be Senator Warren's rabbit hole, so that she's leading her fellow colleagues down. That's certainly an issue. But this will continue to happen if the SEC feels emboldened, which they will do if Congress does not provide that clarity. I'm sure we all have issues and technical fixes with the large market structure legislation that provides those rules

of the road. But those rules of the road, whether they're perfect or not, are so important so you prevent an emboldened regulator because they will continue and continue to push enforcement actions down the line if they don't have guardrails. And that is really on Congress to do those. And there is legislation out there to start that conversation. It might not be perfect, but I'd encourage everybody to read a summary of it, send me over any technical edits you have or send anybody at our organization those and we'll help, you know, engage with lawmakers to provide those edits. But we need to be pushing something down the line to get those guardrails in place

because the SEC, anybody can walk in at any point and without congressional, you know, guardrails, do whatever they want in enforcement actions. And, you know, it's perfectly legal to sue anybody in this country for anything, whether it's arbitrary or capricious or whatever it may be. It definitely has a chilling effect. They're very cognizant of that. And they will continue to do that unless Congress sets up those guardrails. Yeah. Mario, I just want to read a quick tweet from David Bailey, obviously from, you know, owner of Bitcoin Magazine and Bitcoin Miami, Nashville, whatever. Just got a call. Another major Bitcoin company about to pull out of USA.

Wave of DOJ subpoenas inbound. Going to be a full-blown war over self-custody. They will lose, but we will have to fight for our rights. Get ready. What impact? So let me, I've got a few questions for you, Robbie. But before that, just based on what you just read, Scott, what impact do you think, and it's going back to the basic question,

I know you guys were getting a lot deeper, but what impact do you think that will have on the markets? Price? Yes. Not on the price. Price. It just gets a bit more granular than just price. Like what would it mean? Will VC start to freak out?

Will innovation just get stifled in the U.S.? I think innovation is already stifled in the U.S. I think that most companies who are seriously building in the u.s i think innovation is already stifled in the u.s i think that most companies uh who were seriously building in the united states in crypto left last year because they this was before the courts pushed back at all we had these conversations a year ago when the sec came after binance and coinbase on back-to-back days that it was effectively over here i'm not saying it is that was the sentiment and that anyone who is serious doing anything in the united states just went offshore and was blocking

americans right so we saw that before as to what it means for price i mean listen a ton of people having to buy bitcoin into a blackrock etf could send price up right i have no idea so like an attack on self-custody doesn't necessarily mean an attack on the price of Bitcoin in the market. But that's not what we, I think, care about so deeply here at this point. Ryan and BJ? Yeah. So, I mean, back to this idea of companies going offshore. I'm already seeing that with miners.

You have miners literally scouring other countries looking for cheap electricity. We have a lot of companies here in the U.S. that have publicly backed Bitcoin. We have Stripe accepting Bitcoin or processing Bitcoin transactions. We have Square. We have MicroSt strategy being a you know champion of bitcoin holding like all these companies are going to become like be on the spotlight like every everything is going to crash down on these companies eventually because they can't go anywhere the mobile ones they're they're going to get out of this country as fast as

possible and it starts cracking down but there's certain publicly traded companies and larger companies that can't move and they're going to have a world of hurt over the next year, I'd imagine. Listen, Uniswap's based in the United States. We saw what just happened. I mean, right? I mean, so the government is coming after Uniswap

and Uniswap tried to build this out of New York thinking that what they were doing was totally decentralized and compliant and have said so from the beginning and they will fight. There's a lot of this happening. I think it's easy to just brush aside the news because we were in a

bull run there, but this has been pretty much a never ending assault. It's either BlackRock is on your cap table or you're in trouble with the government. Well, that's because BlackRock is the your cap table or you're in trouble with the government. Well, that's because BlackRock is the government. Go ahead, BJ.

Yeah, just a little bit of the political frame. I know we don't like that in the space, but unfortunately, this is just the natural progression of what's going to happen, what we're going to have to deal with. And a lot of you guys know I'm pretty much a bitcoin maxi but i'm not hostile towards altcoins i'm a free market guy and i spoke to an altcoin conference last year in florida and the person who spoke before me was very instrumental in drafting the anti-cbdc legislation in the state of florida for governor desantis and he brought up a very interesting point that we have to be aware of, that despite all the laws that are in the books, which again, we saw in Canada,

our lawmakers are violating those laws. And they're just they're punting everything to the courts. And they're letting the courts adjudicate on laws and the courts are getting frustrated, because that's not what their job is either. And I think from a political perspective, you know, you see when Robert F. Kennedy spoke at the Bitcoin conference, and so did Vivek, the reason is because they know there's a voting block there somewhere. They're not sure where we are on the political spectrum, but they know there's something forming. And that's when it's your opportunity. And I know it's annoying. Everybody thinks it doesn't have an impact, but it does. If enough people start reaching out to your representatives in your districts, it will show them that there is that emerging voting block

and they're not just silent and going to sit back, they're actually going to do something. And so you should be penning a letter and email or calling at the same time your local lawmakers and tell them this is not acceptable. I want you to stand on the right side of this and send them Kennedy speech. Send them some of these other, you know, influential speakers in politics like Ted Cruz or whatever and show and send them that there is the will amongst the political class to get on board with allowing us to self-custody Bitcoin and cryptocurrency but if we still if we just remain silent and talk amongst ourselves in Twitter spaces all day long and we don't chase the people who are hired to represent us, nothing's ever going to change because it's us versus the banking lobby. And the banking lobby

has got a lot of power. But at the end of the day, we're the voting block that they need to chase. So just, you know, my suggestion. Well, we're chasing Elizabeth Warren by all supporting John Deaton. So that's it. Oh, she's awful. She's horrible. Go ahead. Scott, can I kind of pivot to a different discussion with Robby? Just a bit of back and forth. Robby, how are you? I'm good, thank you. So Robby, I speak to a lot of your team members,

a CEO of Animoca, for anyone that doesn't know. I speak to a lot of your team members just kind of understanding what your guys' strategy is. And hearing the discussion back and forth, and you miss an earlier discussion, me and scott

which we've had privately we had here publicly on spaces i try to always bring anything we discuss privately on spaces because that's what people want to hear and scott was saying how um the whole flawed model of vc fundraising our projects raise money from vcs and then launch a token and it dumps afterwards it worked in the last cycle but people at least retail learned their lesson and it will won't work the same way this time around so in other words this time will be different and we've also talked about meme coins we've talked about nfts we've talked about the markets in general and obviously we're talking about the regulatory crackdown right now so my question to you is what what is anamoka stance with everything happening? I know it's a lot of points.

So I think, let's see, let's start with tokenomics. I think one of the things we've been really focused on is trying to build sustainable token ecosystems. And so I think we've invested a lot in building out our own tokenomics infrastructure. We've got actually quite a large team now working to advise our own studios and subsidiaries and also our investees, our portfolio companies, because we really wanted to try to find that sort of secret sauce of how we can create longevity in our token designs. And I think that this is something that really has to be a focus

because in the last cycle, a lot of people were focusing on designing tokens for particular metrics, whether it was for FDV or whether it was for on-chain activity. And really, I think the metric that we should all be most proud of is just longevity because we're trying

to build things that last here. And when we do, then obviously all those other metrics follow. A little bit like in the game industry, if you have good retention in a game, then monetization and all those other things will happen because retention is the hardest metric to achieve traditionally. So I think that's something that we really think hard about. And we've built a big internal organization, not just from token design, but all the way through exchange listing and market making and just the handholding of the entire tokenization process from start to finish. So I think that part, we've invested a lot of time and money into building out. I think when it comes to the regulatory piece, we obviously think, I guess, we're less preoccupied than we would be

if we were based in the US specifically, just because the US seems to be a very complicated and uncertain market from a regulatory standpoint. I've been listening to this spaces just for long enough to get a sense of that. Historically, all of our token launches, we've geofenced the US, which is kind of a shame, obviously,

because we would love to cater more to audiences in America. But I think the regulatory uncertainty makes that very difficult for companies. But I have to say, and I mean this with all the love in the world, I think one of the great things about Web3 is that we actually don't really need to, we can build a great business without the US, frankly, as a market, because we are very, very global as an industry. And so we can afford to bide our time

and wait until the US decides what its regulatory framework is going to be and then onboard users there. But for the time being, we can actually have our products available throughout the rest of the world. And there's a very, very big and thriving Web3 audience pretty much in every pocket and corner of the world. And do you think this time around, so going back to the markets, do you think this time around will be different to previous cycles that we've seen? Are you betting on it being different? Yeah, for sure. For sure. Because I think that we've seen, obviously, as they always say, zoom out, right? So if you see the overall market trend and trajectory, the floor of where the inflection points hit continues to rise over time. And I feel like also with the amount of investment that we've had in the space over the

last three years, particularly in 21 and 22, we have a lot of teams who've invested a couple, three years in building out really strong infrastructure, strong product offerings, and all of those things are going to be the foundation on which the industry gets built now. So I think that means that although there's volatility, we don't necessarily go back to where we started because the industry itself has made so much progress in the meantime. If you just look at our section of the industry focused on entertainment and gaming, look at how many Web3 enabled games there are out there now of quite high quality, strong user engagement, et cetera. I mean, you can't compare it to you know mobile gaming yet because we're only a couple years in as opposed to a decade in but you know we're not we're definitely not going back okay um and and beyond that do you think um so one thing you mentioned

there's a lot of teams a lot of projects from previous cycles um when i talk to a lot of vcs there's one kind of uh one thing i hear across across many of those VCs is that it's much harder for a project from previous cycles, even if they've got the right tokenomics, to create momentum versus just kind of relaunching and doing something new. We've seen a lot of those entrepreneurs that are trying to do the right thing. They launch a business, they launch a project, but it just doesn't go well from the last cycle and then they redo it all over again this time around are you saying and that's a bit of a selfish question there is potential at looking at those quote-unquote dead projects from previous cycles and and focusing on those rather than completely new startups mario i think i think he's saying that a lot of them haven't even launched yet i'm assuming Like people have been building for you.

Yeah, I think it's… And also, I think there's a very important differentiation on how you define success. My point earlier is that I don't think you'll see every token that launches pull 100 to 1,000x just because. Right? And maybe to Robby's point, it'll be the ones that have been building and didn't just cash grab and create a project last week because it's a bull market. No, so Rob, I understand that one. That one I understand. A lot of projects we invested in previous cycles still haven't launched.

But I'm talking about projects that have launched in previous cycles. The token is listed but dead even at the start. The business, the founders are still building in the background. Is Animoca looking at projects that quote-unquote died in previous cycles? At least the token is dead, but there's a business behind that token that is just not getting the attention. For sure. For sure. And I think some of the complication there is, Mario, to go to that point, is that the meta of the first quarter of this year was all about new tokens.

And so if you have an existing token, it's obviously not as sexy as whatever the new thing is out there. So there was a lot of interest and attention focused on the new stuff. And I think one of the ways that we can think about being creative, of course, is if you have a rich and robust ecosystem and a strong community, it doesn't prevent you from also launching additional tokens or new NFT collections and new content. As long as it's in line with whatever the product was to begin with. I think communities appreciate those kind of innovations. Okay.

And the next question I have is about Bitcoin, the Bitcoin ecosystem. Scott, me and you were on a couple of panels in Talking 2049 talking about Bitcoin. I met a few people from the Ordinal team in the last few days. And we're deploying more capital in that ecosystem. Your thoughts? I think it's a great ecosystem i mean obviously it's the most liquid and the largest you know amount of capital fdv available within web3 um i think the thing about the bitcoin ecosystem is that they the people there have not really had a chance um or an opportunity to invest in other aspects of the usage of Bitcoin, really.

We saw a bit of ordinals last year, and only now we're starting to see more rich entertainment products. I think the jury's still out whether the Bitcoin community likes that kind of thing or not. But I think it's great to see people innovating and trying to create new stuff on Bitcoin, because the opportunity is tremendous, in my opinion. Mario, I don't know you weren't here yesterday. I don't know if you saw the news that MicroStrategy is launching. It was called MicroStrategy Orange or Bitcoin Orange, which is basically digital identity on the Bitcoin blockchain. And it just has thrown the Bitcoin into it.

It just made me think of it because robbie said however we don't know how that community will receive these things is a polite way of saying there's a huge divide in the bitcoin community as to what bitcoin should be and how it should be treated as an asset and whether people should even build things on the chain at all but it was fun watching the mental gymnastics of uh the people who said nothing should ever be built on bitcoin who want you know you to get their permission to use a permissionless blockchain, when it was Saylor who was doing it. And just before, I know we're shifting to the Bitcoin ecosystem,

I do want to say we do have Dega. We're going to chat to them in a bit as well. I know, I think, Scott, you're invested. I think we are invested. If not, we want to be invested. So I want to give him a shout out, because the next question to Robbie will be related to something that Dega does, and that's kind of creating metaverses and Web3 gaming. These are two ecosystems I love talking about, Scott Bailey talks about on these shows, and Anamok has been very active in investing in those two ecosystems.

So my next question for you, Robbie, is gaming and metaverse. I think metaverse, no one's talking, no one's using that term anymore. Instead, now the sexy term is gaming. At least that one still has some legs. Your thoughts on those two ecosystems? Are we still way too early to start seeing adoption? So I think gaming definitely has legs. Last time I checked, we're still the largest form of entertainment.

So that's good. I think definitely. I think the thing about gaming that has to you know people have to remember is that building great games takes a long time i mean it is a complex product and most games even casual mobile games you know will take you six months to build a decent product um and and most things that people are accustomed to on console or pc you're talking about two years of development time. So if you wind the clock back to when the investment in this space started with NFTs as playable in-game content, etc., that's why we're really only just seeing a handful of games of sort of AA quality starting to emerge now, because it just takes time to make these kinds of things.

I think definitely that is, you know, I think the way to look at it is from the perspective of the gaming industry, in my opinion, all games will run on blockchain infrastructure. The only question is how long it takes for the industry to completely pivot in that direction. And if we see what happened with developers who were developing on PC and console moving to mobile, that switch took anywhere from five to 10 years in its entirety. And most of the big companies in that space were the ones who were the early adopters of the new medium

as opposed to the people who were dominating the previous platform. And those incumbents who were big on PC and console, they were the people who were dominating the previous platform. And those, you know, incumbents who were big on PC and console, they were the ones who joined the latest. So I think you'll see the same thing now, obviously, with Web3, with companies like Sky Mavis, you know, who made Axie Infinity, which was a company that really was unknown prior to Web3, but emerged early on as a leader in the new platform. And is there any other narratives

that are interesting to you? Obviously, we've seen Deepin, we've seen RWAs, and we've seen AI dominate the current cycle, at least for now. Any other narratives that are not getting enough love? So I think interoperability when it comes to games slash metaverses. So when you have these kinds of interactive experiences

and the ability to use your playable content and your economic value between applications, I think a really simple one that people don't highlight enough is that Pixels, I think, is still the most popular Web3 game at the moment. But interoperability is a big feature of it, meaning you can bring your own NFT as your avatar in that game. And it's a very social game. So people like to hang out with their

communities. We did a big activation with our Mochaverse community. And we had literally hundreds of thousands of Mochaverse holders, all with their Mochaverse NFTs as their avatars, hanging out and socializing in that space. So I think we'll see a lot more of that kind of interoperability, but even more deep as more complex games emerge. And shout out to Mockupverse as well. I think we're invested. I'm not sure if we're invested or not, but I know Tyler and the team really well.

And you guys have built something incredible there. And shout out to Pixels. I know we're invested because I did a space for them. But yeah, very bullish on interoperability. uh but again i think something's even discussed so much in the last full cycle but uh finally we're finally seeing it uh um it takes shape in this cycle and you've given a good examples with good example pixels now moving to something scott enjoys discussing a bit more that's the markets in general um if i asked you to predict what would happen next um what what would you at least what's the anamoka strategy and then what's your personal opinion uh i think those two are pretty much matched and it's funny because i've been i've

been um chatting with people on twitter about this over the last couple of days because if i just read my timeline on twitter people are seeming seeming like they're really bummed out because apparently the market has crashed. But if I look at a three-month graph or a six-month graph, it looks like something anybody would be jealous of, to be honest. So I think once you get to my age, you start to look at things on a slightly longer timescale. So I think for me personally, and for the company, I think we look at things in sort of six-month, one-year increments at a minimum. I think the outlook for the next 12 months is fantastic, frankly, in our sector. But obviously, we take things when we think about developing the business more on a three to five-year time horizon. Okay.

And is there any certain things you're watching out for? Any black swan events that could happen? We can't predict black swan events, but any specific, like regulatory crackdown or what are the other things that could lead to kind of an ugly 12-month...

Well, certainly a macro downturn could be problematic. Yeah, I think, to be honest, between now and the US elections, I don't see anything on the horizon that could be expected. And frankly, I think to be honest, between now and the US elections, I don't see anything on the horizon, you know, that could be expected. And frankly, I think what's happened with the settlements with Binance, etc, has been really great for adding clarity to the space and removing some of those uncertainties. But, you know, obviously, the US elections are a big unknown and have an a disproportionate effect on the rest of the world frankly scott any other questions to robbie i really enjoyed that back and forth i i think it's great and i think it aligns with what we're saying i just for clarity from what we were talking about earlier i am in no way bearish on the industry i think everything robbie said is correct i think you know as we've talked about many times, the sort of bubbles we get in each cycle are just

great ideas that are too early. Because people, you know, tend to think that things will happen exceptionally fast, but also underestimate how parabolic they'll go when it finally does happen, right. And so I think, you know, to Robbie's point, I think now we're really seeing AAA games coming that we expected last time. And so gaming maybe will be a huge narrative that finally comes to fruition this time, which leads me to believe that most of the building on Bitcoin, RWA, Deepin things that we're seeing just be talked about now are probably next cycle narratives, right? And just kind of the same concept, which when we talk about what we talked about earlier with the early investments and the pre-sales and stuff, and like any industry,

just 90% of this stuff is either too early, or is a cash grab or retail is just not interested in it. So I think for them to just be successful, it's going to require, as you said before, impeccable market timing and real interest from the audience. I just don't think it's... I could be wrong. But I just don't think that we're going to see a situation again, where literally everything that launches goes 1000x because it's new and launched. And I that uh that's happening in meme coins right now instead of in like uh you know sort of the ideal oh shit so scott brought up meme coins for the first time robbie your thoughts on the meme coin craze that we're seeing i was very skeptical at the beginning but i started warming up to it not to the whole you know popping up meme coin

launching every day but more to the concept of a decentralized community starting out of nothing yeah i mean i think i think meme coins are great honestly because i think meme coins are an expression of real decentralization these are tools that anybody can just go and make something fun and express themselves and organize communities with other people it's not up to us i think to judge whether they're good or bad. I think the great thing is that they can be done in the first place. Okay. Do you think Anamaka will be looking... Anamaka hasn't invested in any meme coins,

have they? Not that I'm aware of. Is that even a thing? Well, yeah. Yeah, you can. You can just buy it off the market. You can do it. Okay, go ahead.

I think one of the tricky things with meme coins is that it's ephemeral. It's ephemeral. It's really just a moment of culture bottled up, so you can't predict it. And so I think it doesn't make sense to try to invest in it. You just have to lean into it as a trend, in my opinion, for user acquisition. I will say, Mario, the first thing that happened when Bitcoin bounced even slightly yesterday and today is that, and I said this at the beginning, is that meme coins started flying again and Solana started flying again. So you can tell where the crypto natives, what they're still interested in and what they're going to be doing anytime they think they get you in a small window of possibility. Let me go to, to, so Scott,

I'm going to go to back and forth with Dega as well, because I think it's the perfect time to talk about the game and metaverse narrative. Robbie really enjoyed the, the back and forth. And you're welcome to join back anytime to these shows, join the ones I do without Scott. Cause at least I literally saw robbie appear i literally saw robbie appear in the audience and immediately invited him up mario so you're welcome i got very many great podcast conversations don't put me in that box i got so many dj questions

scott doesn't allow me to to ask he starts giving me an attitude in the back channels but now privately you and ran are trying to do like a Tucker Carlson show here or something, right? I don't even know what the fuck that is. No, really appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Robbie. Dega, am I pronouncing it right, by the way, guys?

Yeah, that's the right way to go. But you said, so someone said, and I won't say who it is, but we're not invested in Dega yet? No, yeah, you are. Oh, we are. I knew it, Scott. I told you. Scott said, Mario, you're not invested. I'm like, bro.

I didn't say. I said, whatever. Go read the chat, buddy. Let me go back and forth with you guys. First, Dega, I'm actually going to enjoy this back and forth because you guys are working. If I describe it correctly, it's like the Shopify of the metaverse or Shopify of gaming. So you provide projects, the tools to be able to build their own gaming ecosystem or their own metaverse, whatever you want to use it. So not only build it, but allow them to kind of monetize it as well, build out all the functions, the features.

Is that a fair way of describing it? Yeah. well build out all the functions the features is that a fair way of describing it yeah yeah we usually use either shopify or wix uh or somebody you know for the engineers out there something like wordpress essentially a platform that allows you to not need to know the technical aspects to be able to engage with your audience through gaming and tell your story through gaming right as as it was mentioned uh before, I think it was Robbie that said that gaming is the largest entertainment media, right? So you can take music, movies, TV shows, all of it, combine it, multiply it by two, and it's still smaller than gaming.

Yeah. So I want to talk to you about the gaming narrative in general. First, I love the concept, Shopify for gaming. We did invest in a project that did something similar in the last full cycle i'm not sure what happened with them another we skipped on investing but i know them really well but i think they were just way too early um and that's that's probably why we passed on it in the last cycle but i think now we're getting to a stage where um you know adoption i think we had robbie talk about pixels briefly we're starting to see adoption we're starting to see interoperability. And we're starting to see use cases within the ecosystem. It's no longer like a play-to-earn pyramid scheme.

So my question to you is, first, give me your thoughts on the ecosystem in general. Why did you enter this ecosystem? Why is it not too early? And then maybe I'll lead to the next question afterwards. Well, you know the the key thing about gaming is that one everybody in gaming is digitally native right and even though there's some friction on the web2 side of things particularly with the creators right the streamers um even so they're digitally native right so you don't have to preach to that entire audience

that something digital has value they get it right So that's one of the key things. The other thing is that we're heading towards a gamification of everything, right? So if you see, you know, your Apple Health application, it's gamified, right? You see Duolingo, it's gamified. So everything is taking the lessons learned from the gaming industry

and starting to apply it to everything else. And you can see a lot of digital brand activations like fortnite uh you know nike and fortnite and many other brands so i think we're we can take a call of this the rise of the gamer nation right so if the gaming nation was an actual country it would have like the gdp of the emirates so that's why we believe that right now, as we're rising, as we're breaking down the barriers and smoothing out the tension between Web3 and Web2 gamers,

it's the right time to set yourself up for success. My position is, I'm going to ask you another tough question. And this is something me and you, Scott, were talking about today and yesterday and the day before and in the back channels, the whole concept of launching a token, raising the money privately etc which i'm i'm bullish on i think the model model is is a smart model if done right um i think you're in the middle somewhere and i

think some people just don't like the model in general um so so daga the question i have for you is kind of moving away from from gaming a bit you guys have a token you've raised money from vcs you've had a successful raise i appreciate you allowing us to invest as well. And then you're going to list your token on, I'm guessing, SEXs and launchpads, so centralized exchanges, and potentially do a launch on launchpads. Is that true? And then I want to ask you questions on that model as well in general. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Okay. And what are your thoughts on this model? What was the process like? And maybe you can also tell us a bit more about you know you're a partner of the show so don't don't don't hesitate to tell us about who your investors are and what

um what centralized exchanges you're listing on etc yeah so i mean i gotta tell you that for a lot of people in emerging markets which is most of the humans in the world um there really isn't any other way that you could build out a bleeding edge venture in tech other than going with blockchain and crypto, right? Like if you go, like I know this might sound like weird to somebody in Silicon Valley or in New York or maybe in London or Tokyo, but the rest of the world doesn't have access to that type of financial structures. So crypto is kind of like a place where people, heck, I mean, they even

start companies anonymously, right? So you can be from Sri Lanka, you can be from Nicaragua, right? And if you're creating and building and communicating correctly, then you can tap into capital and actually start connecting with the rest of the world and building. So I think it's a great model, right? As anything, it's open to abuse by some players. But overall, across time, it's a net positive, hands down. And the next question I have, and I'm asking a bit selfish questions, so we'll kind of dig into Dega again. But this one's about Dega.

What are the launchpads and centralized exchanges you guys have partnered with and maybe some of your key investors? Yeah, so let's start with the investor side of things. You know, we started our, we're right now on our second round. The first round is a very small round. And we had investment from Kangaroo Capital, from Cortico PS Games, which is one of the coolest AAA games in space. Melt Finance, Ken Oling, who launched...

I know Melt Finance. Yeah launched I know Mel Finance yeah I know Mel Finance yeah yeah Ken he was in the space that's how actually I got to know the space he was in our space

I think Scott wasn't he yeah Ken's great I did a podcast with him as well yeah from Mel yeah

yeah well he's he's an advisor an investor a partner so we've been working with them closely as well oh there just maybe tell him

his Twitter account got suspended I'm just checking their twitter account now meld underscore defy and they got suspended poor guy they're now they have a new one now it's on meld on meld there it is oh yeah yeah cool yeah we're following that one sorry my bad cool yeah so go ahead and then you have do you have partnerships with launchpads and centralized exchanges or too early? No, we're in conversations with them right now. There's like two launchpads that we've closed and we're working on three more. I just don't want to mention that because we want to do the public announcement jointly together. But yeah, we're going to be listing on at least two centralized exchanges and also two DEXs. When do you plan to list?

And again, I'm curious because I'm looking at the market conditions and I'm wondering what your strategy is. Yeah, we're targeting the end of June for the listing. And we're working on a structure to be able to kind of like provide a gamified token generation event. Also, those details will be announced soon. But essentially, to your concerns regarding the market timing and all that things, I think that it is relevant. But it's also important to be able to properly structure your tokenomics for that, right?

And to give you an example, right, a very simple thing is somebody in crypto, most people get the faucet, right? Right. The faucet of the token. So everybody's good at distributing tokens, right? And almost nobody has any mechanic for the sync how do we take the currency out of circulation right and i'm happy to go into details of that if you'd like to yeah um the but so so the next question i have is um uh how do you plan on getting users because i feel like there's a lot of great projects with an incredible idea. And even they figure out tokenomics. They look at tokenomics and they're like, okay, shit. They've thought this through.

And they do a successful raise. But then they just struggle to actually do the most important thing. And that's get users onto the platform. Have you guys thought that through? Yeah, we actually, you know, we've been deploying every feature that we've built. We release it, right? We're not waiting for the entire system to be released. So we already created our map builder.

It's live on over eight blockchains. There's hundreds of maps being developed by the community. We have four games right now that are going to be building on top of Dega. One of them is called the Degens, which is a social simulation gameplay that we're doing in partnership with Venus Protocol. So that's also a key part of the strategy, not working alone, but also with existing communities. On other ones, we're releasing a game with the Dijon Titans and Ordinals. And partnerships like Cornucopius Games that's using our SDK for some of their infrastructure

has also brought a considerable audience and some of their guilds even over to our ecosystem. And we have another stealth game, which is going to be deployed on base in partnership with an artist that has already a large following of millions of people. So the cool thing about Dega is that it's not one game. We're not doing a game or a brand. We're building a platform on top of which third parties can build out their games so we can leverage accessing other people's communities and other brands to grow. Are you worried, by the way, are you worried about the token? And going back to my discussion with Scott, are you worried about the market conditions and the impact that could have on the token? And how did you guys structure your unlock schedule? And just for the audience that doesn't understand,

so when a token launches, I'll explain the process actually after Dega. I'll let you answer the question, then I'll explain it for the audience, anyone that's not in this space. Yeah, so the thing with the market conditions, I mean, we're always going to be exposed, right? Like regardless of that, that's like the ocean, right?

You can't move the ocean. So I think that there might be some impact on that side of things but for us we're releasing at a very low cap right and we've already considerably generated a large amount of attention from our community of to give you an example like we're one of the few revenue generating companies in the space right we've generated more than 600K worth of revenue. That's revenue, not investment. So we've proven the capabilities to be able to pull in the interest and the inflows to our ecosystem. And now that we're actually doing a massive growth campaign, we expect to take those inflows into the millions, right? And we will be centering everything around the token

in the sense that basically the access to the system, the benefits of the other games that are going to be releasing on top of Dega, their tokens, their airdrops are going to be geared to people who are staking Dega. So we expect to be able to create a push to lock out the asset from the market. That's one thing. And then the other thing is that all the fees generated in the Dega ecosystem, when somebody trades an NFT, when somebody trades an in-game currency, those fees go to buy and burn Dega. So you got lockups and you got deflationary pressure.

Let's just get to the flexing part. Like tell us more. Tell me about your team. Tell me about your investors, your plans, your milestones. What makes Dega? Why did we invest? Why did my team

like say holy shit we want to invest in these guys well yeah first off the product perspective right again we're not one game right we're not trying to push one game one brand out there we're a platform on top of which we expect to see thousands literally thousands of games being which is kind of it's like a good it's a good way to get exposure to the ecosystem like i'm trying to get into my my team's head because a game you could take 90 to the ecosystem. I'm trying to get into my team's head. Because a game, you could tick 90% of the boxes and still fail as a game. The failure rate of games is significantly higher than traditional startups. So I think if you get exposure, if you like the whole gaming ecosystem, well, a good way, if you want to invest in e-commerce businesses, obviously finding the right e-commerce business is tough.

Investing in a platform like Shopify just gives you exposure to the industry as a whole. So that's kind of a similar approach from an investment perspective, yeah? Yeah, that's exactly correct. Yeah, that's on the product side. On the team side, you know, me and my team on the technical side have been working together for over seven years. We've built layer ones, sidechains, marketplaces, a whole bunch of stuff. But on top of that, we have a few rock stars in the space, right?

Our CEO, Michael, has extensive experience on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. We just recently onboarded Philip Shoemaker, who's working with me on the product design. He's the former director of the Apple App Store under Steve Jobs. He's also been on Scott's show. We hope we expect to be there again very shortly. We also been on Scott's show. We expect to be there again very shortly. We also onboarded Jasmine Shoemaker. She's the former CEO of Juga Labs.

And she's also working with me on the product design for the Degon Marketplace. And Amro Shihad as well, who's worked with Animoca Brands, Nelian, and several other projects taking them to multi-million dollar races. So we discussed product, we've discussed team. In terms of validation, we already released our stake pools for crowdfunding for Dega,

and we crossed over $14 million worth of TVL. We did that with $0 and paid advertising. We did it 100% organic. We're a revenue generating company, and we've already got four games across BNB, Ordinals, Base, and MultiChain ready to roll, right? So a lot of exciting things coming. But probably one of the hottest things that we're going to be doing right now,

which I'm going to drop the news here, which is we've closed a deal with a manufacturer to be able to bring to the industry the first of its kind device, which is an AI voice command wearable that you'll be able to use to access your portfolio, your analytics, command the AI bots to perform tasks on your behalf, and control both either Dega systems as well as your conventional DeFi portfolio from a simple wearable. So you've partnered with a hardware manufacturer to create that product? Yes. The product's already built. It's tested. It's working. We will be doing the pre-sale along with the TGE.

You'll need to be able to hold Degga tokens to access it. And we're actually going to drop it for free for the people that are doing staking with Degga. Okay, cool, man. Congratulations on the announcement. I have a couple of questions that you probably were not expecting because I know you did a whole show with the Crypto Banter. Holy shit, 10 months ago. Really long time ago.

Are you still going on Cardano? We're multi-chain. We've already integrated on over eight blockchains. Cardano has been a key community that has supported us. Much love we've received from them and we have much love for them as well. But yeah, we're live on Polygon. We're live. We're about to release Cosmos next week. So for us, the vision is that wherever you are

and you need to build your game, we will be there for you. Okay. And then the last question I have, you guys, one of the topics you guys discussed is what's an ISPO? I know it's 10 months ago, so I'm not sure how relevant it is now. Yeah, it's still ongoing. An ispo is essentially a concept that allows users to be able to stake uh into a project stake pool and they give up the yield instead of outright buying the tokens right so um this mechanics allows them to go long right on ethereum and cardano and polygon whatever it is that they want to hold but they still get exposure to a new project because they're giving up the yield in exchange for that project's tokens, right?

So think about it like a structured financial product where you keep the base capital in whatever you want to go along, but you're getting yield in a new project token, namely Tega in this case, but we're opening that up for our partners as well. Cool, man. Look, I'm really glad to be on the cap table. I appreciate you. Happy to do more with you. Happy to have you on this show more often. I think Scott enjoyed this conversation a lot as well. You know, he hasn't stopped talking.

I'm listening to you. Listen, sometimes you just shut up and listen. That was a great discussion. I appreciate it, man and uh scott any other questions before i kind of wrap it up with dago i think that was uh well covered and obviously i think uh carlos should be welcome back anytime so we'll hear yeah so carlos carlos kind of the last question is a kind of message to the to the audience before you list uh and any final? Yeah, no, on our side, you know, we're ready to roll. We've already proven that we can pull in the capital, the TVL, the revenue, the partnerships. We're going to put even more pedal to the metal

in the next few months. I'd like to invite everybody today to do the DegaQuest. I linked them in the comments of this space. And that way you can earn some free dega so if you want to be part of this ride in this adventure with us um that's kind of like the best way to access that and uh stay tuned for you know all the innovations we'll be releasing make sure that you get one of those ai wearables for you cool man and uh on my end like what i'd wrap it up with squad like we're voting we're putting our money where our mouth is. I've talked about gaming nonstop in every single chance I can get now and in the bear market.

And we just got a gaming platform here in terms that we're invested. So I'm very, very bullish on the ecosystem. And I think investing in a platform rather than a game is an interesting… Hits and shovels, man. I was going to say the exact same thing. And I love anything that sort of democratizes access and the ability of the normal person to participate. Right. So you have to cheer for any platform that's trying to make things that are complex, more accessible and to abstract away all of that, you know,

complexity. I just, yeah. I mean, I really cheer for things like this. Cool. Guys really appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining the show. And we'll see you again tomorrow, Dega. Thanks a lot for partnering with us, sponsoring the show. And we'll talk to you offline. Bye, everyone. Bye-bye.