The Wolf Of All Streets - ETH FUTURES ETFS TO BE APPROVED | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Crypto Town Hall is a daily Twitter Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in the crypto and bring the biggest names in the crypto space to share their opinions. ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉  https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL  - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets    ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/    Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor.  Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Yo. Hey guys. Hey. I'm just in coach. You're so down now. I'm like excited. Like, hey guys, how are you today? Yeah, I was so excited.

That's the best advice. I know. He's like, hey. I'm like, fuck you then. All right, shit. Why do you want to suck up my energy? I don't know. I'm in a really good mood.

Me too. I don't know why. It's standing in the air. I need to figure out what's causing it so I can keep doing more of it. Don't leave me. So I have no idea what's causing it. It must be all the biohacking. Finally, something is getting some sort of result,

getting something out of it. Yeah, figure out if you can bottle that, please. Did you say how I could move that to like move that to you that bottle it how you can bottle bottle it bottle it in positivity um hi noelle how are you feeling feeling great scott thank you how are you doing i'm i'm doing i'm doing well you should be pretty much uh coming out of it right yeah done with chemo done with radiation now feeling better every day and loving it i'm so happy amazing that's good news at first i did it i didn't know your story noel so i'll kind of sympathize first i'm i'm sorry for you going

through much respect by the way no thanks very much noel's one of the i've been um i've been sorry i've been lucky you've been lucky you've been so so positive as well and like you've been lucky. You've been lucky and you've been so positive as well. It's incredible. So positive. She's one of the kindest panelists I've had. She sends me such... I remember you sent me a really kind message a while ago. It was such a nice message that came across and we never even met.

You're so good at what you do. You're so good at what you do and I don't know how you keep your energy levels up through all of this. Stop. If only Ran and Scott appreciate. His head is big enough. If only they appreciate the value I bring to the ecosystem. But they don't.

So I appreciate that, Noah. His head is big enough. I've sent out all the advice, guys. So, guys, there's a lot of, I know there's some big stories today. I wouldn't say big, but some cool stories today, fun stories. But I would say there's a lot of i know there's some big stories today or no i wouldn't say big but some some cool stories today fun stories but i would say there's a lot of big stories in the last two days a lot that um we couldn't cover um and if if i get permission from ryan and scott we'll go through today's agenda and then i really want to touch on them from from jp morgan and the and banning crypto transactions to uh ruling in China when it comes to Bitcoin,

Bitcoin gaining some sort of legal recognition. And other pieces of news that I think the market is ignoring, like Pudgy Penguins and the deal they have with Walmart. It's just things that are interesting to mention. Mario, when I heard the Pudgy Penguin story, I was like, Mario is going to love this. No, but look, think about it. Don't you wish you would have bought a penguin not an eight another punk no i'm happy with my punk but like

think about it like now you can buy one of those penguin toys that is linked to an nft that you can claim online and then that nft has utility within different games and ecosystems so that connection between the physical and virtual world and that's connected with today's announcement of paypal um announcing or not announcing some breaking news that they filed for patent application when it comes to transfer of nfts I've got the news right here so PayPal files patent application for an FD transfer trading so it's just like there's just so many good news across the board and then Brian Armstrong put comes out with a statement like I'm actually surprised Bitcoin's above 20k I'm like what

like I'm going to be surprised above 20k with all the positive news like sec action against cryptos is more delaying the inevitable but the the adoption we spend can we spend can we spend one minute just one minute talking about gary gensler yesterday and how badly he got destroyed go ahead yeah and i saw you covered it in your show so i didn't watch it you know a lot more about it than i i mean mean, I think the best part was when Richie Torres tore him apart about the Pokemon card. You know, Gary Gensler is always the one that says that he is technology agnostic, I think he calls himself. And Senator Torres said to him something like, he said, if I buy Pokemon, is that a security? And Gary Gensler says, no. He says, well, if I buy Pokemon that's digitized on a token,

is that a security? And he said, well, I'd need more context. And he said, well, didn't you say you're technology agnostic? You know, like he ripped into him for being technology agnostic. And I think that was one of the highlights of me. I think Gary Gensler walked away with a lot of egg on his face yesterday. It was really one of the...

I think the mood yesterday... I'm used to these hearings. And I'm used to how heated they can get. But I think the mood yesterday was quite um hostile i've got the clip is around i've got the clip i got it out of your agenda do you want me to play

it the pokemon can't clip yeah go for it yeah i just can't play it hold on let me do it now i don't know what the context is but i'll start again suppose i were to purchase a pokemon card would doing so constitute a security transaction you could purchase a pokemon card it's i i don't know what the context is but if you're just purchasing a pokemon card purchase a pokemon card is that a security transaction that's not a secure okay if i were to purchase a tokenized Pokemon card on a digital exchange via a blockchain, is that a security transaction? I'd have to know more. Okay.

So for you, the process of tokenization is what transforms a non-security transaction into a security transaction? Look, if the investing public… I thought you were technology neutral. If the investing public is anticipating profits based upon the efforts of others and they're exchanging funds that's the core i see my time has expired so that was a good setup by torres here uh it's uh but like i think it's an unfair it is but it is would you say it's an unfair question because the context of that pokemon card matters so if they if no not at all. What is the difference? If I'm buying a paper Pokemon card,

or if I'm buying a Pokemon card that is digitized on a token, the only thing that is different is the technology. And I thought about this long and hard last night. I'm thinking about it. Gary Gensler has always been the one to say he's technology agnostic. So if I'm buying a Pokemon card as an investor, just think about this. Like if I'm buying a Pokemon card,

there is a chance that I'm buying a Pokemon card as an investor. There is. If I'm an investor, I think it's going to be a Pokemon card as an investor, just think about this. If I'm buying a Pokemon card, there is a chance that I'm buying a Pokemon card as an investor. There is. If I'm an investor, I think it's going to be a rare card. I'm buying the card. Gary Gensler says that's not a security. He said it's not a security. Right? True. So then why is it that if you just change

the way that it's served, it all of a sudden becomes a security? It's not. Does anyone have a different take on this? Scott, do do you agree because i can't find a counter-argument to what rand said there's no counter-argument i have one please i do have a counter-argument not that i agree with get against on this at all and i told me agree with you mario yesterday was quite cathartic fun to watch um it is dependent on the code and the inclusion of the efforts of others. If the Pokemon card that is tokenized can increase in value because it is going to have the functionality that we were just referring to, that many NFTs are having now. If it is going to have additional functionality because it is now code then that could be a different type of

vehicle whereas if you are buying a pokemon card at you know a garage sale or something like that run you're not buying it with the expectation it will improve because of the efforts of others there's no work that has yet to go into that card it could be can i ask you a question on this now because that was the initial thought that i had but then when i thought about it a bit further that pokemon card when you buy it you expect pokemon you know you could use it in different so if pokemon adds more utilities to it that pokemon card gives you different characters in a game or allows you to participate in tournaments and make money pokemon launches new series so you'd expect that card to go up in value because they launch

a new game because you can use that in that go up in value because they launched a new game, because you can use that in that new game. But hold on. They're doing that anyway. They just don't organize it on a virtual forum. There's lots of Pokemon tournaments that happen. I'm agreeing with you. I'm agreeing with you, yeah.

That's the point, Edvan, I'm making. You don't know well. That's already existing within an actual physical Pokemon card. Why would it be different when it's tokenized?ized no it's totally inconsistent because pokemon cards will be valuable if pokemon as a brand is valuable right so it's and that does depend on the efforts of others but yeah this is a big inconsistency that we saw with the cat's nft action that was undertaken it doesn't make a lot of sense but that is the reasoning behind it. Stone and cast. Yeah, absolutely. Good example. Patrick, did you have a thought there? Yeah, so I would say I definitely agree with Ran. And I mean, I don't know if people

have tuned into the Pokemon card industry. They are, but there's actually full-time Pokemon card analysts. There's Pokemon card influencers. There's a whole industry around speculating Pokemon cards and buying them for profit. The one counter argument that I can see is that Pokemon cards do have utility within a game. People play tournaments with Pokemon cards. So if an NFT doesn't have that utility, then I could see the case that the NFT is solely for speculation, whereas Pokemon cards, you can make the argument

that they're for speculation, but also use in a game. Do we have any crypto lawyers up here? Yeah, I think we should move on but that could happen the game could happen anyway come on it's just yeah i mean we just have to accept i mean let's just understand something here gary gensler prides himself on saying he's technology agnostic the sec is technology agnostic he keeps saying that we're technology neutral with technology agnostic we don't technology naturally is naturally improves on previous iterations. That's what technology is.

It improves where we were previously. That's what technology is about. And so if he's technology agnostic, I think that was the smartest analogy in the world because the logical output of paper is onto the internet. That's what happened. We used to read magazines on paper. We now read them on the internet. That's what happened. We used to read magazines on paper. We now read them on the internet.

It's the same thing. We're now moving from internet to blockchain. It's exactly the same thing. I think that Richard Torres was actually a genius for bringing that up. Absolute, absolute genius. And I think that was one of the things. I mean, I think when Patrick McHenry actually went and climbed into

Gary Gens in the beginning he said this is going to happen either the easy way or the hard way but this is going to happen and if you force me to send you a subpoena I'll send you a subpoena but it is going to happen that was so good that was my favorite part that was

don't make me go there but I'll go there love that and that would be a first but guys can I ask one question subpoena is amazing That was my favorite part. That was a, don't make me go there, but I'll go there. Love that. And that would be a first. But guys, can I ask one question? To send a subpoena is amazing. I want to just ask one last question on this. Scott is boiling and muted. And then we'll move on to,

would you want to do a market overview right after that, Scott? Do whatever you want. Yeah, we can do a market overview. There's not that much to look at. Yeah, go ahead yeah go ahead that's gonna say i've got a question i can't believe we're on day two of talking about uh genzler again last question on genzler scott last question on genzler and i want to ask you that question does any of what happened yesterday really matter no no that's why and listen i i talked about this morning. I played the clips. I'm not begrudging anyone who discusses it because it's worth discussion. But it's very, very, very clear that, first of all, this is an extreme minority of Congress people who believe in this and are looking for very favorable soundbites. you come out pro crypto and you make these big statements and you go against Gary Gensler that you get this out outsized marketing push as a congressperson or as a senator, you just get a

ton of attention for very little effort. And so it works very well. But Gary Gensler doesn't care about any of this, right? He's not going to change his tune based on a few congresspeople. He's not going to change his tune even if Congress passes different laws unless he literally has to so it's my opinion he goes in he takes his beating for an hour he moves on goes back to his overlords uh in the elizabeth warren camp and does his job and that's it so it makes for a really fun day of dunking on gary gensler my favorite literally activity maybe in the entire world you there scott you cut out yeah i lost i think it's got cut out yeah let's go through the next yeah you cut out for a second um joining into the gemini story scott because there's a lot there and if you give me the mic i've got too many pieces before we go into gemini just one thing i think we should maybe point out something that I did actually cover on the show,

but probably worth mentioning, is we're starting to see miners send a lot of tokens, a lot of Bitcoin onto exchanges. So like I said, I think in the last couple of days, we've had the largest send to exchanges by miners onto Bitcoin exchanges. I covered it in detail on my show, but just the headline story is

we are 200 days away from the halving, right? A lot of these mining stocks are actually listed stocks on the stock exchange. And I think as a listed stock on the stock exchange, the last thing that you can do is tell your investors that your revenue has been cut in half because of a Bitcoin halving. So expect our earnings to be cut in half.

And so what we will probably see from now and for at least probably the next, you know, 200 days or so, or maybe slightly less is we may see miners actually selling a whole lot of Bitcoin. And why they're selling the Bitcoin is because they're going to need to use that money to invest in miners, space, cooling machines, whatever else they need to run mining operations because as the halving happens, the reward is going to be cut in half.

Now, the assumption that the Bitcoin price stays the same, they're going to need double the machinery, simplistically speaking, to generate the same kind of revenues. That is why I think every cycle just before the halving, we get some kind of, around about this period, we get some kind of sideways movement and even some kind of dip. It's because the miners who own about 10% of all the Bitcoin in circulation actually land up selling so that they can reinvest in machines so that when they start earning half the rewards, they don't affect their revenue so much.

And as I said, a lot of these mining stocks are actually listed stocks. So you don't want to go to the stock market and say, hey, our earnings are going to halve. And the only way to do that is to reinvest as much as you can into actually doubling infrastructure. Cool. Scott, do you want to go through the Gemini story

before I dig into all the stories that I have? Sure. I think we can get the broad strokes and then I'll move on to Mike. And I know we had AP Abacus was supposed to be here as well to just discuss this, but effectively the New York Post published an article yesterday that says the New York Post, we have to say, of course, saying that Gemini effectively the Winklevii, we call them the Winklevii themselves, had withdrawn $282 million from the Gemini Earn program. And it implied that they did this knowing that there was already a hole in the DCG or Genesis balance sheet and that they were effectively getting ahead

of it without telling their own customers that they were withdrawing this massive amount of money to protect themselves, did nothing to protect the customers. And they got that off before. Mind you, this was months before. So that was the story. I think a lot of us kind of looked at it and said, maybe this is a nothing burger. It was months before. They can do what they want with their money.

That's life. Okay. Then Gemini just responded within, I believe, the last hour, basically saying they're disappointed that the entire article is completely incorrect and that it's actually the opposite. This is what they said, and I quote, the Gemini Earned Program terms permitted Gemini to establish a liquidity reserve for the benefit of earned users by holding back a portion of the money they deposited into the Earned Program. Amidst the broad market turmoil in the summer of 2022, we decided to increase the liquidity reserve. As a result, we pulled back $282 million of EARN users' funds from Genesis on August 9, 2022, and held those funds in the liquidity reserve for

their benefit. In hindsight, this proved to be a wise and prudent decision. As a result of our risk management, EARN users had $282 million less exposure to Genesis when Genesis halted redemptions on November 16th. So this was three months in advance. And they said it was not Gemini corporate funds and it was not the personal funds of our founders, Cameron and Tyler, on their investment firm, Winklevoss Cap. So I guess that the question that this raises is, A, I think it's clear you have to decide who to believe. But there's the one side which says they took money out. They knew what was going to happen. They did this to enrich themselves and to protect themselves.

I think that's very polar, probably not the whole story. The other one is that they did this to protect users. And then if they did it to protect users, the inevitable question becomes the same. Did they do this knowing that there was a hole in Genesis' balance sheet and that there were going to be issues coming? And if so so then why didn't they take it all out or b was this literally just a technical move that they made you know based on a certain percentage of what it was and i know that we kind of tweeted about this and mike mike alfred and andrew actually said you know we know who the good guys and the bad guys are in this and mike Mike, you sort of disagreed. So I want to give the floor to the two of you. Mike,

perhaps you are the first one who sent me this story. Tell me why you think that this isn't a nothing burger. It's definitely not a nothing burger. And more will come out about this. I've got two or three pieces of information that haven't really been reported yet because some of it's private. But the first thing to keep in mind is that if those were really user funds then they would be included in the bankruptcy process and they have not been pushed forward by gemini at all to compensate earn users which to me is a huge smoking gun because if they were really user funds gemini should have come out immediately upon learning that genesis was insolvent and said look we did this good thing for you users you're going to get 282 million dollars immediately of course they didn't do that. The other thing to keep in mind

here is that for sure they knew because there's tons of notes. They knew about the promissory note because the promissory note already existed when they made that withdrawal. So the withdrawal only makes sense in the context of knowing that there's a hole in the balance sheet that has been filled by this promissory note. You can believe that's real or not. That was the argument, by the way, between DCG, between Barry and the Winklevoss brothers was, is that real? Like, is DCG really going to be good for that? And of course, they decided there's enough risk there that they wanted to withdraw capital. So you can argue all you want about whether that's earned user money, whether it's personal money, whatever, but they did not push it forward in the bankruptcy process

to compensate users. They still haven't said that, hey, that 280 is going to go back to users. And so I think it's pretty clear something else is going on here. Now, the other piece of information that I'll share here, but is not public, is that in the actual DCG CRM system, like inside of the company, there are contemporaneous notes related to that transaction that were put in before. And obviously, you can pull them out now, but like, you can't edit them. So they were there before. And those notes were very clear that those funds were some combination of treasury funds and personal funds of the Winklevoss brothers. So they can come out now and say whatever they want about what happened there. But the notes at the time between the people that were involved in that transaction say that they were in fact not user funds. So again, I don't know enough to say for sure. I think this is a very contentious issue. I think these guys are involved in litigation. I'm not going to get involved in their litigation. But I think this idea that you can put out a story saying that these guys are terrible

means that they're terrible, obviously, is not correct. But also that you can respond by simply saying, oh, those are user funds without any other previous indication that they were actually user funds. I'm pretty confident they're not. But my question, but for them to lie public, because if they're not user funds, they'll just go quiet and ignore the story or they put something very broad like, hey, this is misinformation and that's it. But when you answer with so much specifics and such detail, especially with this ongoing

litigation, it'd be surprising or even foolish for them to do so if they're actually trying to hide something that is either keep it broad or keep it keep it kind of vague vague ish similar to how Pfizer responds to that leaked video it's like very vague broad refutes it but doesn't refute it to be fair Pfizer is a much bigger company than Gemini they have much better crisis PR people. I think crisis PR at Gemini is mostly done by the Winklevoss brothers. I don't think they have the same resourcing. I don't think they have the same skill set in this area.

They went on the offensive because they thought that was the right strategy. They started writing these love letters to Barry. Barry, you're a bad person. You screwed the users. It's all your fault type of thing. I viewed that as subterfuge. In all of these types of situations, when somebody behaves like that,

there's something they're hiding and they're hoping to go on the offensive. Again, I'm not going to take one side over the other because I think they both made mistakes here. But again, like the key issue here is that they withdrew $282 million and they never disclosed or offered that as potential compensation for their users.

That's end of story. It doesn't matter what else happened afterwards. This particular point is odd. Yeah, what do you think, Andrew, Scott? What do you guys think? I'd like to go to Andrew because I know he had an opinion on this and has been very much on top of certainly the DCG side of this for a very long time. Actually, Andrew, i remember the day i don't know if you can hear me but just for anyone listening andrew is the person probably the first person during the ftx spaces i got so much hate

because of andrew and he turned out to be right he came in our space remember that first space and when he came in got a lot of traction, had a few journalists reach out. When he started talking about the hole that DCG had and they're going to be next, before anyone even mentioned DCG. And within hours, DCG puts out a public statement and then Bloomberg comes out with a piece maybe six hours, 12 hours later. Do you remember that day? Yeah, I do. And this particular issue is very simple for me. One, I appreciate Mike's comments and thoughts and don't have any idea what he's talking about.

When he's talking about I've got secret documents that I'm not going to disclose and I don't want to share. Mike always has the documents. He always has the documents right so um it's interesting that um there's been one party here that has been uh clear about where they're headed has been clear about the other side and has been willing to stake uh their entire, their entire company have taken personal commitments in terms of litigation against the people that are on the other side. There's one side here that still has a functioning company, a company that is not only still functioning here in the United States, but also is growing internationally. There's another side of this ledger

that has effectively shut down most of their companies. And most of their companies are worth nearly zero and they can't get a bid on anything. And just for the audience, the latter one is DCG and the former is Gemini. Yeah, so there's been obfuscation and avoidance and delays on every front by DCG and Barry. We knew this was going to happen because Barry's an old school bankruptcy lawyer. That's how he cut his teeth. So Barry's hunkered down.

This New York post story is literally two paragraphs there is no documentation there is no backstory there is no smoke there's there's nothing other than a headline and two paragraphs that's um, listen, bottom line with all this stuff, I know how it's going to effectively end because I have seen all the fraudulent documents. Um, I have seen all the fraud. I have talked to people that worked at Genesis. I have talked to people that have, and still worked at DCG and know what the end game is. Um, I I'll say it again, as I said in my tweet. We know who the good guys are, and we know who the bad guy is. It's very, very, very simple.

Barry plays a very specific game. That game is to protect the fees associated with Grayscale that go to his pocket. And to protect his own pockets everybody else be damned and uh that's the reason why there's one party here that's taken effective action as it relates to the courts and there's another party here that has taken defensive action delay delay delay delay it's this isn't a it's really not even an argument it's very very simple well hold on a second there isn't a – it's really not even an argument. It's very, very simple. Well, hold on a second. There isn't – it's actually not just black and white.

I mean, the key point here is that if Gemini – Hold on, hold on, Andrew. Let me just make this one point. Everything that I just said is literally true. All those actions taken by both parties is literally true. Both philosophically, both sides made, both sides made mistakes. Andrew, both,

both sides made severe mistakes. And the only point that actually matters on this issue is that if Gemini is not, hold on, hold on. Let me, let me make the point. Let me make the point here that the mistake that Gemini made very,

very clearly is they believed when Barry lied to them about the state of Genesis and their balance sheets. That's true. That may be true. But that's not what we're talking about. That's a red herring. No, it's not a red herring. What we're talking about – No, it's not a red herring.

No, Andrew, we're talking about the $282 million. Hold on, hold on. Andrew, you're talking over me. You're not letting me make a single point. As it relates to the 280 million, if they made that decision and that choice, they were relying on the realities of what is being told to them by Genesis and DCG,

which were lies and fraud. Which is why they pulled the money. You're literally making the case, Andrew. They pulled the 282 because they were concerned about the balance sheet. Now, if that was really earned customer funds, which is what they're representing in their tweet today, it should be in an escrow account, and it should have been mentioned as part of what was going to be sent back to users. Tell me why, if that's really true, that there's been no mention of those 282 so so your your point is your thought here is that gemini just put out a 22 paragraph tweet that lies to the public is that what you're saying here

no i'm saying that if if that's really useful i'm asking a simple question no yes or no no you you yes or no i'm asking you a simple question should i or no? Yes or no? No, you yes or no. I'm asking you a simple question. Should they put that in an escrow account? I absolutely think it's in treasury. I absolutely think it will go to Gemini earn users. And I absolutely think... Okay, good. Good. Let's see proof of that.

The moment I see an escrow account, Andrew, the moment I see an escrow account with that 282, I'll change my opinion. Well, there's your red hair. You've obviously obfuscated the truth. Do you think Gemini is going to send Mike Alfred, the runner stock guy, a balance sheet and proof of funds in the Treasury? Think they're going to do that? That's not what I'm saying.

This is a bankruptcy process that's ongoing. All they have to do is circle those funds, put them in an escrow account, and then the story's over. But they haven't done that, so why? I'm just asking a question. I actually don't want Gemini to be – hold on, Andrew. I don't want Gemini to fail because I have investments in a bunch of companies that have got money at Gemini, right? Nobody wants Gemini to fail.

But Gemini did not behave as above board as you're saying. You're making this into a black or white world because it serves your purposes, so your narrative of these guys are evil and these guys are good neither of these guys neither of these guys did everything right they both fucked up in different ways and if you don't see that i'm sorry i can't i can't help you and by the way i'm not just the runner stock guy any different than you're just the guy who talks to all these people about what's happening in crypto i'm not asking for that's not all you are you're also like the quantitative i'm creating hedge fund guy right you also i'm family man whatever else i'm not i'm not i'm not asking for your help mike i'm literally giving you i'm not asking for your help either buddy

my name isn't buddy mike okay so i'm giving you buddy you know what of the situation i'm giving you the truth of the situation barry continues to play delay delay delay defense let me give two paragraphs to the new york post let me pay pr to be in the wall street journal let me pay pr again to be in different business journals about you know what we tried really hard and because of ftx things really went sideways on us right that that's what he that's his narrative until he went underneath a bunker and is doing everything he can to keep all of his

money in his pocket and not give it to anybody else, right? With under the bankruptcy laws and how all that stuff works, he's perfectly within his rights to do. Morally, that's a different issue, right? But the plane... And the week of August, the exact same thing the exact

same thing you haven't proven anything you haven't proven a damn thing you just keep talking gemini declare bankruptcy gemini urn is dead and that's the product which bringing out these red herons. They lost $900 million to a family that had $282 million in their personal treasury. All right, guys. Hey, guys. Real one second. I actually thoroughly enjoyed that. It's a great debate, but now we're going on to the

not productive part of it. I think we know where everybody stands on the debate. I actually think that you both make very a very valid point yeah i think i think because i think i think they both agree they're both uh critical of of gemini i think i'm sorry of dcg the the only the only the only disagreement is gemini and i think we just don't have the information yet i'm leaning more on andrew's side based on what we've seen i know about travis jumping in maybe get travis thoughts quickly as well see what i just had one question for the people that are paying i mean i think we're all paying

pretty close attention to this but like my question maybe for andrew and for mike and anybody else that has a view is like does anybody feel strongly that barry and dcg are going to get charged like with criminal like criminal fraud type of stuff yes andrew does yes you do huh yes i i believe that they will they're still under investigation by the Eastern District of New York. Like that hasn't gone away. That's the G.O.D.O.J. That's not the SEC. Right here again is a bifurcation of the two parties. The SEC has taken a look at Gemini and their earn program. We haven't heard a word about it since it was announced six seven months ago the sec and the doj are taking a good look at what's going on at dcg and genesis and interparty loans and fraud and lies and we have heard about it in the last few months again very different right those are those are significant differences right the fact that you got agencies that are that are looking underneath the hood both the sec sued both before you right go on to the next point i mean the sec sued both at the same time related to

iron so i think that fact should be on the record yeah yeah but i mean what i was just going to say is it seems like we are going to get an answer to this this isn't going to be like This isn't going to be like some unsolved mystery that we're never going to know for sure. It's kind of like Binance. It's like we're going to figure out one way or the other kind of what's going on there. So that's good. Yeah, really quickly, Mario, before you move on to the rest of the news, I can only say anecdotally, and I don you know, I don't like to like speak in conjecture, but we've been hearing these things on this show and before about DCG for a very long time. It is certainly,

I think, one of those where there's smoke, there's likely some sort of fire situations. I can tell you that when I was in Dubai last February, and I've told this story many times, I crashed a meeting with the Three Arrows Capital guys. And Kyle was very, very, very adamant that Barry and DCG were somewhat the ones who created this entire CeFi yield structure and were sort of the masterminds behind all of it. He made some very sort of clear and concise points about the interrelationship between Grayscale and Genesis and all of the relationship between grayscale and genesis and and all of the different companies at dcg in the way that they were lending and borrowing from one another and it does feel like i can't say whether it was illegal or very you know or immoral or what

it was but it does feel like dcg was uh sort of in one way or another manipulating this market in a certain way and probably are the bad guys whether that's illegal or not i have no idea but i do think uh to your very long-winded answer to your question travis we're going to see something well i think i think the reason why the guys from fiero's capital said that is because they own the gbtc so they own the GBTC they own the GBTC trust and have loans from Genesis and they were investing to capitalize on the premium

investing to capitalize on the premium and when the premium became a discount that's when the whole thing turned patient so it's pretty rich to cite Suzu and Kyle when they were literally like the biggest borrower of Genesis. They're the reason why Genesis went down.

Three arrows is the biggest. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, They're not the reason. Yes, they were. Yes, they were. I talked to them at the time. They literally borrowed billions of dollars from, from Genesis. And they're the primary reason that Genesis went down.

The reason is the unsecured, the lenders who gave them unsecured loans. Those are the idiots. If I borrow money for a house and the bank gives me 10 times the value of the money to the house and then there's a housing crisis and I can't repay back the house, the idiot, me or the bank.

The bank's the idiot. Yeah, the point is they collapsed because there's no good borrowers in crypto and genesis gave out billions of dollars of loans to basically stupid borrowers they collapsed because they they collapsed because they got uncollateralized loans because because they because people because people took risks without without proper risk strategies they gave them uncollateralized or semi-collateralized loans.

And when the trade went against them, that's when the tide went out and you could see who was so naked. But again, I'm saying the reason- They got uncollateralized loans from one of Barry's companies to make a play on the GBT trade, which was another of Barry's companies. Guys a play on the GBT trade, which was another of Barry's companies. Guys, this isn't hard. I don't know what the deal is with Barry, whatever.

I don't know what's going on there, but this is, again, this is not, it's not rocket science. Really isn't. Yeah. I mean, the whole industry is complicit though because everybody was taking loans and everybody was trying to make money using big barry's bank right so like this idea that we're going to blame barry after it blows up like to me is short-sighted but again yeah it doesn't really matter to me either way i it could very well be that he was just the bigger player at

the center of it and there was no impropriety and it all just went down like a house of cards, which I think we saw. But it was just Travis asking the question as to whether there was a chance. I think there's obviously a chance if there are already investigations. Yeah, I mean, if Barry's been very fucked up that bad, that he committed's gonna that would just be incredible but i certainly wouldn't after everything we've seen the last 18 months yeah you would you would never you would never say it would never happen but just like the bankruptcy guy the super trad fi guy the structuring expert like that would just be incredible but it could happen yeah you know i must say i'd be very surprised if if the binkle by binkle boss brothers committed any kind of fraud like i've had dealings with them i

agree and i know people there that have had dealings with them and these guys operate a clean by the rules you know like i'm not saying that i've seen people try and i've seen people try and get them to bend one or two rules. And I'm not going to mention the context because the context is actually quite close. But I can tell you that these guys work 100% by the book and they have, they are, they, they operate very, very close legal counsels. I'd be very, very, very surprised if such high profile people were so much at stake and did something like that. Those are famous last words in this space

though. No, come on. A lot of people thought that the BlockFi founders were wonderful people and nobody was ever going to get screwed. A lot of people liked Alex Mashinsky. I never did. But a lot of people liked Alex Mashinsky. I just don't know.

Sam is the best example. I'll simply say this. I've gotten at least six different DMs from huge Genesis creditors who, by the way, most of which are portfolio company founders that DCG and Barry bought out and then ended up lending, handing their money to Genesis for it then to get lent out, yada, yada, yada. And I mean, bottom line is, is I'll say it again, Barry's the guy here, pure and simple. And in fact, I just got a DM from somebody that knows folks at the DOJ that were working on the DCG cases late last week.

So it'll all come out. It'll all be clear. There's one very, very clear fraud and guy that wants to stay in the shadows for as long as he possibly can. And all the connective tissue is not hard to see unless you don't want to see it. And so I'll leave it at that. And just on my last two cents on the piece today by the New York Post, funny enough, we also have the Binance hit piece that we didn't talk about from a couple of days ago. It's just a very – it's the way that it's written. It lacks any detail.

I think one of the speakers mentioned it. It was you, Andrew. It lacks any detail, think some one of the speakers mentioned it was you andrew it's like any detail just a couple of paragraphs so i don't think you know it doesn't mean it's not true but it definitely does not you know at least in my eyes does not does not bring any concern and then gemini's quick response and detailed response is the opposite of what a guilty party would do and it kind of goes back to their response to the whole drama with Barry. You just said Binance. You meant Gemini, right? Gemini.

So there was another hit piece by Wall Street Journal on Binance earlier. Oh, I see. I'm just talking to this week, but referring to the Gemini one. Gemini's response, not only the Winklevoss twins' response earlier to Barry, they were the one messaging me. I think they even tweeted. I tweeted, they retweeted or vice versa a while ago to do a space where we invite Barry Silbert

and the Winklevoss twins. Usually that level of transparency is not what a guilty party would do if they're hiding anything. They do the exact opposite. No, there's always exceptions. So we don't know for sure and time will tell, but it's based on what we've seen so far.

I tend to agree more with uh with scott and ran on on this one but uh you know then again hopefully no one clips this in six months and end up being very wrong but uh but that's how it looks like from the outside i'm just gonna clip clip you saying that you agree with scott and ran and just loop that and use it we don't need context let's go to the there the other pieces of news that I think are more important for the market than this, Scott, waiting for your permission to go through them. And then you tell me, you guys can tell me what your thoughts are on each piece of news that I'll read and how impactful or whether it's a nothing burger. Because I think this whole DCG, the whole DCG in Gemini thing was a big story a year ago. Even Binance, it was a much bigger story a year ago even binance like what's much bigger story a year ago now it just matters a lot less does anyone disagree like is there anything

could come out of this that could have massive impact on the on the markets because i think most things have already been priced in and we've kind of moved on i think i think it can only be good things i think the only things that can come out i think people are factored in the worst and i think anything that happens that's not the worst is is is is going to be positive i hope so um so we've got the um one report by the uh federal reserve bank of boston i think that was in your show as well ryan um and and they drew parallels between stable coins and traditional money market funds and they were suggesting that these coins could transmit i'll read out exactly what it said transmit instability to the wider financial system akin to money market funds. And they were suggesting that these coins could transmit, I'll read out exactly what it said, transmit instability to the wider financial system

akin to money market stresses during previous crises. That's the Federal Reserve of Boston and New York coming to that conclusion. And it goes to the stories like how, I'll read another one, identified a discrete break the buck threshold for stable coins at around 0.99 and that below this price redemptions accelerate rapidly as investors panic that the dollar peg will be lost and they mirror they're comparing this to the tipping points in money market fund runs um so looking at that concern is there any validity to it and i think they're talking here about stable coins in general not

algorithmic stable coins and whether that's linked to the whole um the conspiracy around um you know the government's trying to kill crypto and to bring uh to kind of bring money into cbdc's not sure whether you guys consider this a nothing burger put as one of the the main pieces of news for today i think it's from yesterday did you cover this in your show as well ryan no i mean we hear these these articles all the time that's not something that we covered I think it's from yesterday. Did you cover this in your show as well, Ryan? No. I mean, we hear these articles all the time. That's not something I've covered. And we've got another one here.

We've got the U.S. Treasury goes after – oh, there's another point here. So that's not a big piece of news, but it kind of goes the opposite of what the authorities have been saying about crypto. So the U.S. Treasury went after Ethereum wallets used by the Sinawala cartel for fentanyl trafficking. So that's the Department of Treasury, which kind of goes the opposite of the fears that these lawmakers kept talking about when it comes to crypto. Well, here that shows transparency and crypto not being the best way to transfer funds when it comes to criminal activity. So that's another piece of news. And then the biggest one that I've got is Bitcoin gaining legal recognition in Shanghai, despite China's. So we've got a ban in China when it comes to crypto. Obviously, Hong Kong is a lot

more receptive to being looked at as a sandbox. But Bitcoin, so they've got a court here, the Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People's Court, they recognize bitcoin um as a unique digital currency so the argument that made that despite the national crypto ban um the the law could protect crypto holders in theft or breach cases not sure if we have any care and lawyers on stay we don't have any lawyers but if anyone can give more clarity on how important this is whether it could be set it could set precedent but it supports supports this perspective. A Shanghai court recognized Bitcoin as a virtual property, so strengthening the legal rights for cryptocurrency holders in China. So it goes back to the narrative where in the West, we're seeing a crackdown. In the East, the crackdown

happened earlier, at least when it comes to China. But now we're seeing them shift their approach. So my question to the panel, and anyone could take this, is that seeing what's happening in China, could we see, and what happened in Hong Kong as well, could we see China opening up for crypto? And how impactful would that be for the ecosystem? I see Patrick hasn't spoken much. Tom, you're on stage as well. And Zach, we'd love to get your thoughts on this. Zach, Patrick? love to get your thoughts on this. Zach, Patrick? Yeah, yeah.

So it looks like Shanghai is really pushing to become one of the crypto hubs of the world. And this is absolutely massive. But I have a hard time trusting, you know, what we get out of that region. And they've been flip-flopping back and forth over there in China for a long time. Just to speak on the broader conversation before i hopped on here um this is the crypto cannibalization that's taking place that we need to get through you know we can debate who committed fraud who's d5 program sustainable and right now we're seeing uh like rand said the tide's gone out now we're seeing who's swimming naked um as far as where we're at um big victories uh with shanghai sorry i got a phone call jackie name sorry i got a phone call um and then in the united states

we're starting to get some big losses handed to the sec as well uh the first question topic that you guys were discussing was the the securities and if you look at the howie analysis for the decades of precedent and how it's been applied in the courts, never is the underlying asset the security. It's the investment contract, how it's packaged up. And that's the historical ruling

that we just got on XRP, the digital asset itself, in and of itself not being a security, but... Sorry. I think you're done again, man this i apologize let me put on do not disturb oh good yeah i'll let you put the dot disturb and i'll mention another two pieces of news as well so we've got leaked documents that for me that's probably much bigger than the others because it impacts at least our business at ibc so there's leaked documents that that reveal Microsoft's plan to bring crypto wallets to Xbox.

So we talked about gaming being massive in Singapore. Rand, Scott, we've had many discussions about this. Two narratives that were really big in Singapore. One of them is the tokenization of real-world assets. The other one is gaming, gaming, gaming. We've had Yasu on here as well. So now Microsoft has plans to bring crypto wallets to Xbox based on leaked documents and goes to the other piece of story that put it in the same bracket um i'll see

someone i'm here to travis i'll give you the mic but gonna go so the pudgy penguins having to deal with walmart and kind of bridging that physical and virtual world uh travis patrick yeah i was gonna say that the xbox leak wasn't that from like spring of 2022 uh that one just came out let me see maybe it's a separate but but the but the documents that were leaked were from spring of 2020 you're right i'm just you know you know we've had about 19 own goals since then so i wouldn't be surprised at all if like a lot of other traditional folks you know they put their crypto foray plans on hold for now because of how how badly we've managed to fuck this thing up

true it's a good point patrick yeah so i wanted to comment on the xbox xbox and pudgy penguins things i think the common thread running through these as well as real world assets and a lot of other news recently is as really the quest sorry quick Sorry, before we move on to the Pudgy Penguins. So Phil Spencer from Xbox Travis, he just responded eight days ago on this. So we've seen the conversation around old emails and documents. It is hard to see our team's work shared in this way because so much has changed. So that goes to your point. And there's so much to be excited about right now and in the future. We'll share the real plans when we are ready. So I don't know why they've just responded about it

in eight days ago, whether that news has resurfaced. But they do say exactly what you've mentioned, Travis, is that because so much has changed since those email leaks. But go ahead, Patrick, about the Pudgy Penguins news, which is more recent. Yeah, so I guess the first thing relates about the Pudgy Penguins news, which is more recent. Yeah, so I guess the first thing relates

to both Pudgy Penguins and Xbox. I think that this is more evidence that the next bull run will be the one where real businesses are actually built on-chain, and it's not just speculation in future use cases, which is why I think that the next one will be crypto's sort of 2001 moment. And that goes to the... on that goes on that's a that's a bit of a kind of an fu a very nice respectful fu and kind of a

win for me in my debate with ran and i'm not sure probably ran if you agree or disagree that we're seeing we're talking about nfts not having utility we've got now an nft collection doing physical toys that go on walmart and then the royalties go to the NFT holders, and then those toys connect to actual NFTs that have utilities in a virtual world, and you actually own them. So you've got the ability to move them from one world to another and not lose them. I'm not saying it is or it isn't going to say is that less than 0,01% of fluffy toys in supermarkets actually do really, really, really well. And, you know, I think this is a great move. Don't get me wrong. I really think this is a great move by Fadji Penguins.

And I think we've got to experiment with these things. But again, I'm highlighting that the possibilities of success of these things. And this is for someone. This is what I used to do for a living. I used to try and create brand activations out of, you know, like try and create brand activations doing stuff like this.

And I'm thinking that less than 1% of these things actually land up working. I really hope that Pudgy Penguins does work because Fred owns some Pudgy Penguins in the office. But again, would I be buying a a well i may buy a pudgy penguin because i don't cost as much as punks or apes um you know i've given opinion on people that are willing to pay these kind of prices for for for punks but wait you you would buy one i'm a penguin i thought i mean i don't know i don't know what the floor price is but i don't

know what it was like for you when someone said the other day but it's too much too much too much i'll pay like fifty dollars i'll pay like fifty dollars a hundred dollars that's like yeah it's eight thousand dollars right now so yeah obviously you would not no no no no no i'm out i'm out i'm out i'm out yeah i mean fluffy toys fluffy toys and that fluffy toys and that you know i mean great idea. I think when it comes to, unless they can come up with some killer, killer movie, which is produced by the likes of a Disney or something like that. You know, basically, I think what's going to happen is, either these Pudgy Penguins are going to be on sale next season in Walmart.

You're going to be able to buy them for 99 cents, like below cost. Just take them. Or you're going to be buying like two bottles of water and you're going to get a free soft toy at the at the pay points they're going to say look just please just buy a bottle of water and you can have a free budget penguin because they're taking up space in my happy meal 100 and again i'm not i'm not trying to be negative because I think that this is the kind of experimentation that we actually need. But, again, I don't think that I would be investing or the floor price should go up because they've now managed to get a listing in Walmart. No, but it's a short protest. Yeah, Tom and Patrick, but I just want to add one more thing.

It's just opening up. So the actual news itself is not that major. Launching fluffy toys in Walmart, I agree with Ryan. I don't own any pudgy penguins i won't be buying them because of this news but at least it shows you own a punk but you own a punk the punk has a completely different selling point it's being the first it's a collectible this is a utility aspect i don't care about utility for punks it's more of a collectible it's more of a flex it's the same thing as you owning a ferrari type thing but the opportunity to go up in value because there's only 10,000 of them so it has collectible value as well so that but just to go back to to

the thing why I think this is good news is that it's just showing the and you remember we're doing this in a bear market and Walmart is announcing this again this is just a fluffy toy collection and something major but it's just showing what other collections could do just opening up the possibilities on what type of utilities we could see in the future. But sorry, I took the mic from someone else. Yeah, I think you hit on it perfectly, right? NFTs are, at the end of the day, just a flex. And there's only so many NFTs that actually create that flex. It's punks, maybe it's apes. It's probably not going to be pudgy penguins. So all these other collections are kind of grasping at straws as they're

windowing down their treasuries, right right they're basically saying like how do we gain revenue so we start selling toys like you know lazy lions and other things we're selling like comic books and trying to create like metaverse worlds and they're basically just doing anything to stay afloat right now so you're gonna have a wash out of all of these projects and you're gonna have just like two or three left so would i buy a i don't know who i don't know i don't know who the speaker is i don't know who the speaker is because i'm only on my phone but whoever it is you should be invited here more often to talk my go-to guy for literally all research and the second half of our topic today pre-recession denial phase was based on tom's tweet and he was the guy doing it all i'm sorry so yes you should

always have him on so yeah just just tom tom uh i would like to blacklist your fish now i'm joking i disagree with you tom but i i agree and disagree i think the point you're making a grasping at straws most of them will fail true the collectibles will you know collectibles much easier use case when you're first that's it you don't need to do much punks are not doing much um but then again i think these experimentations kind of show what could happen later on when more adoption kicks in. Like if those pudgy penguins, like imagine those pudgy penguins have access to games that have thousands or millions of players. And then if you buy a toy, you get access to that game. And then as an NFT, and that NFT could move from one game to another.

You get access to events, et cetera. You've just kind of bridged two separate worlds, a virtual and a digital world, with the concept of owning an asset online. Again, the concept of bridging virtual and digital world already exists. It's nothing too new. But bridging a physical asset, something you own, when you buy a penguin in the physical world, it's yours. No one could take it from you. But now the same thing applies in a virtual world. When you own the virtual representation of that silly penguin, no one can take it from you. But now the same thing applies in a virtual world when you're on the virtual representation of that silly penguin. No one can take that from you as well. I think that bridge is what makes it really exciting. Do you disagree, Tom? No, I generally agree there. But I think, you know, for me as someone who likes to think of

these things as potential investments, right, it would need to be tied back to some sort of revenue. And then we get back into like the securities territory here. So I think what Pudgy Penguins is doing is really cool. It's interesting, but they're essentially trying to build a media brand around these assets. And I see Lucas in the chat. So I'd love to have him up here and see what he thinks. But it's a media brand. And there only can be so many media brands in the space. So there's probably like five or 10 projects that are going to be fantastic. But then there's going to be thousands that are just going to be, end up being worthless. Yeah, I brought up Luca.

Luca is the, not the founder. He, I think he acquired Pudgy Penguins from someone else in the bull market. So while Luca's connecting, oh, he's connecting. Luca, did I, did we misrepresent the news? Is it bigger than we're making it out to be? Or is it just a bunch of fluffy toys at Walmart? It's a nice experiment but nothing too major yeah i hopped on about a minute in so i haven't i don't have too much context but i saw something uh somebody tweeted at me which kind of got me up on stage uh saying that somebody said that essentially it's a yeah so look at the

question is um what's the model like and And is that really that big of news? It's just a bunch of fluffy toys at Walmart. For me, I see it as like a great experiment that could open up the opportunities and kind of bridging the owning something in the physical world and owning something in the virtual world. Now you're connecting the two, which is something that most projects haven't done. And it's like more it's opening up the doors for more things. But the numbers are not that major, at least not yet. But maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah, no, I think from my perspective, I think it's a huge step forward for the industry. And I think if people don't realize that, I say they would, they would lack vision. I think at the end of the day, you have to understand what crypto is today and what blockchain tech is today and what

this industry is today, which is it's a bro culture that looks inwards and not outwards. And the biggest problem that this industry has is a branding and a marketing problem. And so somebody has to take a leap of faith and somebody has to make the difference. Instead of having an intimidating and taboo industry, which this industry is today, somebody has to go and try to change the narrative. And I think this is a huge step in that direction. A fool would look at it and say, these are plushies on a shelf of Walmart, and they wouldn't see the significance behind it. But I think if you really care about this industry moving forward, which ultimately, I believe, to reach escape velocity, it has to become a consumer-facing industry, then you see that this is the first barrier breaking that we've had in a very long time

that pushes this in this direction. And so it's on its face, you can say these are plushies on the toys on the shelf of Walmart. In my breath, I would say these are vehicles to onboarding people into our industry in a familiar and non intimidating way. I would say that this is the story of what Web3 is about and what crypto is ultimately about from a community that went, you know, pretty much rugged to us standing up and now, you know now leading the industry in a way that just hasn't been done before to saying, hey, we're not just going to make toys. We're going to take NFTs that holders own and turn them into characters and then give them a royalty in perpetuity.

There's a difference there that I think just toys on a shelf. And so for my perspective, obviously I'm passionate about it, but I think it's better. I agree with you. People are leading on. Real quick, you just got a new follower, man. That was great. Yeah, I must say, I really, really, really agree with you. I think what you're saying is fantastic.

I also look forward to watch the Penguin community actually start building their own brands in the real world. So I want to see like, you know, you've got 60 odd thousand Twitter followers. How many, how many real world followers can you get, you know, by creating an identity for your penguin. And I think that's, that's something that's going to be pretty interesting to see how we can transform how we had, we had this whole,

we had this whole move from mainstream media into citizen journalism. That's why people like Mario have a million followers on Twitter and have become very big voices. I think the same thing is going to happen out of celebrities. I think up until now, Disney is in that they created the celebs, right? So you couldn't be an animated celeb if you weren't – if Disney didn't say you were going to be an animated celeb or one of the other studios

didn't say you were going to be an animated celeb. And I think that one thing that NFTs actually do allow is that they allow for what Twitter has done for mainstream, for citizen journalism, it does for citizen celebrity, if you want to call it that. The ability of citizens to create celebrities so that's the that's one thing that i look forward it's going to be an industry of how people can market themselves in the real world without having a studio do it for them yeah ran you hit it right on the head and i guess i'll give some alpha to the chat but a a huge thesis for ours. And it's not a narrative. We were waiting to build some back end tooling for this. But there's tons of different pudgy penguins. For those of you who are not familiar, we make gifts and content and stickers out of these pudgy penguins. And a lot of holders penguins have tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of views. I actually believe eventually owning a pudgy penguin NFT will be owning your own individual

influencer. We have pitch decks and materials for you to take your penguin, throw them on these decks and these materials so that you can go procure your own licensing deals or your own brand initiatives or your own partnerships with your penguin. It's not really a narrative that we're pounding too hard today, but it is a part of the vision of where we want to go tomorrow. Yeah, I love what you're doing, Luca. And I love the idea. And my argument isn't that your brand or a particular brand is invaluable, because that's what you're trying to build. You're trying to build a brand around a particular asset. My argument is that there's only so many of those that can actually exist in the space. And in the future, the number is going to be much

larger. But it's challenging to pick out which one of those are actually going to succeed, right? There are other projects just like yours, Lazy Lion, Sappy Seals, all the other ones, right? That tried to do something very similar, but you were able to build that brand, build those connections and make that profile picture actually have some value. So kudos to you. And I unfortunately sold my pudgy penguin at less than an eighth. So maybe I'll get back in for the ride. Just a quick shout out first. I want to say two things. Number one is, as you were speaking, Luke, is an incredible response to the question. So hats off to you. And I think the NFT community

needs more people like you. That was a great response. Another thing I was like, I was worried while you're responding is like i'm gonna go check my phone because scott was giving us shit for having too many people with pfps on stage and he's scott is like the the the the king of having a panel of very high profile people and he gives us shit if you bring anyone else that it doesn't meet those expectations and then i was i was all black and white headshot i was walking to the i was walking to the sauna so i wasn't looking at my phone. I'm like, let me check in the sauna quickly before Scott kind of gives me a grilling on why Luca's on stage.

And I see Scott putting 100% 100 emojis or 100%. And then Mike did it as well. And then almost everyone else, I'm not sure if Travis did. And then Ryan agreed with you. So very, very good response and kudos to you. And lastly, it's just beauty of Twitter spaces. Like we're talking about Pudgyuins we're debating it and then the founder or the owner or the the leader whatever you want to call luca and it comes up on stage hears about it someone tweets and jumps up

comes on and starts talking about it you don't see that on any other medium so so it was really cool to see i mean i want to go back to where i started and i think i really think this is a great move by by pudgy penguins and i, I think this is one of the bravest moves that has been made. Mario, I think you're... Would you buy it for more than $50 to $100 that you said earlier? Yeah, I don't know if I'd

buy it. I just think in general, all of these NFT collections are overpriced. I'm not talking about Padre Penguins because I don't even know what the total market capitalization of all Penguins are. And I don't know anything about about specifically this project i just think in general these things are way overhyped and over overpriced mario you know um that both of us saw a a a brand a real world brand yeah which is linked to an nft brand i'm not gonna too many names but it was on killer whales the show that mario and we saw a project which is a it an NFT brand. I'm not going to name too many names, but it was on Killer Whales,

a show that Mario and I were on. We saw a project, which is a real-world product, which is linked to an NFT project. I'm not going to mention which project. I don't think we're allowed to give it away. But I love the fact that they're bridging into the real world.

I think that is the real adoption. If you can find a consumer product, and I think the Walmart thing is a great consumer product. I think that is the the real adoption if you can find a consumer product and i think the walmart thing is a great consumer product i think that you know other products can include very very basic products maybe i don't know i don't know i mean something simple like a beverage or i don't know whatever it is um so those are the the kind of real world crossovers that may get real world adoption uh of nfts and and bridging of real world and nfts i think that's that's super super super exciting i agree and i think that episode is going to be very relevant to anyone in the nft ecosystem i think ran i think you accepted i'm not sure what

we're allowed to say but if you watch killer whales there's one of the show one of the episodes where me and ran you know fall in love with a brand and i'll probably want to join you ran and advising them because i love what they did um but also when i you know before giving the mic back to luca is that any nft project they're still building right now um hats off to them uh you know you're in the midst of a of a bear market and you're still building come and experimenting um at a time when there isn't much money there like i don't know if your floor pumped did your floor pump usually in the bull market when you announce news like this luca, the floor would just skyrocket. Did that happen with you guys?

Because I doubt it did in the current market conditions. And if it didn't, that's like more kudos to you. Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, it's a part of the process at the end of the day. You know, you can't control things that you can't control. Ultimately, the market will do its thing. I think what was the best part, I think, about yesterday was just the sentiment around the industry. I think people are starting to become bullish on NFTs again, and that's all we can ask for. You know, Ran, I put up my hand because I wanted to ask you a

question as just a crypto and token guy. When you look at the tokenization of assets just in totality, and you look at, you know know all of the coins that exist and and i kind of look at nfts in some similar light at the end of the day you know tokenized assets i think fall under a giant bucket you know the entire market cap of pudgy penguins is what 80 million dollars when you multiply the floor price times how many assets there are if you compare us to every other coin that is worth 80 100 150, 150, 200 million dollars, will you really ask yourself? Brilliant.

As I mentioned, I didn't know what your market cap was. But to me, at that kind of market cap, that's something that I would invest in. But when you're talking about... And let's talk about APE. Like, what's the market cap of APE coin today? Billion dollars plus? Yep. Okay.

What's the market cap of all the apes combined? A couple of billion? I don't know. I mean, I don't follow, but it's ridiculous, right? Yep. Probably about $2.5 billion total across all their assets, most likely. Okay. Can you tell me what in that ecosystem is worth $2.5 billion?

I think they have curated and built a cultural significance that I think is not to be underestimated. Now, how you price billion dollars, two and a half billion dollars. It depends. It depends who you're asking. I think if you look at the revenue for the last year,

probably warrant that. And so it just depends at which light you're looking at it from. Okay. I mean, I'm going to, we all know my view. so i i yeah i think this is it on the on the nft side and um patrick anything else to add on this particular point yeah i just wanted to add quickly so i actually used to work in bentonville managing budgeting

for one of walmart's largest worked where we're walmart's headquarters bentonville arkansas okay so i managed budgeting and forecasting for one of walmart's largest suppliers where we're walmart's headquartered bentonville arkansas okay so i've managed budgeting and forecasting for one of walmart's largest suppliers and i'm not sure people who haven't worked in retail realize quite how big of a deal what luke has accomplished is i mean getting getting a display in 2000 walmart's is it's like the gold standard if you're trying to sell any product um can be make or break with products right because people scale up scale up supplying um and then if it doesn't pan out then they've scaled up for nothing but i mean i just don't know if people realize quite how huge that is and the other thing i wanted to give props to luca for is i've actually had people um actually especially uh women have sent me pudgy penguins gifs and they know nothing about crypto they just think it's a cute gif

so so it is getting some cultural penetration that I've never seen in another NFT. I appreciate you, Patrick and Mario. I hate to do this to you on your stage, but I'll only do it once. And this will be my only time. But everyone's got to go out and sweep that Walmart floor, if you know what I mean. What he means for anyone not in the NFT community, go and buy those Splash toys. You got to explain it, Luca. The NFT lingo doesn't work anymore now not in this market um but i i agree i'm happy walmart before

uh the holiday season and stock up for christmas and thanksgiving i think it's a great present for anyone who's interested uh in potentially getting can i buy it can i buy it online if i'm not in the u.s or no yes you can walmart.com baby all right send me through the link if you don't mind luca and i'd love to buy one is this more supporting the ecosystem what you guys did i don't own pudgy penguins not looking at and invest in buying pudgy penguins but would love to support in any way i can thank you but yeah i think we'll go to the next story guys we've got um the last story because you know this show's gone over time but the last story is just the etf news we've got um so lawmakers we talked about this briefly yesterday they're pushing the sec to approve uh the bitcoin etfs so members of the house financial services

committee wrote a letter to the sec chair we read it yesterday and in that letter they urged him to approve pending spot bitcoin etf applications that's the number one number two etf so so bernstein two days ago and they put a probability that most likely or probably etfs will be approved so the bitcoin etf will be approved early next year and there was a good argument one of our speakers maybe it was you travis i can't remember but one of our speakers yesterday made an argument that it makes it like there's it's not a bad thing if the etf approval takes time like why is that a bad thing it could could even be a good thing. Because right now, the market is not responding too positively to any good news.

But later on, as we get closer to the halving, maybe that's a better time for the ETF to be approved. That was a debate we had yesterday. And lastly, there's an article on Bloomberg, and one of our regular speakers, one of our regular analysts when it comes to ETFs, did tweet out. So James Safar did tweet out that it's, quote, looking like the SEC is going to let a bunch of Ethereum futures ETFs go next week. And I think he tweeted again while we're on this space.

I think he tweeted again. I have it saved, you know, saying it's going to be likely approved there it is and so eric eric also tweeted yeah go ahead bro yeah no no you finished i thought you were done now eric also tweeted if uh ether futures etfs could be trading as early as tuesday as the sec looks to speed things up in order to get it done before the looming shutdown just like they sped up the delay on spot bitcoin etfs if, issuers likely in mad scramble as we speak to update documents. Stay tuned. That's right.

Mario, I spoke with Matt Hogan from Bitwise and Steve McClurg from Valkyrie, both good friends of mine, and I'm actually one of the first investors in Valkyrie. And so I have some color here. It actually hit the Bloomberg terminals this morning that there was a 90% chance that next week the Valkyrie blended Bitcoin Ethereum futures ETF, that's a mouthful, would be approved. As you know, unless it gets denied, it basically just passively gets approved. And as you said, would be listed next week. So this is not a pure Ethereum futures ETF, but this is from Valkyrie, who already has an approved Bitcoin futures ETF. And it would be a blended one, which would be actively managed by rule.

They can't go more than 50% Ethereum in it. So it will probably be more heavily weighted Bitcoin, depending on the market, but it will be actively managed. And according to Steve from Valkyrie, who I spoke to, he literally, when I got cut off earlier, I didn't have my phone off, he tried to call me, is that we saw the Bitcoin futures ETF launched in a peak bull market, obviously, two years ago in December, which really marked the top at that moment. But when we saw that approved, we saw BITO, which was the first mover from ProShares, do about a billion in AUM in the first couple of days. Valkyrie was approved three days later, 72 hours later, and was the next largest. And they did about 100 to 200 million. So the first mover advantage, first of all, for one of these approvals is absolutely

huge just to be the first name. But now that we're in a bear market, this is a less exciting product to the market because it is Ethereum based and there's obviously less institutional interest in Ethereum. His estimation was that we would see about 200 to 300 AUM, a million AUM. So about a sixth maybe of what we saw with the Bitcoin ones, which are about 1.3 total in the first month, that we'd see maybe 200 to 300 million, which is still sizable in AUM in the Ethereum blended or Ethereum futures products in general as they start to get approved.

Just to give some idea of scale and what it would mean for the market, I think that's a pretty accurate assessment in the current market. But then why does the market not care? Has it already been priced in? Well, first of all, like I said, this is a Bitcoin-Ethereum blended. So we already have Bitcoin Futures ETF. It's just a very similar product to what already exists with the Bitcoin futures ETF. And the assumption is that most institutions... Can I ask a dumb question? Doesn't that mean that the likelihood that a Bitcoin futures ETF or Bitcoin, sorry, a Bitcoin spot ETF is more likely to get approved than the opposite after the Grayscale ruling?

I don't think so. So the differentiation here is that the futures ETF, an Ethereum futures ETF is extremely similar to a Bitcoin futures ETF, right? So the fact that we already have approved Bitcoin futures ETFs means that structurally the SEC has already agreed that this is a viable product and a viable product structure. Therefore, they have very little reason to deny this. When you go to the spot ETFs, it's an entirely different product. We still have the market manipulation claims. And of course, we know that it was arbitrary and

capricious in the Grayscale case, but the SEC can still go ahead and make a case for many reasons to reject a spot ETF. They can't really do that right now with a futures ETF when we already have had them trading for two years. You have to remember, I don't want to misquote, but I believe BITO from ProShares was the single most successful futures ETF launch in history. I'm not talking about crypto ETF, single most successful, the fastest to a billion AUM of any ETF launch in history. And I believe Valkyrie 72 hours later, which only quote unquote did 100 million was top 12 of all time ETF launches. Right. So to just to give you guys some perspective that even though those weren't huge products per se, as ETFs go in all markets, these were very, very successful launches with huge AUM coming in very, very fast. So I think that it's still very exciting to get these futures ETFs, but the final boss is clearly spot. A couple of things. The eFutures ETF, there's no yield associated with that product,

right? There's not for now. mean there's i think there's a lot of people conjecturing that there could be a time when those actively managed etfs can stake okay yeah because so but i don't know like the one yeah i can't remember what the spread is year to date of bit you know there's an underperformance from the futures role in biddo versus that's you know that's kind of the main main reason why from a performance perspective you know spot is is preferable to to the to biddo it's huge actually yeah it's huge and if you look at the biddo launch there was a huge problem because it was so successful and so large and did a billion so fast that for them to even be able to have the ETF listed, they had to go past the 30-day dated contracts. And

they were out to 60, 90, 100 and something days. And the further you go out, obviously, on buying futures contracts, the less they're going to accurately track spot. I mean, this is literally the argument for spot ETFs. Like if you're going to give us the futures one and you're going to give us 2x leverage ETFs, how can you not give a spot ETF that will actually track the underlying asset and have minimal fees? Right. Yeah. So I was just going to say to the extent that that makes Biddo, you know, an inferior product to spot Bitcoin than with ETH. And in ETH, you're not getting any staking yield. So that's just even more of an inferior product relative to holding spot ETH, which is

kind of tough. And then the other thing I was going to say about Gensler talking yesterday, he got asked specifically on the Bitcoin ETF, the spot ETFs, and the Grayscale ruling, got specifically asked about that. And his response was a little weird. He said, wasn't that in district court and then he corrected himself saying oh no appellate appellate court which i didn't know how much to like read into if there's like something kind of freudian you know in that or or not but when you when you look at the so when you combine maybe what he did or did not say

in the in the hearing with the fact that they came out yesterday and delayed, was it three spot Ethereum ETFs? It was a two or three. Three spot Ethereum and two Bitcoin ETF and through two Bitcoin spot, I think. Yeah. Oh, which,

which Bitcoin spot ETF did they delay? I didn't see that. I believe ARK, ARK 21 shares. Oh, it was just that one. Cause it had the, yeah, yeah, that's right. That it had that. I believe ARC 21 shares. Oh, it was just that one because it had the – yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right.

It had that. Yeah, so I feel like at this point they're probably going to delay all of those, which then – and it seems like they're doing that under the guise of a government shutdown, but that's really weird because it's in November. These were like November dates, and like the average government shutdown is seven days so it's you almost can't help but wonder if they're using this as an excuse to punt on a bunch of this stuff but then yeah and then i i asked somebody that would probably know whether or not they thought that the sec could continue to work on the grayscale response that's due in the middle of october if that's like deemed quote unquote essential and would they be able to continue to work on

that during a government shutdown and this person said he thought they probably could um so that means that like if they're going to punt on all of these and you're just going to be hanging on like under the guise of government shutdown and then you're just going to be hanging under the guise of government shutdown. And then you're just going to be hanging out there. To be fair. Yeah. Yeah, with a great deal. To be fair, Travis, I mean, if the shutdown happens, it would be by this weekend, right? And so…

Yeah, JP Morgan put out 90% by the way. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I can understand. I asked Steve and Matt about this because they obviously have a lot of color on it. And I think the consensus is that the SEC was probably going to kick these down the road maybe tomorrow, today or tomorrow, ahead of the government shutdown, but ended up just doing it because they had the letter from the four congressmen that day.

They said, well, we've already got these lined up for a delay. Let's go ahead and do it 45 minutes after these congressmen push as sort of an F you, you know, and push the button. But I do think there is something to be said for the fact that they would push with the government shutdown coming, because as we know, and I got a maybe on this question, because it's so confusing. But as we know, and I said before, if they don't deny and don't have the staff to deny effectively, these products just become available. So they have to actively reject them or all of a sudden on October 15th, shutdown or not, we would start to see these approved.

And that's the last thing. And guys, just to add a little context there, there's actually seven of these spot Bitcoin ETFs that are their second deadline comes in the middle of October 10 10-17, 10-16, 10-19. And then after that, if they don't get approved in October, the next deadlines really come in in January is where we'd be at on that. Right. I mean, it still seems like it all comes down to grayscale. That's what it feels like.

Like, how is the SEC going to respond in the grayscale ruling yeah it's the big question overhanging for sure I was just saying Scott is there more you wanted to talk about on this particular point because we've covered everything we can cover the economy tomorrow I think we've done enough for today

yeah I agree I think that was a great the open AI We can cover the economy tomorrow. I think we've done enough for today. Yeah, I agree. I think that was great. The OpenAI discussion, we'll probably do that tomorrow. They want to raise it 90 billion. What was the valuation they're raising out? Does anyone remember? Because they want to launch the OpenAI is launching a new phone. I haven't read the story.

I'm not sure if anyone has. I'll see Joe on request. Probably he knows the story. Joe, if you want to talk about anything else, we're wrapping up. But if you know about the OpenAI, maybe just a quick one- probably he knows the story if you don't talk about anything else like we're wrapping up but if you know about the open ai maybe just a quick one minute overview the story they chat gpt maker open ai to raise funds at a valuation of 80 to 90 billion um and that's because why hello it's because they want to launch a new phone and that was mentioned earlier um earlier today so i'll put that as a story to cover cover tomorrow

but that's uh um you know pretty crazy on the ai side we also have news of um cia is nothing too exciting but people like when they hear cia cia is launching the ai to compete with china i think they were explicit about it as well um and we've got um a meta uh investing heavy on the AI side as well. But yeah, I think this is it. So your ex-Apple designer, Johnny Ive, and OpenAI Sam Altman discussing AI hardware device, essentially a phone. So that's going to be,

we'll talk a bit more about this tomorrow, even though it's not about crypto. But I think that's it from my end, Scott. Anything else? I think that's it. That's good.. Anything else? I think that's it. That's good. That was a great space. Talk about CEO tomorrow. We'll cover the economy.

Yeah, I'm glad we did today's space because we covered so many stories we skipped over the last two days because yesterday was Gensler. Before that was the BitBoy and ETH and Vitalik. So now we're back. We were caught up again. Before that, we had a good old-fashioned Twitter space rugging repeatedly. We hadn't had that in a long time actually yeah i don't know interesting mario because you do these all the time but at the

beginning we used to get like cut off literally all the time so i it hadn't happened in months i didn't even remember that that happened until we had it twice on the web yeah it happened it happened again last night um so i i put out i started a space and I went to bed because I wasn't running it, but I did it from my phone and Suli was running it. It was the GOP live debate. And then I was about to go to sleep and then the space rugs, I'd get out of bed and start it again. So it was not a pleasant 48 hours.

But otherwise, the ruggings improved drastically. And talking about X, not sure if you know, but X is almost me and you debate on the future of X Twitter and how it's doing. Then I keep mentioning the metrics, like the numbers of users, the video views, et cetera, and how they're hitting all-time highs. Well, today, I'll tweet about it in a bit, but the CEO talked about X reaching profitability by early, I think, first quarter or early next year, early 2024. So you've got X now. Is that going to happen by charging everybody to use it by their conjecture no no no no this is because advertisers uh i've got the news actually on my

phone because the team is writing up a tweet but it's because most um most advertisers have returned so i'll read out the the exact news but you know that's uh it kind of answers your question on why i'm going all in on uh on on x and not expanding to other shitty platforms like YouTube. So she says 90% of the top 100 advertisers have returned to the platform. And in the past 12 weeks alone, about 1,500 have returned. So in other words, all the advertisers that left worried about all these shitty reports about hate speech and all that by the ADLl and the other organization and i'm saying shitty because i've looked into the reports and they were very unfair at least one of them was very very unfair um but they seem that actually the platform is doing pretty well there was an independent report that showed hate speech

actually pretty damn low um so um yeah pretty classic right there i mean isn't it pretty classic that they like these advertisers made a big stink they got their big pr moment about uh pushing back and please their audience and then they quietly just come back and maybe there's genuine fears or genuine worries but when then elon obviously hiring linda and linda's doing a great job and that's her you know her background is getting advertisers and then elon being pretty explicit on multiple occasions that hey hate speech is not allowed anti-semitism is not allowed and it's not OK. And he's pretty explicit about it. So then people are like, all right, cool. Maybe it's not as bad as the media made it out to be. Just we're trying to sign up. Yeah, I know we're trying to sign off.

Just one more thing to add here, because I have a very close personal contact who works directly with the CEO of Twitter and just some inside baseball. It seems that, and I love the platform always going to be here, but Elon makes changes on the fly, middle of the night, he'll send out like product changes, like the whole change to X, the whole team was not communicated with ahead of time. He just did it, had his few developers just change it. And then the team basically had to go through, communicate with all the advertisers, communicate with all the branding and try to figure things out. And there's a lot of that going on behind the scenes. So I think there's going to be a lot more changes coming to Twitter. Some of them might work.

Some of them might not. But he's definitely trying stuff and he's definitely really engaged. But it's a bit fly by night over there. Yeah, I think you can tell that just even anecdotally. I mean, X was like halfway changed. We all saw that. saw that like everything was still like a retweet but you're on x you know it took a couple weeks to do my contact was literally telling me that they woke up in the middle of the night they saw the tweet that's that's how everyone in twitter found out and they had to decide the next day they had on one side of the whiteboard uh you know tweet okay

what do we call it now or retweet what do we call that now like just literally down the line to try to figure out everything so it's uh you know we know how fast elan like likes to move but uh you know that's what we're going to be dealing with i think at twitter as well for for a little while yeah funny enough i'll actually ask this we got walter isaacson we're launching our video series today is our first interview video interview on on x anyone not not leveraging video on x you are missing out but we're doing the first one today and we're gonna have walter isaacson who wrote the biography for elon so we'll ask him about this uh and uh and you know his biography

is really good gives you an idea of how elon thinks and how he acts as well um but like it's just insane how well he's doing and that's not just trying to be objectively saying this whether it's tesla obviously x and the numbers and and and the recovery from all advertisers leaving and obviously yesterday he won the uh he won the contract for with the u.s space force it's like a seven 90 million dollar contract spacex won it um and uh and he's still battling it out for another million dollars worth of contracts throughout the next few years so uh yeah fucking hell man he's doing well pississes me off how well he's doing because I'm like, shit, I wish I can grow that fast.

But yeah, I think that's it, Scott. Let's just ride the very, very, very, very last tip of the coattail here on Twitter. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much.