The Wolf Of All Streets - Discussing Privacy With @COTINETWORK | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

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let me let me cut the intro short scott i've been i've been off for a last week and a bit traveling i haven't even looked at the markets that's how busy i've been just exhausted jet lagged uh so can you just brief me and what happened hey mario literally again i forgot about you literally exactly literally nothing happened in price nothing happened actually although i would say that the last week and a half has been arguably like the craziest as far as the news cycle, certainly with the Supreme Court and all the rulings and all of the problems for the SEC, I would say. So it's been actually kind of a huge couple of weeks. Just not much has happened with Price, which I think… The Supreme Court, you talk obviously the ruling when it comes to Trump, but beyond that…

No, nothing to do with Trump. Who cares? Oh, shit. Who cares? I'm completely – just so you know, for the last week and a half, I'm completely out of the loop. Wrong space. Yeah, but I'm completely out of the loop. So maybe a quick recap.

What did we miss? What did the audience miss from anyone that hasn't attended every one of the spaces for the last week and a half? Literally everybody has been here but you. It's been basically a utopia. Every day I open the show saying you guys can openly mock mario and ran and not one single person took the bait except for fred rispoli at some point made fun of ran i think you said that he took two hours to get ready every morning for killer now ran ran is getting a lot of attacks now he launched a token which had a bit of an issue with the launch

so he's uh you guys he's an easy bait for now yeah i can't wait for him to join i didn't even know that yeah he launched he launched he launched a meme coin called baked and uh and then it someone sniped it at the beginning they put in 10k as a snipe and made four million dollars within like half an hour um obviously you know that's not a good thing for for investors or ran or anything so that was a good thing for somebody who made $4 million. Yeah, exactly. So that happened when the token launched. And I was just wanting to go to bed.

And the teams like Mario Breaking News, there's a token that launched called Baked. I'm like, I know that name. And that's RAND's. So they did a space on it, a Breaking News space on the other account, not my one. And RAND jumped on and answered all the questions. So that was a couple of days ago. That's my news. That's all I know about crypto is rand's coin but otherwise obviously it was in la for a week and doing tell us about like did you give us the like two minute download on

killer whales to uh not uh yeah it's it's no i can't i can't projects so that's actually a lot there i probably should have done a quick video on it. I could recap. So apparently I was even a bigger asshole than before. The contestants were pissed off. Some took us outside, took the managers outside, made a big fuss about it because they needed five votes to get like $250,000. Four of my judges said yes, and I said no. And I was pretty pissed off because the project was pretty mediocre, close to rubbish. And the project's really pissed. So that was a lot of value. What does that say about the other judges? Oh, I was so pissed off. It was a really heated

panel and day. Like that last day was very, very heated.ason derulo dropped by as well so they got a lot of a fair bit of attention i'm actually going to see him now and i saw him he does have like a rug pull as well of some sort no he launched a meme token called jason um and it didn't rock i don't know what it's at now but it's not a rock article i could not vet it but i read an article just in passing that said he like said tweet that he was never going to sell and sold like 75% of what he had on the launch. Oh shit. Yeah. Well, I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't know. I haven't looked into it enough, but he does have a meme. Bubble maps is, is, is our friends bubble maps are looking into those.

So that's another one. And lastly, other than killer whales, obviously did an interview with Mika and I haven't done interview in ages, but the cool thing is I'm creating a virtual version of me. So I go into a studio where they got like hundreds of cameras. And you spend half an hour doing different facial expressions. They take photos from like 100 cameras of all these expressions. And then they work on your voice as well. And then I'm going to use AI to train it.

So it's going to be like a virtual replica of me that thinks like me through ai and that could do different things so that's two questions i have two questions was it all screaming faces for youtube thumbnails no no i'm like i swear i was thinking of rand's fucking thumbnails as i was doing them like fucking you have to you have to like how could i get uh all coins going down 90 tomorrow face and then you do that one. And the second question was, will your AI equivalent actually show up to this show? He'll show up.

You won't even know it's me. He'll show up. But that's a bit of an overview of LA. But it's less interesting than the last week. You said the price action, not much. But the SEC is taking more hits to the face. Well, actually, John. John's here.

John Reed Stark. He can probably untie. I didn't even know you were here. Hey, man, how are you? Hey, good to see you guys. Yeah, he can probably. I wouldn't say necessarily directly the SEC. I would just say that the Supreme Court obviously came down hard, I would say, on the regulatory apparatus in the United States.

I mean, there was the day when we were kind of here, Mar, you missed it, but a Solana spot ETF was obviously filed by VanEck. Another one was followed by 21 shares. We all know that Gary Gensler obviously doesn't want to see that. The same day, there was a Supreme Court ruling against the SEC effectively that they could not use their own court panel. I mean, we can get more deep into that for like arbitration. They'd have to go to the courts. And then Coinbase sued both the SEC and the FDIC that same day. That night was the debate. So we were just sort of joking that Gary Gensler had already had the worst day of his life.

And then, you know, probably seeing the chances of his side winning fading that night of the debate was the consensus. And then, of course, the Supreme Court just absolutely started spamming decisions on Friday, including reversal of Chevron deference, which is highly problematic for regulatory agencies to some degree. And some have said, and maybe, John, you'll have a different take. But obviously, some have said, obviously, it kneecaps regulatory agencies to some degree. But specific to the SEC with crypto, it does bring into question how much power the SEC even has to reference the Howey test or deem things securities and such. So that could be a massive hindrance to them and say the Coinbase suit. The irony that now the US DOJ and Marshalls have done a $30 million plus contract with Coinbase for custody and for selling their seized assets. The irony of that should not be missed when one side of the United States government says that Coinbase is an illegal exchange,

a legal broker, while other agencies of the United States are literally using Coinbase to sell those assets. But yeah, John, I mean, is that accurate appraisal? Well, there were three big Supreme Court cases, and that's what I can talk about, if you'd like. I think they were all three really good decisions. The first one you mentioned was Loper turning around Chevron deference. And for those who don't understand Chevron deference, it's a lot of times when Congress enacts a statute, they will sometimes, instead of getting into the specifics and particularities in the statute, they'll just direct, like they did in the Dodd-Frank Act,

they'll just direct the SEC or whatever agency to promulgate rules and use those rules and promulgate those rules in accordance with the directions of Congress. And historically, in this case called Chevron, judges were able to say, look, we're going to defer to the expertise of an agency like the SEC with respect to these rules. So they get almost like a presumption that the rule is going to be A-OK. I don't know. I'm not a Chevron scholar in the sense that I can't tell you in all the circuit courts how much Chevron deference really stopped judges from turning over SEC rules. I can tell you that the Administrative Procedures Act requires the SEC to do a cost-benefit

analysis on any rule they promulgate, and the SEC gets clobbered almost every time they try to do a new rule because they botched the cost-benefit analysis. That will probably happen with this new cybersecurity rule that requires four days. You have to disclose any cybersecurity incident in four days, and it's a completely redundant rule, ridiculous rule, and random rule. And I think it's impossible to do a cost-benefit analysis. So that one could very easily get tossed out. But it might work the other way where judges who are inclined to like a rule don't have to spend much time talking about that. They can just say, in light of Chevron,

we defer to the judgment of the administrative agency. And what the Supreme Court said in Loper was, nope, can't do that deference. This is a separation of powers issue. The judiciary should look at everything independently and should not have to have some sort of deference. It's a clear violation of separation of powers. So great decision. I never liked, personally, I never liked Chevron deference. I thought it was ridiculous. So it was good that Supreme Court did that, in my opinion. The next decision you referenced was a decision called JARCSE. In JARCSE, a bunch of my friends, Russ Ryan, Nick Morgan, several other really terrific former SEC lawyers who I worked with when I was at the SEC, got together and started saying that

the SEC Administrative Forum was an unconstitutional denial of people's right to a jury. Well, what's the SEC's administrative forum? Well, you know, I was chief for 11 years. I worked there for 20 years. I think I brought, I never brought a contested case administratively. I would bring a settled case occasionally, but this is the differentiation. If the SEC can, at least before JARC, can say, okay, this involves a regulated person or a regulated entity. So instead of charging this person with violating the federal securities laws in federal court, like we're supposed to, we're going to do it in an administrative forum under our own administrative judges.

And I've been an expert in several administrative proceedings, and the reality is the rules of evidence don't apply. You don't have a right to a jury. The appellate process is crazy because the same group of commissioners that approve the action against you is also the forum for your appeal if you decide that you want to appeal the administrative law judge's decision. So what the lawyers all argued was that, hey, everybody's got a right to a jury trial, and you're penalizing people pretty heavily, and this court takes forever to make its decisions. Its rules of evidence are a mess. There's so many unconstitutional things about it, and it's a total home-based advantage for the SEC. All of those things I agree with. And so the court in Jarksy, and this was a

very big decision for a lot of SEC lawyers, essentially said, hey, SEC, if you file anything administratively, an individual is going to have a right or a company is going to have a right to remove that and bring it in federal court. Now, the reality of that, Scott and Mario, is that the SEC has pretty much stopped bringing administrative proceedings anyway because there were a bunch of lower court decisions that had really circuit court decisions that had restricted their abilities. And I think they saw this case as something coming down the line. So there isn't much going on, but the rent in those administrative courts, which are actually in the basement of the SEC, located down in the basement. So that's JARCSE, which says, hey, if you're the SEC, you only have to sue in federal court.

Like I said, in my 20 years there, the only thing I ever did administratively was a settled case. And then in my 11 years as chief, I think we only used administratives as follow-ons for a bar against an individual because the forum made it easier. So that's Jarksy and that's Chevron. I don't think either of those will have any impact on the crypto industry. I don't think that will slow down the SEC in any way, shape, or form. I think the SEC, again, their crypto enforcement efforts will slow to only fraud if President Trump is elected. They went after consensus two hours exactly and dropped and put like five or six tokens passively as well what do you yeah oh they're

okay so but john joe what do you think of and rancy so i've got a few questions for rand not sure if he's joined the spaces in the last week and a half or he's avoided them he skipped them like i did but just another question i was. I was here. I was here, bro. I was here. Oh, shit. Respect. Listen, John, just a question. How about the whole discussion about the Biden administration taking a U-turn? I don't think we've had you, unless I wasn't here when we had you, since the ECTF approval

that I think goes live in a couple of days. What's your interpretation of that? Are we seeing a pivot by the SEC to becoming more crypto-friendly? I don't know, Mario. I think maybe I don't know. I don't tend to personify the SEC and Gary Gensler like a lot of people do. I think that most everyone who works at the SEC is not a political appointee, just about everyone as opposed to at the DOJ. So you have the staff grinding through with these cases, and I don't see them slowing down at all. These ETF approvals, they make no sense to me. I mean, Gensler voted against his own party. And again, in my 20 years there and whatever, almost 40 years now just working in this space, I've never known a chairman to vote

against their own party in a really big decision like the Bitcoin spot ETF. So I think those are difficult to explain. I think what we know for sure, Mario, is that when or if President Trump becomes president, they were talking about the different chairs, whether it be someone like Giancarlo or someone like Dan Gallagher from Robinhood or even Hester Peirce, who's there, sort of the senior Republican real libertarian. Any of those people, the crypto industry is going to experience a boom like never before because the SEC will not only slow down rulemakings, which I'm sure they're slowing down anyway,

but they'll also slow down dramatically enforcement efforts so that they only relate to cases involving fraud as opposed to pure registration violations. That's what I think. Interesting. Scott, I don't know if you had more questions on this with John. But there's also the Binance decision, Mario, which was pretty important last week. Yeah, the BNB secondary sale was huge. I don't, I see it as- Can you explain it, John? Can you explain the decision first and then tell us why you got it? Yeah, of course. So, okay, so there are many ways that these cases,

these 200 or so SEC enforcement cases involving crypto entities have been adjudicated. Sometimes they're settled and then you just get essentially a complaint or an order or something along those lines that's really negotiated between the parties. And some people say, hey, that doesn't have any precedential effect. That's just a settlement.

Other times, the SEC actually litigates, and the first break in the action is when the defendant moves for a motion to dismiss to say, hey, even if everything the SEC says is true, we didn't do anything wrong, so you've got to dismiss this complaint. The next stage comes at something called summary judgment, where the SEC and the defendant conduct all sorts of discovery, and the defendant and the SEC come back again and say, hey, we learned all of these things, and all of these facts are axiomatic, they're all true, they're not disputed, and given all these undisputed facts, we deserve a verdict just

based on this. There's no need to go to a jury, no need to go to a judge who's ever adjudicating. And that's during summary judgment. And then there's also at the trial phase when they actually decide, okay, now we're going to go to trial. We're going to speak in front of a jury and see how these things go. We haven't had many jury trials because, again, this is such a nascent industry. Most of the time, an SEC jury trial can take two to three years before it actually comes to fruition. And I haven't done too many SEC jury trials. Most of them end up settling somewhere along the way. So where does Binance decision fit into this? Okay, so Binance was a motion to dismiss. So Binance came in and said,

look, given all these facts to be true, we got to throw out this case because the FCC doesn't have a case. And the judge wrote, as is custom in this space, like with Telegram, like with Kik, like with LBRY, she wrote an 89-page opinion. And it was probably one of her first securities cases. I brought a lot of cases in D.C. court, and most of the time they don't have as much experience in securities cases. And she really did an amazing job in breaking everything down. So here's what she said. First of all, she said, of course, the Howey test applies. She quoted both Howey and then a case called Joiner, both of which just say it doesn't matter what the iteration, what the configuration, whether it's an eel farm, an ostrich farm, an orange grove, a prime banknote, whatever it is,

even if it was completely unanticipated at the time of the Howey decision or the 33 Act and 34 Acts enactment, then Howey applies. And that's pretty much what every court has said. So she said Howey applies. The second thing she said was, hey, with respect to these defenses, like, hey, there's this regulation by enforcement. She threw that out. She said, this is how the S. Sorry, with respect to fair notice, she threw that out. She said, and the fair notice defense is this idea that, hey, nobody knew that these things were against the law, so you shouldn't charge them. It's a due process violation she threw that out the major questions doctrine which is another favorite of the crypto industry and their defenses in the

200 or so cases and all the rhetoric and you know when i testified before congress they talk about this uh that was thrown out also there's no problem with the major questions doctrine it's not a major question it's a minor league question and And you made that clear. Let's get to rip. Go ahead. What does that mean? Just kind of go digging into what does it mean for crypto? I kind of feel for us in the space. I think it just reinforces that all those defenses that the crypto industry loves to love to talk about are just worthless. So it's time to stop talking about fair notice, regulation by enforcement, major questions, doctrine, just stop using those. They've been rejected time and time again. Now, here's where Scott's making a point about the

decision involving the secondary market. And I think it's being way, way overblown by people. And again, you just have to really read the 89-page decision. The split in Ripple, because you had Judge Rakoff about a week after the Ripple decision saying that Judge Torres was wrong, basically comes down to this. Judge Rakoff says, hey, once you label something a security, like during its initial public offering or whatever you call it, initial coin offering, once it's labeled a security, it is forever a security. It can't become not a security someday. Judge Torres essentially said, look, it depends on the totality of the circumstances. This case has no precedential value and unique to this situation, something cannot be a security. And she also said, you need a contractual relationship between whoever the

secondary market recipient is of the product and the offer of that product. And that's what Judge Rakoff really went ballistic about. No judge has ever said that there needs to be some sort of contractual relationship between the secondary market investor and the initial offeror, whether it be Binance or anyone. So what Judge Berman in Binance said was, first of all, you don't need a contract. And she agreed 100% with Judge Rakoff. But what she did say that was different, and I'm trying to figure out whether I agree with her or not, I might agree with her, is that someday a security can become not a security because

it takes on utility. So if you're buying a token solely for the reason to get a discount on trading or like a stamp, right? You buy a forever stamp, you're not buying it because in 10 years it'll be worth more. You're buying it because you want to use it to, you know, mail a letter. So I think when it comes, when Judge Berman looked at this in Binance, she sort of said there might be some utility here. And you know what? The SEC has not pled with adequate particularity what exactly these investors were thinking. Maybe these weren't investors at all that bought the Binance token. Maybe they were just customers who bought it to get a discount. So that's where she said it's,

the SEC's pleadings were insignificant. And my take is that, look, all you need to do is, I think the only reason people buy these tokens is because they hope they'll go up. And they hope they'll make money and they hope they'll get rich. And that's what's being touted to them. And Judge Berman focused on that a lot. And she sort of said, you know, when it comes to Binance, sometimes they were touting these tokens at some point to sort of say, these are great because they get you a discount on our trading. As opposed to these are great, hey, based a discount on our trading, as opposed to these are great, hey, based on our efforts, the price is going to go up. So that's really the differentiation

in Ripple. I would not call that a victory for big crypto at all. I've spent a lot of time speaking to investors, again, during my 20 years. It was pretty customary. You would talk to investors, all you needed are a few disgruntled investors to say, of course, I bought this because the price would go up. Yeah, it might have had some utility, but I never cared about that. I just want the price to go up. That's why I put it in my IRA. That's why I put it in my 529. So as long as the SEC can find that, and my guess is in future pleadings, they'll plead that with more particularity.

But that's the differentiation. But otherwise, the Binance position is a crushing blow for Binance. People just listen. I think that people don that's the differentiation. But otherwise, the Binance position is the crushing blow for Binance. Listen, I think that people don't understand the nuance. So the industry just takes it as confirmation that what was said in the Ripple case is accurate, and everybody moves forward accordingly. So I think perception is extremely important in these cases, whether right or not. I think the funnier story here with regard to the SEC is the news that broke, obviously, that the DOJ has tapped Coinbase as their custodian in an over $30 million contract, and that we know that they sell the self-proclaimed Bitcoin,

United States government on Coinbase, and that the DOJ and United States Marshals will be doing the same, while a different agency is concurrently suing Coinbase for allowing those assets to illegally be sold and saying that it's an illegal brokerage. But hey, I guess good enough for us as the United States DOJ. I think we should. I think Coinbase should be. It's so thick and insane. It's laughable. I agree. I think big and insane. It's laughable.

I agree. I think Coinbase should. It's just so insane. Let Coinbase refuse to sell them and say, look, unfortunately, we can't sell them to you because we're in an illegal platform. Then there'll be less selling pressure on the market. I agree with you, Scott. I think it's just a ridiculous decision from DOJ. Never in history has a federal government agency that I can think of done a contract with a company that's being an existential lawsuit.

It's not just a peripheral lawsuit. Existential and for the exact same service, basically, being provided to government. Yes, you're right right you are absolutely right like if the doj if the doj uh seizes some solana or matic or something in their next suit they're going to go sell that on coindesk yeah you're absolutely right i can't argue with you there it's uh it's absolutely it's not just ironic it's it's laughable sad man it's like it's. It's laughable. It's sad, man. It's laughable. It's comedy. It's comedy, Scott. Boy.

Boy. Dan? Yeah, just to chime in on the difference between the XRP and the BNB. I worked at Binance from 2018 onwards. When I joined, it was called Binance Coin, and then one day we woke up and it was called BNB, which was in no way – obviously in no way a way to differentiate the token from the company. Just like it used to be called Ripple, and now it's called XRP to try and differentiate the fact. Things like you used to do buybacks based on the revenue that Bounce had earned, and it became some obscure kind of that kind of stuff. Look, what I've learned, so I used to be a police officer in the UK and I used to be very by the law.

Something that I've learned over the last five years is probably the law is about what's applicable and what you can get away with, which has somewhat darkened my view of the world, but it is what it is. So that's the point I want to make about BNB and XRP there. The other thing is, yes, Coinbase refusing to sell the Bitcoin for the US government. Sure, they could, but as a shareholder-conscious company,

are you going to... He was kidding, Chad. Yeah, no, no, no. No, I was kidding. No, no, no. Hit me up. Boys, boys, lads. Guys, I know, I know, I i know i'm just saying at that point no i agree with you i agree for making a principled stamp i get that but then so look i'm just here to brand some counterpoints

otherwise we're all you know just jerking each other off a little bit so i'm just here to try and provide a little bit of counterpoint and give a little uh stir the pot a little bit um as a shareholder conscious company would they reject revenue is all i want to say i agree with you guys i'm just trying to provide a little bit of counterpoint to make this a little bit. As a shareholder conscious company, would they reject revenue is all I want to say. I agree with you guys. I'm just trying to provide a little bit of a counterpoint to make this a little bit more of an interesting conversation rather than we're all just big crypto boys talking the same book, right? Apologies. Pretty sure John

wasn't talking about it, but I got you. I love you guys, but I am not a big crypto boy. I don't have anything to do with crypto in any way, shape, or form. Not even BTC, John. Come on, not even BTC. Nothing, Mario, nothing. I don't make a nickel from anything I'm saying today in any way, shape, or form.

Can I pitch you a meme coin maybe? No, everybody tries to pitch me this crap, and I don't want anything to do with it. Go ahead. The coin will be cash tag John Reed snark. And you know, I'll tell you this. To be clear, I wasn't saying that John was saying that he rejected it. I think it was Rand that said he rejected it. Okay.

I was having a go at you, John. I was just trying to counterpoint what Rand said. I apologize. If I go that wrong, I apologize. No, but look. No, that's okay. I agree, buddy. I totally get you.

You know what? I mean, Scott, you know Anthony Scaramucci. Mario, you know him. He's someone who's been my good friend or very, very close friend for 50 years. And Anthony has this view that it's not only a brilliant dollar, tweeting about. The guy says, John, and to your question what happened with the Bitcoin spot ETF and persuaded ultimately chair Gensler to change his mind and change his vote and issue this weird rule that at the same other side of his mouth, he's telling everybody not to invest in. So I, I, I, you might be right that these decisions and the crypto community being as active and voting with their digital wallets like they probably will could make a difference. Other people, people much more

politically savvy than me, because I live right outside of Washington, have said that I just don't know what I'm talking about. Anthony doesn't know what he's talking about, that this is not a movement and it's just like any other issue. It'll be ignored ultimately when people get to the ballot box. But rest assured that if President Trump becomes president once again, the regulatory posture with respect to crypto, that doesn't involve fraud. Remember, I worked under seven different chairs,

multiple different presidents in the enforcement division, and never once did I feel like, wow, this commission is telling me to go a different way than I want to. The bottom line is, is fraud is fraud. You're going to come down on it strong no matter what. But when you get into these registration arguments, like the one Coinbase is having, remember, Binance is accused of a whole mess of fraud. Coinbase is not. That's the dramatic difference. And if you take someone like Dan Gallagher or

Christian Carlo or some of the others mentioned, they're going to take a more libertarian view. not. That's the dramatic difference. And if you take someone like Dan Gallagher or Chris Giancarlo or some of the others mentioned, they're going to take a more libertarian view. And I got to tell you, Dan Gallagher is the general counsel of Robin Hood. He is a former SEC commissioner, former head of market regulation. I've known Dan for 30 years. He is one of the brightest, greatest people you will ever know. He would make an incredible chair. And I have no desire going back to work there for anyone. I'm just saying that objectively. And he would be great for you all because, again, he's not just a measured voice. He's someone that has been really knee-deep in your industry.

Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. I've heard that, you know, either way, John, I think you had mentioned that likely Hester Peirce becomes at least the interim before there's an appointment. She will. So the way it works, Scott, is that once, you know, January 20th happens, one of the commissioner of the leading party, and if it's Republican, who's there, and Hester Peirce will be there. And I was staff attorney with Hester Peirce, again, known her forever. And she is a fantastic person, a true public servant. She is just a real libertarian. She is not saying any of this to get a job somewhere or do anything. She is the best spokesman you could ever have because objective. She just has a point of view that's different and she will become acting. Now, whether or not the White House will propose, I've seen actings that are only like seven or eight days long,

and I've seen actings that are nine months long. So you really don't know. But during the Hester purse and the acting doesn't necessarily have as much power, but they control the agenda before the commissioners and they're going to rock the vote. So, yeah, I think you're on the right. You're thinking is right, Scott. Yeah, perfect. Thank you for all that insight. Mario, I think we should talk a bit more, obviously, about ETFs. We've got Matt here. Matt, you know, Balchunas and Safer, they let us down a little bit and we had like a high chance that we were going to see these approved and started to trade today. It didn't happen. We love those guys, by the way.

But I think still kind of dotting I's and crossing T's here, right? But still inevitable. Is that correct? I certainly hope so. Yeah, I think things are still on track. I think we can all be happy that it's not happening on this holiday week i think the market will be better off uh with launches that are on normal weeks so um yeah they were wrong and and yeah we all have to wait a little bit longer but i think it's for the best just pointing to the fact that it's kind of the worst week to do that right i

mean and we have july 4th on a Thursday. It's effectively everybody's just not around. I would have thought that they would launch it right into that for us just to make it as difficult as possible. That's right. Yeah, launch it on the half day on Wednesday. Would have been a lot of fun. So yeah, I'm happy that we're not seeing it this week. And yeah, I think, you know, what you're seeing in the media is everyone assumes that it's all on track. And I think that's the right assumption to

make. Matt, can I ask two questions? Sorry. Sorry, Scott, just two questions. First on the ECTF, what expectations are and how important that is for the market, like if we do meet or don't meet expectations versus exceed expectations. And then maybe give us an overview. It's a selfish question for me, because obviously I've been away for about a week and a half, but just an overview on the Bitcoin ETF inflows versus outflows in the last couple of weeks and maybe your thoughts on it. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, on the ETH ETF, I think the more seasoned watchers of this space, I would put Bitwise and Galaxy and a few others, have come out with estimates that suggest that these will be significant successes. Our estimate at Bitwise is that these ETFs could pull in $15 billion in their first 18 months on the market. I think Galaxy, who has a great research shop, was out saying about a billion dollars a month in net inflows. So I think the consensus is that these will be significant, that the flows will ultimately lift the price. I do think there is a reasonable amount of concern around what will happen right around launch. If you remember the Bitcoin ETF launch, Bitcoin's price sold off dramatically

in the first few weeks after launch. I think there's a risk that you could have rapid outflows from ETH. I think investors have learned from the GBTC example that they're going to make that trade anyway, and that trade might accelerate. i think that quickly yeah quickly sorry to interrupt but do you think we haven't really seen the fewer yet or the statement of fees like do you think that if grayscale for some reason came in line with the competitors that we would see the same kind of outflow just because people were taking the discount trade anyways or do you think if they come in you know uh if they come in at 1.5%, we know exactly what's going on? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think the outflows would be reduced. But you would still see outflows, right? Because a lot of people bought ETH just for the premium arbitrage trade. They don't want to be long Ethereum. They just bought ETH because it was trading at a discount and they assumed it would convert. And once that conversion takes place, they exit the market and they need to be replaced by long-term Ethereum investors. That happened in GBTC too.

It's just there were enough long-term Bitcoin investors to sort of fill the bucket as some leaked out the bottom. So yeah, if you had lower ETH fees, it would be a more stable situation. But I think the point I was making is I would just expect it to be a little uncertain. I don't have a view on what inflows or outflows or market price will do in the first few weeks around launch. But I think everyone that's talking to professional investors about this and indeed to retail investors, you know, expect as we get into September, October, November, these things are going to be massive successes. That's what you see in every market. You know, that's what you see in Europe. They're successful in Canada. They're successful

in the U.S. They'll be successful as well. I'd just be a little bit cautious in the one or two or three weeks right around launch. And on the Bitcoin ETF front, to handle that, I think we've seen flows stabilize. We at Bitwise had a great day in flows yesterday. $40 million came in. We saw some outflows. But if you look over the last month, there have been net inflows. I think the consensus on this is right, which is we're going to see a secondary acceleration of flows as we get into September, October, particularly if the Bitcoin ETFs get approved on platforms like Morgan Stanley,

and if trends move in the direction of they're looking on the election, I think you could see H2 flows that are as big as H1 flows. So I think the market is stabilized and will tread water through the summer, but I expect a significant acceleration of flows in September, October, November, and December. I think it could be many, many billions if the trends line up the way they're looking. Every trend lining up for the halving, boring summer, up only, parabolic move in the fall that we've been discussing. Election, liquidity cycles, halving cycles, all the four-year cycles, the approvals.

It really, it's hard not to just see tailwinds, personally, you know, and even on the regulatory and legislative and all those sides, as much as I think we saw the contentious relationship with regulators, it's a hell of a lot better than we would have imagined six months or a year ago, right? So even a thawing in that direction seems like positive momentum. Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, I think the trend in the market right now is short term negatives with liquidity shocks from Mt. Gox and the US government that are tempering price, but the long term positives are just massive. And eventually those will overwhelm the short term headwinds. And yeah, I think we're going to start seeing that, you know,

in the coming months. I'd be scared that we have this just sweeping consensus of how things are going to happen. Yeah, consensus within crypto. Right where you want to be now. When you go outside the bubble, when people aren't paying attention to these trends and they don't realize the regulatory winds have shifted in Washington. I mean, you know, Scott, you like to talk about the comedy. Oh, I'm sorry, I interrupted. No, I'm done. I'm done. Go ahead. Oh, okay. Scott, you like to talk about the comedy and I get it, but it's true on both sides. I mean, you guys are talking about these ETFs and was this the original vision of Bitcoin to have this massive intermediation, this massive centralization in places like Coinbase and BlackRock and financial behemoths

who have their own agenda, who are all building $100 million beach houses at the expense of the consumer and the investor? Was that really what everyone had in mind when it came to this? Well, maybe they invited us to a barbecue. So I see hypocrisy on both sides that is very upsetting, but I guess it's hard for the course. There's hypocrisy, or they'll tell you it's an evolving of the narrative. Okay. You've been talking to Anthony too long. No, I'm largely on your team here. But I think there is an argument that for those, obviously, who were early Bitcoiners,

yeah, you're supposed to be raging against the machine and cheering for this level of adoption might be a bit hypocritical. But then the flip side of that is, if you believe, which I do not necessarily, but that Bitcoin becomes a global reserve asset or you play it out to the finish line. That only happens with adoption from institutions and, you know, from literally everybody. So, listen, either way, Bitcoin can't become a mature asset class without institutional adoption. So it's hard not to, you know, cheer for it. But with one eye open,

I think it's probably the best approach. But But yes, john, I think your point is not missed. Dave, you've been throwing a David towel, you've been throwing up all kinds of emojis throughout. What are your thoughts here in general? Oh, I think we're, you know, in terms of trading, summer malaise, holiday weekend, a lot of stuff going on around the world, France, armed conflicts, US election. I do believe that the judicial and legislative activity of the last two months is really important. And it may not go ahead and show up in pricing immediately. My response to that is that's a prize that everybody who is long-term bullish on the asset class should go ahead and grab because eventually it will play through into pricing exactly what the catalysts will be that kind of allow it to get

ushered in and push prices higher. I don't know. Maybe it's the election, which I think, you know, at this point, I'm going to call it as I see it. And this is not what my vote is. But I think there's no shot that Trump doesn't win at this point. It just, it seems clear as day to me. Even, even, even if, even if Biden swat, I think that, first of all, I don't think logistically, it's, it's going to be easy or pretty. And maybe impossible to get another candidate lined up so quickly. I'm not a politician. I'm, I'm a lawyer, but I'm certainly not an election lawyer. So I just don't think that that's happening. Again, I'm not trying to be partisan about this. Frankly, it's not my morals to vote Trump, but I do think that Trump's going to win. I don't think Trump is. I'm just sorry. Not on the swapping thing.

I know Scott doesn't want to get into politics, but the prediction markets are putting it at a likelihood of 35% to 45% that Biden will be swapped. I didn't look at it in the last few days. Listen, Mario, are you looking at Polymarket? Polymarket? Yeah, I think it was Polymarket. Why? No, no, I was just going to ask two things.

First of all, Polymarket was once a host of my show, the Finance Daily show in the morning uh which was so cool do you know polymark the one yeah yeah of course the one with danish yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah there were there were sponsor vows a long time ago okay and and us maybe still now i don't know us based people cannot cannot bet on polymarket. I mean, I guess if you have a VPN, maybe you could do it. But the majority of people predicting the outcome of a US election on that platform are non-US people. So I would take the other side of that bet if you can.

Yeah, I don't know. But I still like – anyone that is spending their money is doing it for an educational. You've got a lot of institutions that will probably be using Polymarket or using those betting platforms. So I just – and people from the US, whether they're using a VPN or not, I don't know. But then again, you just think – I don't know. There's a lot of smart people just talking about Biden being swapped. A lot are talking about Gavin Newsom already being prepped for this. It's beyond me I know

I gotta be honest I don't see it I I just don't I think it's going to be an impossible lift in order to get him out I think there'll be two camps of people the Biden people and the non-Biden people and it'll just be messy again I'm not a politician I'm not a political strategist um but you know I think that that's the way it rolls. Nevertheless, you know, even with Trump becoming president, it doesn't mean all of a sudden the guy's going to get up on day one and, you know, usher in this amazing, you know, world of pro crypto. You know, it'll take some time, but maybe that's the catalyst that comes. I'm not really sure. But at the end of the day, I believe, to the real point, the legislative light switch, make Hester Peirce acting chair. And then she is about as extreme as you get in the area in terms of being pro-crypto. And that could be pretty dramatic, no? Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know enough about the marketplace.

No, no. I totally agree with you on that, John. But that action or that event is somewhat binary. It's not the type of thing that I go ahead and invest on the basis of. But certainly, I'll take it. And yes, it's certainly a very high possibility, high probability. And so, no, I wouldn't disagree with you on that, you know, to the list. Yeah. By the way, Scott, since you don't like talking politics, before we go to Shahaf and discuss Cody, I've got a question for you. Do you think Biden will be swapped?

I have no idea. I mean, I think it's insane. I think it's insane for them to let him run i mean but but let me put it this way they should swap him but i have zero faith in either political party to do something rational at any point from now until the future of time that's what i've got what are your What are your thoughts on the debate? It wasn't a debate. It was one guy who should have been in bed, who they've openly said can operate from 10 to 4. And it's, listen, I don't have any personal opinion.

It was just embarrassing. I mean, you know, Biden obviously couldn't answer a question from the first moment. And I'm not a fact checker, but listen, my nine-year-old daughter could have slayed Biden in that debate, like just by showing up and saying that she likes flippy or something. I have no idea. Literally anything that his opponent would have said that day would have

been deemed a victory, which is insane because all Biden literally had to do to quote unquote, win that debate was show up and put together sentences, right? We couldn't even do that. So I think that debate was more of an indictment of the state of things in America than anything you can draw conclusions on, you know, about the candidates. So it was just embarrassing. It's sad.

It was sad. It was very hard to watch. That's a pretty detailed opinion for someone that doesn't like to talk politics. Listen, I still watch. I'm American and whatever. I'm a registered, non-affiliated voter. I try to use my brain and choose candidates that I like regardless of party, but I don't think that a sane person or a deeply thinking person can wholesale agree with all of the policies of either side and say

that's me i just don't get it like there's going to be things and there's people who just like no matter what their party says or their guy says they just sweepingly agree with all of it and i don't know how you can listen to either of these two guys and and take that approach right doesn't mean you can't support them i just think the state of like tribalism and politics in this country and beyond is it's hard to hard to it's hard to stomach but yes i think they'll swap about uh unless they just want to lose terribly i don't know i think but i think uh trump has all the momentum obviously obviously. And I think now that, like, you know, based on the Supreme Court decision, legal troubles are probably in the past. Not many headwinds for the guy. Yeah.

Well, it kind of just shows that the legal system, obviously, some would agree or disagree with the statement today after the Supreme Court ruling. But the legal system in the U.S. is still pretty strong despite all the criticism that you throw at it it's got a lot of flaws but it's still right i mean they've certainly helped crypto in the last year by just uh yeah exactly a lot of crypto people love to a lot of crypto people love to hate on the on the u.s legal system especially when it comes to pro trump crypto people you've got the supreme court ruling is obviously we're talking about the supreme court here but still um it's part of the legal system, so to say. So you've got Supreme Court ruling, obviously kind of putting behind us most of the potentially politically motivated attacks on Trump from a legal perspective. And then you've got the crypto ecosystem as well with the SEC targeting

crypto, the legal, and John might disagree with the statement, but kind of standing in the way and to an extent reversing that. But let's get into Coda. Yeah, right. I mean, I can tell you that just because like, I think I have like a diverse friend group and, you know, I'm almost in my pushing towards being 50 years old and I have, you know, group chats with, I would say, huge groups and swaps of people on both sides that I've known

for my whole life. And I've never seen a time where there's so much hyperbole as to what's likely to happen if the other guy wins. Like literally like the chats that I'm in that are maybe more Republican dominated think that if Biden wins again, like it's the end of American democracy, it's over America becomes a shithole third world country. And on the other side, if you're talking to the people who like are begrudgingly defending biden they literally think if trump wins like we'll become a fascist nation he'll abolish term limits and it'll be a hundred years of like the trump family dynasty it's so irrational on both sides to me like yeah one side wins and then it's hard to govern and then the other side like comes in and takes a sweeping victory and we have mean reversion and the policies you hate inevitably get reversed and nothing really gets done.

It just seems like maybe go outside and play with your kids and stop stressing about it so much. Yeah, that's a very long opinion for a person that doesn't like to discuss politics. Yeah, but who's running? Okay, go ahead. Yeah, that's a very long opinion for a person that doesn't like to discuss politics. Yeah, but who's running? Yeah, go ahead. Let's get into it. I think it's RFK and what's his name? Dean Phillips.

I really like him. Let's get into Cody. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I like both. I like Dean and Marianne. I think the other candidates, we had some pretty good candidates, but obviously none of them got traction. RFK, did you see what he did? He had like a separate live debate debating Biden and and trump did you watch that i watched it back he was great listen i think like

obviously that's a different scenario to be standing in he gets the benefit of uh no response and getting to rip off what do you think what is it what he did an exceptional job what happens what happens what happens if rfk so if biden Biden drops out, RFK moves back to the Democratic Party. Could that then give it give give the Democrats a real shot against Trump? because I think people believe he's the better candidate necessarily, but because the people who are voting for Biden, like if you're still voting for Biden, it's only because you're voting against Trump generally, from what I've heard. And so you get all of those people plus the people who maybe are in

the middle or who were supporting RFK. I mean, the polling shows that in a two-way election RFK would probably be either of them, but that's not a real poll where that's going to happen. I love it. It could become real of them, but that's not a real you know, but that's going to happen. I love it. It could become real, and again, if that's the only option that Democrats have,

then I'd be surprised if that would take it. But let me get into a discussion with Shahaf, our friend Shahaf. Shahaf, how are you? Hey, Mario, I'm Scott. Thank you for having me here. What do you think of the debate, Shahaf? Look, it's kind of sad to see that the world's greatest superpower has only that to offer. But coming out of Israel, I think we can't really say a lot about bad governments.

We definitely hit the top there. Talking about energy kind of reflected on the U.S., the world's biggest superpower, one last thing I want to mention quickly, Shahab, before we go back and forth. Scott, one thing caught me by surprise is I see all these videos about homelessness on Twitter. And I've lived in the US, I've lived in Miami, I've lived in Marina del Rey, so I love the country. But I never went out.

I never went out for a walk. And Ran would probably say the story a lot better than I. Ran, last week, he goes, Mario, let's go for a walk. He wanted would probably say the story a lot better than i ran and in last week he goes mario let's go for a walk he wanted to get a stupid protein shake so i go for a walk with him to get the that protein shake and right next to the hotel downtown la and um and just homeless people everywhere and before that as well we were driving back from the the show uh to the hotel and it was just heartbreaking holy fuck. Those Twitter videos that I keep seeing are reality. So it was heartbreaking to see. I know it's completely unrelated, but you asked me earlier about my trip.

That's one of the highlights as well, and I completely forgot to mention. But it's just a heartbreaking scene that he laughed at me. Obviously, he's from South Africa. It's even worse there. But he laughed at me and, you know, saying, like, why are you surprised? I live in Dubai. I'm back in dubai right now and uh obviously there's no homeless people at all in dubai i'm not saying dubai is

a perfect example of how it should be you know no no there's no there is no homeless people in dubai but that's not for the right reasons um i think i still prefer much prefer democracy in general and i much prefer the us but uh i think it's just uh it was any just the scene itself was just heartbreaking but like again shahaf i apologize for digressing again um i want to get into anyone that doesn't know cody we've had them on the show scott actually i want to ask you first can you explain to the audience on on your i'm not sure if you're still an investor in cody but i know you've been a supporter for a long time you know shahaf i want to get your thoughts organic thoughts on cody and then i'll go back and forth with the shop go back and forth with shop everybody knows he's my buddy and that

i and i and that i like them and hold it so my organic thoughts are that i cheer for everything he does yeah we met and we had the pleasure of meeting in dubai as well can you tell for anyone that doesn't know yet what coty is um we've had you on the show before most people know you um for various reasons. You've been around for a long time. But we'd love you to give us a quick overview of what problem you guys are solving. Yeah. So we are building a privacy-centric Ethereum layer 2.

And the big problem that we're solving is privacy. And I think privacy is the most important topic in crypto and should be for the next 10 years because it really affects the future of the internet, not just crypto. Can you elaborate a bit further? We've given examples. I was speaking to another project that launched today. Scott, you're invested in it as well, Natix. I think it's called natix and we're talking about how they leverage um they leverage all the cameras around the world to kind of use all that footage to be able to tell what traffic

there is if there's been any crime etc um but i'm like all right cool if you're using the camera on my phone and you're gonna you're gonna get some footage that you don't want to see just me butt naked having a shower or something by accident so how do you how do you ensure there's privacy there so that's like one use case that happened earlier today in that space. But can you just tell us half of other examples of where the blockchain is not the best solution when it comes to privacy? And then we can dig into how you guys solve it. So let's begin with something that is more fundamental, right? The example that you just gave, it's called, you know, private learning, basic stuff for AI.

Like I want to train models, but I don't want them, I don't want to give away all the data. So how can I do that? Yes, you can do that with privacy. You don't actually need blockchain for that, but you can do that with privacy techniques like we offer.

But something much more fundamental with regards to the future of the Internet is that basically there are two versions of the future. Version one, let's call it Web 2, where we are right now. A few big companies, a few services, a few apps control the Internet. They control the data, they control the access, hence they control reality, right? Yeah, you get a decent user experience and some hearts on Instagram photos, but that's the offering. Now, the problem is not only that it destroys competition and innovation, but it is also like a major threat to our privacy. Because all this data is kept in silos silos and these silos become a honeypot

for hackers and this is why we see you know data breaches all the time with the recent one with Ticketmaster. Now version two of the future is a decentralized internet let's call it web3 obviously it's based you know on blockchain tokens, and users own their data, and everybody can build protocols and have access. Now, this obviously has a lot of advantages, but there is one major disadvantage, and it's the fact that on a public blockchain, you can't really store sensitive information because everybody will see it.

And even if you could encrypt that information or this data, everybody can still see the metadata. Like metadata is, you know, the information on the information, like transactions, tokens, et cetera. So, you know, the current state of things, like the intersection where we are right now, and people really need to get this is that right now, you need to decide what you want to sacrifice the ownership of your data, or the privacy of your data. And, and in reality, normal people are not

willing to reveal their bank accounts, their purchase history, who they vote to medical records that, you know, all of that. And it's not just people, you know, businesses need their infrastructure to be able to keep a secret. Whether it's commercial secrets, legal, sensitive information of sorts, you'll never see adoption before data protection is granted. And, you know, the way I and the entire Kodi team sees it, it's, it's all about freedom. You know, you want people to, to be free to know to both have ownership of their data and the freedom to decide who they are online without fearing to their privacy. Now, we're getting to Kodi because the only two viable solutions out there for that are fully homomorphic encryption, FHE, and gobbling circuits, GC.

And with FHE, you're sacrificing performance and costs. And this is why Kodi is the first company to implement gobbling circuits, which is built by researchers from Soda Labs. And from everything that we've tested and benchmarked, Goblin circuits are much faster and lighter and cost a fraction of anything else. And we'll be publishing a paper about this soon. And I also think we'll be the first to launch a privacy-centric Ethereum layer 2 before the end of this year.

And in a nutshell, this is what we do and why we do it. So you talked about two different solutions for privacy on the blockchain. Can you just mention their names again? Yeah, fully. The terms gobbling and versus what? Fully homomorphic encryption. Fully.

And gobbling circuits. And the idea is that you can use encrypted data without needing to decrypt it when you use it. So with your example, like the photo of you back naked taking a shower. Yep, you don't the people or the system that will use this photo doesn't need to see you naked. It can just work without it. So essentially, yeah, so it's essentially the assess the

gobbled gobbled circuits approach, where essentially, you get the data, but you managed to learn from that data without actually seeing the data itself. Yes. So like, imagine that you and a friend want to work out which one of you is richer. But you also don't want to really tell them exactly how much you're worth. Just Yeah, that's a good. Okay, so you each write down your net worth on a piece of paper, but you don't want to really tell them exactly how much you're worth. Yeah, that's a good example. Okay, so you each write down your net worth on a piece of paper,

but you don't really write the numbers. You're writing a coded string of letters, right? You cipher it. You both do. And you put this piece of paper in a magic box. And after a split second, the paper is ejected out with the name of the richer person. And it says Mario is richer, right? Without ever revealing the numbers to anyone or to the box.

So this magic box is a Gobble circuit. It's a powerful computer program that can perform complex calculations on encrypted data without leaking any information. Fully homomorphic encryption can do the same thing, but gobbling circuits will do that at a fraction of the cost and much faster. So you won't be sacrificing performance, which is critical on blockchain systems. Can you get into DeFi? I think privacy when it comes to DeFi is another big problem.

Can you explain some use cases there as well for coaching? Sure. So let's talk about DeFi and also about AI. So DeFi, you know, you can, big things, right? First of all, MEV, you know, people are being exploited by smarter people because they have to send information on chain that reveals, you know, the bid. I'm going to, I am going to pay this amount of money for this token uh and in the next block right so people just front run this so if you were able to have a confidential transaction then this wouldn't ever be a problem um other thing like

i'm an institution in defy um i don't want everybody to see my proprietary trading algorithms i don't want people to really understand what i do how i do it no serious institution will do that right so they have all these walkarounds right now but it would be much better if this thing was um if you could obscure what you're doing. So you have, you know, private AMMs, dark pools, you could have under collateralized lending, et cetera, et cetera, blind auctions. So essentially the experience you would have expect from a centralized exchange, but on a decentralized exchange. So that's one very important use case. Anything,

by the way, we're talking about DeFi, real world assets, institutions, this is like the number one thing they'll tell you is that absolutely, they won't do things on chain if they can't have confidentiality. It's in their mandate, right? They have to have that. You were talking earlier about photos. So AI, two big things. One is, yes, private learning. I want to train a model based on a private data without sharing that data, without exposing it, without leaking it.

Critical for our future. The other very interesting model is federated learning. So I have a model or a set of data. So I have a model or set of data. You have a model or set of data. I mean, you have lots of photos of cats. I have a lot of photos of dogs. We want to train a model so that if you give a model a photo of an animal, it will tell you if it's a cat or a dog, right? So two of us need to actually work together to figure

it out. But I don't want to show you my photos, you know, you don't want to show me yours. So federated learnings allows you with privacy to actually train a model in a way that in the end, this model can actually make the distinction without us ever revealing this data. So this example, of course, is stupid, but think about major companies sharing data between each other without needing to reveal this data. So yeah, just a few examples of what you could do

with with privacy on a block. Like I think I think the importance of this comes down down to freedom, like if you don't own your data when it comes to AI, it's a pretty scary world you live in. And you talked about the centralization of power earlier. It's just not sustainable. And I think we'll see even further centralization. I think who owns data pretty much controls the internet, controls life because life will become the internet. Yes, exactly. And if you think about the current regulation about maybe limiting what companies can actually

develop AI, et cetera, it will even mean it's a far more dystopian future if you think about this. And also when it comes to adoption of blockchains and Web3, privacy, as you said, is a major hurdle for a lot of these larger companies and financial institutions. Have you seen – so what type of clients have you guys been mainly talking to at Cody? I'm pretty curious. Yeah, so we've recently launched a $50 million builder program. And we've received a lot of interest from native developers to banks and government. So we are talking to about 50 different projects and parties and, yes, governments and banks.

And they're in various stages of exploration or even development. What I can tell you is that you know we've been looking at you know the CBDC project somewhere in the world and it's the number one request is confidentiality of transactions okay and then

what about when it comes to regulation I know we've got only a couple of minutes I have a few questions but I'll try to kind of squeeze them in when it comes to regulation? I know we've got only a couple of minutes. I have a few questions, but I'll try to kind of squeeze them in. When it comes to regulation as well, how do regulators perceive confidentiality on blockchains? Because they're not going to like decentralization as a whole. But then when you add decentralization, there's also private. It's going to be a bit scary for them because they like the blockchains, right? They can track everything.

I think you talked about being in Israel. Well, Hamas, I think, put out a statement, I don't know when, how long ago, we were talking about it, me and John Deaton, saying, please don't donate to us in crypto and Bitcoin because it's all traceable on the blockchain. So how do regulators perceive the, do they perceive this as a potential threat despite the use cases? Actually, if you think, it's a big misconception. Your right for privacy or for selective disclosure, confidentiality, it's protected by law.

We have specific regulations for that, GDPR, HIPAA, etc. So users are going to have the ability to allow or deny specific entities to access to their private data. So what we do with CODI is we hide the content of the transaction, not the addresses behind it, or even the fact that this transaction happened. So this is protected by law and this is why institutions actually need to have this if they are going to be on a public blockchain. Anonymity is something different. It means that you hide who is behind the transactions and this of course will have regulatory issues. Lastly, I would say that COTI is not a privacy token uh the kodi token is is the gas in our network so we don't achieve privacy by shielding coins

we do that by adding protective layer to every transaction between users or businesses um last question i have for you man um is any plans moving forward for Kodi, for Kodi V2? Yes. So last time we talked, we launched our early testnet. We are now about to introduce our full testnet. So we're actually testing it right now. And we're going to unveil a list of partners developing on it. I've mentioned that we've launched a $50 million builder program.

We've also launched a $50 million builder program. We've also launched a creators program. It's a program to incentivize companies and individuals to develop high impact content creation and distribution. And we've received applications for creating different types of content like videos, articles, and infographics. So we are very happy with this program. So I think big things, testnet and unveiling the partners behind it. We're glad to be investors. I think Scott is. I know he's a close friend of yours.

I think he'd be an investor. Does Owning Tokens count as investing? Yes, Owning Tokens counts as investing. So you're an investor. I didn't get like the early nod. And you have to pay your taxes. I didn't get like the pre-launch nod years ago or anything, but yes, I owned it. All right. You didn't invest privately, you invested on the open market? I did, you know, dude. Just own the token. It's easy.

When did you, oh, it is now, obviously market conditions. When did you buy the token? I've owned it. I'm not going to lie. I've traded it over the years. But in the last six to nine months. Okay, not bad. 0.005.

I think Ran owns tokens since 2018 or something. Ran's an OG, for sure. I owned them in 2018. That's before I paid attention to anything. But didn't it launch in June 2019? That's how early Ran launched. I think this is when Ran bought the SAFT.

Early investor. Okay, you know. Okay. Okay. Invested privately in 2018. Makes sense, man. Congratulations to him. All right. Well, do you mind if I ask what round? That's kind of confidential information.

Ran? Let me see. Ran was... I can ask you. I think we call it the Ran round. It was that early. Yeah. Okay.

Let me see. So you guys did a launch-founder ah perfect founder yeah um i'm just having a look now um yeah private round is at 0.08 oh no i see. See, anyone listening, just so you know, because of market conditions, you can get similar prices now as the private rounds. Oh, I can tell. Private rounds at 0.08. Mario, I mean, you know this, obviously. And, you know, there's been huge OTC deals went around for like six months. That became the new like meta for people to buy things at discounts.

Oh, it still should be. It still should be. It's such an incredible opportunity i'm just saying right now for a ton of things that like people were getting discounts on they're well below that discounted price from six months ago you know so like i think altcoins right now if you're looking at it through that lens like are lower than the discounted prices that people were excited to pay six months ago i'm so bullish on all these listed tokens like cody i swear i know we have already a lot of code because and there's all these great projects like i said this to natix yeah i said i said that to natix as

well the one that launched earlier that me and you invested in i literally messaged the guy you can listen to the space at the end i'm like hey man hit me up on whatsapp send him my number i'm like i want to do an otc deal i know we invested privately and we helped you launch we did their launch space and they're a great project they're an incredible the ai i want to mention to have um but yeah man you have like to you know for what you guys are building for where you guys are at um it's yeah really exciting um but on that point i have a great discussion i apologize for going over time i love what you guys are building love being part of the cap table i know scott is i know ryan is and uh you know it's a pleasure to have you again man we'll be speaking again absolutely thank you

later buddy thanks a lot thanks a lot everyone we'll see you again tomorrow everyone bye