The Wolf Of All Streets - Crypto’s First Mega Empire? Tether | CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

This episode of Crypto Town Hall dives into the intersection of crypto, politics, and tech innovation. The hosts and guests discuss how political dynamics—especially generational divides within the Democratic Party—impact crypto regulation in the United States. There's also an in-depth debate on the valuation and future of stablecoins like Tether and Circle, their business models, and the looming battle for dominance. The session features a sponsored segment with Pradeep Gaul, CEO of Pi 3, who presents a decentralized, privacy-focused AI network built for business use cases. Overall, the show aims to give listeners news updates, sharp commentary, and insights into market trends, political influences, and the evolving role of new technologies in crypto.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall every weekday at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time here on X. Once again, I know that we're in the glitch. Dave, I think you're a speaker. You show as a listener. I just wanted to start the show. I don't know why the team used this title, $500 billion for Tether. I propose a title, massive, epic, breaking news that will change the face of your face and the planet and the world. And I was going to play the Jeopardy music for the next 24 hours. straight without saying anything you know it's funny when you when you were joking about that I literally had on my keyboard I think our title should be massive crypto news dot dot dot you know it's funny all the abuse you get and what things that that we think are important in the global scheme of things in the big picture rarely move markets in the short run and things that move markets in the short run will ultimately be irrelevant in the long run. And so, look, we know the people who get maddest are the ones who I made the joke this morning. Their fingers are hovering over their keyboard on hyperliquid or Aster or finance or bybit or whatever or OECS. And they're ready

to put on a big, you know, leverage long trade or a leverage short trade. They got them teed up on two screens and they're sitting there with sweat in their brow, hoping for the news to beat everybody to it. And then there is no news that's going to move markets and then they're butt hurt. And I think that described about hundreds of people yesterday, which is, to me, funny because the first thing that anyone should know about news is it is almost impossible to make money with a human being hovering over a keyboard on news. It just isn't for lots and lots of reasons, either the initial move gets faded or whatever. But the other thing is, is that it's clearly I could tell from the responses that I clearly

nailed it. That's what was happening. So it's kind of funny. Hey, Dave. If you need to wait for the news, you shouldn't be investing. Well, Dave, that's a corollary to my point, David. Of course, I agree with that. But the point that drives me crazy is we've talked about this many, many times. How many times have we had Ron or somebody else? Is Ron on here today? No, he's not. But how many times do we have Ron on here? Or, you know, Carla, who is here and can say good morning to us in a second, or Austin, who is here, concerned that if we don't get,

legislation in the United States that the next administration could undo things, understanding how important it is to turn the tide and make crypto bipartisan eventually. Right now, it's clearly extremely partisan. But that's because the Marxists are in control of the Democratic Party. I'm sorry, Austin, but even you recognize the truth with what's going on in New York and et cetera. And if Katie Porter, who is of that wing, becomes the governor of California, that's a really bad thing. So it's hard to disagree. Now, do I necessarily trust that Ian is a great candidate? He didn't take questions. I was going to ask them about tax policy because that's the worst, the most important thing in California. Will they enact a wealth tax? And will that hit

Bitcoiners? And what will they do with Bitcoin Capital Games? But, you know, we'll all in good time. The truth is is that it is important. And that's how I look at it. Meanwhile, the market also, I mean, a Democrat's going to win in California, right? So yeah, even with all the new ones, it's either going to be a Republican Democrat or maybe a pro-Bickpoint Democrat. Correct. Correct. But But don't underestimate the importance nationally of having an actual, you know, we keep talking about the gerontocracy, and I'm sadly too close to that age, although I don't act it. You know, we keep talking about the age divide. I mean, if Donisher here, he would, you know, in addition to talking about his skincare regime,

he would talk, tell you about how, you know, the older people are screwing over the younger people. Well, it's important for it to get youth injected into politics. And youth that understands technology, especially our technology, is very important. So, well, look, Dennis is Dennis. Dennis always overhypes everything. But honestly, you know, it was news in the sense of news. So I don't care. You know, people, but you guys want to send me hate mail, go for it. I don't know. There's been a few moments. I think every child or person remembers in their life where, like, your parents were so epically disappointed in you that it left, like, permanent scars. I received more criticism yesterday that felt like people were trying to parent me and tell me how disappointed they were in me. I've gotten from my parents in my entire life. It was, it's absurd. It's absurd how comfortable people have become saying the wildly most insane things to strangers on the internet out of the death.

I was like dying. I was going through them like with my wife giggling about all the comments and all my responses. It was so, it was, it was good entertainment at the very least. But man, wow, man, I think people just need like a hug or a hobby. Well, look, everybody wants their bags pack. Yes, Dave. Let me just make one point here. Yeah, about the Democrats being anti-Crypto.

The Democrats have failed to put in place an honor ramp to actually take contributions in crypto. I'm working with a friend of mine who was from Protocol Labs to actually amend that so we could actually, on the Democratic side, build up a crypto proletariat. Oh, that's good. I mean, look. You want to help invest? Let me know. It should never have been bipartisan.

It is, the divide isn't Republican or Democrat, which used to be, and Austin and I have had this conversation in person, used to be where do you draw the line on redistribution, how much help do you give people, you know, what policies, et cetera. And it's becoming, but it's not there yet, because there's extremists in the Republican Party who want big state too, but it's quickly becoming should the government control everything. And that's a problem. And I don't believe that's the majority of actual Democratic voters. I just think Democratic voters, you know, vote, you know, basically vote blue no matter who.

And the extremists are the ones who win in the primaries. And in a Republican, you know, camp, it's not all that different, but Trump just happens to have this Spengali-like thing where he's convinced the Republican Party to lurch to the center, even though the media says he's an extremist. So, you know, we have all this crazy shit going on in politics, and it's swept crypto up into it, where it should be and is actually. a proletariat thing if you really want to get down to it because it's a democratizing force and we all kind of see that i mean austin you must have a comment on that sorry carlo i'm jumping over you because he and i've actually talked about this yeah i think you know it's a fascinating problem in the democratic party i think there's some brain damage from 2008 where some of the senior democrats maybe elizabeth warren is the best example of this have managed to convince themselves

that talking to anybody in industry ever is evil, and they should only talk to their inner circle of academics, all of whom are 65 plus and have no experience in the real world, and that at the same time, anybody attempting to change or do anything with the system that they just put back together as an existential threat to humanity. Now, because they don't understand the system that they built, this ends up basically being massively favorable to the big banks.

And then there are people defending it out of principle and people depending it out of cynicism who know they're lying and there's a mix of both. But where it puts the party back to the on-ramp comment is there's also no off-ramp for a lot of these people out of these views. And so I think what it's going to take to change the behavior of the Democratic Party, and this kind of alludes to the elections thing we were talking about is just getting rid of some of the olds, to be totally honest. You have to look at the people who are now three generations aged on technology and still

tried to live in the 1970s, like that's where we want to be and just kick them out of leadership. You know, I remember having Richie Torres on this show. It might almost be two years ago now. I mean, time flies. And he made a similar point. He said, I said, I asked him, point, you know, what's up with the anti-crypto army? Why are the Democrats so anti-crypto? Obviously, this was at peak Elizabeth Warren influence. And he said, it's not left, first right, until old verse young. he flat out said that he's like we just have a whole lot of old politicians who are never going to change their way on our side and eventually they'll be gone and he said that about his own party so carlo good morning rich who's right good morning dave good morning scott i have to agree and i have to build on what austin said because it's it's almost it's bizarre because you would think that the the ethos of crypto would be more aligned with the democratic party because it is decentralization and It's anti-establishment, it's anti-bank, it's breaking down the old way of doing things.

But yet, because you have this entrenched group, including Warren and Sherrod Brown, who have decided to side with banks on all these issues, they have alienated a lot of young people who I think they could have brought into their camp if they would have been a little bit more flexible on crypto. And, you know, we've heard many people talk about the fact that young people are completely disillusioned with everything in finance, and they see no way out. Home ownership is impossible. Saving and retiring has become untouchable, and they're all attracted to the crypto casino because it's the only way that they can see to build wealth. And you're right, to not have fundraising

rails to accept crypto is just indicative of just how boomer they still are on this particular topic. And as far as California, look, I don't know a whole lot. I was out of the loop with all this yesterday, but it's the fifth largest economy in the world. I think that alone kind of makes it something you have to report on. Obviously, it's news. I think people took an issue with that it was massive breaking, earth-shattering, whatever, and to their definition, it wasn't enough. My favorite is just the people who said that for two days, then showed up to listen anyways, and then bitched about it afterwards. I don't know. If I expect something to be lame, I just don't watch it. Weird.

I'm crazy, but I don't like to waste my time on things that I don't take seriously. Goddammit, Scott. Don't you know the world of cyberspace? That's right. Yeah, there you go. And so let's switch to that. Awesome. What do you think?

I know you and Carlo care about stable coins quite a bit. Yeah, I mean, just quickly, this would make tether effectively the largest big name private company in the world, right? This would be bigger than open AI and SpaceX, just for context. Go ahead, Austin. So I think it's important when you look at business. is to separate your view of the business from the valuation of the business. And this is something that people are in general bad at, right? You can have a terrible business.

Imagine it's run by essentially the dumbest people that you can possibly find. But if that thing is sitting on $100 billion of real estate where you could take it over and sell that stuff, that's a relatively valuable business, even if literally the dumbest people possible are running it. On the other hand, let's take a business that, you know, markets in general love right now, like say Nvidia, right, where it's incontrovertible. They've had massive growth. They've got a huge trend behind them. You expect forward revenues to go up, et cetera, et cetera. But if you look today and Nvidia's like market cap is $100 trillion, do not buy that thing, right? Like it may be a great

business, but it can be massively overvalued. And to me, looking at a 500 billion price point for Tether, look, Tether's done a good job. They have global distribution. They have the most liquidity in crypto, but to be worth $500 billion as a company that generates most of your investment income on float from like things essentially in your reserve, you need to believe one of two things, right? One is that interest rates are going way higher forever to justify that number or two, tether's basically going to destroy every bank in the world and take over. And so I think it's one of those because people are looking for access to the asset class, the valuation is completely disconnected from the reality of the business, even if the core business is pretty good.

Yeah, I asked, this morning when discussing this on my YouTube show, my friend Alan Marshall, who was here last week from you, Pexe, I said, you know, why would they be raising $20 billion right now if they're a company that makes, you know, billions of dollars a quarter have like 100 employees. One of the most successful businesses, he said, old adage is if you're willing, if someone's willing to give you money, take it, right? And so I guess putting 20 billion on the balance sheet right now in light of what you just said would make a hell of a lot of sense. Rates are going to come down, I mean, to your point, right? I mean, this is going to be a big problem for Circle, probably why Circle is announcing the launch of their own layer 1 blockchain,

right, because they're going to have to find a hell of a lot of ways to make money beyond passively investing in treasuries. Otherwise, these companies as investments are just basically interest, it's a bond. Yeah, you're buying a $500 billion bond. Right. But at the end of the day, well, that's not really true, right? I mean, you know, sorry to disagree. I mean, Circle, if you look at Circle with a $33 billion market cap fits up a bit today, so it's probably a little bit more than that, you know, with no earnings, you know, for share, you know, negative earnings per share. And revenues are, are what, 150th, 160th, 110, I don't know, you tell me what the number is, but it's a lot smaller than Tethers. And Circle has his valuation on the basis of being a, a, you know, first mover in what people see as an emerging banking sector or a new banking sector. So by that metric, is tether overvalued? I mean, sure. Double golden tax.

If we're talking about banking, only J.B. Morgan would be larger even on the public side. Well, but the thing is, is what's funny about it is on a price to earnings basis, it looks cheap compared to these companies on a price to on a price to revenue perspective because their profit margins are so ridiculously high, it looks ludicrously expensive because it's so ludicrously high. We also don't know, and I'm curious about it, you know, what the size, they have amassed quite a balance sheet. Of that 500, you know, how much in terms of excess reserves that they've earned over, you know, in terms of reinvested in all the crap that they've reinvested in, you know, what are they worth? And without knowing that, you can't really make a

determination. What you can tell, though, is there's a huge institutional appetite. to be part of the next financial system, full stop. And whether that's tether or whether that's Ethereum via, you know, or whether that's Bitcoin, there's a lot of it. Now, Bitcoin has an additional way of looking at it, but that appetite is very, very real. And at some point, there will be too much crap coming to market and people will start to revolt against it,

but we are so early in that cycle. Anyway, I've talked way too long. I didn't see the order, Scott. Mark, go ahead. Yeah, I'm still kind of reeling from from Dave's opening monologue about the guy sweating over their keyboards for the free time in my life when I did that. I still get PTSD from trying to trade and outsmart the market. So thanks for that walk back to memory lane there, Dave. You got it, dude.

You know, and yeah, and the fools, Aaron, that it is often. So California. Yeah, Scott, you know, no good deed goes unpunished. So, yeah, those messages coming in. California, anyone who wants to be governor of California, God bless you, because you have a body of people who, when they leave because of taxes that they don't like, they go to other states and then try to do the same thing. Ask anyone in Arizona, California.

It's just mind-boggling that they're leaving a place and they say, hey, you know what, let's do what we did in California. So very difficult to fix, but God bless him if he can. And the other part about the markets here, Circle, Coinbase, and Tether, is, does Tether have a moat? I mean, you know, to quote Jeremy Irons, if you want to win, you got to be smart, you got to be first, or you got to cheat. And, I mean, Tether was first by a lot, you know, whether they cheated and, you know, they didn't cheat. they basically had regulatory arbitrage of retaining the income from something that they couldn't pass along and whether that changes. So I agree.

I don't know what they have in persistence besides being first. I would rather invest in Coinbase who's gone deep into derivatives and has distribution. And also may tap the money from Circle from USDA. Yeah. Coinbase is arguably a better stable coin. I'm not even, like, no opinion on the stock, but it's arguably a better stable coin investment than the stable coin investment you can make on public markets

because they get the revenue. Coin plus. Yeah, to build on that, if I could, Scott, I think we're witnessing a battle between Circle and Tether for global dominance of U.S. Stablecoin market because Tether has built overseas. Tether has got much bigger network adoption because of their global reach.

but they didn't have to do it under the constraints that Circle did it under because they wanted to be U.S. compliant to the extent they could. So they've got network effect. Now they've acquired bohines. They want to enter the U.S. marketplace. They are definitely a challenge to Circle. And I think one of the interesting side notes of this is I think one of the big things the stable coins are going to do is they're going to be very attractive to overseas investors who want to have a position in the dollar, but can't be. can't easily get into the dollar. So all of the overseas wallets that are already comfortable moving tether around are now going to want to play this dollar game. Circle is obviously in bed

with Coinbase. They've got a nice relationship, and Coinbase is now offering interesting yield programs on USC. We're starting to see the lines being blurred between these centralized crypto exchanges and banks, and if that continues, and if one of these major players actually gets access to Fed Wire and gets treated like a full-fledged bank, then I could see this being total disaggregation of banking, and it puts Tether in a position to really lead on that. You know, Paolo is not someone to underestimate, very shrewd. And bringing bohines in, the architect, essentially of the Genius Act, a very bold move. And I'm watching, man. a spectator on this, but I think they could take the lead here.

I love Beau, but I don't think we can credit him with being the architect of the Genius Act. Well, yeah, maybe that's the bridge too far. Maybe that's too much. But certainly, obviously, being the condoices of the White House. Certainly, certainly being the spokesperson to get it done and whip the votes for sure. Thank you for keeping my DMs from getting in a dated time. Sorry, I didn't want to get you in trouble. Maybe I got more trouble. I don't know. But I love you. Love either way. Is Dave still here? Dave, are you still here?

I can't see anything. I'm here. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm here. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on Dave's observation about, you know, excess assets of stable coin companies and how they're invested. I mean, arguably, if you're going to be going out and trying to raise funds or if you're going to try to run a stable coin business and a declining interest rate environment,

you've got to be doing something with your excess. assets in order to generate return, I'd be curious to see if they're putting up leveraged plays on non-USDC or non-stable coin cryptos, and if so, which, and when they'll disclose them. And obviously, Circle being a reporting company, we'll have a chance to look at that. I mean, I think more broadly, when you look at markets today, we know that the Mag 7 effect is very, very real and makes people very, very nervous. So everybody, you know, there's this, there are these these two forces there's extremely expensive by traditional metric equities at the same time and i keep repeating this number but it is the number at a minimum eight percent a year

of more money in the economy and the denominator uh which has to go somewhere and you know people have to invest in something they can either invest in uh decreasing yield of products or they could invest in growth and most people want to invest in growth and so what does that mean? Well, that means they gravitate out on the risk curve toward the newer, shinier object. And so don't be, it's not remotely surprising that, you know, pretty much everything has been doing well if it goes to the stock market with the except, well, I mean, if you look at, like, Gemini is trading right at its IPO price. Okay, fine, but, you know, they don't have a profit yet. And while the founders are well-known, it hasn't gone crazy.

that said, the IPO price was adjusted up multiple times. So, you know, still it's there. If you look at, you know, Iron and Cypher and other mining AI, you know, pools, those are, that's the new shiny thing. But, you know, you're seeing valuations. I mean, Iron just had 48 bucks. By the way, iron just had 48 bucks. Actually, I think it was higher earlier. But yeah, look, I, you and I both own it. So I don't, I'm not pumping it. Thank you, Mike Alfred. Thank you, sir. I just tweeted. I bought him a whole lot of waggew and really expensive wine last year in Vegas, and now I owe them like five more of those dinners, I think.

Right. But my point is that the money will flow to where the story is, right? And that's true in crypto, too, but we're talking about a much bigger pool of money in the U.S. stock market than we are in the crypto market. It's just in terms of market cap. It's a rather large differential. I don't know what the exact numbers are now, but it's pretty big. So that's what you're seeing.

Meanwhile, you know, we had this event this past weekend, and I said that you'd know at a couple days, you know, what the result was, and I think it's pretty clear, right? We had a major sell-off. It immediately retraced 50 percent and then sat there. And since there, it's starting to grind higher. But basically on the lowest volatility we've seen, even in this low volatility cycle, I mean, we've had two days there after a small gap, it sits in, you know, a 1% range in Bitcoin. I mean, that's kind of crazy.

I mean, there's been some promotion inside of crypto with certain things falling a little bit more, certain things are doing a little bit better. But truthfully, the market is just kind of obviously sitting in a very tight range. And very tight range is we all know what happens. It's going to break one side or the other. But since it tried to break down and didn't, one would think the bias should be to the upside. Now, that is not what the technicians are necessarily saying, but I'd be curious what some of what people here think.

But to me, it feels like next month, really, you know, eight days from now could be the start of the next cycle. And we should have our eyes glued to what goes on not next Monday, but the Monday after. The Bitcoin chart looks relatively incredible for a bottom right now. Right. I mean, this kind of 12,000 area was obviously gratuitous support. You've got oversold conditions. You have the market crypto fear and green index hitting fear once again. And right now you have a massive bullish engulfing candle for all the chartists out there.

So I would say that if Bitcoin ramps up here, it's going to be a very healthy market across the board. I mean, Salon also putting in a pretty nice candle. It just feels like we got to that massively oversold, aggressively negative sentiment place that we often get to before things bounce. I mean, Gary, we were talking about this last night, right? You know, it's, the markets rarely give you opportunities that seem as obvious as it does this time, at least in Bitcoin. And I think that it's from a risk-adjusted perspective, I think people will look back and hit themselves in the head and say, well, why didn't I see this? What do you think? You're there behind the microphone, sir.

And I know Gary's watching the miners right now. Yeah, this has been, I don't know that it's so obvious. I mean, you know, if you don't know the space, Dave, it's a hard. It's a hard one, but, you know, the thing I've learned from this particular cycle is that I probably, I think this market gives you a lot more opportunities to enter than people ever talk about in this space. I've entered some of these positions way, way, way too early because I was, you know, concerned about missing them. I mean, I'm in iron. It's been, I don't even understand where iron goes from here. Because this thing is like, what's it done in a month?

It's done. In a month. I mean, since I can go back to the beginning of September, it was trading around 14.15. We're up 126%. Sorry, that was the beginning of August. Sorry. Yeah. We're up 126% in 30 days.

That's $27, man. a stock doesn't move like this unless it keeps moving. So I, you know, I think you're going to see consolidation in this space. I think you're going to see anything that's got an MNAV near one gets sucked up. We saw that with similar, right, or whatever deal was done just recently. Anything under MNAV, if there's an audit. I think, I think this is, like I've not done this. as long as you guys have, but I would not be taking money off the table right now. This thing

feels like it wants to run, and it wants to run really hard. Mark. Jesus. I mean, you know, I've been following the miners laterally, but yeah, the moving iron's crazy, but it's across markets, too, guys. Like, look at, look at the meme stocks, which, going back to what Scott laments about why is that. FTT have money and you're right, you know, why is it worth $3?000. Did you see that FTT bounced like 30% when Sam Bankman-Fried's account tweeted GM yesterday? I cited this as proof of the degeneracy, and I was going to use the word stupidity or gullibility or other really even nastier words of the crypto community, but oh my effing God. I mean, trying to turn FTT into a meme based on a dude

who may every once a while get access to the internet while in prison? Are you kidding me? It's alive and well. So while these real companies that are vying for leadership among, you know, Tether and the Coinbase circle, you know, partnership, as Scott was talking about, while that's going on and that's got, you know, legs and numbers to look at, Open Door is up 80% this month. It's up 14X in the last three months.

And so there's this absolute sort of March of 21, Q121 exuberance going on at the same time that the Fed is still taking money out. That's scary. That's scary if this is 21, man, because there's some people with 21 investments that still are buried. Well, some of it will. I mean, you know, Bitcoin, you know, eventually got hit a year later, but it's up X amount, you know, multiples more. But there's definitely exuberance. And I'm not sure if we get fully washed out, guys, because 21 went away because we went from zero to 400, 500 basis points. Yesterday, and I'll stop with this one point, which stopped me in my tracks when I heard it, Powell's up in Rhode Island being introduced by the distinguished senator, former Senator Reid.

And Reed says, Powell has done a great job because without him, only because of him, we did not go into recession in 2000 in the COVID season, that we basically stopped recessions because of one guy. So if we have acknowledged of that, acknowledgement of the fact that the Fed is preventing recessions, we're staring at the screen and seeing what happens. the young people will not get assets because there's no transfer of wealth through the market it's trapped so i thought that was a very to what we're seeing now which is just money go and let markets run i don't know if you guys think that that's the lack of recessions you know have an impact on this kind of I'm telling you, recently, Matt Hogan, it must have been now six months, came on my show, and he said the funniest thing ever. He said, it's clear that governments have made recessions illegal. Recessions are illegal.

They're absolutely doing that. They will not ever be another recession, man. They're not going to allow it until there's depression. Yeah, I was going to say, so you mean skip depression, skip recession straight to depression. You need, the only way you can end up with a, with actual contract. action in GDP these days is going to be a currency crisis where they start ignoring the moves. And I still think we're away off from that. At least I certainly hope we do.

That's the ultimate, you know, hyper-bitcoinization, doom disaster, Mad Max case. Absolutely, Dave. That is a release valve. And that's the reason I got into Bitcoin. I fully agree. Right. And it's not a bad reason. It is, however, a tail risk.

But there are many outcomes other than that. And this administration is trying to engineer that, but it's not obvious. I mean, I think that any praise to Powell you get from this administration on his legacy is intended to convince him that he should get out while the getting is good. Because, you know, when Besant says he wants someone who's open-minded, what he's really talking about is someone who understands, you know, the different factors in monetary policy are different now than they were. when most of the textbooks were written

and all the academics were involved. I mean, you know, I tweeted about it this morning, but there is a huge freaking difference when Volker took place. If you even thought about doing what Volker did back then, and you could argue that Powell, in percentage terms, did a lot, but it was still, in terms of real rates, were never anything close to where Volker took it.

Volker had virtually no budget, no debt. I mean, the debt to GDP was 34%, it wasn't 130, and there were no unfunded liability. So if you look at it that way, it was a fraction. And so it's a very big difference. And there are many other factors at play here. So, you know, we're going to be, they're going to want to make money easy, but what they really have to do is figure out how to engineer real growth. That is the only way out. And people keep forgetting that. But what does real growth look like? Real growth is something that's going to require a lot of the stuff that we all invest in. And so that's what that's what that is what's going on here. It's can they do it or not. If the answer is yes, then invest in everything that people. benefits from real growth. If the answer is no, then buy Bitcoin, put it in self-custody, get your tin hat, make sure you stock up on canned goods, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. David?

Yeah, I was just looking at the chart, looking at all this action, looking at all the talk about things going to the moon, and it brings me back to read John Kenneth Goldberg's book about the crash of 1929 and talking about the bezel, except in this case I will talk about the grift. As soon as the grift stops happening in our space, I think that's when things start to turn south. And I don't know. I'm just looking at this rally and fading it. You know, I've got a portfolio that basically is long volatility, but at the same time, it's also hedged.

And I'm earning on a compound annual basis, you know, well in excess of 100% a year. It works for me. I don't know about the rest of you guys. You want to try and shoot the lights out. I think that, you know, there was a comment that came out of J.P. Morgan, head of market intelligence. People were talking about just how the market was running against the seasonals and was wondering, you know, what's likely to knock things off? And his mention in terms of the favorite tail risk he saw right now was an asteroid hitting Earth. I don't know.

I've been around this market long enough since 1987. And I look at stuff like this and, you know, this makes my antenna go up. up and sort of think about, you know, I'll never get fired for taking a profit. So just, you know, I'm looking at banking right now and watching this stuff run. It's great. Dave, it's amazing. You sound like you're rationalizing and justifying 100% return. Like it's mediocre.

I think it's so classic. Thank you very much for the reality check. Hey, you're welcome. That's for my state money. The last person I know, no offense, David. I'm not trying to poo-poo you, but this is a simple fact. The last human being I ever heard saying they could run a short volatility strategy and generate 100% returns, his first name was Bernie.

No, no, I'm in a better place than Bernie, trust me. I certainly hope so. Otherwise, you know, there's a place for people who take other people's money. Hey, look, you know, DM me on the outside. I'll tell you what the trade is. I'm curious. If Sam can tweet, if Sam can tweet, you can DM from your cell.

Yeah, well, I mean, no. I'm not accusing you of fraud, David. I'm just saying that. I haven't taken other people's money. Can't be fraud. Selling volatility when volatility is compressed is an interesting trait. I would be very afraid of that. Selling covered call strategies or taking funding when it's available

and being able to get out of the trade almost immediately is a totally different kettle of fish. My guess is you're much more like that. But what do I know? We'll talk. Okay, cool. I hear someone's Mike, Gary. Have a comment?

Didn't know what I was on, but hey, can we talk about NACA and BM&R? Nothing's better than a Treasury Corporation conversation to end the day. You know, I just thought, why not? I mean, to David's points, these are moonshots, right? They're either going to fly or they're not. Metaplanet's down again today, down to 383, 5.67%. NACA was down to 125. I picked up some more NACA tomorrow just because I had already bought some, so now I feel obligated.

Yeah, I might buy more here, too. It's about 27. Yeah, I think the, and anybody who wants to correct me, please do. but I think they're worth, I mean, I think you're buying NACA right now at least at a discount, 15% discount to the Bitcoin, if they have the Bitcoin. Bailey said, yes, but I think Bailey said it was basically at Nav because of, I think, a $200 million debt or something. But yes, to the actual Bitcoin perhaps, but, yeah, when you add it all up there. Yeah, and then you've got to figure out it or the other assets, liabilities are assets, can they spend those off?

Because I think these companies are going to sell all this shit. Anything that's not, you know, Bitcoin, they're just going to dump it, sell it to some medical guy. And I think there's some medical companies that should be looking at, hey, I'm going to do a Bitcoin strategy. Why wouldn't I go buy one of these other revenue generating businesses? Combine the businesses if they're, you know, symbiotic or any kind of, you know, tangential use. and start building, you know, start, I think there's going to be a massive M&A cycle. I think that's what I'm saying. I think Bitcoin's, yeah, we've been saying that.

Yeah, similar. I mean, similar just got bought. I still can't get any color on this similar Strive deal because from what I saw, strive bought similar to 210% of their stock value. Why would they do that? Well, because there's, so the stock was trading at like, whatever it was trading at and you're seeing a $71 print but it's so the price was 71 72 but embedded in that those guys also got warrants at like 82 so all those options

are embedded in that purchase price that looks like a 40% premium to the price when they did the deal but there's a shitload of warrants at 86 bucks I think 80, some some 82 or $86. Wow. Shouldn't the stock trade down then? Because that's dilutive. Yeah. That's wow.

Thanks for that insight. I'll check it out. You had the gall mark to say shouldn't. Shouldn't it like to dare question the irrationality of this market? Bold. Bold strategy, buddy. You're supposed to just turn your brain off, go full chimpanzee and buy. Box on me.

baby all the way it's coming back i think iron's about to hit 50 bucks what we're talking here 49 50 is the top here i mean this is wow well i mean look it to be fair uh the the the investment case for iron is not bitcoin mining it's AI cloud and and that's that that is that gets a lot more people a lot more excited i mean regardless of earnings potential understand that so many companies start their bull runs on the basis of a story. If they then can execute on the story, then of course it continues. Invidia being the obvious biggest example of that. When it first started, it was a graphics chip manufacturer that people that were saying, hey, it's going to be, we're going to power the AI revolution and people snore, you know, they ignored it. And of course,

if you ignored it, you ignored the biggest story of the last, you know, in the stock market, at least, of the last, you know, a couple decades. But it was a change in the story. Iron is, is a narrative play on AI cloud, whether you agree with it or not. I mean, yeah, we kind of all had it on our radar because of Bitcoin mining. And by the way, Bitcoin mining is a really great symbiotic. I mean, someone said something stupid yesterday on our show, Gary. I forgot to our... Was it me?

No, no, no, no. Arguing that because of the Bitcoin... Well, no, someone made the comment, and I don't want to call him out because I don't think he meant it this way. But he made the comment that Bitcoin, which is demand response, you could turn it off, turn it on, turn it off, turn it on, and AI don't work well together in the same data center. And that's exactly the opposite of the truth. The thing about AI is just like any virtualization, you have to provide for peak capacity, which means you're going to have a lot of cycles available at times that are not being used. So Bitcoin is the perfect companion to that, which is a reason why a combined data center operations. that does both is done correctly is absolutely going to win. And so that's the story. Now,

whether it plays out or not, we'll see. Anyway, it's a little bit long-winded, but that's really what Mike has been saying, and I think he's right. Hey, Dave, I'm going to come back and make my call that between now and the end of the year, one of the Mag 7 companies is going to get into Bitcoin mining. And I'll say, for the very reason you discussed Iran now at a small scale, if Alphabet but did this on a large scale, get back. Well, okay, ask yourself the question. How are they going to do it? Are they going to do it by trying to convert, or is there something, is they going to buy

somebody? I would argue they could take their existing data forms and data centers and move some over if they can't find a way to buy it at the right price. Yeah, I mean, I think that just like you say that, I don't know about timing because I hate timing. I believe in the Mag 7, at least two, if not three of them, within the next couple years, we'll have Bitcoin in their balance sheet. Okay. I'll give you one last forecast. On Tuesday, December 2nd, Circle will drop. The IPO lockup comes off. Yeah, that's a bold prediction.

I think we're all here, time, right? You said December 2? You said December 2, the lockup is off. how much volume is that day all of it um I would say at least half I mean wow

I mean they've made so much money on that trade that's right so why wouldn't they where do all these profits go dude Bitcoin exactly

you know to your point I agree with you on the mag 7 and to me the obvious choice here is that Navidia puts Bitcoin on its balance sheet while it sells all this equipment and machines to the people that make Bitcoin. Why not?

To me, this is so symbiotic for Navidia, right? But they can't become a miner. That would be stupid. Why would they take the risk of becoming a miner? They sell to the miners and the AI guys. I'd start buying Bitcoin, 5, 10%. They've got so much cash. It's stupid.

and yes dave you were right it is time to pivot we got to hand the mic over to buzz cool you you there buzz i'm here i don't mean to derail a good job buzz thanks for derailing the conversation i know right i know i got to have any hey do you have a breaking massive news announcement by a chance i do good i don't know if you got that but i just muted myself to get everyone to wait i don't play the jeopardy music i told you okay go ahead all serious this enjoy well today we have a we have a sponsor it's pi three um just a disclaimer before we get started mario's company i bc does marketing incubation and investing and sponsors on this show are sponsors working directly with ibc not necessarily crypto town hall scott dave or myself in particular um so pi three who do we got

behind the account let's do a mic check here before we get started yeah this is pradip gole and the ceo of pi three it's a pleasure to be here and great to listen to all the incredible insights Thanks for joining us, Pradeep. I always like to give the opportunity, just as we start the AMA, maybe just give us the 101, give us the elevator pitch before we dive deeper. Great. Thanks, everyone. I've been listening to the incredible conversation between Gary and Dave and others,

and it's been really illuminating. Always enjoy listening to all of you and your insights. But today, this 90 seconds pitch that I'm supposed to give you all, I'll keep it brief, is about decentralized AI. And you touched upon that in the last closing moments. about how AI and Bitcoin inference mining and Bitcoin mining can be symbiotic, and we do agree with that. But coming to Pi3, AI is here. It's going to be touching every aspect of our life, business, and personal, but it is very much centralized in the large data centers,

and it is very controlled by the infrastructure players. Then Pi3 is going to flip that model, and we are merging D-PIN, DFI, and AI together. On the deep end side, we have designed a Pi-3 computer, which is very compact in size, which can sit on your corner of your desk in the basement, in your kids' room, and it allows us to build a global network of about 3,100 devices that power the global Pi-3 network. It's a combination of hardware and software. So you have the rig, and you have the models, and you have the protocols that connect these rigs together. On the DFI side, we built a protocol that actually manages the risk of using AI in business.

So there is a model to assure behavior of agents and models in the context of health care or finance. So people who are using AI have an assurance level, risk level management layer, which protects them should something go wrong. And AI will hallucinate and the models will collapse. So it's a DFI protocol that underwrites the risk of using AI in business and particularly. And then on the AI side, we bacon a lot of models and we build an orchestration machine that runs in your rig that lets people build agents that are really smart instead of them essentially relying upon a single model, an agent can be multimodeled and it protects your data and privacy. So you don't have to send your data to the agent, the agent and the model run inside your data context. What that means is that a doctor can use AI inside their practice without violating HIPAA or I can run. AI in national security situations where the data cannot be transmitted or should not be transmitted

outside the context that it was collected in. You can apply that same to health care, to finance, to insurance. So effectively, it's a private AI network that allows people to use AI in a very specific context that their business requires, and it does not really care about the height of Mount Everest, but it really does need to know how to manage diabetes. So that's the general principle of building a bespoke AI network that is targeting B2B and B2C and B2G usage. And underneath that is an open, transparent, tokenized ecosystem. So model builders, agents, infrastructure providers all share in their revenues. If a doctor pays $100 to do a prognosis or diagnostic analysis of a medical record,

a complex multi-disease scenario, and they pay, let's say, $100 for the that agent to compute, then that revenue gets automatically distributed to the appropriate model publisher and the node operator. So effectively, the idea and the approach is to make AI relevant, make it edge, make it containerized, and decouple it from the centralized infrastructure and run it on a cloud that can be secured and can be monitored for its compliance with all the different industries. So that's what we're doing. The rig is called Power. We are selling it currently. A lot of people have acquired it.

About 400 have been sold by 2,700 remaining. And we would love to hear your questions and happy to answer them. So for people who are tuning in and they're curious about the power node, I did just pin a post up into the nest from Pi3. It's right up in the nest there if you want to check out a video of what it looks like. The Pi3 account is also up here in a speaker spot. So click their profile. Make sure you're following.

you're following official links and things like that to keep people safe. So it made it easy for you by putting it up in the nest. But with the power nodes, I think they're capped at only, what is it, 3,141 units. Why did you choose that limit? And how does that scarcity of the units play into your future? Yeah. So we play with the symbolic value of the Greek symbol pie, which is kind of resonatively similar to our name.

So 3141 is a number that was chosen primarily because it complies with that value. But we also wanted to keep the node scarce. Each node has vertical scalability. So we don't need to sell a tremendous amount of licenses or access point to the network for it to scales because you can achieve vertical scaling by stacking more devices on each address. So there are only 3141 compute addresses where you can plug in the computer. So in that sense, yes, it is designed to be scarce. And the other reason for scarcity is that each address has a guaranteed three-year emissions of tokens, the buy three tokens.

So we have finite number of tokens, so we can only have a finite number of token earners. And we are not doing any kind of a token sale. There are no safts. There is no free allocation of tokens. So everything goes to the node operators. So therefore, it creates a balance. You know, we have X number of tokens, X number of node operators, and the tokens are guaranteed performance. and subsidizing their early adoption.

But ultimately, the long-term revenue is based on compute that you provide to the actual user. And we have clients like a pediatric network in Florida, which is using it to diagnose children's health from prenatal pregnancy stage to first five years of their life, critical formative years where you need to be really on top of a child's health care to assure that they have a meaningful adulthood. So those kind of scenarios are very batch AI. You know, we are not really interacting with AI the way you would think of chat GPT, where you have random queries and every inference is different and every chat question is essentially a new context. Our context is constant.

You know, if you're dealing with diabetes, if you're dealing with healthcare or financial theory or whatever, you're typically dealing with a context that is constant and the data is changing. So it allows us to streamline compute differently. We are essentially looking at, let's say, an insurance company computing risk on all its 5 million policy holders. The context is the same. The model is essentially the same computing risk against, let's say, 5,000 variables, but the data file is going to keep changing. So it makes compute a lot more effective the way we have engineered it. Having said that, yes, it's designed for scarcity because you want to have enough decentralization,

but you also want to make sure that every node operator is handsomely rewarded for being an adopter of the pi-3 network. Well said. The Crypto Town Hall show in general has curated a pretty great audience. But one thing I know about this audience is that token economics are definitely a topic

that the audience is going to be interested in. And we have about 3,600 people here right now, and I just want to give you the opportunity to highlight what token economics drivers are behind Pi 3 and how that aligns with what you just described with the node operators and the community for the long term. Yeah.

And I know there's some incredibly smart people on this session. We just heard many of those. them talk so certainly would welcome input and tell us why our baby is ugly but from a tokenomics design perspective what we have tried to do is to make sure there is no preemptive emissions there is no flood of supply ahead of demand so the token economics are deflationary in three different ways one token emissions are tied to actual node operators activating their nodes and those nodes create a compute supply which we can then sell in the market in the form of use cases so we don't really sell GPU per hour, we sell use cases. Like, okay, doc, you want to run scheduling better. You

have a scheduling agent. It runs on P.3 network. The scheduling agent costs you, let's say, $5,000 a month. Then that revenue spreads across the network rather than how many GPUs did we consume. So GPUs provide the foundation for actually meaningful revenue generating use cases. So we can reward everybody handsomely without really worrying about whether you're getting paid $18 per GPU hour or 22 because we actually can drive a lot more utility and then a lot more value to the GPU hour than if you are selling pure hardware. So yes, the infrastructure is key to actual value in the market rather than you don't care what you're doing as long you're just selling your GPU per hour. That's one. Second, the tokens, when the revenue comes in from

the doctor, the lawyer, the accountant, the HHS, these are all our current and potential users, then that converts to a 2-2-5-3 token right away, and then 5% of every revenue dollar coming in gets burnt. So therefore, we are always going to create a compression in supply, and the more utility there is, the smaller the supply is going to be, because you have burning tokens automatically, without any intervention or even thought.

The idea is that as soon as $100 tokens are bought, only 95 exist after a few seconds, because 5 will get burnt as part of the revenue management cycle. And that'll create deflation continuously. So the more utility, faster depletion. And the third part of it is we didn't do any kind of a SAFT or any pre-allocation of tokens. So there is no preemptor seller. The demand for Pi-3 token is linked to node operators supplying compute

and users using Pi-3 network to solve real-world issues in a regulated space like healthcare. So therefore, it creates this constant pressure on the token, Even if it's not skyrocketing in a day, it is a steady, you know, it's a 45-degree angle curve we are looking for, for it to perpetually rise. So those are our thinking, but tokenomics is as much as an art as a science. And if there are folks in this audience who say, you know what, you could tweak it this way or that way, we're very open to that. But that's how our tokenomics is structured. I love the openness to asking for critical feedback. And I was checking the comments.

We have about 235 comments from listeners since we've started the show here. I didn't see any critical feedback there, so that's a good sign. But I do invite the audience to post comments in the spaces here, whether it's in support of Pi 3, asking intelligent questions, maybe a little bit of pushback on the token economics because that type of pressure does help create diamonds. And like you said, token economics is it's an art. It's not necessarily a science, but I loved everything that you. shared there. Talk to us a little bit about network security and how the compute power remains stable and reliable as you scale. Yeah, so the 3141 nodes, each of them is a very densely packed rig with 20-core GPU and a 14-core CPU to allow agent model interaction to happen. Plus, it comes

with significant rate zero SSD storage, which is then individually encrypted into 25,000 cabinets per node. And a cabinet is a vault which allows you to essentially store HIPA compliant, PCI compliant data. So let's say I'm a doc and I see 5,000 patients, normal metric forays, you know, family practitioner operating on Main Street. And, you know, ideally I want to keep my, of course, my data is an EMR, but if I'm going to want to run any really meaningful AI on that data, I have to segment and segregate that data. So I can't really co-mingle it. So then I could take all my kids with a certain disease condition, stick them in the respective cabinets and then take the other kids who are dealing with more mental health or other scenarios

and put them in a different cabinet. And then I can connect the agent to that cabinet, which gives me the context and context preservation, which makes AI very efficient because you're not just switching random context then. And by doing that, you can also achieve very efficient inference and very high quality inference because you're no longer trying to map the height of Mount Everest to the question about what, you know, what their kids H1C is. So by creating a very optimal batch processing environment for AI models to function, you create a very efficient compute environment, which is not typically how AI is configured. So we configured our nodes to really serve businesses in a very efficient way.

I used to be CIA of a major insurance company, so I used to run all these batch processes every night, eligibility enrollment cases, claims, payments, appeals, and things like this. And these batch processes were very inefficient because we were using traditional compute back then obviously 10, 15 years ago. But with the AI world, I can do the same stuff enormously better with the architecture that PIT3 has created. So in a nutshell, the compute power is decentralized, absolutely. We don't want to run a node ourselves. We don't want to own a data center. We don't want to be responsible for the compute because that compute more decentralized it is, by nature becomes more compliant. And that's one. The second, the cabinets are individually

encrypted. So your key, your tokens, well, it's also your key, your data. So every cabinet is key to a different key set, and the doctor can share that key set within their organization, like as a hospital setting or inside a multi-party clinic setting, but they can't really share it outside because the keys would not be accessible outside their power node. So there are a lot of different layers built in where you retain custody and control over data to achieve compliance, but you still have consent-based sharing, but not to the point where you start to have risk of some hacker getting inside your database

because there's no single attack surface, every cabinet is unique, you would have to individually hack each cabinet on each node to find whatever you're looking for, which is practically a very expensive compute proposition. So that's why we believe that we exceed HIPAA requirement, both in principle and in practice. I appreciate that well-thought-out answer. Tell us a little bit after the node sale

and fingers crossed it, it sells out. I mean, I'm sure it will. What are the next plans for you and your team? So it's primarily driving utility or demand for the network. So we are right now looking at a lot of custom models that people want to build. Yesterday I was speaking with a general council of a major sports NFL team who does a lot of contract management for this NFL team. And obviously they have a large outlay every year.

have a lot of legal constructs, different legal formats that they apply. So for her, she wants to build a sports contract management model. And that would be something that we are sponsoring for her to build, and then every NFL team would use it. And that's a significant revenue saving for her, because if you can mitigate the risk of contract, risk, and contract compliance, you know, in terms of dollars, that's a lot of money for them, that this one-part NFL team would experience.

And then you'd multiply that across the league, and you're talking a very large economic value from one single domain-specific model. That model will cost about 100 grand to build, but it could easily produce for the PY3 network, in the ideal sense, $100 million a year of revenue from shared risk, shared reward scenario. So we intend to use most of our proceeds

beyond supporting the infrastructure, is to really support builders who are building domain-specific models that are optimized for PI3 network, be it pediatric care, be it diabetes management, be it sports contract management, be it family law, be it financial planning and risk assessment. There are million. I mean, the world is full of very complex and very specialized domains, right? We all understand how many different specialized domains we could potentially create this influence. in it practically. So the use of funds is to identify high value domain models and then sponsor or encourage or support the domain expert to build them and then launch them for general consumption. So instead of building chat GPT, they try to answer every question in the

context of a large model. Our vision is to, and we are doing this, is not just a vision, to create domain models that are built by professionals, verified and certified by counter professionals who are evaluating the model to say, yeah, that model fits my professional view of how things should work, and then you put that out on tie three network, and it propagates to every node automatically, and it allows all other professionals in that domain to use it, pay for usage, and that revenue flows to the node operators. So the idea is to just really push to growing revenue, and we have some bold objectives. So we want to see the model-driven revenue scale, to over a billion in revenue over the next 24 to 36 months.

I know it sounds very bold, but AI is going to pervade every aspect of humanity, and we believe that our solution gives you a very reliable, accountable, professionally trained AI rather than, you know, one precocious system trying to answer everybody's questions, which can only do to a certain degree. I appreciate that. And for people who are tuning in, again, we have about 3,600. people here. If you're liking what Pradeep is talking about and what Pi 3 has to offer here, again, I penned up a post from the Pi 3 account that shows the unboxing of their power nodes,

and the Pi 3 account here that Pradeep is speaking from is in a speaker spot. So I encourage everyone to click on their profile, follow their official links there, and follow the account, the account, too. If you're just listening in, maybe you're not on your device, it's at Pi 3AI. That's P-A-I-3, AI, that that's the account if you wanted to type it in later or maybe you're listening to the recording. But Pradeep, as we're wrapping up here, what would be your final call to action for the 3,600 listeners that we have in here? What can they do? How can they help you? First, thank you for having me here. Prior to speaking, I was listening to this incredibly thoughtful and provocative conversation at a time. It's so educational to listen to the minds

that you have on our group. So it's an honor to be part of this group. The second You know, we are really taking a look at how AI is structured, and the current AI will work for many. And in terms of general consumption, you know, the race to build the AI infrastructure for general consumption is on. And that's a very large funded, very large mandate into the funding. What we are building is an alternative private AI network that is specifically targeting domain-specific models that run differently than a general purpose LLM. And they can be built efficiently and they can be launched domain by domain. And when they are launched, they generate incredibly high density, high value transaction rather than a $19.95 a month subscription.

So we are not a SaaS AI company. We are a domain revenue generation company that is focusing on where we can deliver high value domain models. And those revenue streams for us don't measure in 20 bucks a month. they measure in, you know, they can be as big as 20 million a month per client depending on the use case you're solving. And we're looking at use cases and things like national security or maintenance of aircraft carriers or, you know, pediatric care models or sports contract management for an NFL team and so on and so on. So the objective here is we have a decentralized

network that we do not own, that people own and benefit from directly. And our job is to drive demand to the network with very high value transactions, which then flow back to the node operator, and we take a piece of that like App Store. So it's really about building an AI app store that is incredibly high value apps running on your node, the Buy 3 nodes. So that's our business model. It's new, it's innovative, but it's also very much meeting the demand of businesses that cannot and should not use Chad GPT because that's not really the model that serves them well. And of course, there are a lot of compliance and regulatory and data privacy issues with a cloud-based AI. So it's really building a Pi-3, an AI cloud that's not running in the

cloud. I appreciate that. I also want to appreciate Scott and Dave for putting on this show, and of course, Pi-3 for bringing us the show and sponsoring the show. Dave, I know that Dave's still here. Dave and Scott had a great show yesterday with an announcement from Dennis Porter. I just wanted to show some support for them for being a great citizen journalist in the space and bringing us the news and announcements. And with that, just wanted to thank Pye 3 again and remind the listeners that we'll be back tomorrow at 10.15 a.m. Eastern time. So thank you again, Pardip. And for the listeners, we'll see you again tomorrow.

Thank you, everyone. Take care. Thank you.