The Wolf Of All Streets - DEBATING NFTS | ASSET TOKENIZATION | TOKEN 2049 RECAP | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

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Hey, welcome back to life. I wouldn't go that far, but welcome back to home for sure. It was a pleasure to meet you in Dubai in the airport, man. It's such a cool... Tell everyone how we... Dude, you know that I got like... I had to sprint. No.

I was super delayed in both directions and like Gaurav was like holding the plane for me on the way there. On which one? In Dubai? Yeah, in Dubai. Like I was delayed in both directions and i didn't end up spending any time even in the airport and actually i was going to uh switch my flight on sunday uh to early in the morning to uh come see you for like seven or eight hours

instead of having a quick layover but then the flight was totally sold out glad you didn't because i would have felt like shit i was actually not in i left dubai on saturday evening so for a while yeah so uh i thought you never left the house so it was a safe yeah it was actually relatively safe but uh i meant yeah i didn't even let you know because once i saw that the flight was uh it was impossible to to get the change yeah it was the craziest thing though yeah while we're getting everyone up on stage, I was briefly in the Dubai airport on the way back, and I was trying to watch F1 on my laptop,

and there's this guy sitting behind me watching it. And we start talking, and he says, what are you doing? And I was like, I was in Singapore with McLaren, with OKX, just doing some global brand ambassador stuff. And he's like, oh, we work with them. We do all their activations. We do everything.

He's like, let me give you my number. And so we exchanged numbers. And I'm like, I swear to God, I know this guy. He gave me his number. The name was Bally. I'm like, I know this guy. And then we get in line to get on the flight. I followed them out 20 minutes later.

And I'm like, this is going to sound crazy. But in 2003, do you remember like a company called Tiger Telematics and having a meeting with a couple of guys from America in a suite with Damon Dash from Rockefeller records? Me and this dude had spent like the craziest week of all time in 2003 and totally like bumped into him this thing and remembered it and now we're we're best friends again how long has it been you haven't spoken to him 2003 oh shit since that crazy party yeah i see travis is there on business but we were trying to like pitch damon dash a long long story back in my old music and marketing days, but it was really wild to bump into them at the Dubai airport. Yeah, Ryan, you were referring to Travis?

I see Travis is, yeah, it's going to be great. It's one day after the Binance hearings. I think we're going to have a good discussion. Oh, the hearing is tomorrow. I promised you, Ryan, I wasn't going to dunk on you too hard, even though I was going to have ample opportunity to over the coming weeks and months on this and i i'm gonna stick to that so oh no i know if you get the opportunity i don't understand so who won the hearing yesterday like when you talk like if you were

like scoring you know like if you were like a a judge scoring like point to SEC, one point to Binance, who do you think won the first round? I think it would have been right down the middle. Yeah, I think that was right down the middle. Okay, fair enough. Okay, so then I think we're – But I mean both Binance US and the SEC are complete sideshows in this. Sideshows.

Yes. The afterthought of the afterthought. Yeah. Yes. And do you agree with me that Binance is playing a strategy that's kicking the can very, very far down the road here? So they're trying to delay this as quickly as for as long as possible.

It does certainly seem like that they are, yes, trying to delay for as long as possible. But I don't know how to think about the, you know, like if I was going to try and put some date out there for an over under for some certain event to happen. I really don't know. It's it's very hard. I mean, I would have, you know, I would have been wrong all year, basically, about the timing, because I think when CFTC came out in March, you know, I was talking to, you know, I mean, for a lot of stuff like this, you just export your opinions to people that know more about it than you do. So, you know, there's people I talk to that certainly know more about, you know, the way Washington brings, you know know securities cases and then criminal cases and that kind of thing and like the people i were talking to were saying oh doj should be coming like any

day any day and that was that was six months ago so it's it's yeah i mean yeah i mean well i mean it's why i mean trev it's why i i keep referring to this thing as the slow train wreck, because one of the most one of the weirdest things about this has been how slow it is. And, you know, I think for people that support Binance, you know, that that is one of the main things that they point to is like, well, this has been going on for so long. So there must not be, you know, anything to worry about or, you know, would have collapsed by now, which like, you know, I think at first glance, I understand how you could come to that conclusion. But so, I mean, one of the things that I've heard is that usually with these DOJ things, if it's urgent, like, for example, like, you know, like I'm saying SPF, but I'm saying like if things happen quickly, then if it's urgent, things happen quickly. But if not, the DOJ is incentivized to work out and even hear, you know, every single bit of discovery and every single argument in the SEC case before actually landing their case. It just gives them more time to plan a case and make the case stronger. There's no rush at all rationally, right?

I mean, there's literally no reason that they would rush into this. They have all the time in the world. And look how, I mean, SBF was in cuffs, what, two months? Right? Just to tell the audience and the developers, the setback for the SEC is not getting the request for, they want an immediate access to their software,

to Binance US's software. And they could not get that. So that's the setback for the SEC. The setback for Binance, I'm not sure what it is. The Binance US's auditor said the following, maybe this is it.

But he said, quote, he found it, quote, very difficult to ensure the company was fully collateralized at specific points in time so irrelevant though it's so irrelevant binance us first of all is over right and and whether you want binance us to be finished whether you want binance us to be finished or not i don't personally the sec killed them with simple accusations without proving anything. Now, listen, maybe they will down the future, but the SEC should not be able to

raise a suit against someone. And just because of their allegations, especially seeing how poorly the SEC has done in court, that should not effectively kill a business. But they were able to basically scare off all of retail that was trading there, scare off every single banking relationship, scare off every single banking relationship, scare off every market maker. They killed it. It's over. I have a question.

I have a question. We're blaming the SEC. The SEC went after, and I was agreeing, but I've just got a counter argument to make. They went after Binance US and Coinbase. Why were they able to kill Binance US so quickly? Different. Coinbase is getting stronger.

Different cases. Totally different. Come on, think about it. On the Coinbase case, there's just four very simple linear charges, whether they were supposed to register as a dealer, whether they did. But Binance, I mean, there's

I think it was 18 charges or 18 counts. The point I'm making is that the SEC's fault? Is that Binance's fault for not playing by the rules as much as Coinbase? So the way, the way the SEC approached Binance and Binance US was they came in and they basically said,

here's the complaint. And we have reason to think that there is co-mingling of assets between, you know, they basically said Binance US, this is a front. Everything on the back end is controlled by Binance.com and by entities that Changping owns. And we're very worried about the commingling of assets between US and dot com to the extent that, you know, U.S. citizens that are on Binance U.S., we don't feel confident that their assets are secure by this entity, Binance U.S., the way that it should happen. And so that was the kind of stance that the SEC took on this. And then we're asking for this kind of like immediate action from a judge to allow them to secure these assets. Now, you know, some of this stuff has come to light. They've unsealed some documents that were previously sealed. I spent a decent chunk of my

day yesterday going through some of those. I'm not actually sure because when all of these things were first filed, I didn't go exhibit by exhibit to look at everything that was previously kind of like sealed or marked out versus like and like so i'm not exactly sure exactly what came unsealed you know just yesterday basically but i mean you know i think the body of evidence is going to end up pointing to the sec having valid concerns that it was kind of just a slush pool on the back end. And there are like good hints of that. There's some messages from Catherine Coley in 2020 going back and forth over, I think, a $17 million BUSD transfer that she didn't understand what was going on there. There was a $250 million convertible note that

was issued between Binance US and CZ personally, which is like a very strange, it was like this very weird way to get money into Binance US. And so I think that their concerns were probably valid, but to your prior point, I think the SEC – whatever was going on with Binance US, the SEC with the way they approached it did spook the market to the point that they probably don't have much of a business left. But I think they had good reason for that approach. And looking at the numbers, is there any way for Binance USD to get back in there? It's dead. Right now, it's the same day. So now September 19th. September 16th hit a new low of $5 million trading volume.

It's literally dead. If you go on there, it's literally dead if you go on there it's it's dead and and all of the uh like affiliate exchanges to international exchanges in the united states are effectively seeing the same thing as a result of the binance the binance case it's dead i mean it's it's going to coinbase and as ran said they're just very different cases which makes sense of course you stopped using binance us if they were accused of fraud and not being fully backed right whether they were or not everyone's gonna rush off the same day last year 2022 um obviously there's various factors but it was at 230 million dollars

what how but does anyone know how far off i know it's not part of the topic but uh you know just a bit curious how far off coinbase was binance US at its peak? You don't know. Massively. Yeah, massively. You also just don't know how much wash trading was on there. You just don't know. But I mean, you got a high degree of confidence that there was a meaningful amount. So it's just kind of hard to do, I think, period over period comparisons on something like that.

They were never a major player in the United States market, but they were a functional real business that was at least liquid and gave a lot of people an option to trade. I'm surprised they haven't closed it down. I've actually been contemplating, thinking to myself, what's the benefit to actually keeping it open? There's costs involved and stuff like that. The volume the the day, like $22 million the whole day. You know, like that. The thing that gets me is that, you know, we keep making news stories out of the departure of the CEO

and the departure of executives. Now, I'm not saying there is no news story there at Binance Maine. There is a huge news story there. But like, are we surprised that the ceo of binance us continues continue to step down when it's literally a non-business of course they're stepping down can you imagine can you imagine like a recruiter calls you today scott he says listen um got this job opportunity if you sound really really exciting you said okay well what's the job opportunity he says look listen

there's this crypto exchange called binance now there's a good chance that the doj are looking into the sec is already engaged in in in shenanigans there it's very much on the decline um would you like the job like can you imagine how the discussion goes with the recruiter like yeah it's not just for the record the guy that they just appointed after brian schroeder left the guy that they just appointed you know he was an existing he was the general counsel at finance us that was an existing employee they didn't that wasn't a new guy that they brought in there's no way they're hiring anyone new yeah i mean my guess is they haven't shut it down yet you know one i mean this thing you, it's gone sideways pretty quick.

You know, I mean, it was I was combing through these these emails that got like unsealed yesterday. You know, and there was a bunch of back and forth in May before they filed email email correspondence back and forth between the SEC and Binance U.S. with all the or Binance U.S.'s legal counsel, obviously, and Binance US with all the, or Binance US's legal counsel, obviously, and Binance.com's legal counsel. There's back and forth in May where they were trying to sort out, you know, they were trying to come to an agreement on a consent decree, basically, that I think if they had come, again, I'm not a lawyer, so I'm just trying to read into, you know, what I'm reading here here but if they'd come to an agreement that maybe they they would have avoided the public charges that the sec brought in the following month and that it was

because they could not come to an agreement that then the sec brought charges so there was you know there was two-way dialogue, reasonably constructed two-way dialogue that was going on in late May. This was like May 23rd, 25th, dates like that. But Trev didn't. TZ come out at one point and say he's disappointed with the SEC because he thought that they were meaningfully working together to achieve something.

And he feels the SEC jumped the gun because they were still in open dialogue. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And I was reading emails yesterday that I believe just became public yesterday. I'm not 100% positive on that. I don't know if anybody else here has been far enough down the Binance legal dock rabbit hole to have an answer on that. But it looked – think that that that corresponds

with what he was saying is that there was two-way dialogue trying to come to an agreement but there were a couple emails in there were like you know fcc sends his consent decree uh uh finance legal counsel sends back a red line and there's an email. Well, the SEC was like, just for the record, this is like not even your red line is like not even close to what we're going to need here. I read that yesterday. So it's like, you know clear that the situation was such that, you know, the different regulators and banking partners and payment processor partners and credit card providers, all these different regulators and traditional financial services companies that were touching Binance.com and U.S. and all these various different ways that at some point, you know, probably late spring, early summer, that having Changping involved in this company was just not going to be tenable for for the large majority of these entities for the regulators and for the

traditional financial services companies that were touching this company and there was pressure for cz to step down remember we had this bloomberg article that uh was talking about this guy that cz might step down and that they bring up this new guy there's chatter around this kind of thing and then and then he was unwilling to do that, patently sort of refused to do that. And then you started having the kind of senior executive exodus that we've now seen, you know, at Binance.com and obviously at Binance US. And I think it's to me at this point, it seems very clear that those things are related, that Changping needed to step down. He's being demanded to step down.

He would not step down. And a bunch of leadership was like, okay, we can't do this anymore. We're out. Guys, I know the topic today will be tokenization of real-world assets after what Citigroup announced. And I wanted to discuss something else

since we have Ryan and Scott here coming back from Singapore, if that's okay with you guys. I was getting your thoughts on the sentiment in the East versus the West. I'm very curious on this since Yasu brought it up in one of the shows. You touched on it in the last couple of shows yesterday, I think, when you were in the airport. But tell me more. What were those discussions?

What were your key takeaways? Talking to investors, talking to projects, and then how does it compare to the West? Maybe you can go into more detail, guys. I think just before we end the Binance discussion, I've had a few sources, and I'm not going to reveal sources or information now, but I've had a few sources approach me

and tell me that the DOJ and the U.S. legal case against Binance is one thing, but apparently inside Binance there's also a lot of turmoil. Now, I know a little bit more than I'm going to say now because our policy here is not to talk about things unless we know for sure that it's not rumors and it's not hearsay. But I think if anybody does know any other information, let us know about it because we have been hearing that there's huge factions inside Binance at the moment. So again, I don't know. I haven't verified anything. If I had, obviously, I'd be the first to drop it here.

But that's another thing that I'm hearing from the inside. Cool. Do you want to get into the Singapore discussion, Ryan? I want you to go first as well because I've discussed this with Scott a bit more. He jumped on the show when he was there. And one of the times he jumped on the show, he walked out of the club. He left the club. I don't know where you guys were at night just to join the show.

He's like, Marquis. You're Marquis. And I see a message. You're on your way in yeah i ask in the group is ryan joining and scott was i'm like guys i'm walking out of the club now like is ryan joining i'm like i don't know actually i just saw him walk in now i don't think he's joining but uh yeah it was like an hour before but yeah i would go as far i would go as far as to say that this is that last week was one of my my best weeks since i got into crypto in terms of being positive about this industry in terms of

learnings about this industry uh in terms of the quality and caliber of discussions that people are having like we're not talking about whether or not this in this technology is going to survive we're not talking about you know is blockchain a thing or is it just a passing phase we're talking about how we're going to institutionalize in investors we're talking about uh putting 180 million retail wallets onto grab which is the biggest biggest Asian consumer app for delivery, transport, and stuff like that. Those are the level of discussions that would be held at Token 2049. But how's that different to the West? Everyone's talking about the sentiment being so bearish in the US. I don't know if you remember, but when I came back from Consensus this year, I said that what it felt like to me, the energy there felt like a boxer who had been through five rounds and knew that there was another round to go, or eight rounds and knew there was another round to go.

And it felt like the wind had been knocked out of people's sails. It felt like the energy was down. Half of the stand, not half, but a lot of stands of consensus were actually empty. We know from some of our sponsors that they actually made a last-minute decision to not, even though they had paid for their stand, they made a decision not to come because they said, you know, it's not worth actually coming to the U.S. We're too scared. They're going to tell us that because we are an Asian company, but we came to the U to the us and we had a stand we promoted in the united states and they all just what they

cut what they said is that is it really worth it is it really worth it in asia just to give you just to give you an idea there were two floors two or three scott i saw i walked around two yeah apparently there were three there were they were mario if i tell you that each floor was the same size as the floor at consensus so like we're talking big each floor was the same size of the floor consensus they were packed with vendors and exhibitors every single one of them and the amount of investment the amount of investment that each stand made, because, you know, it's not only being on the floor, but it's also like you have to buy a stand and you have to bring, you know, girls to man the stand and you have to create activations

on the stand. And the amount of money that these people had spent on activating their stands in Asia was paralleled to what I saw in the peak bull market when I went to Bitcoin Miami or Bitcoin 2022, I think it was. When was the big Bitcoin? 2020, yeah, 22. It was massive. I'll go as far as to say I've never seen as many exhibitors spend as much money on

conference. The event was completely sold out. People were haggling for tickets. People were trying to get tickets from, you know, trying to hustle tickets from wherever they could. But to be honest, you couldn't put more people in it.

You just could not put more people in it. It was just not possible. It was jam-packed. Scott? I mean, that's a perfect summary you know i i've been into it pretty deeply here there's what industry is all about that is some extra charges what industries were the most like was it i will talk about nfts was a game yes all so i will say this that it was extremely web 3 uh nft gaming etc heavy exchanges of course now you have to remember exchanges won't yeah that but also exchanges will not have booths now in the united states

even if you're just not going to see if you remember that bitcoin 2022 ran you'll remember the biggest booth there was binance right as much as bitcoin says it's only bitcoin bitcoin miami literally binance had a massive quarter of one of the floors and none of those for compliance reasons even if they offer services to american no exchanges advertising there so they're focusing all of their budgets on asia for for conferences so that's a huge part of it and they spend a lot yeah i mean, Scott, I mean, one second. Yeah. I mean, if you, if you look at the Asian exchanges,

so let's look at the big Asian exchanges, probably one of the biggest ones that was on display, there was OKEx as usual. Yeah. Yeah. They brought, I mean, OKEx, you know, they, they, they sponsor Manchester City, which, yeah, McLaren, Manchester City.

They had Daniel Ricciardo, which is an ex-McLaren driver. They had that snowboarder. I can't remember his name. Scotty James. Scotty James. Yeah. They had Scott Melker on their stand as well. Correct.

Correct. You know? So big, big, big. Was there anything, any talk about so nfts was just that's fascinating to me because nft volume trading volume literally hit an all-time gaming gaming i'm not surprised how about metaverse does anyone talk about metaverses beyond gaming or just pure gaming gaming didn't hear the word didn't hear the word metaverse once. I heard the word gaming a lot. I heard the word gaming a lot.

I saw a lot of games. I saw... Tokenizing real world assets was a ton of booths. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. And DeFi, obviously.

No, not actually DeFi. L1, L2. You know, like, Polkadot was still there. Tron was still there. Ripple was still there. So gaming dominated the conference, huh? Gaming dominated.

Gaming dominated. Made my day. Cool. We're talking about tokenizing real-world assets. Scott, do you want to talk about the Citigroup announcement? Yeah, sure. Now I need to reopen it. But effectively, Citigroup saying that they're going to explore something that we saw with Deutsche Bank last week and something that we know is happening across the industry institutionally, which is

effectively tokenizing bank deposits and using smart contracts to tokenize and move real world assets faster and cheaper. Now, I think it should be clear that this is a usage of the technology largely on private blockchains, much like JP Morgan coin, which we've heard, you know, the way JP Morgan uses it, which we've seen in the past. So this is more of an adoption of the technology than it is one of those, you know, narratives, it's bullish for Ethereum or bullish for Bitcoin, or something like that. But I mean, I think that a lot of people have been screaming from the mountaintop that, hey, there's a better way to do these things, PayPal, stablecoin, another great example of these large companies saying, listen, we can settle faster

and cheaper and more directly by tokenizing these things. And so seeing monster companies like Deutsche Bank and Citigroup coming in and saying that they're running pilot programs and doing this is confirmation of that idea that we've had for so long. Yeah, and Douglas, I've got a question on that. I mean, Ryan Rugg, who's the global head of digital assets at Citi. And I'm going to read out a quote, Douglas. And that quote, you could have read that quote out to me in 2018, but it would still make sense.

I'm sure someone said exactly the same thing in 2018. It just seems like they're just so slow in moving. The tokenization of real assets, the hype has been around it since the last bull market, but it hasn't really materialized. And my question to you is like, is it any different? Let me read out the quote to you. It's like, Citi Token Services, which is like the JP coin equivalent of Citi, that's how I would describe it,

provides corporate treasurers with a new tool to manage global liquidity on a just-in-time programmable basis. That's exactly the terms that we used in 2017, 2018, 2019. So Douglas, how does that compare to then? Are these experiments going to go anywhere? Does it mean anything for the industry? Well, I think it's huge for the industry. I think it's huge for the industry. I think that obviously it's going somewhere. I think that I've had conversations with a lot of Fortune 100 CFOs. And first, tokenization was thrown in with crypto.

And so they were a little bit anxious. But now they realize that tokenization is something completely different. And one thing that CFOs want to know is who is the person that owns their asset versus who's the person that consumes their assets. And I think that being able to match the consumer with the investor, we call that the insumer, I think is very, very important. And if you can see who your investor is, and the investor is buying, let's say, stock or something of your product, but you can see who exactly that person is, you can send them an NFT that has a discount. So then when they buy that purchase at a store or something, they can get a discount. And this is something that I think is going to absolutely

take over. Now, when I go to a shopping mall, I walk into a mall, I own stock in lots of different companies that are there, but I don't get a discount. I don't get anything. I'm not treated any differently. But tokenization allows you to be treated differently. And obviously, you get that real-time element in terms of I can immediately buy the tokens in a market. I can hold these tokens, get a discount, or I could be seen as being an owner. This is something that's absolutely new. Now, when you're with a big company like Citibank or JP Morgan, you don't just do something because it's cool. You do something because it's going to be much more efficient. And efficiency is very, very important. I remember

days when I traded currency at Morgan Stanley and others, where when you were dealing it and there was two-day settlement, if that company went down that you'd just done a trade with, well, that was a problem. So if you can take settlement and you can make it so it's real-time, absolutely, that's going to be very good on a risk front. And I think that this is just really the start. But I think that it's fantastic to see tokenization finally taking off. You know, INX was sort of like talking about tokenization in a vacuum back three years ago. And, you know, I got on Scott's show and talked about it. And I think people thought that we were crazy. But I think that now you're seeing tokenization being overwhelmingly, you know, hugged by the companies that first, you know, threw it in that bucket of crypto, but they see it as a very, very different product

and they're very excited about it. Douglas, is everything you're referring to there, how much of that are you talking about things that are happening on public blockchains? Well, the INX token, which is the only token right now that's a registered security, so full registered security with a prospectus, trades on the Ethereum blockchain. I think that there is an interest.

Banks, obviously, are going to keep things, I think, on their own blockchains. But when it comes down to the tokenization of real assets, you're going to actually see people start to hold it on the Ethereum blockchain or other level twos, you know, maybe, sorry, other ones like maybe Avalanche, I think, and Algorand. And Scott, you did talk, you did say that you speak to a lot of Fortune 500 companies. What assets, what companies are most interested in tokenization right now? What assets do you think are the low-hanging fruit that we'll see getting tokenized? I think we're seeing a lot of movement in the financial sector. We'd love to get a few more examples. Equities.

Yeah, I was going to say equities would be the future. Right now, I think it's largely just cross-border transactions, sort of the old narrative actually coming to fruition now, the old XRP narrative, to be honest, but doing it with private blockchains internally. Yeah, I mean, right now, what folks are talking about is really that movement of money. But when you talk about real world assets and where things are going, I think that we can be absolutely sure that equities at some point are going to start moving on to public blockchains. And there are so many people talking about it right now. That's interesting. And any other, so equities, financial sectors in general, any other assets that you think we'll see tokenized? Because I

remember investing in a bunch of companies that do want to tokenize wine, want to tokenize this and that. Obviously, real estate is a big one. A lot of that's happening. Did you guys see, by the way, sorry to interrupt, but I spoke to Alexandra Dreyfus. Did we talk about this? From Chili's Socios. And they just added in the Italian Premier League, Serie A, that now every single goal, and they showed videos of this now, the referee runs over, grabs the ball, puts some sort of chip or QR code on the ball that becomes an NFT and is given away to one of the fans with the fan token. Every goal in the Italian league.

Hold on. Sorry. What gets given away? The NFT? They give the ball away. No, they give the ball away and it's authenticated with the little QR code or whatever that the referee puts on it after every goal. Now, of course, people are pissed because it slows the game down. But it is something that's literally happening right now in that league. Well, you're also talking about gaming, Mario. You get very excited about gaming. I think on the gaming side, when people buy a skin in a game right now, and then some kids will spend thousands of dollars on different skins,

machine guns, all that kind of thing, and something like Call of Duty. But there's a movement towards where you can actually take that and sell it to someone else, or you can move it onto a different game because you bought it. And that as well, you're going to see tokenization of these types of elements. Now, whether it's an NFT that's seen as a security that's moved from one game into another, but certainly kept in a wallet. There are gaming companies that we've talked to that are now looking into this very, very seriously, not just the implication of being able to move it from one to another.

So, you know, you move from one game to another, but also the tax consequences of this. Cause as you know, the IRS came out about two, two or three weeks ago and said, look, if anyone's trading NFTs, if anyone's trading tokenized assets, there's tax consequences with this and uh you know i think that's going to be a very very big thing jason anything else to add uh i saw you requested speaking i know that i know sto market didn't know that you worked there any other assets i see being tokenized right now the example that scott made that football one in that league is

really cool that's an interesting use case 100 yeah i appreciate uh you know the opportunity to come up on stage fantastic speakers um and conversation you guys are having but in terms of other assets that we're seeing you know equities obviously is definitely a great use case we're also seeing treasuries and money markets uh being tokenized you see franklin tuppleton we see ando finance doing this and a bunch of other issuers i think one of the main things right now is especially with yield and interest rates, right? You have crypto winter going on, but people want to keep their money on chain. You know, what better way to keep your money on chain and earn some level of yield than through treasuries and money markets, money market funds that are tokenized.

You can easily liquidate and then go ahead and transfer that money over to another investment opportunity. So that's something that we've been seeing a lot. And the other thing I wanted to bring up, too, was, you know, there's tokenization of multiple assets, right? We've talked about real estate equities, now these treasuries and the money market funds, which a lot of them do have a retail focus. You know, obviously, we have the democratization of finance and access to new assets. But the other side of the coin is on the institutional front, you know, we're seeing a lot of, you know, why are the institutions looking at this? And it's not necessarily to get, you know, more investors on board. And I believe it's really more about the operational efficiencies and operational savings that come with this, you're back in

middle office processes. And we recently talked to, for example, Intane, who's reported, you know, 60 to 65% operational savings, which is a fat amount, especially for, Entain, who's reported 60% to 65% operational savings, which is a fat amount, especially for these institutions that trade on multiple billions and trillions of dollars. So that's another thing that we're looking at. Same thing with – go ahead. I mean, I love what you guys are talking about, but I think that what I'm hearing here and also what i heard in singapore was very much v1 of of like the exciting part of tokenizing real world assets what it feels to me

is that we're moving web no finance two to finance three like what i'm what i'm much more interested in is how does tokenizing real world assets allow us to do things that we ordinarily couldn't have done at all? That's the kind of stuff that really excites me. Absolutely. Yeah, no, that makes total sense. I mean, first and foremost, we all know about having your cap table on chain, right?

So we always like to talk about the AMC example. AMC, the movie theater chain, they're trying to give out popcorn to their investors. But there was no way to verify, you know, who your investors actually are, right? They're all in street name. Having them on chain, it allows you to individually be able to depict, you know, who are your investors? What kind of perks can you offer them, et cetera? We've seen this through, for example example villas in tulum in mexico we've seen this through the saint regis hotel and the perks that come with that in saint and aspen um and a bunch of others

i think there's another one in japan as well that comes so i think i think again again jay smith i think don't get me wrong i think that this is a great first step and you guys doing fantastic work but again like there is a registry of holders somewhere and if you could and if you had all the permissions, you could see them. I heard of one or two use cases which really excite

me. I'll just walk you through what I mean by innovation. So someone was talking, for example, about if you're bullish about if you're very about McDonald about if you're bullish about, if you're very about McDonald's, but you're bullish about beverages in McDonald's, you could have the security token, which was linked to the beverage sales in McDonald's. And you could break up basically the sum of the business into multiple parts and create a security token that basically pays an automatic dividend every time a juice is dispensed in McDonald's. Now, that's something that you can't do today. Today, you buy equity, you get bottom line.

You know, you get bottom line. That's after all management expenses and all other expenses. But that kind of tokenization of real world asset creates a security out of every part of the business. So give you another example. If you're bullish about one kind of Nike range or shoe, but you're not bullish about another kind of Nike range, you can create a security token,

which says that every time barcode is scanned at a Nike store, which dispenses one of these shoes, you get a dividend. And every time that one of the other shoes is dispensed, you don't get the dividend. That kind of tokenization of real world assets is really exciting because it's not possible to do in today's financial system. Yeah, that's really interesting. I had never heard of that side of it, being able to really parse it and break it down. I wonder how that breaks down in finance.

Yeah, it's like you're fractionalizing, like fractionalizing the entire stream of income. It just gives you a lot more flexibility. You can fractionalize anything. You can fractionalize anything. But for an investor, it's just beautiful

because now you can invest. If you see, if you think that business won't be profitable, you see one side, like the revenue will increase or revenue will do well

or a certain product will sell well, you can invest in that particular product or that revenue stream rather than the entire business that for me is tokenization of real world assets i'll give you another example like you know if you think about like shipping like what is this like if you think about the the the the the activity of shipping shipping is effectively investing in very very very expensive assets and getting a reward for the amount of nautical miles

times a function of how much volume they're transporting, right? That's what shipping is. How many nautical miles times how much volume, that's a dividend. And so what if you could get investors to finance a yacht, sorry, a ship, not a yacht, a ship, and you could get smart contract dividends, which were automatic based on nautical mile times weight, times volumetric weight, which is a function of the weight that's transported. And you could effectively open up shipping to everyone and say, you know what, you want to invest in the ship?

The formula is simple. It's math. The math is how many houses of travel times how many kilos is it carrying or how many nauticals, how many tons is it carrying? And then you get an automatic dividend. That's the kind of shit that excites me about real-world assets. But we have to go through phase one first, which is what everyone's talking about. But that is just – I want to see the stuff that we haven't seen yet

being in this industry. Mikkel? Yeah, I think a big thing tokenization is really going to do is just create more liquid 24 7 marketplaces for assets that typically didn't have that liquidity i mean if you think of something as simple as like carbon credits i mean that's a very untransparent market right now it's just becoming a huge part of es, whether a lot of us probably want it there or not. I don't think there's any question that that marketplace is going to have some significance in the future based on our current place. But things like that, just it makes so much more sense to actually be tokenized because right now the actual trading of those assets is just done between companies in back rooms or however they negotiate those deals. And it just makes so

much more sense to have those assets tokenized trading 24 seven on a transparent blockchain. And you're going to see the same thing going into real estate and a whole bunch of different sectors. And as these kind of functions build out, and as tokenization of these marketplaces really take place, you're going to be able to leverage those assets in different ways, such as loaning them out and creating yield based on smart contract dividends. And I think these products are going to run really deep. But I think at first, the real thing we're going to see is enhanced liquidity, enhanced trading, and just overall better marketplaces for assets that typically were not able to be exposed to the big money that kind of crypto in the internet enables these assets to be exposed to.

Yeah, I think the level of transparency is something that's not being discussed enough. And in some markets, it's a solution. What's the problem looking for a solution, Dave? Yeah, I mean, look, four years ago, I was talking with my old friend Larry Tabb, who's now at Bloomberg, their head of research, and I said the entire world will go digital, but it'll probably take 20 years. The fact is, is there's no version of reality where the analog current system that every asset is consigned to a particular geography with economic rent seeking entities, making things like ADRs or GDRs, American depository receipts or global depository receipts

to trade across border. The fact is, is tokenization will, along with DeFi, effectively bring true disruption to a very, basically every single financial market. That is almost certain to happen. It is equally true that despite the technology being more or less getting close to available now, it's going to take a long time because regulators are going to be used, weaponized by people in every geography to protect what they're currently doing. So that's why you're seeing tokenization starting with assets that have less resistance to becoming more efficient like real estate but the real big kahuna how long yeah it's just it's a big how long will it take dave well i mean it's

going to start in countries that are behind right you know like i can remember years ago talking with the with the singaporean monetary authority they were asking why their equity markets lagged and the answer was even thoughmex, their futures market is extremely solid worldwide, as good market share does a lot of business, their equity markets have lower liquidity because the frictional cost of settling, clearing and all the plumbing is higher. And so what you're going to see is markets are going to start to adopt tokenization as a method of jumping ahead of the markets that have adapted like the United States, where our market on the equity side has the plumbing is just simply better. I mean,

Europe is caught up a lot, but it's still more expensive. That's the real economic drivers is it's not going to start in the markets that are the most liquid, it's going to start in the markets that are less liquid, and they'll become more liquid. Then all of a sudden, companies and people will start, it'll be, you know, it's one of those things, you know, the famous expression in crypto, you know, slowly, then suddenly, it's going to be like that. But you're going to see that sort of thing evolve. And as the technology and the excitement around the technology starts to get to the political zeitgeist, that's when you'll see it. And as I said, it's not going to start in the big Western economies. It's going to start smaller and it's going to accelerate and you'll see it.

The proof use cases are all the ones that are exhibiting and talking at token. And you will continue to see more of that. That's my thought. Travis? I agree with what dave just said like it does make complete sense that uh you know basically all assets will be digitized and i think there's a big bifurcation between how much of that ends up on public blockchains versus private i think because if it's private blockchains we really are having a conversation about databases which i think is kind of outside of the scope of what we normally talk about on this show. And I think the real world asset landscape is looking at stable coins. And I mean, I think we've all talked about it here before.

Stable coins, this is the best product market fit ever in crypto. I mean, it's better product market fit than Bitcoin. And I love Bitcoin. But if you just kind of look at the numbers, and then you look at a bunch of anecdotal stories of all kinds of different countries around the world with different levels of kind of GDP per capita type of stuff, I mean, stablecoins are an incredible product market fit. And so people are kind of looking at that success. They're going, well, where else can we replicate

that? Although I will say, you know, stables do have the way they exist, you know, in the marketplace today. There is a sort of KYC free or KYC light nature to stable coin usage globally, that is a significant part of its value proposition. And, you know, does the United States end up being okay with that sort of thing existing for other assets other than digitized dollars? I think this is a valid question. And then I just have one question for anybody that wants to answer it that's maybe in tune with this kind of real world asset thing. What's different this cycle? Like for the people that were here kind of when all this came around in 18 and 19, and it was before my time, but it's my understanding this was also kind of around 15

as well, too. I think this theme popped up that this was the blockchain, not Bitcoin period of time. So I'm curious to hear from people like what's different this time? I think it just took time for institutions to actually pay attention and to start to adopt it. So I don't think technologically it's that different. Certainly it is from 2015, right, to your point. But I think from the last cycle now, it's just gained enough traction that it's really being looked at. I mean, JP Morgan has been doing this for quite a long time. Kadena, the project, is actually a spinoff of what was originally the JP Morgan coin experiment there. And I think that it's just this more, like I said, and to your point, blockchain, not crypto mentality that a lot of

the institutions are taking. I mean, we're not seeing them talk about putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet, but they are saying, hey, we can send money a lot faster without a third party. And that makes sense. So i think that we're seeing traction finally for the first time and it just takes a long time to get that groundswell these are still going to be pilot programs right so it's not like uh city group is about to start tokenizing every single transfer that they do that's not going to happen anytime soon but if it works we're only going to see an increase in this and that may take even i mean you can also chain itself hasn't been usable up until now.

Even now, it's so hard to use blockchain. It's ridiculously hard to use blockchain. So I think that's also why now. Right, but they are private. That's true. It's still very difficult to use it. I don't think this tech is usable by mainstream. I think friends tech is just usable by mainstream i think friends tech

is just a indication of just how much work there is to do i know we've spoken about a lot and that's like i would say that might be one of the most consumer friendly blockchain apps there is and it's it's a long way away from actually being consumer friendly friend you just mentioned frantic by the way it's part of the news today frantic is still beating nfts in terms of volume i think it's like the eighth day straight. So you're talking about being difficult to use? Well, NFTs just became easier to use. Just understand crypto.

The NFTs have matured. The platforms have matured. The ability to trade them. OPC has different competitors. Yeah, NFT volumes are all-time lows. I'm concerned that the NF concerned that NFTs that the NFTs that you're talking about and by that I mean

the the fancy JPEGs limited edition fancy JPEGs I don't think that those are are ever coming back I think that

I think if you think that those are coming back you live in La La Land I'm talking I'm talking about all but Ryan I'm talking about all NFTs there's nothing that's doing well

even gaming NFTs are doing well I'm invested in a whole bunch of them there is zero liquidity there. Yeah, but I mean, okay. So first of all, I think anyone who bought a fancy picture because they thought they were going to be included in part of a club, I think you've got a one in a million chance of actually making a comeback on that picture.

Maybe, maybe, maybe one collection will get right, but I don't even think that any of these V1s will get right. I think if you look at metaverse i think the metaverse is so many years away that it's probably not worth investing in right now when i when i say metaverse i don't mean games i mean non-metaverse yeah shopping malls going to have meetings and zoom meeting metaverse i think that's so so so so so far away that it's probably not even worth investing in now. We're probably three generations of technology

away from that. And my point there is, just look at how much money Mark Zuckerberg invested and just look at what he's going to show for it. So I think that we're so far away when it comes to metaverse. I think the one place where the NFTs do come right is gaming, though,

because I have seen some great iterations of games and also the difference between between metaverse and gaming is gaming is something that already exists and is is well used and you can kind of phase in nfts the metaverse is a complete rethink of how we interact with things but gaming is happening anyway every day and you know if we just add in a couple of layers of NFTs and players start to earn a bit of cash, and to be able to own their own items, that's maybe a bit more realistic for me than all the other things. Let me make you, I agree with you. I'm going to make you the same argument in a different way. The way I would make that argument is that when you talk about non-gaming metaverses, there's no need.

So when I say metaverses, me and you are talking about the open metaverses the the metaverses that use blockchain where you can own assets not just a virtual world where any centralized entity can create it like meta so if you're talking about you know virtual you're talking sorry open metaverses where you can own assets nft technologies nfts are there it doesn't make sense to have them outside of gaming yet like why would you want to meet someone in a metaverse you don't need to own anything it's a meeting zoom um but it doesn't make sense to have them outside of gaming yet like why would you want to meet someone in a metaverse you don't need to own anything it's a meeting zoom um but there's gonna be reasons later but for now there isn't why do you need a replica of your house in the metaverse yet this is too early for you to need that but gaming owning an asset in the game makes

sense now it becomes interoperable you move it from one game to another you can own it you can sell it the feeling of owning something like your own song in the physical world so that the utility makes a lot more sense in the gaming metaverses they will make sense in non-gaming metaverses but it's just too early so so you know i'm on the same boat with you i'm surprised though i'm surprised sorry it was just one last point i'm really surprised that a gaming assets gaming nfts did not get traction like they didn't have their time yet in the last bull market and if the same reason for this question though when travis asked what's different this time it's just a matter of time just go take time exactly it's a it's a matter of time and but but no well yes matter of time and i also think that v1 of

technologies never i mean i don't know if it's never, but very, very, very seldom does V1 of a technology actually work. And what we saw now is arguably V1 of NFTs. And again, like my view is, and it doesn't make me popular, and especially with people who spent lots of money, but if you bought a punk or a dog or whatever you landed up buying, I think you can say goodbye to your money because I don't think that those are ever making a comeback. I think that the notion that the next big Disney style movie is going to be a

movie about CryptoPunks, if you really believe that, sure. Oh no, you think CryptoPunks is... Sorry, Scott, I know you're going to wrap. But Ran, do you think CryptoPunks sorry Scott I know you're not a rap but Ryan do you think CryptoPunks

are dead be serious or you just think that others are dead but they just will never ever know I wouldn't pay I wouldn't pay

if you said to me buy a punk now and you have to hold it for the next five years you have to hold it there's no off ramp in the next five to ten years

to be honest i wouldn't pay more than fifty dollars for it just because that's wow mario that was your pfp bro you've got yeah but ran you're talking about the i i agree with almost all of them but you're talking you think there's no so i i know we want to wrap scott just Just give me a second, bro. Someone just took a jab. I got to respond. The CryptoPunks, in my opinion, is different. It has all these other PFPs. I'll just say we're building a community. This is our story.

What are CryptoKitties worth today? It's a very good question. Do you know CryptoKitties has no limit to the supply as CryptoPunks? So CryptoPunks are the first collection with a 10,000 limit. So that historical value… Bro, bro, please tell me you don't actually believe the sales pitch. Please tell me you don't actually believe the sales pitch. Bro, what do you mean?

Obviously, I'm not alone. The floor price kind of tells you we're in the midst of a bear market, and the floor price is, what, 70, 80K? That's pretty… The market is telling you they believe this uh you're gonna own it you're gonna own a picture of a tank that i can take a screenshot of and you're gonna be able to said you own it on chain and it was the first the first limited edition nft collection i mean come on

just be honest can you please be honest with me are you doing this for entertainment because you want to argue with me or you genuinely believe what you just said? I genuinely, genuinely believe that there's a very close zero chance that punks will have any value. I think it's the biggest load of garbage. I think that, you know, I'll tell you. I think when price is going up and everyone's got a lot of money

because the government printed tons of money and people are making money because we discovered this thing called tokenomics at exactly the right point where governments were printing money and we created fake pumps because of limited supply tokens um and everyone got excited and thought they were gazillionaires then it kind of makes sense to say that i was part of a club because i bought a crypto punk and you can't get in because you can't hold on okay so let me let me make my right let me make my argument then can i just finish can i let me just finish one let me just make one point but anyone in the comments don't come to conclusions let me respond back before you come to your company it used to be so cool to put a crypto punk as your as your as your profile picture because it was just so cool

you know why Because that was like the equivalent of walking around with a Gucci bag in the metaverse and it defined your identity and told everyone that you're part of an amazing club. Mario, you took your punk down to put a picture of yourself and it's not even a great picture of yourself. I'll be honest, I've seen better pictures of you.

This picture looks like it was taken when you were 14 but you chose to replace it with the punk. Why? Because it's actually, I'm cool to have the punk now because. That wasn't why he did it though. No, hold on,

hold on. Because why? Because what the symbolizes is I was dumb enough to spend a million dollars on a J-Pick. That's really what it symbolizes. Like I was one of the dumb guys. I love, I know that,

I know that Ryan is going far when Scott has to jump in and stand up for me. That's normal. I mean you did it because you couldn't like interview Imran Khan and all these people as a crypto punk. Yeah, so let me – yeah, so if I was – I'll tell you this. So now before – no, no, hold on. I've got to respond, David. This is getting personal.

You just talked about my mom, my dad, my brother. No, so Ryan, first, this picture that I'm talking to, the one on my Twitter now, I took it a few months ago, man. I think it was a couple of – a few months after you left Dubai where we met. It is, bro. If I take my picture now, you'll say I took it when I was six. No, I would have kept my CryptoPunk. I was still purely in crypto. I definitely still have my CryptoPunk because I think it just stands for – because I think the next bull market, it stands for something.

It just shows that, hey, I was in it for the money. And I still have it on my banner on my profile but that doesn't matter so i've got a question for you um i think it's you know i want to ask you that question because i know you and scott you know you're a pretty intelligent guy and i think you'd you'd understand where i'm coming from if you've made this argument about any other pfp collection it's a very fair argument there is value in building out those communities a very very small percentage, obviously, the apes are one example, that will succeed and that will do well because the community has built something. And the apes go back to the games, for example. So if you look at PFPs, as a standalone asset, your argument that it doesn't make sense is fair.

But if it's an asset within an ecosystem, it starts at a PFP collection, then a game, then physical events, then this and and that i don't know what else the apc building but they're building a question can i ask you a question yeah hold on let me let me go ahead let me let me ask my question first so so i've agreed with your argument but i want to get to crypto punk specifically why i think this is different the argument is like i can take a picture of it well if if a few hundred years ago or whatever there was there was a bunch of paintings, and you went to an artist and said, these paintings are going to be worth millions. Picasso, these paintings are going to be worth millions. He's going to look at you and say, isn't it the oldest painting?

Later on, maybe you can take a photo of it. So just to be clear, you've changed your whole thesis already. So you went from the thesis of when you bought the punk saying, I'm part of a unique community and a unique culture, and now you're saying the reason why I'm holding it is because maybe in a thousand years, people are going to say I was dumb. Not in a thousand years. No, no, no. Not dumb enough.

I'm joking. There's historical value. So art has value. If you go to a museum, there's things there because they were the first in X. This was the first painting when the war started. This is the first photo that was taken during World War I. So for me, NFTs are going to revolutionize the world the concept of digital ownership and punks have historical value in how many years do you think people will go back and say wow this

these were like i think it'll be a lot sooner i think it'll be the next bull market i think it'll be a lot sooner just because how quickly this is moving like how quickly the first computer ever the first what do we there's game boy there. There's like PlayStation collectibles now. There's like CD collectibles. That's not a thousand years ago. So it's like every cycle. I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, I think, was my first computer. And there's no collective value to that.

It doesn't mean each one of them is. But guys, don't you think it's a bit weird that some Pokemon cards or some baseball cards are worth – someone bought a Pokemon card for $4 million. That's dumb. That's really, really stupid. And you can make a lot of the similar arguments against that. You just said it. You just said it. You said it's stupid.

You just said it's stupid. We think it's stupid, but the world doesn't. It's worth $4 million. So obviously, we're the wrong ones. We're the stupid ones. I called it humanity. No, no. i called humanity no no i called you no no no i called humanity stupid but unfortunately we live in a world that's controlled by humanity and humanity gives value to the first being the first and punks were first i remind you of a conversation

that we had when i first asked you about your punk. And I said to you, Manu, why are you buying a punk? And we had this discussion. And you said to me, because by buying a limited edition punk, I'm part of a club. I'm part of the culture. There's going to be benefits. There's going to be a whole lot of use cases for it one day, et cetera, et cetera.

Now we know that there's not going to really be use cases. We also know that you're not really part of a unique club because you have nothing in common with the other 9,999 people, other than the fact that you were all dumb enough to pay a lot of money for something that's got no value that's the only thing you got in common you don't share you don't share the same ideals you don't share this culture you don't share the same religion you know nothing nothing the only thing that you have in common is that you were dumb enough to pay a lot of money for a picture of for a for a limited edition

picture i mean come on. So, hold on, there's not the belief in crypto? You're part of the early crypto. Anyone that has a punk, anyone that still has an ape or a punk, it definitely means they're still in crypto. It definitely means they believe in it because they still have it.

Hold on, is this a new narrative that you're creating now? No, it's not. My narrative is the same. No, no, my narrative is the same. Punks were first and being the first had had, in in humanity being the first in any evolution. Anything first wheel ever created. It's probably sitting in some museum. Why is it in a museum?

It's just another wheel because it was the first. So the first asset that started the PFP collection. How many years later did these assets get their value? It took me hundreds of years. Yeah, but that time is shrinking.

It was whatever, a hundred years before. Now it's a few decades that something's valuable. A Pokemon card is something valuable after 10 years. You know, I know that you're an

intelligent guy so i'm very surprised by the caliber of this discussion i want to tell you what i what i hold right i hold one of the first exchange shit coins of a coin that never ever of an exchange that never ever launched i own i own the tokens i invest in the tokens they sent me the tokens the tokens are sitting in my wallet, but they never launched. It's a limited edition. They only printed 100 billion tokens. I own the tokens. See them now and say, I was an OG in crypto.

Do me a favor. It's garbage. It's garbage. It's a zero. Yeah, look, I'm not saying every single thing that's a first is going to have value. I just think in terms of NFTs, the whole concept of being a digital collectible the the punks and again the markets have spoken the punks are still sitting at 70k despite the bloodbath we've seen in the last bloodbath how long did that token maintain its value the one you're referring to probably collapsed as soon as the market collapsed

um so so i know i know my argument doesn't make a lot of sense to you. I don't know how, but it is what it is. But the markets are the arbitrage. To take a bet as to what history is going to look back on and define as the pivotal moment. Actually, let's make a bet. Actually, hold on. Let's make a bet. What do you think the price – let's end it with a bet.

What do you think the price of punks will be in five years' time? I don't know about five years. And I'll tell you why I don't know about five years because I don't know how long this next cycle. Like, for example, I have the same feeling about apes. I have the same feeling about apes. I think the same – apes, in my mind, apes actually have a slightly better chance of success,

slightly better chance of success. But that's it. And the reason why I say that there's a slightly better chance of success, these guys are really experimenting with things like gaming. Like, you know, Apes launched a game and Apes are launching merchandise and stuff like that. They have a slightly better chance of success. But even then, I'm putting the chance of success at 0.1. Like, 0.1%.

Like, I wouldn't invest in these things because I think they were v1 i think the the the rationale or the notion behind it that you bought into a collection which could not be copied there's bitches anything what you bought into you bought into computer generated art it wasn't even drawn by human it was fucking computer let's make the bet let's make the bet 10 years that's too long let's finish let's finish come on let's finish it let's finish. Come on. Let's finish. You're bought into computer-generated art. It's art that any fucking computer can generate by pressing one button. It's limited to 10,000 until the next day when the insurer decided that they wanted to launch another collection. So they launched the mutant apes and the bored apes.

Then they realized that apes aren't cool anymore. So what did they do? They launched a dog. Now it's the kennel club. What is it? The doggy, doggy kennel club. What was the collection called? Yeah, you can create, but this argument makes no sense.

It's no longer the same thing. The first 10,000 are done. The punks you can have, can you have 11,000? Can you have 10,001 crypto punks or not? The barrier to entry? The barrier the barrier to entry no the barrier no no the barrier to entry

no no there's no no it's impenetrable you cannot technologically create another CryptoPunk there's only 10,000 there can never be

one extra CryptoPunk but don't worry don't worry the issuers tomorrow will issue a new collection a new collection sure they can create they can issue

a million of them CryptoPunks 10,000 that that's it. And I bought Cryptopunks. I didn't buy their issuer. I didn't buy shares in the creator. I bought Cryptopunks. And when the shit hits the fans, because that's what you tell about the real value of an asset.

The shit already hit the fan. I don't think the shit can hit the fan further. Hold on a second. Hold on. I know that when the shit hits the fan, my Bitcoin, I can take anywhere in the world and I use it as money. And it's going to be accepted by a lot of people. And I know that there is a use case when the shit hits the fan. When the shit hits the fan, what is going to be the use case for your picture, your pretty pixelated picture?

Hold on. What is going to be the use case of a – I'm looking at a beautiful painting now. I'm at a house of someone you know. And I'm looking at that beautiful painting. It's probably worth in a multiple six figures. I'm looking at it right someone you know, and I'm looking at a beautiful painting, probably worth multiple six figures. I'm looking at it right now. It's so big you can't even carry it. It has no use case, and the painting is fucking ugly. I'll send you a photo after this.

Actually, I'll do it right after I'm at the space. I'll send you a photo. What is the use case of that painting? I want to say that you can definitely compare paintings to NFTs. You can definitely do that. Paintings have a story.

Let's just understand where a lot of these paintings originated. Crypto punks have a beautiful, lame story. Just tell me the story about crypto punks. Maybe I missed something. No, no. The point I made with this statement is that story doesn't have to be interesting. Just tell me the story about CryptoPunks. Maybe I missed something. Tell me. No, no. The point I made with this statement is that story doesn't have to be interesting. Some paintings don't have a really interesting story.

Not every painting is a Mona Lisa. It just happened to be the first. Which painting do you know that trades for millions of dollars and doesn't have an interesting story? Just name one. I think me and you are not going to have a good argument about paintings. I know nothing about paintings. I know that the value no no all i all i know is that there's two so paintings have value because of a story behind it they painted this woman who suddenly disappeared whatever oh he painted during his miserable time wasn't happy wasn't sad or being the first alone

has value there's two things there's two things that I can tell you. Wait, once again. There's two things that I can tell you that only have value. There's many things, but specifically, I'll tell you two things only have value because of the story. The first one is art. Art only has value because of the story. It's how you market the artist, how you create the city. Who was he?

How important was he? He painted the prime minister. He painted the roof of the cathedral he he bit his he he cut off his own ear that's the story and that creates the value number one the second one is wine okay wine 90 of the value of wine is around the fucking story you sniff the wine they tell you how it's gone it's gone down i mean i i actually you know like i've been getting a lot into my wine and, um, and, and, and, and doing a lot of wine tasting. And it's all about the fucking story. It's about how well they market the story. It's the same thing with punks. What is the story of punks? Just tell me what the culture is. What is the story? I just want

to understand it and tell me the story of the apes as well. Cause I want to see how relevant it's going to be for my children's children like i don't see why so once during a pandemic would be less relevant than any of the other things that you described and i would take the middle ground on this by the way i think that there will be a few collections that will persist i don't think everything goes to zero do you think punk will have value in 20 years from now scott yes yes 50 years from now yes 100 years from now sure what 4 000 years from now i don't know man 100 years from now? Yes. 100 years from now? Sure. 4,000 years from now? I don't know, man.

100 years from now, I have my downside. Define value. Define value. You can sell it for a dollar amount. No, no, no. Let's define value. Because, I mean, if a punk's cost $70,000 today, and in 100 years it cost $500, and we've had 20,000% inflation, then there's no value percent inflation that's effective of course that's that's not my point i think that i think i just think

that you're splitting hairs to try to define the value of the story because the story is something that's important to the individual who purchased it and to the community and there's people who think wine is stupid there's people who think wine is stupid. There's people who think art is stupid. The story could be, but the story could be, but the story could not just be CryptoBox. CryptoBox were the first. So the story could be about NFTs and how NFT PFP started.

It's like now in a world where, in a world, no, no, I'll tell you now. The first NFT PFP was CryptoKitties. They were with Jack Shit. The first one was actually CryptoKitties. They were with Jack Shit. No, CryptoKitties,

the only reason CryptoKitties doesn't count is because there's no limit to it that's why the whole collectible aspect something doesn't have a limit can't have the same you mean you mean the fake limit that the issue you mean the fake how's it fake you can't actually change it the determined limit by the issue how's that fake somebody can paint another painting it's the same hold on hold on hold on no no that's exactly my point. This is exactly my point. When an artist paints a painting, the one of one, the most expensive,

then some artists or some houses or whatever it is get the right to make copies. And those sell for a fraction of the price. Okay, well, what about one of one NFTs? What about a Beeple? Okay, but hold on. Are you telling... So what people gave the value- No, I'm not comparing them.

I'm asking your opinion on a one of one NFT since you just made that argument. Well, hold on. Okay, so which one do I think might have value? Take, for example, Beeple's NFT art. I think that might have value. You know why? Because that's an artist with a story

taking time to actually paint shit, not computer generated, not made out of a mold of six types of eyes, six types of hair, six types of noses, six types of hats. That's bullshit computer algorithm garbage. I mean, come on.

Do you want to do this, Ryan? When there's NFT news, when it's going to happen next week or so, me and you will prepare for this debate. We'll have it when there's NFT news. Is that a fair way to conclude this? And then Scott is happy and then we're happy. But you have to promise me one thing. You will not take it personal when I crush you. Is that fair?

No, no. But what do you mean when there's NFT news? What's the news going to be? When there's some news about NFTs, like some hack in this new protocol, NFTs reaching new low, or this protocol. I know we could talk about it and get into a deeper discussion. I think the technology behind NFTs is game deeper discussion. I think the technology behind NFT is game-changing. I think the fact that you can

now earn things in games is game-changing. I think the fact that now every concert ticket and every movie ticket is an experience and it's one-of-one and you can't transfer it and you can't sculpt it at stadiums, that is fucking game-changing technology. I think that schmucks like you that

landed up buying punks and paid millions of dollars for this shit you guys drank Kool-Aid you guys drank the Kool-Aid and now you're trying to, I see Elio's here bring Elio onto the stage because I know you may have different views here I want to settle this debate once and for fucking all

because I know that you also invite him because I want to settle this Because I want to settle this debate. I want to settle this debate. Honestly, if you were dumb enough to buy a picture of something and you think it's got value, I want to chat to you now. But Ran,

to Mario's point, most altcoins are down 99%. Yeah, but I don't think that in 100 years people are going to look at the altcoins and say... No, no, Ran... No, no, but what Rand is doing is he's trying to use logic to make arguments, but humans make very weird, illogical decisions. Like, where's the logic where watches are suddenly going to be worth hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars? I remember seeing a watch brand that was created because it was after pilots during World War II, and they used the material from the planes which is not even that fucking rare and that's the story or the creator or gucci gucci said or gucci oh hold on or gucci suddenly a brand that's worth a lot more than zara because of whatever the

brand the the the what the brand represents well gucci began represented exclusivity a certain a certain set so the same thing wearing a gucci shoe you could make fun of it if you go to right now to a country that doesn't understand gucci if i go right now to a country in in central asia if i go to kazakhstan i'm wearing gucci and i go to village there they look at me they're like oh how much is this i'll be like oh there's you know whatever a thousand dollars a pair and after explaining to them what this pair is a thousand dollars and i have another pair of zara which looks identical it's only fifty dollars i'm sure they look at me i'm sure they look at it looking with the same logic so when you look at crypto parks ignore

the position ignore the first ignore the position of being first in the collectible aspect of it you you yourself said it was seen as a rolex it was seen as a way to flex for some people on the web. They tried to convince me that it was not a Rolex. It was for many people in the bull market. A flex was to have an April Park. Obviously, you can laugh at it.

Some people did. You could laugh at someone that's wearing Gucci from head to toe, but it's still a flex. Guys, the NFT PFPs that people still have as their profile pictures is honestly, honestly, it's not so different. I look at those people. Honestly,

I look at the NFT PFPs, the people that are flaunting their PFPs. And I think the only thing that you've got in common with the rest of the apes and the rest of the punks is that you were dumb enough to buy a picture of a of something uh at a high price you have nothing else in common you have zero else in common guys you don't have the same culture don't have the same beliefs you don't share the same values you share nothing except the fact that you all made too much money too quickly in the bull market you had to flaunt it because because you were stuck behind your computer and you weren't allowed out and maybe you were allowed out after you couldn't buy fancy shoes.

Or when you did buy fancy shoes, you had nowhere to go. So you had to spend your money on something to show everybody that you were rich. What did you do? You went and bought a fucking J-Bag and you paid millions of dollars for it. Ridiculous. You guys look so stupid. You look dumb. Scott, we'll do it next time.

Nope. That went a little farther than I would have been willing to go. Julio's here. I'm not good enough to settle the debate. Hold on. I want to hear Elio's. Elio's a brilliant debater. And I know he believed a lot in NFTs, but I haven't spoken to him.

I know he believes a lot in gaming. I'd be very disappointed if he still believed that owning a limited edition JPEG is worth anything. But I don't know. Let's see, Elio, what do you think, bro? Well, that was quite the setup. Thank you, Ren. Look, I got into board apes

when they were about one ETH or a little bit less. And I saw them go up and I saw the airdrops and I made, you know, roughly a thousand X on those purchases. And so, you know, why I didn't sell them all at the peak is the same reason why you didn't sell your Luna at the peak, Rand, when you had, you know, $50 million or whatever it was. And so, look, we all get a little swept away. I mean, I was in, um, I was in a, uh, a chat room with a very well-known OG who I'm not going to name, but they said that they, uh, bought almost every time within about 5% of the bottom, but they had never sold within 50% of the top. Um, and I think that speaks, and this is someone who everyone follows and respects um this is i

think it's just indicative of of what the emotions like at the top um it's it's really hard to see past um all that excitement sometimes uh that said i do believe that nfts being their first cycle uh we'll see what happens on the next cycle but it's pretty clear that but what do you think about the collections no no let's get we'll all be the same thing here but let's get straight to the point the collections that people paid a lot of. Let's get to it. We'll all be the same thing, but let's get straight to the point. The collections that people paid a lot of money for, and I'm going to name some collections. Punks, board apes, mutant apes, what's it called?

Kennel dogs, woof, woof. What's that called? They're all under apes. So punks, apes, and let's say zookies. Hold on. What was the other one? The handbags. It was a handbag one too, one the handbags it was a handbag one too right wasn't it like that the handbag one too what's the other

big okay so now Pudgy penguins are pretty big and they have toys in the target can't wait to tell my kids can't wait to tell my kids that instead of buying them a Rolex or a bar of gold or a Bitcoin I bought them a picture of a Pudgy penguin and that's the inheritance can't wait for that. But can't wait for that conversation. Do you think

that any of these will have significant value 10 years from now? And if yes, tell me why. Yeah, so I think there's, the way I see it is an NFT is just something online that you own. Obviously, knowing exactly what of those things will accrue value over time is a lot. I think it's a harder game to play than the altcoins. But to say that we spend all our time online and stuff online is not going to hold value, or there's not going to be possessions online that people want to trade or own or collect. I don't think that that thesis is right. What the price point is, what we determine is a lot of value that'll happen over time in the market. But I'm very confident that there will be certain NFTs. What those are, I'm not sure,

but I'm very confident there will be ones that do accrue value over time and do end up holding a high price point because it's just very natural to human nature to collect and own unique stuff that we feel like represents us. Yeah. Ran, I understand the philosophical argument you're making. I think I agree 80% and always have. There's nobody that's been more critical of PFP projects probably than me. So you're being nice. Change the 80% and be honest to him. There's no way to agree with 80%.

So the point that Mario made earlier, I don't understand how you can different and what elio just said i don't understand how you can differentiate the value of a picture that you think is stupid from the value of pokemon card which i think is stupid or a baseball card which my parents thought were stupid and but hold on things each of those have retained value and so humans humans collectively nothing you're making the argument that nothing digital can ever hold value if you think that – No, no, no. No, he's saying without utility, you can't add value. Humans collectively decide what's stupid and what's not. Humans collectively decided –

In the world. Exactly. Humans – stamps being another one. Stamps. I used to collect them as humans. Right, right. Humans decided, collectively decided that the first of something has value just because it's first the value of anything is a shared myth

exactly so the first, I used to collect stamps you put a hundred stamps next to each other, the first one that was printed out of the first edition was worth a lot, as a kid I used to collect them, was worth a lot, or the first Pokemon card out of a collection that was printed

was worth a lot, why is it the to collect them was worth a lot the first pokemon card out of a collection that was printed was worth a lot why is it the same thing no it was first and that made it gave it a significantly more value there's the first that's the first value of punks the second value is i want to understand your argument for first you're saying it wasn't the first pfp it was just the first pfp which was limited edition is that what you're saying yeah so it was the first 10 000 pfp collection that brought value okay so we can actually it's also the culture it's the first one to have significance right it's the first one to reach a level of significance and that historical value is what i think people might look to again we don't know but that's the gas right what about the apes yeah i would, I would say apes are more risky, right,

and significantly more so. But they also, I would argue, have some significance in the history here of the NFC. I think there's some on-chain art that has significance, right? Who knows? I could be totally wrong. I would say apes is that it's leaning less on significance of being first or early,

because it's early more than first, but more on utility. So apes is depending on the utility in their building. Punks is depending on being the first. Yeah, very well put. Apes has a bigger chance of success because I think that apes could become Pokemon,

even though I'm saying that the chance of that is close to zero. Why? Because I think this is v1 and i think that i i disagree but ran ran i disagree i think the utility makes it more risky punks have less risk that's why they eventually flipped apes again they have less risk because no one else could be first they've they've already taken the position of being first a stamp that was printed first can never be replaced it doesn't need to create utility

why is punks not creating utility they don't need to create utility why is punk's not creating utility they don't need to the community didn't even want utility apes depend on constant utility and innovation which makes it riskier in my opinion and then the second one so that's the whole being first and then the second one is the ability to flex so when you go to let's say you know you you have your nft as a pfp on twitter or you have it as an avatar in an event, in a metaverse or in a game. It's a flex the same way us dumb humans have a piece of T-shirt with another name written on it that's an original and is suddenly worth $100,000 or $1,000. Yeah, I agree, Mario. Your statement about utility being more risky is true.

And then when you look at specifically on-chain art, where the art is actually in the code, so the block of Ethereum actually holds the code for the art itself and it generates from that code, like you're talking about Fidenzas and some of these generative on-chain projects, those to me are interesting because I'm like, oh, okay, this is the first time in art history

that you have a verifiable timestamp of this digital art. It just to me seems compelling, right? It could go to zero or infinity. I don't know. But I have bags of stuff that go to zero or infinity. That's just part of my crypto portfolio. I would choose. I would much rather choose to put my money into technology, which may or may not work.

And if it does work, we'll make a difference to the world and make the world more efficient and allow us to do things we ordinarily can't do rather than putting our money into into a jpeg that one day may be worth something because a bunch of clowns decided that it was the first one to do something i mean honestly like guys i can't even believe in the bear market we're having this discussion in the bull market we were all making hundreds of millions of dollars and we literally could didn't know what to spend our money on great okay you can buy you can buy these these these computer generated pictures of degenerated badly computer generated pictures of punks i get it but in the come on guys you can't kick like this is this is the art of kicking something while it's

on the opposite side of the liquidity cycle. Of course, it's not going to make sense in the bottom of the bear market, and no one is going to buy them. I'm not kicking Bitcoin. I'm not kicking Bitcoin. But guys, he's late. Guys, he's wrong. Guys, guys, he's wrong in the bear market as well. Punks are 70K.

Mario, there are pictures in the MoMA that are literally a frame around the white wall that are worth millions of dollars. You can't tell me this is stupider than that. You just said it. You just said it. Yes, it's stupid, but it has value. It fights your opinion on what is stupid does not define the value because people are stupid. Do that banana in Miami. How much did that banana taped on the wall go for?

Millions. Millions. Okay, now, in hindsight, let's call it a spade a spade. Yes, he's redacted. I think we all know that, but I'm talking about the Museum of Modern Art. Swept up in the moment of art, Basil. Idiotic. Landed up buying a banana.

The nuance here, Rand, is that you're not the judge, jury, and executioner for what another stupid or non-stupid person will do to have value in the future. I'm choosing not to invest, and I'm highly, highly encouraging my friend Mario to sell his one while he has the chance. Honestly,

go and sell your punk, and go buy yourself a pair of shoes. At least you can get some good traction out of them. You can wear them, but by the ones with the red, with a red soul, a soul, like the ones you wore for, those are called the answer.

In the next season, in the next season, at least you can wear new ones. You know what I mean? So people can see like, look, the red soul isn't worn out. At least you got some kind of use case out of it,

bro. Yeah. You know, that was funny. I'll end it with this. you know that was funny i'll end it with this you know how we i just laughed at renry says buy the shoes with red soles and the first time i wore those because you know i used to hate brands until what lie a year and a half ago and then i was doing the first event i spoken about nfts ever it was about punks and

about explaining exactly what ran is me and ran having debate on why punks have value the value of being first, the value of having a story, and the value of having a flex. And I did that in Dubai. That was my first event. It was like two years ago, whatever it was,

two and a half years ago. And that was the first time, and I forgot my shoes at home. They were probably not branded. That's before I wore brands. So I buy online ones, random ones, and then I get them delivered,

and it was Louboutins with a red sole. I look at the red sole, I'm like, oh shit, look what the fuck is this red song people are gonna laugh at me and i go on stage i speak and all that when people start messaging me man i love your red soul sick shoes sick lbs or louboutins sick boutons and i google it and i find out louboutins so the first time i learned that louboutins the first time i wore them and i now only wear them because the red souls are pretty cool but the first time I learned about them was at Lille. But was that an event? Ironic was at an event.

You're not married. You're not married. Let me tell you, when you get married, you learn about the Red Sox shoes very quickly, man. Yeah, well, you knew about them before I did. When your wife walks into the store with the Red salt you realize it's gonna be a bad day yeah so what's funny is that i learned it on my first speech ever talking about nfts crypto punks and the value being first and now we're having a debate about the same thing but guys as around we could wrap it up yeah listen much love to you guys mario do me a favor

let's go let's go buy some cool stuff that you can actually use let's invest it it in Bitcoin. Get rid of the picture. Yeah, let's move on. We'll see everyone again tomorrow. Thanks, everyone. Bye. Thanks, guys.