The Wolf Of All Streets - David Sacks To Hold Crypto Conference Today! | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

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Crypto Town Hall, welcome everybody. We do this show obviously 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time every single weekday. And wow, what a few days it's been. Obviously, we had the largest liquidation event in crypto history effectively this weekend. Well, it was reported at $2.2 billion in liquidations. Ben from Bybit saying it was more like 8 to 10 because of the ways that the APIs report to Coinglass. So looking like about $8 billion liquidated by degenerates using leverage in the crypto market in a matter of hours. Right before Bitcoin bounced back to as high as $102,000 after, as we predicted, the tariffs were canceled. Then we got some China tariff news and Bitcoin dropped a bit, now trading around $98,909.

To me, this is all just complete noise. We're trying to get more panelists up here,, we get these quick moves and we all look to fundamental events for why it happened, but usually Bitcoin just absorbs it and goes right back up. Can't say the same for the altcoin market, which has suffered obviously disproportionately in this sort of Bitcoin focused cycle. I mean, David, how do you frame all this up and down and tariff news and trying to assign narratives?

Hey, I would say that, yes, we know that this is going to be a volatile environment. We kind of had a sense of that just given what we saw in the first Trump administration. The guy likes to drop bombs out of nowhere. So, you know, just buckle up and get ready for it. I think the most interesting thing we've seen is that, you know, the U.S. government is now running a hedge fund with the executive order that was signed yesterday with Treasury Secretary Scott Besson and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Obviously, they're all saying that this is going to take time to implement. But as was pointed out by other people, generally, you have countries that are running surpluses who will start a sovereign wealth fund, and usually it's funded by natural resources,

oil sales, et cetera. But as we know, the U.S. government does not have a surplus. So we're basically going to be creating a very large leverage bet. We'd like to see it come into crypto. And I know that relative to crypto, obviously, we've seen Trump and his wife take money off the table through the issuance of their own meme coins. But, hey, you know, grifters are going to grift. So what can we say? So I would say simply, I think it's still up and to the right as far as the trend is concerned for Bitcoin. You know, Ethereum may actually face some technical issues in terms of challengers coming up.

But, you know, for the time being, hey, it's there. So, you know, buy that one, too. Well, there's a question. Guys, I'm in a horrible glitch. I can barely hear what any of you are saying. Gareth, you are a expert at this job. I'm going to sign out and sign back in. It'll take me about one or two minutes. But, Gareth, I'm going to have you continue the conversation.

And then, you know, if for some reason it goes dark, please just, you know, keep it running until I get back. Right. I'm now the honorary host of CryptoStyle. Whatever, man. I know you can do this job. I'm putting you on the spot. But yeah, I've been the other side of your questions before. I'll be right back. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we can continue the conversation from there. Maybe Simon and David, you guys want to weigh in on this. There's a big announcement

happening later today, obviously, in reaction to the news and the executive order that came out yesterday that the White House crypto czar David Sachs will be hosting a press conference later today. It's expected to be on digital assets. They're probably going to talk a lot more about this new sovereign wealth fund that they've set up. Do you guys have any idea what to expect from that? And can we expect some clarity on perhaps the Bitcoin bull and when that's actually going to come to fruition? Okay, I'll have a go. As you said, the devil's kind of in the detail. Maybe these are combined, maybe these are independent. It would make sense that the strategic stockpile is the transfer of the crypto assets that the Department of Justice has seized. and if there was a congressional approval for a Bitcoin strategic reserve then the sovereign

wealth fund might be a nice dollar cost averaging way of doing it but the real question is how is it funded and where does it come from I'm not sure if we're going to get those types of announcements I think this might be focused on the digital asset strategy, maybe like a roadmap for America, the different types of regulations that they would like to focus on, the vision of the strategic stockpile, whether there is going to be a made in America type of crypto policy. Maybe these types of things, I think maybe just clarity around, you know, America is open for business. And these are the things that are important to us. And these are our strategic goals. I'd expect something like that. I don't think they're going to actually,

maybe, I don't think as a panel for announcing anything, because everything from here really is, okay, now now now this has to be done and i think there's congressional um you know processes that need to continue and regulatory processes um but you know i i guess it's a we want to um get this off the ground we want to tell our voters that we are serious um and're seeing everything as time sensitive, time urgent, and everything is moving at a very, very fast pace. I'm back and I can hear you guys great. Gareth, you're hired. Did an amazing job.

Yeah, I'm assuming. that we should just be wary that understand that everything that comes out of the Trump administration can most readily be just pulled right back within a fairly short period of time. So, you know, whatever David Sachs has to say is all well and good this afternoon. And yes, we're all focused with our eyes on the prize of the long term potential. But just giving back what we were talking about volatility earlier. Yeah yeah what can be said one day can easily be taken away the next absolutely i'm hoping you guys can hear me fine i can hear all of you which is great we have some notes from my friend andrew who always kind of gets the inside scoop update some notes it's uh tagged right above in the nest this tweet some notes about david tax and today's press conference will be heavy on Bitcoin and timelines. Discussion of sovereign wealth fund,

timelines laid out as to propose legislation and Bitcoin strategic reserve. Yes, I expect there to be America first rhetoric with SWF and crypto reiterating no XRP. Interesting. So we have the announcement of the sovereign wealth fund yesterday. I think conspiracy theory throwing on my tinfoil hat, that seems to be about TikTok, uh, to a large degree beyond the fact that I think they want a sovereign wealth fund. But if the United States is going to be, uh, forcing a sale at a tremendous discount of TikTok to an American company or entrepreneur, it does seem like time that when America puts money into things or subsidizes things that they actually get equity back for it, which is kind of the idea behind the sovereign wealth fund. So the United States could become a de facto owner of TikTok. But think about all the companies

that basically the United States has found, you has found ways to subsidize or industries they've helped. Imagine if the United States was an equity holder in all those companies. And that's kind of what a sovereign wealth fund could potentially allow. I also think that the sovereign wealth fund could be sort of a backdoor way to start putting Bitcoin not on the balance sheet, but having the United States invested in Bitcoin and other crypto assets. I mean, we have the Southern Wealth Fund announcement.

We have Eric Trump tweeting that it's a good time to buy ETH in his opinion. And then kind of hints that something's coming, then edits away the part. Basically, tipped his hat so that there's going to be an announcement. So I mean, could this be, you you know could this be instead of a strategic digital asset reserve that these assets go into the sovereign wealth fund i mean derek what do you think i don't know i mean i commented on on andrew's post that's been pinned at the top of the space um i think it was earlier today um you know, and like the points that he raised, you know, like heavy discussion on Bitcoin, you know, this America first and the strategic wealth fund reiterating no XRP. I mean, like this sounds super, super, you know, like Bitcoin maxi, you know, like I'm not sure if any of that would would be right.

I mean, like one can only. I don't expect it to be Bitcoin, Matt. No, no, no. Trump hasn't said the word Bitcoin. He hasn't. Precisely. I mean, the question is, David Sachs is just going to take an all crypto approach. I mean, honestly, from the outside looking in and from all the reporting that we've done, it seems increasingly likely that there is going to be some sort of a crypto reserve and it will have a basket of assets. I think it would probably be heavily Bitcoin. That's just my two cents worth. But honestly, I don't have any inside knowledge here. I know as

much as everyone else that's been speculating from a new sense. But in terms of the sovereign wealth fund, I would find it actually quite surprising if they then announced that a Bitcoin acquisition is going to be part of that. But I'm also not an expert on sovereign wealth funds or anything like that. I don't know the mechanics. I couldn't even speak reputably

on what would make up a proper sovereign wealth fund. I mean, what sort of assets do sovereign wealth funds typically invest in? Is it even assets or businesses? Yeah, anything strategic to the country. Yeah, literally anything. So this is kind of like when people talk about what you can put in a reserve, obviously focused on gold or oil or things that are strategic to the United States. When you talk about a sovereign wealth fund, I mean, they could flip Trump and Melania if they

want to. Yeah, sorry, David, just before you jump in, what I found interesting was, you know, Senator Lamas herself had kind of put out a few, you know, retweets yesterday, sort of saying that it would be good news and kind of intimating that it might be good for Bitcoin but you know maybe she's just trying to type that up and and continue getting some good support for what she's trying to do with the Bitcoin Act I mean that's that's my general feeling and I I don't think that they're going to come out with a very clear sort of statement on what crypto they'll be investing in and if it's going to be part of the sovereign wealth fund I just don't think that they're going to give that kind of clarity this early after signing the executive order yesterday.

Yeah, David, I'm going to go to you in one second, but just, I did pin that above for anyone who wants to see it. This is a big deal with the Bitcoin B again. Now, listen, we had our biggest faces ever when we got fooled by her Bitcoin B big deal last time that we were about to get a strategic reserve for being totally transparent. But thank you all for showing up that day. Yeah, which was her getting a job. But in this case, she's referring to the sovereign wealth fund specifically with a

Bitcoin B. They're going to put Bitcoin in the sovereign wealth fund. That's what that says, whether it's going to happen or not. That's what she's saying. Go ahead, David. Yeah, I was simply going to say, in terms of the funding in the sovereign wealth fund. That's what that says. Whether it's going to happen or not, that's what she said. Go ahead, David. Yeah, I was simply going to say, in terms of the funding of the sovereign wealth fund, I'm speculating here. But given the issues around the Social Security Trust and the demographic profile in the U.S., obviously, you need to raise the rates of return on the social security trust fund to fund benefits going forward and i wouldn't it wouldn't surprise me uh to see if the current administration says maybe what we see in terms of the sovereign wealth fund is to get the ball

rolling is to have a portion of the funds that are in the social security trust fund rolled into the sovereign wealth fund. I wonder what the laws are on insider trading with a sovereign wealth fund. Anybody know? Bill, you're a lawyer. I was going to say, if we've got Bill yet, we should ask Bill. Just have Nancy Pelosi run it. Yeah, with, well, I don't know what the... I don't know what they are. I do think that... I think Justin...

Yeah, if the question is, is insider trading allowed, you can just assume no. I just wonder what the definition of insider trading is with a sovereign wealth fund. You know, like if the United States, yeah. Well, there's insider trading as a general category. And basically, if you're taking proprietary information and using that for personal gain, it could be violating a number of different rules or laws or standards.

So do you know if it's possible? So we've obviously talked about the mechanics of moving assets that are already seized by DOJ and the marshals into a quote unquote strategic reserve or a digital asset stockpile, right? So basically they can take everything that they've seized in the past that becomes the de facto strategic reserve. Does anybody have any idea what the mechanics would be of moving those assets into the sovereign wealth fund? Me either, just for the record. So I'm not trying to put anyone on the spot. Matthew, you're-

No, I expect that it's not lawful to do that, and they would need an act of Congress. Yeah, that's my assumption. But I don't know necessarily what the rules are without that, because we don't have a sovereign wealth fund. No, but we have 11 states. We have 11 states that have sovereign wealth funds. Well, that's fine, but we have a federal system. Sure, but in all of those states, they have commodities, which I think is really interesting. It's either petroleum or public land or fossil fuels, some assets and things like that. There's nothing in there like stocks.

And maybe there's a difference between how we are starting to differentiate these assets between each other. Maybe some are commodities and not necessarily securities. And that's where you're going to be able to make that justification. So I would venture a point here to say that the classification of cryptocurrencies in a particular way might allow them the ability to put them into a sovereign wealth fund. Yeah, I would add to that point about states with sovereign wealth funds. I would also go through and look about state-run pension funds, whether you look at CalPERS, CalSTRS, New York State Common Fund, the Texas Funds, even Ohio. But one thing I would just observe

about the current administration is that they don't seem to be bothered by the niceties of laws. They would rather just rule by executive order and let any challenge be taken up in the courts. That's patently absurd. Look, crazier shit

has come out of this guy's mouth. We'll see what happens. Well, nothing that crazy to be. What? You've got Elon Musk going in and willy-nilly just shutting down parts of the U.S. government. No one's doing really anything about it. This is the Wild West, my friend. Get ready.

No, it's not. ready no it's not no it's not i i understand there's there's sort of a lots of catastrophism um i think the catastrophism is more organized and coherent this the lost pill did you guys this transition has been laser focused on getting what can be done uh in the executive branch done um and their lawyers are very hey bill you have a terrible connection and you keep cutting out, buddy. I'm going to bring you down and bring you back up if we can re-invite him. So, yeah, David, I kind of lost what was happening there in that argument. I did just kind of look up the mechanics and it does seem like we would need a new legal framework to move assets.

But it's very vague. Go ahead, David. No, I'm's very vague. Go ahead, David. No, I'm good. Simon. I was just going to say, the reason it's all crickets and speculation is because everything's unprecedented. The impression I get here is that the largest economy in the world is doing what Google does,

where they're creating all these little departments that are operating like startups. And this is unprecedented. Name a country in the world that has a sovereign wealth fund that's not backed by some kind of surplus cash flow and has transferred over Department of Justice seized crypto assets, not ETFs, and is trying to classify what these different types of commodities, digital assets are at the same time as coming up with a bunch of new regulations

where the president of the country has conflicts of interest below an nft collection a launch of a stable coin a defi platform a governance token a meme coin for himself and his wife and a brand new crypto saw like no one's going to have the answers to this stuff we're just enjoying the journey of a startup division within the largest economy in the world. It's completely unprecedented. And then you have the whole Bitcoin conversation. That one's complicated enough.

Adds the shitcoin casino to the mix, and no one's going to have the answers. It's never been done. You won't find a case. So we're making it up as we go. No one's going to have the answers. It's never been done. You won't find a case. So we're making it up as we go. Unfortunately, that's true. I mean, like, even if you look at this, you know,

announcement that's supposed to take place later today, I suspect it'll be very similar to, you know, Trump's executive order for the, you know, the digital, the cryptocurrency working group, right? Like they want to develop a strategic reserve XYZ, but they have to cross their T's and dot their I's before they even start thinking about doing any of these things. And I guess that's the nature of crypto Twitter is we all want things to happen super quickly, but it's just not going to be like that. And you kind of need to let all of these processes take place

before you get anywhere near that. Could I just address the issue of the press conference later today? I heard a couple thoughts on it. From everything we in D.C. can tell, it's Congress, especially those leading the efforts in the House. We're particularly annoyed with the executive order setting out a 180-day research and writing period for the administration to figure out what it wants to do. Congress wants to move on legislative packages, many of which are largely built and ready to go they just need to be repackaged and then you know the legislative process needs to begin again with a new congress and so this is a i think most accurately seen as a collaborative hand extended from the white house to Capitol Hill. Um, and is, um, you know,

and frankly, in that regard, I think a very positive sign that the white house wants to work so closely with Capitol Hill on lots of stuff. So the first priority for Capitol Hill is a market structure bill that matters very much to French Hill. It matters very much to Cynthia Lummis, although she has sort of competing legislation from what passed in the House last time. And then secondarily is stablecoin legislation. And so they want to proceed with it and they don't want to be sitting around on their hands waiting for the White House to do whatever it wants to do. I think today is the first indication that the White House is on board with that and that they want to work hand in hand with Congress. So I, you know, I'm sure they're going to talk about all the things that have been mentioned on this, but I think that this is more good internal politics between the executive and the legislative to let folks in Congress know

that the White House isn't trying to take this over and run it in its own direction and disregard what the folks in Congress want to do. Yeah, Bill, and Hagerty, yeah, to your point, sorry to interrupt, Hagerty proposed a new stablecoin bill today in the Senate. I pinned it above, called Genius. Genius, and here's the quick highlights from Eleanor Tarrant. Genius Act provides clear regulations for U.S. stablecoins, defines stablecoins as digital assets pegged to the USD, establishes, that obviously, by the way, means like no Luna-type algorithmic stablecoins, establishes licensing and reserve requirements for issuers. Applies Fed rules for issuers over 10 billion.

State rules under 10 billion. Supports financial inclusion, efficient transactions, and dollar supremacy. Pegged to the USD. And Senate staffers tell me they expect the bill to move quickly through committees in Congress. Will be discussed in today's press conference with David Sachs. So sounds, Bill, like you're right there, that they're going to make it clear that this is a legislative priority. It's start to push.

I mean, we've had, you know, Lummis Gillibrand sitting for years. We've had market structure and stablecoin bills in the House, you know, led by McHenry et al for years. It's time. Yeah. And what the blockchain industry has really never had are the chairs of the relevant committees on Capitol Hill, both in the House and in the Senate, working collaboratively with the White House on actually realizing some of these policy goals of ours. I think today,

at a minimum, you're going to see there's going to be some sort of parallel congressional working group on crypto only lead to bigger, tougher questions in the future. But we're starting to set a table now for a really robust industry in the United States. David? Yeah, I was just going to say, no, it's all very, very positive news. It's nice to see the confluence of Congress and the executive potentially collaborating. But I would say that looking at the executive's priorities alone and thinking about the time frame within which they have to enact that, it all has to be done before the midterms, I would argue. And I would just say one thing is that given what we're saying about all this innovation taking place, it's very much a part of the idea

of Elon Musk or others of just moving fast and breaking things. So, you know, I think on the outside, we have to bet that there are going to be things that are unexpected that are more likely to happen than to look at sort of standard operating procedure being what's going to happen. If in the event that Congress pushes back against the executive, I clearly would expect Trump just to come down really hard on Congress because he does not wish to be reined in. There is, you know, limited appeal for him, I think, of checks and balances. And we'll see how it plays out. Yeah, quickly, I just want to say, actually, who was jumping in? Go ahead,

because I can move on to the next point. Somebody was jumping in. Is that you, Bill? All right. Sorry. Yeah. I think that the point about midterms is really important. And Bill, I'm assuming that's why you kind of said they have a year, right? And not two years, because in a year after that, they're going to be fundraising and worrying about elections. And I think it's important to note, in a conversation I had with John Deaton the other day, he pointed out that if the Senate flips Democrat, and usually you did not see a party remain in power in both houses and the executive, you know, throughout, usually it is pushback and one of them flips, Elizabeth Warren will be the chair of the Senate Finance Committee again in two years. So it is a pretty limited timeframe here. Yeah, I'm not as worried about the Senate as I would be about the House. The House

was supposed to flip them this time. And, you know, the fumble was so bad that it stayed Republican. But no, you're right. In an election year, it's hard to get anything done. So I'm not normally all like rainbows and unicorns, but have done to really educate and cultivate a growing bench of, uh, Dem candidates and Dem representatives, um, who aren't at the very least aren't crypto like antagonistic and, um,

go all the way to, you know, Richie Torres pro crypto, let's embrace innovation style folks like the like a throwback to the 90s democrats who were clintonian in their view on innovation um i think we're seeing that trend and so i i think this this year um we're going to be kicking ourselves if we don't get um the big pieces done and that's the the way the industry in DC is very much focused. Let's get the big things right.

And let's worry about the noise later. And then let's continue to build broader coalitions in both parties who get crypto. And want to give us the opportunity to prove the merits of the tech we're building. That last point was the one that I've been stressing repeatedly, and it's kind of my biggest fear, is that we finally have this all systems go moment, and now the industry has to actually prove its worth. Right. Well, I see people sort of making the laughing faces, but it's true.

It's actually a good corollary to that is exactly what we were talking about is when one party is completely in control, you find it's very hard to govern and very easy to scream from the sidelines about all the things that are wrong. Well, now we have been screaming from the sidelines about all the things that are wrong with crypto policy. And now we have the chance to basically do anything we want. And it's a very brief chance. Go ahead, Matthew. Just a quick analogy here, or just from a policy standpoint, that when Amazon was, you know, after the 2001, you know, one sort of internet bubble burst, and Amazon was coming back into the foray of things. And there was a huge problem in policy about how to deal with taxes, because people couldn't figure out if I was buying from a warehouse, or I was buying from Amazon,

or if I was buying from somebody directly, how do we tax and earn and figure out where the revenue goes for all this? And it took Congress and the United States 14 years to ultimately figure out how Amazon could tax its goods. So I just, you know, to your point there, you know, Scott, there's just, this stuff takes a lot of time for policy to suss itself out. And we're at the very beginning stages of this. And so it's really critical that we continue pushing the ball forward. But it's also just important for people to have the set of expectations that this stuff doesn't happen overnight. So when you hear that they're going to come out and have this grandiose, you know, meeting today and on the steps of Congress or wherever they're going to do

it. I just think it's going to be kind of a nothing burger and kind of, you know, we should temper our expectations about what they can do and what they will say they're going to try to do. And I think that that's the point everyone's making. It's going to be more of a reiteration that this is a priority, just to make sure that the industry is happy and nobody forgets that they're working on this, but like nobody's expecting, I guess a huge announcement very specific that could be like a market catalyst. Is that kind of what you're saying? Yeah. And I think we should just hope that, you know,

that the market itself is understanding that too, and not trying to price things in, which it doesn't really feel like it is. But it is just something to keep in mind that when we hear, you know, now it's becoming a much larger game of, of announcements of announcements, right? Like we do this with founders in the space, or, you know, some tokens and projects and things where we're hoping something comes, and there's a lot of hype around it. But this is now becoming on a much more national and world global stage. So the announcements of these things or the speculation is just going to be a much, much broader sort of, you know, system here, I think. Yeah, Bill, you're obviously in DC, how would you handicap

the odds of getting some meaningful crypto legislation in the coming, you know, months in this first year? I mean, we talked about what needs to get done. I mean, do you think that we see something substantial? I do not know. Is your ability speaking? Anyone? I can't hear. Okay. Crickets.

Also can't hear him, Scott. Okay. Crickets. Yeah, we like to, we like, X, I feel like they're trolling us. You know, I know that there's glitches in the software, but they want to make us look stupid at the most inopportune times. I feel like there's like one of his... You know, everybody's very upset about Elon having like 23-year-old devs

running Doge and cutting departments. I feel like those guys are also listening to our spaces and just fucking with me. But hey, that's just me. Go ahead, David. David, you had your hand up. Sorry about that. Now you're doing it. You're one of the devs. I see what you did there. And honestly, man, that was perfect comedic timing. Well done.

Sorry. Oh, you can speak now. Oh, you can speak now. Oh, sorry. No, there was a good point that was made in a conversation, not ours, earlier today, that what's going on right now is somewhat reminiscent of what happened in Iraq when the Coalition for National, you know, after Bush invaded, you know, the people who were put in to run things knew absolutely nothing about what they were doing. And it just took a lot faster to ruin a country than to actually build it up. And we'll just have to see what happens. Hopefully, in the meanwhile, X continues to work for us. Thanks. Hey, Scott. Sorry I'm back. Hey, man. It might have been you, but I blame X, so you're good. Yeah, well, so I think it's high that we're going to get something done legislatively. I think the hurdle is getting to 60 votes in the Senate. The worry is if you don't get to 60 votes, somebody is going to filibuster whatever's put forward.

You know, Warren could, you know, lay down in the aisle and say, you don't have 60 votes to get past my filibuster, so I'm going to hold my breath until this thing goes away. Oh my God. Well, maybe she'll hold it forever. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, right. But look, I think they're going to get to a package which is palatable enough even for the crypto skepticsics and you're going to get to and the antagonists are not going to lay down on the tracks for it. How much you get done, I think is the issue. Hopefully, if we got market structure and stablecoin done, I think that's a big success. And we can start to fill in the gaps. Obviously, the doubles in the details as to what they say, but I think we need big table setting items done.

And it looks like at least initially Congress and the White House are going to try to work together to make that done. Stable coin has to be the lowest hanging fruit, right? I mean, that just seems easy relative to everything else. Yes and no. There are a couple of sticky issues in there, but you'd think it would be easier to get to yes or sort of sufficient consensus than market structure. But it's not going to be prioritized ahead of market structure. It doesn't look like so. And then there's going to be a lot of horse trading because there's lots of different ways to go at stablecoin. No one knows what Hagerty's bill, the perfectly named Genius Act, what precisely it says, but they're going to have to reconcile

the differences among these various bills and then get past the question of how these stablecoin issuers are going to be supervised and who can be a stablecoin issuer. If they get past those hurdles, yeah, I would think it would follow on shortly after market structure. Do you think that would be ACC or SEC? What's your take? Stablecoins? Yeah. what's your take stable coins yeah um no i would think that they would be regulated by a prudential regulator for the banks and fdic etc uh depends if they're probably not insured

but in terms of supervisory whether it's just the Fed or whether state banking institutions can also supervise issuers. It's interesting. No, yeah, I would think if you're thinking SEC or CFTC, I would think the outcome is more likely that non-stable crypto tokens, whether the issuance or secondary trading is overseen by one or both of them to some degree. When it comes to stables, it seems more that that's going to fall into the banking bucket rather than investor protection bucket. We had this sort of interesting scenario in the past administration where there was a chance of stablecoin legislation,

but a lot of the things that were floated were, I would say, outwardly antagonistic for any non-US issuer, right? There was a lot of fear that Tether would be sort of left out in the cold or that stable coins would have to be issued by banks in the United States. Now you have obviously Lutnik as the Department of Commerce, and he's a, I think, 5% other in Tether and Cantor Fitzgerald, basically custodies Tether assets. Do we think now that Tether or others that are issued offshore have a much better chance of being a part of this? Or is there still a fear actually that it could sort of follow this America only rhetoric and we could have, you know, the tethers and others basically not given approval in the United States. I think the U S market is so big that if we set out the rules,

everyone's going to fall in line in terms of big, in terms of economic mass, you can't really run a stable coin and be as big as you want to be and cut out the United States. So what I think happens is they're going to write stablecoin rules. Tether is going to click its heels and salute and do what it needs to do to continue to print billions of dollars in profit. Find a US banking partner of some sort to go through some sort of exercise that makes them compliant. I mean're if you were making 13 billion what is it a quarter or or is that too much if you're making that much money you'll do pretty

much anything to keep the to keep the party going and so yeah i don't see a stable coin issuer of any size in the world in the next five years that's not compliant with the united states's program for stable coins which is frankly great for the united states it perpetuates the it perpetuates the supremacy and the ubiquity of the united states dollar which is good for everybody 100 simon yeah um well if europe is anything to go by mika um basically made it where stable coins are just not what stable coins are today. The beauty of stable coins is that you're able to send a digital dollar anywhere in the world. And they regulate the on-ramps and off-ramps.

And then you have to have backing and transparency and all that type of stuff. The way they function right now is a recipe for success. The problem is travel rule. And so with travel rule, they want you to have, be able to pass on just like a bank account, the details of the sender. And that is a US heavy regulation, but it was also implemented in Europe. And so if they go for travel rule, which I can't imagine why they wouldn't, there'd have to be a miracle here because it would give such a competitive advantage to stable coins over banks. It will just completely change the nature of how stable coins are.

You'd have to have an element of KYC. They couldn't be used for DeFi. It would almost be like a security token. So everyone needs to watch this, they need to be actively involved. If we could keep stablecoins as they are today, it would change the world. If they do what they did in Europe, which I think they will do in America of travel rule, then literally it will break all of the innovation and turn it into a digital bank deposit, which will be clunky and problematic.

Definitely a good take, Simon. I know we're going to be doing a Spaces at 2.45 to kind of go over exactly what David's going to be discussing in the press conference later. So we would also love you to join that. But for this basis here, we are here with a sponsor, Earn M. And just a disclaimer before we get started, Mario's company, IBC, does marketing, incubation, and investing. Sponsors on this show are sponsors working directly with IBC, not necessarily Crypto Town Hall, Scott, or even myself specifically. So Earn M, not sure who we have uh behind the

mic but would love to to kick it off just with a explanation of exactly what the project is for people who've been tuning in hey boss uh do you hear me okay first of all yeah yeah i can hear you great great amazing uh so yeah my name is gaston, first of all. So I appreciate the intro and I'm glad to be here. I've been hearing a lot of great things that you guys have been chatting about. We are definitely living in a very interesting time. There are a lot of interesting mechanics that will come into our space that would be, to say the least, interesting to see. But yeah, basically, we have one of the largest consumer super apps in the world. We are US-based as well. So we are closely watching all the specific aspects that you guys have been discussing here in the space.

We were basically one of the first super apps to be able to focus on user acquisition. We have a community of over 45 million users. They spend time within the app, and they do basically day-to-day activities. So they get to watch YouTube videos, listen to music, play games, surf the web, do shopping to some degree as well.

And basically, the incentive is that they get rewards by doing so. We have different advertisers that we work with, like people do shopping to some degree as well. And basically the incentive is that they get rewards. So we have different advertisers that we work with and we give some of those rewards in different crypto assets. So it's basically like a rewards ecosystem, but benefits the user-equal engagement within the platform specifically. Awesome. Thank you for that background. And you guys were able to raise over $40 million

for some pretty prominent VCs and recently had your TGE. How did the TGE go? Correct. Yeah, I mean, we actually, like, up until December, we were probably one of the long-lasting projects that had a large token or go under in this space. I mean, the initial base we did was over seven years ago, eight now.

So it's been a while. We've been really focusing on building a strong community and a specific placement for it to be hosted basically, which from a very early stage, like we realized that it was most important to get users, get activity, get real off-chain revenue to be able to make a higher dent in the space. And that's what we did until about two years ago when we started focusing on the Web3 aspects of it. Since then, we were able to create a strong model, a strong tokenomic model, which, as you

mentioned, launched back in December in 2024. So yeah, I mean, we are pretty happy on how things are going right now. There is a lot of work that the team has been putting and there is a lot of attention coming into a few very interesting events that we have coming up in the next like month or so. Awesome. Yeah. Just scrolling your, your website. I mean, definitely some, some pretty big partners on here, Comma3 Ventures, Magnus Capital, GSR, AU21 Capital. So very recognizable people and groups on the cap table. And you also have uh your initial merge offering coming up which is probably a new term for a lot of people who are are tuning in can you explain just first what an initial merge offering is yeah totally um so it's something we're very proud of and um it goes

similar like in the same direction to what you guys were talking before. The space is going through the maturity phase. And there are certain aspects to this maturity that we see on other industries in the world. So, for example, if you go to tech or media or basically any other large industry in the world, they all have one thing in common, which is the consolidation aspect. If you go back 20, 30 years ago, or like in the US, for example, you had at least like 20, 30 different big media albums. Right now you only have like four or five. If you go to the tech aspect, for example, you see all of these gigantic acquisitions, like KMD, apparently the third largest chip manufacturer, or like Apple buying the creators of the multitouch to be able to create the iPhone.

So basically, over time, the more mature the industry is, the more consolidation exists across the different companies to be able to build greater products using their competitive advantages. That's something that is not really happening in crypto right now. We see a trend where the space is going to that specific direction we are trying to lead it,

by basically bringing that consolidation aspect into the space. The merger itself, it's like a new mechanic that we developed with StormX. StormX, it's also a very uh like old project they've been around since 2017 as well they have been missing the diners and happy um over time across all the exchanges as well and the main thing is like they they are in a very similar business as ours they do cashback which is a business vertical that we never touched on uh but they also have a strong

user base they have about like three four million users and they have a strong presence in certain Asian markets as well, especially in Korea and China. On the other hand, we have a larger community, as I mentioned before, for about 5 million users, but we specialize in other user-centred activities which, at the end of the day, creates a good environment but the more in-arrior for the users. So, at the end of the day, we are able to join forces with other teams and other companies that are doing something similar to us, the addition, the sum of both companies becomes greater than what we are currently doing separately. It's positive. It's positive for our holders, it's positive for the space, it's positive for a lot of different entities

in the ecosystem. So that's basically what the IMO represents. It's the initial merge offerings, being able to bring that consolidation into the space. So how does this IMO fit into your original roadmap? What can people expect in terms of milestones and different developments as you guys are ongoing with the IMO? That's a very good question. So basically the IMO, it's like an underlying process

that will happen. It's mostly an administrative concept by now. We started with this process back in October 2024. So basically there's been a while. And of course, like we started working, we just started seeing probably like about a year ago, like hashing down the process on this. But basically, around October, there was a community vote that got

approved with a 99.95% approval rate. The community decided that the merger made sense and it was a step in the right direction for both projects. And basically, from there, we started having conversations with the exchanges, both Binance, Abbott, and our exchanges as well, to be able to support the merge. It's mostly a specific point in time where the tokens are going to be merged into a single one. There's going to be a change in the charts and different structures around that. So as I said before, it's mostly an administrative staff right now. What we are focusing on is to be able to enlarge these revenue opportunities that we have for users, and we are also trying to enlarge the size of the community itself. So it's basically business as social to be able to grow both of those aspects,

bring better rewards to users, and keep distributing the revenue back to them. As a high-level metric, and to give a little bit of context, we have been able to distribute over $350 million on the last seven years to users that we're engaging with in our platforms. So that's our mission, and that's what we are going to keep doing after the merger.

That's awesome. And for people who are tuning in, what's the opportunity for them to get involved? Like if they're hearing about RNM for the first time or hearing about the IMO for the first time, what's the opportunity in front of them right now for them to look into? Great. I mean, it depends on the type of user

and there are different ways everybody can interact with us in many levels. So first of all, you can download the app. It's available on Android. It's called the Earn app. If you type that, it will come up. It's one of the largest app downloaded in the app store. Is it on iOS as well or just Android? It's just on Android because Apple is a little bit more strict with revenue opportunities generated in the app. It's also way more restrictive when it comes to implementing certain aspects.

And also the type of audience that we are targeting, it's often present on Android rather than iPhone, especially in international countries. The US is one of the only countries in the world that has the 80-20 iOS versus Android ratio. But if you go overseas, you see the opposite. Or even some countries have 95% Android devices versus 5% iOS. So it's a way larger market for the type of audience that we're targeting.

Got it. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt about how people can get involved of audience that we're targeting. Got it. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt about how people can get involved right now if they're tuning in. That's fine. That's perfect. On top of downloading the app and getting to use it,

which will open up some revenue aspects and the opportunity for people to start making some supplemental income, the token is available on a few major exchanges and also decentralized exchanges. So anybody that wants to invest in the token, they are able to just investigate on our website, Twitter, etc. and make a decision based on that research. We do have a couple of exciting aspects coming out. We basically developed this area within the company

that we call the earn and alternate initiatives, which is basically like a division within the company that specializes on high return, low risk projects. So you see how in crypto we have all these different trends going one direction, the other direction. On the baseline, the only thing that all of these initiatives or narratives have in common is the fact that they drive a lot of attention, and with that attention, they also drive a lot of volume. Those are two things that any project wants to capture. The main thing is how you're able to

do it if the narrative is going in the opposite direction as your core vision, as your core narrative. Basically, we developed this model, this framework, where we are able to capture value across the different trends. We did that with the Telegram mini apps a while ago, like eight to 12 months ago. We are doing it now with AI agents. And there are also other aspects in the pipeline that we will be ready to roll as soon as we see an active in the attention. That basically drives attention and holds the value back to ERNEM.

It's one of the things that we're most proud of, to be able to be able, in the office of a large corp, to be able to capture some of those incentives. What's your outlook on this vertical specifically within Web3 say in the next three years? Do you see this as a vertical within the market that's going to expand quite a bit?

You mean AI agents or AI in general? Yeah, AI agents, but also like the E-Web3 world as well. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, it's here for the long term. There's no doubt about that. I think people in Web 3 have a hard time differentiating

what is a good trend because of the market value or the attention they're seeking versus the actual product or quality value to put away. I think we will see larger projects in the space do more serious work over time that are going to be able to amass a lot of potential within it. I think by the nature of the space, there are also going to be other huge attention drivers that will drag some of the liquidity out of these new technologies.

It's kind of like a mixed answer, but the way I see these things and the way we have been seeing this for the last seven years is that things pop up very quickly, they get a lot of attention, and then you get some people that truly understand the way the niche, the network works and they tend to work on over time to create true value, not just high value. So you mentioned earlier about, I think it was, you said 45 million users. Is that correct? Yes, correct. I mean, obviously obviously when looking at the

landscape of crypto projects that's a massive accomplishment thus far. But what plans do you guys have in the near future and maybe even in the medium term as well to even increase those user numbers? Great. Yeah, I mean, I

appreciate that. It's been a while since I started acquiring these users and figuring out a way to host a safe environment for them. And they come in many different shapes and places as well. Most of them are within our application, within the superapps, so they are active players. And this allowed us to create strong relationships with other advertisers in the world. So working with Binance, with Coinbase, with other Web3 apps or exchanges as well, as well as different games, different apps. We have partners with Candy Crush, with TikTok, with some of these other games as well. And they all want something and they all share

one, which is to get more users. And that's also how we equipped it. Once you reach a certain level where you are able to sustainably grow the user base, you end up in a situation where you can basically get that attention for free if you crack the model. So what I'm trying to say here is there are many different industries in the world that want users and most of the users that these different applications look for are US users or to some degree international English speaking users. So basically the tier one countries like Canada, Australia, the UK, Ireland and New Zealand. But if you go outside of that, the users are not really sought after for this part.

I'm from Uruguay in South America and Nobody will pay for an ad for something that is expensive or realistic in that sense. So what that means is that the revenue that a company can make for U.S. users is much larger than what they can make from any other country in the world. What happens in there is that it creates an imbalance in the cost of acquiring those users. So U. So US users are

more expensive because there are more dollars back in incentives behind that. So we find out that there is a single industry in the world that doesn't really care about that mechanic. That industry is crypto. It doesn't matter if you're signing a transaction from Uruguay, the US, Pakistan, or whatever it is. It's the same transactions, the same cost, it's the same experience for the user. And that opens up a lot of doors. Basically, we figured out that there is an opportunity to be able to acquire very cheap users that are highly valued on Web3. And that's what we have been doing.

It's basically an engine that we get to capture audiences through different mechanisms. That includes different KOLs, different partnerships, working with other projects, working with other communities, doing simply amazing viral stuff that we get to put on socials through these alternative initiatives. For example, we actually have a campaign coming in with the Chinese Elon Musk if you guys saw that. But basically, with all the hype

and all the buzz around Elon and the Chinese Elon Musk meeting, we've been working with that guy actually for the last year and a half. He's a big part of ours. He's actually featured on our website across the last couple of years. And we actually ran a campaign with him before. But right now with this new meta,

with this new narrative shaping up, it's a great opportunity for us to be able to capture some of that audience as well. So basically, it's a matter of staying sharp, figuring out what are the key metrics to be able to look at and execute those. And that, to be honest, drives a lot of value because we cracked away to be able to generate revenue

on chain by using these transactions. The users, the money that comes from our advertisers are giving to users, but users decide to spend on chain through our own smart contracts and mechanisms. So we have an actual way of making money on chain every time a user is completing a transaction. Speaking about partners, like going through your website,

there's a section, notable clients and partners, where it's listed as like Robinhood, Binance, Coinbase, even Crypto.com, some of the largest brands in crypto and even launchpads as well, like Ape Terminal. But could you maybe drill down a little bit on how exactly you're working with partners like Robinhood, Coinbase and products like that?

Yeah, totally. It's very similar to what I was mentioning before. All these partners, basically what they want is users. They want notifications. They want more activity on their platforms and you often have different goals. But if you're thinking about an exchange, for example, one of their key goals is to be able for users to download their apps, create an account, fund the account, and then depending on the case, either trade a certain amount of money or just save a certain amount of money or stake a certain amount of money.

That's basically what the service that we provide to these users. We have these big user base, and the best way for us to activate it is to create special campaigns, special offerings with these advertisers. Basically, our users have special opportunities to be able to create accounts on Binance, Coinbase, Robicode, etc. at their location. With that in mind, they just go, they follow those steps that I mentioned before, and they get a reward by doing so. The model, the business aspect of it, it's very straightforward. We get paid a portion of the activity that the user is draining on the system. So let's say, finance business, 50 bucks every time a user goes through that process. And

basically what we do is we rep share it with the user. So the user gets 20, 25, 30 bucks depending on the campaign and the location. We keep the rest. We make the business work in that process. And basically what we do is we rep share it with the user. So the user gets 20, 25, 30 bucks depending on the campaign and the location. We keep the rest. We make the business work in that sense. The user is happy. The partner is happy. We are happy. And yeah, we are able to grow it further. Awesome. Yeah, I love the website. And there's

certainly for people who are tuning in, a lot more partners that people could go through and really do their own research ahead of the IMO to see whether or not they want to get involved. And Ernim, I really appreciate you guys joining us today. If people are tuning in, make sure you click the green square icon up here and give Ernim a follow. Their website's in the bio there if anyone wants more information on the the project um but as we're we're wrapping up is there any sort of final call to action or anything like that or opportunity that you want to let people know about today yeah sure i think the best way to proceed is uh check

the website and check the twitter account uh you can type vernon.com and earn and ai to be able to to look on the alternative initiatives aspect too. Yeah, that's probably it. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you joining us today. And if people are tuning in, make sure that you give ERNM a follow. I see 334 comments down there. So we'll certainly be going through those. And I'm hoping that the ERNM community is here in good spirits as well.

And just another announcement as we're wrapping up. So IBC is also hiring for writers, journalists, and moderators. So if anyone's tuning in, looking for a great team to join, or if you're a project that's wanting to do an AMA, just like this one that EARNM just did, make sure that you DM either the Crypto Town Hall account or the Mario account that's up here. Mario doesn't personally look at all those DMs, but he has a team of 60 plus people that are helping him with all of the news, all of the business development and different things that go on behind the scenes. So make sure that you DM those accounts up there if you want to get in touch and are looking for an opportunity. So, Ernim, I appreciate you joining

today and wish you guys all the success with the IMO coming up. Thank you, Matt. I appreciate that.