The Wolf Of All Streets - Gold Hits ATH, ETH Struggles, BTC Stuck! What’s Next? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

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Good morning everyone. It is Tuesday March 18th and 1018. I think we did it in three minutes this time. So we're doing better in terms of getting started. Markets are are are not thrilled on the risk side, but gold is certainly flying, you know, pushing up against 3050. And, you know, with ethers continued struggles, we were talking about it yesterday, there's a fair amount to unpack in the market, we can get right to it. Obviously, when you see gold miners outperforming gold outperforming, and the NASDAQ dropping, you know, almost 2% off the open, there's kind of a disconnect here where the risk markets think that what things are bad, we're going to into recession. and the gold market is saying, well, okay, they're going to print more and we're going to go up first, which is a interesting scenario.

It actually makes some sense. But then again, I rarely expect markets to make sense when people are trading emotionally. So that's where we are. And we could get started on any of these vectors. Anybody raise their hand, that's where we are and you know we could we could get started on any of these vectors anybody raised their hand That's fine. Otherwise, you'll have to listen to me for longer than you want. Okay, Mark. Why don't you go ahead? Hey Dave? Thanks, and yes, I was part of the three minute delay there. So thanks for enduring that I'll I'll work on my time out of the blocks The There are two markets here. It looks like Besson is in control. He's asking us to acclimate

and there'll be a period of acclimation. He's almost acting like a headmaster telling his students that the first semester is going to be the hardest. And it's really only in the equity markets unless other folks can talk about things that I'm missing I mean, of course crypto In particular, you know the beta higher beta names getting hit harder but the thing that's not happening Dave is you're not seeing credit spreads or even the move index and and That's what I'm looking for as a potential end index. And that's what I'm looking for as a potential end to the creative destruction that Trump and the administration is doing in order to try to get the deficit down with

tariffs. So yeah, it seems to be more in the liquid equity markets, but high yield spreads are still in the 99th percentile relative to investment grade. There's still risk seeking behavior there. So that's what I'm looking at. I mean, gold is obviously telling you the signal of, I don't like it, proxy wars are not going to stop. That needs money. It means printing.

So you're right. And this is not a but. And in keeping with that, spread you like great as long as they print there won't be a Dislocation in the Treasury markets. So therefore, you know my seven to eight percent private debt is fine So that's from you know more on the credit side my background. I'm looking at that as a potential Signal for contagion, but it's not flashing even yellow yet Yeah, the other only other signal that I've seen and there have been a bunch of people commenting about recession Indicators and you know, I personally think that

It's it becomes a trick of nomenclature. I mean we all know that that Yellen changed the definition a little over a year ago. Actually, it was under a year ago. Who knows? I do know that searches on Google for recession are up, and so investors are certainly worried about it. But the real question is, why would Bitcoin be continuing to track more with the NASdaq right now than with gold. And it is interesting. Personally, I just think Bitcoin is in this kind of choppy little range here and kind of working itself out. But I don't get too bothered about these moves.

But it is interesting. Carlo, what do you think? Well, good morning, Dave. Peter Schiff has taken a victory lap this morning. He's been aggressively posting about accumulating gold. And I just find that to be an interesting paradigm shift that we're seeing here. I cannot explain it. The only thing I can,

and I was thinking about this this morning, we have probably 98% of the world that has not yet really woken up to what is happening with Bitcoin. However, institutions, nation states, and most of the major TradFi sector has awakened to what Bitcoin is. So is this just a lag? Are we just seeing consumers and retail respond in the predictable way in the threat of recession, and that maybe they're missing the mark here. That's kind of what I'm thinking. And I'm curious to know

what some of the financial heads in the space think, because it seems to me that people are just going to the default gold as a safe haven and kind of missing the obvious play here that the institutions and TradFi and even now nation states are seeing. So are we just in a paradigm here where we're just waiting for people to catch up to reality? Well, I think it depends on reality. I mean, my point of view has always been that the when all the broker dealers have crypto trading services that they're ready to offer that the public consciousness will

Miraculously wake up and you'll see more But that's really gonna be the back half of the year. So we'll see anyway mark you had your hand up first and then I'm a tail Yeah on the on the financial side, I think the headlines are all there I mean you could not have crafted a better set of headlines and I think all of us would realize or think that Bitcoin would have sustained or gone through the 109 peak, especially after the distinction that Trump made between the Bitcoin strategic reserve and the language there versus the stockpile. But it has not trickled down to beyond a few financial institutions like BlackRock, who

is all in with their $150 billion model portfolio inclusion, biggest headline yet in the private markets, and then Fidelity, Bitwise, et cetera. In speaking to advisors at Merrill Lynch, at UBS, formerly Credit Suisse, where I still have some colleagues, they're not touching it. They're not allowed to. They're not really interested. And at $1.8 trillion, they're not incentivized. They'll pick up yield in the private debt markets.

They'll get exposure still through equities, either private or public markets. And their models don't allow for it. Their compliance departments don't allow for it. And it's these are conversations that I've been having. And I'm I'm veering away because it's such a wall. It's just I'll wait for it to break. I'm not going to break through it. So I don't think that the traditional financial markets are embracing Bitcoin to the degree

that we think they are. Well, I want to push back a bit on that. It's a question of time. So I spent 35 years, you know, working, building businesses and working with compliance departments. And compliance departments are very simple. They're binary. It's either yes or it's no. Right now until, because remember, Paul Atkins has not been confirmed at the SEC, Ryan Kintens

has not been confirmed at the CFTC, Gould has not been confirmed at the OCC, until they are in their place and they wave the checkered flag that says, okay, start the race. You can do this, these traditional firms, particularly the big banks, are not going to touch it, and the compliance department's gonna be waving the red stop sign until that changes. The fact that that's going to change is inevitable.

I mean, the odds are, you wouldn't even get odds on Polymarket against it, but doesn't matter, compliance departments don't anticipate doesn't mean business people don't want to where they can make money. But the real question is, when can they and they won't be able to until the back after this year? Well, at a bare minimum, they won't be able to until you know, FINRA on the broker dealer side

says you're allowed to and the CFTC comes out with guidance, you know, I don't know if we need a market structure bill or not. But I do know we need to have a very clear signal or no action relief at a minimum. Amitay, I'm sorry, I have my mic on. Good morning, Dave. Good morning, everybody else. Yeah, I think that what you're saying, Dave, is exactly right. We're actually seeing institutional buys in addition to the lagging implementation of

a lot of these policies and the infra to actually get this liquidity into the market. But I think one thing that we don't always highlight as much as we used to, which is how Bitcoin tends to be a predictive indicator a lot of times of moves in the short term. And I think obviously that the big news today is around the FOMC meeting. And what we expect is no rate change, but volatility is expected. And so I think in the short term,

we're gonna continue to see quite a bit of pressure and recession fears, even if they're overblown. I don't know if we're going to get a hawkish or dovish Fed today. I'm curious to see everyone else's perspective on the outlook and if we expect any changes. And the last thing I'll say is, when it comes to Bitcoin price, I wonder if one of the headwinds here is actually around micro strategies. There was a report released that they accounted for 28% of Bitcoin inflows in recent months. They just purchased 10.4 million, which just shows that the liquidity tap might be drying up a little bit. And then today announced a new perpetual preferred stock offering.

Are they out of leverage? Are they out of capital? Is one of the biggest buyers starting to slow down? And I just wonder if that's hanging over Bitcoin at this time. Mark, is your hand up as a legacy or? Yeah, no, sorry about that. I was just actually DMing you I liked your you know your your point About the and what was just said here about the regulatory side So Cue me in because I was just DMing you on your point about Atkins and about how it is setting up for the back end

I agree and when I talked about why is Bitcoin here, I was saying it's here because right now today, there is a still a siloed demand for Bitcoin. And even the FASB ruling that came out in 2023, August 23, I think was a past, and it came into place for fiscal year 25. It will not be compulsory until fiscal year financials for 25 are filed. So I think once you see companies that are allowed and are filing for moving from impaired assets to fair market

value on their balance sheets, MicroStrategy hasn't done it yet. They won't, I think, until the end of 25. That is a signal. I think, as you said, Atkins is a signal that will maybe trigger compliance departments. But I put it back to the crowd and maybe you, Dave, what other signals would there be for the broker dealers or the wirehouses to say model portfolios can have 1 to 2%? That's really the signal. I don't have that Intel. I don't know when. I can tell you what. And that's why I think that the strategic reserve EO matters a lot. I mean, if they managed to

codify that, that would be a blaring red signal. Red is usually considered bad, a blaring neon signal that it would be now. Because the what is, and this is minutia that a lot of people don't know, but most of the pension funds, most of the model portfolios in this country, and actually really in the Western world, are driven by a group of people called investment consultants. These are firms that are the gatekeepers to most of the pension money who are choosing active and passive managers, et cetera, et cetera. When those firms put move Bitcoin from alternative assets into a mainstream asset alongside gold, that's the starting gun.

The price- The common fund, folks like that? Well, no, the common fund is a fund. No, I'm thinking like Mercer, Towers, Perron. I don't know how many, there's been probably been mergers. Yep. Sorry, I've got to call. In any case, get everyone hear me again. Yeah, you're all clear now, Dave. Okay, well anyway, what I was saying is the investment consultants are going to matter. And that's where and that's where the And that's where the, that is basically going to be the start sign.

I don't expect that in 2025, to be honest with you, but we don't know. If you wanna talk about things, that would be a very big deal. That would be a very big deal. Yep, thanks. Yeah, hold on one second. I mean, switching back to the front and center,

I don't know if it was Carl or Alex speaking about Bitcoin down. You're right. Bitcoin is of two minds. It is that store of value, that separation on a four-year basis, never down more than 23% long-term store of value, but it is also that risk asset. So it is following things lower for the time being. And that's just the nature of it. So, and that's one reason why, why people will point to it and selectively

look at the correlation or the beta to have done the correlation over, you know. Sorry guys, can you hear me again? I got a call came blasting in. Yeah, Dave, we got you. We were just following up on the split mind of Bitcoin that was brought up prior to me speaking about it is still a risk off asking. Did I glitch out. Nope. Dave. Yeah. We got you covered. I think, yeah, I think you're glitching out. Maybe pop back in and out again.

Damn it. But you know, back to the, uh, you know, I hear nobody. Can anybody hear me? Yeah, I don't think we can. I don't think Dave can close. the the the the the the the the the

the the the the the He doesn't know we can hear his exacerbated discussion right now with himself. If anyone wants to disagree with Dave, that was a great time. Yeah, so back to the floor with anyone on the current state of markets. I think, you know, Schiff doing a lap when he has 3% to 5% of his portfolio in gold, if that's the right stat last time I checked, you know, God bless him.

Not not not really doing a whole lot of good for the balance of the portfolio, if that's your allocation reliance. Yeah, it's also it's also interesting to me that it all but ignores what's happening on the ground. I think he's kind of clung to an outdated notion, in my opinion, and he's married it and he's almost made himself a meme in the sense that he's doubled down so much on it. And it's his number one talking point right now.

And it just is stunning to me that someone who is as accomplished as he is would just outright dismiss and ignore what is happening on the ground with Bitcoin. I just don't understand the disconnect there. Is it just because it gets him engagement and is he secretly buying Bitcoin? I don't know, but it just seems strange to me that someone who is as steeped in financial markets as he is

could just outright dismiss this offhand. Well, you know, I made that point like two and a half years ago, and it was obvious that that Peter believed that nothing virtual could have value. In his mind, if you can't touch it, it doesn doesn't have value which of course ignores Quite literally the you know the youngest third of the population entirely and ignores anybody if you've ever played a video game or you've ever done anything and It's just to me. It's illogical But that's the way he looks at it and he ignores the gold silver divergence and the gold platinum divergence where platinum is rarer and more valued in jewelry yet platinum is now one third the price of Bitcoin or one third the price of

gold. Which kind of is proving that Bitcoin, that gold's monetary value is what's driving its price not its jewelry value or utility value. Those arguments when you make them to Peter, they go completely off into the ether. Why? Well, either he's just incredibly stubborn and considering his track record with his bank, and yeah, he probably was unfairly taken advantage of by the authorities, but not great. So, is he making his living off

of having huge engagement by tweaking the Bitcoin community? I mean, it seems like that's the most logical outcome to raise here. That's what I think. But what I will say is, is I mean, for a while, I muted him and didn't follow him, but his crowing is such a great market timer. It's not quite as good as Kramer, but it's pretty damn close. When he starts doing victory laps, you have a pretty good idea and you can chart that against the Bitcoin gold ratio. Not only does he doing virtually virtual victory last day, he's actually directing people in his most recent post last night, he's directing people to his website, encouraging people to buy gold, shiftgold.com and the opportunities to buy in increments of ounces and micro ounces and so forth.

He's talking a book at the same time as completely dismissing an entire asset class. Well, but he always did with Euro Pacific capital to I mean, look, we can talk about Kramer and why does he do things you've got about shit and why does he do things you can talk about, you know, the others. He's going to look really foolish again. He always has, you know, everything has its part. But the fact is, you find a Bitcoiner who doesn't also favor gold over financialized stocks, and that's going to be very rare Bitcoin. Right? Most of us understand hard money matters, understand that gold still

has hard money attributes. And so, you know, it's not about bashing gold, it's about understanding that there's an entire world of people out there who need digital hard money. And this notion that you could digitize gold every time they say it, I look at the people and say, okay, so you're going to digitize it and you're going to trust that it's real. When's the last time we've had audited trusting, trusted gold that we know is real that hasn't had some instance of counterfeit because Bitcoin is so much harder to counterfeit, so much easier to verify. And you know, to add to that, Dave, it's stunning to me also that gold is something that you cannot accurately track. There's no ledger. There's no immutable, fully transparent ledger that can tell you how much gold is actually stored in relation to how much has been discovered. And it seems like it's propped up based on

speculation and people make fun of Bitcoin as being purely speculative because it's digital. But who can give an accurate audit of how much gold is in the world relation to its value? And isn't that something that at this point in the world, maybe we should be like fixing? Well, I mean, I asked everyone the question yesterday and didn't get good answers. I'm curious, the panel cares. If they audit Fort Knox and it's less than people think,

if the fed reserves were audited and it's less than people think, if London, if it turns out that, and if we had Lawrence Lepard up here, he would go on about this, and I think he's probably right, that paper gold has been used to suppress the gold price for years by hypothecating or by basically people selling it short with futures and never having to borrow it. If that any of that starts to be true, what happens to Bitcoin? What happens to gold? Because it's not obvious. I mean, yes, gold would probably go up. But it's pretty obvious that people

would look at that and say, wait a minute, but you can't do that with Bitcoin. Is there an advantage here? And so that becomes an interesting question, don't you think? I would tell you, yeah, actually, you and I were the ones who went back and forth about this before we kick it to Amiteo. And I kind of started that conversation. And the interesting thing about that debate is the whole point that people want to accumulate gold is because they're afraid of a financial collapse, the dollar falling apart, the United States losing its prominence. But if you can't actually pick the gold up and go anywhere,

then isn't it just as useless as Bitcoin? I mean, I don't know about useless. What I'm saying that pejoratively, of course. No, no, I understand. Look, I own gold too. I'm not gonna lie. I actually own more silver because I think silver in any of this stuff

will revert closer. I mean, it's not going to regain its monetary value, but you could look at that in a different way, and that's always been something that people care about. Anyway, Amitai, you had your hand up for a while. Yeah, I was just going to say that I would imagine if it looks like the Fort Knox audit doesn't pass, et cetera, there would initially be a reaction of, oh my gosh, gold is far rarer than we thought.

But I think that in a mid to long term scale, we would immediately reach a place where there would be broken trust in the gold market. And I just don't think markets operate well with broken trust. And I think when you go from broken trust, and then you have a trustless global asset that is accounted for, you get an asymmetrical bet that a lot of people would take. And I think that Bitcoin itself, something that we always discount is just how fast it can rebound off of different macro conditions. And I expect the same here, no matter what happens with gold. Yeah, me too.

Mark. Hey, Dave. So on the trust front, let's go back to Fort Knox. If there is anything beyond a minor accounting issue, I do think that the trust factor will rattle markets. I think everything would trade lower initially. And to this crowd, we all question why hasn't Bitcoin picked up, etc. etc. I think we have to go to the behavioral economist, you know, Kahneman Tversky, about just our bias and how long it takes for us to adopt new dynamics or shed old lenses and filters that we have. So I think the fact that we have BlackRock and Fidelity,

although they're TradFi and they're consolidating, you know, corn at Coinbase and then Fidelity in their own place. I think that those folks will be the shepherds along with folks like us that will help direct people into the fact that Bitcoin is different. So these types of forms are critical, but we don't have the same kind of scale that

that TradFi has. So I think that everything would trade lower on a Fort Knox. And that's something that maybe we should sort of get out message and say, hey, this is a temporary negative, but it's actually positive for Bitcoin. Because there is a possibility that there will be at least a delayed accounting if not a you know a I'm not full accounting of what's supposed to be there I don't know what if you guys think that's too too conspiratorial conspiratorial but you know something hasn't been looked at for decades and I

don't really assume the best well I haven't seen goldfinger circling or anything like that happen but you know who knows. Look the other big thing that's been going on in the markets are a higher correlation to the NASDAQ not just with Bitcoin but of course with all coins and I attribute that to the crypto community kind of of writ large, and there have been some headlines, actually, I think it was like, I can't remember which one made them in the block, I read it. People talking about the crypto community running out of money, which I think is kind

of funny, I think what they're talking about is running out of money on leveraging getting bored, and tired of banging their heads against the wall. But as long as Bitcoin on the margin is set by speculators on big leverage, then what happens or what happens is the short side is where you can make money by the famous hyper whale, the big whale trade that everyone was staring at this weekend. But when you look at the alt sign, I think that you're seeing a lot less leverage and overall less leverage in the system is incredibly healthy for a rebound because no

leverage means when momentum changes, you know changes, then you get FOMO but you know, look, we've seen these cycles before hell we went eight months in a big trading range not all that long ago so we shouldn't really be terribly surprised. Actually, I saw Simon come in and out I kind of thought was going to T him up but let's see here. Nope, I saw Simon come in and out. I kind of thought I was going to tee him up. But let's see, is he out here? Nope, I guess Simon gone again. I don't know if anybody cares about that.

Or do we want to switch gears and talk about Ethereum? Another big thing that's really drawn a lot of attention is that terrible Solana commercial that was dropped and immediately withdrawn. And man, when I first saw it, Dave, I have to say I got excited for a moment because it kind of had the same vibe at those early Coinbase commercials that we saw

that were just so well done. But then as it just sort of meandered on, it just became so cringe. And I really failed to understand the point of it. And just whoever was put in charge of that, man, is probably getting their phone blown up today. That was just an epic miss. Yeah, it didn't help my bags.

I can tell you that much. I was less enthusiastic than I could say. Someone just had their hand up. Yeah, I was trying to figure this out, guys. Look, I think I just don't understand the US culture right now because to me that ad was hilarious. It kind of captured this frustration with observing US society from the outside being obsessed with weird pronouns and these things that don't really matter and finally kind of getting back into a builder mindset. But it seems like I'm definitely in the minority and like I'm not able to read the room at

all. So can anyone explain this to me? Like what was like what were the things that were so cringe about it? I think it was the attempt. You know, I only got to see it one time and it got taken down. And now, you know, actually someone minted it and put it on the Zora blockchain, which is hysterical, because as a lawyer, I'm curious to see if there's going to be any kind of DMCA to take it down by Solana, which would kind of be funny. But I think the

problem with it is, is I'm all for encouraging building. And I think Solana has such a promising future. And especially with the advancements that are coming with Fire Dancer, I just think that they kind of were trying to tap into a conversation that was maybe speaking directly to one segment. And I think if you're trying to build a brand, I think you can universally communicate that in a much better way, kind of like Coinbase has with their commercials,

which are very subtle comments on, hey, young people, there's a different way, there's a better way, there's a future here, without overtly hitting all those buttons. Because it's not just the United States that's caught up in this woke culture, it's the world. And I think if they wanted to make that message, they could have done it a little subtler and gotten their point across and maybe not dragged it out. Because to me, it seemed like an exorbitantly long ad,

too long for attention in this economy. Yeah, it was incredibly long and really like an unnecessary cultural commentary for what it's trying to represent, which is also highlighted that is advertising, you know, not just Solana, but like an event associated with it. As someone who is a marketer, if you're looking to highlight builders on Solana, there's an innumerable amount of ways that the war is over when it comes to building

in America on Solana. A guy who maybe has ambitions, venting to a condescending therapist, I just don't think is the way to convey that idea. And I just think it shows further the thing that has been causing a lot of downward pressure in the market, which was this meme coin cycle that was just completely out of touch. And I think it just continues to be completely out of touch, which is just unfortunate

and just shows where we're actually at. Yeah, I mean, from my perspective was very much along the same lines Amateo, which is if you're investing in Solana because you expect a rebound in the meme coin casino, and that's gonna be the be all and end all, then other than that, the other thing, my first impression will be,

may God have mercy on your soul, because that's not going to happen. I mean, yeah, sure, some will come back. But most people who are investing in Solana or believe in the blockchain is because it is a superior blockchain for doing high-speed financial transactions, which could fit a lot of other verticals. The last thing you want to be doing if you're in the Solana Foundation is even touching popular culture. You want to distance yourself from that because that's where the real

money is. But that was sort of the way I read it. I kind of thought that their response was overblown. But then again, in crypto, when people... We've been either in fear or extreme fear now for a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, and people encrypt them in two or three weeks, that feels like a lifetime. And the people who are like, you know, your picture, you know, going withdrawal symptoms from dopamine hits on the market going up, I mean, people with their hands shaking, and all of a sudden, they go, they see this thing, it's like, God damn it, it's this fault, and people are looking for an excuse. Alex,

I would love to comment on that, Dave, because you mentioned something that's really, really important. And I'd love to steer the conversation back to ETH struggles, but at the same time, compare it with Solana, because you said something that's very important, Dave. I actually sold all of my ETH as soon as I saw the debate between Solana Ethereum, we had Justin Drake on the Ethereum side, which is one of their top senior researchers, and Toli, who's the CTO of Solana. And the reason why I sold all my Ethereum to go all in and Solana is because I noticed one core component when it came to the mindset that Anatoly, despite being a CTO and having a tech mindset, he also had very strong business acumen.

While what I saw with Ethereum and most of the foundation researchers, they're really living in a utopian world where they think that everything can be liberal and free without a business model and anything that can help the chain scale. As a matter of fact, it was a really smart decision when I saw that debate, which was, I believe, end of 23, because Ethereum is one of the only major assets that didn't reach a new all-time high. BNB reached an all-time high since, Bitcoin reached an all-time high since, Solana reached an all-time high since, but Ethereum didn't manage to do so. And the reason why I believe this is the case, Dave, is multiple fault. As you said, Solana is the financial chain. It has more spot and leverage trading than any other chain, including Uniswap. And so all of a sudden,

Ethereum that used to be the financial chain, everything that you can do off chain can be done on chain. It lost one of the most important metrics for any chain. And that is how much trading volume and transactional volume that you get because that generates fees for the validators. It's directly connected to the security of the network. And all of a sudden, when I saw all that trading volume leave Uniswap, I'm like, oh, shit, Solana is becoming the Wall Street chain where Ethereum has become an on-chain commercial bank. And the reason why I call Ethereum an on-chain commercial bank

is because the only thing it can do today, either then store your assets in a decentralized manner is to stake. And most of that liquid staking or restaking comes from ETH itself, its own asset, or you can do money markets, lending and borrowing with Aave if you want to go on a retail level or lending and borrowing with Morpho if you want to do more sophisticated institutional type lending in DeFi. For me, Dave, the only way for Ethereum to survive is number one, they got to pull their pants up.

They got to bring someone who actually has a business acumen like Joe Lubin when he was involved back in the day. Now it's just devs leading the troops with no clear strategy whatsoever. Their strategy of scaling the Ethereum network through L2s is the worst, and excuse my French, fucking strategy that exists in terms of all networks. And the reason why I say that, imagine guys, Ethereum is a big mall, right? And every single DApp is a store, a digital store. Now, how can you create a system where those digital stores are stealing your revenue

without paying you rent? And that's what's happening with Ethereum because one out of a hundredth of the transaction fees from the L2s are going to Ethereum and 99% is going to the L2. So how can you fucking steal the transactional volume and not pay rent? So first of all, that's messed up. It's a really weird business model.

I've never seen that in any type of industry, including Web2 in my life. And then on top of that, Dave, what's even more worrisome, I'm sorry, I'm saying these bearish feelings because I want Ethereum to solve these problems. I'm not saying this through hatred, it's through love. So I don't want to come across as a douchebag. But another thing that bothers me is it's so bad that even Uniswap, their number one DApp, imagine you have that store in your mall

that is literally taking 70% of all the volume, all of a sudden announced that they're building their own L2. So like Ethereum's number one store is leaving with their own chain again. So Ethereum's number one store is leaving with their own chain again. So this is not looking good. It feels like a mall that's having all their digital stores shutting down and leaving. So for me to, for Ethereum to survive, once again, business acumen, hire some people in business development and go and chase after Wall Street. Instead of JP Morgan building

their own chain, get JP Morgan to build on the layer one for any type of money markets, bring back that on chain commercial bank and hopefully they will survive. But I wish guys sorry for being negative. Hope we'll kick off this conversation. So before Carla, just just to point out as a commercial, since Scott skiing this week, he actually wrote and talked about this in his newsletter this morning, you know,

in some depth and basically echoed a lot of Alex's point. So for those of you who get the wolf den, you can read it. But his point was that, you know, someone needs to kick. He said it nicer, but Vitalik can say, listen, you can't let people steal from you and take your lunch money every day and expect to grow, which is really the way that I read it. Carlo. Yeah, no, I cannot disagree with Alex.

And I almost kind of felt and I actually posted about this that Ethereum in its messaging seems a bit lost. I do think there's fundamental promise there if it can reclaim, but it almost has become a counterculture chain is the way I see it. Its messaging and its agenda seems to be counter to what its use cases are. And I think it's kind of gotten lost and maybe there's just too many chefs in the kitchen. So I think perhaps a remessaging and a reminder of what the fundamental benefits of that chain are would certainly be helpful at this time because it does seem to be losing market share relative to Solana

relative to Bitcoin, especially the gap is growing exceedingly large. Well, I mean, I think my mental model has always been that Bitcoin is completely separate than the rest of crypto, that Bitcoin is a digital store of value. It is by design, a monetary policy that is fixed. It is by design, a chain that is designed specifically for never going down, lots of other things, conversion of energy. We could go on and talk about it, but it is if you look at ether, what drove ether to its highs, DeFi Summer. And what was DeFi Summer? DeFi Summer was mostly and I know people are going to get upset about this,

but mostly, you know, crypto masturbation, right? You know, you you you basically people enriching themselves on the back of their own stuff. So, you know, people thought they'd invented perpetual motion machine or a flywheel or an infinite money glitch, whatever you want to call it. None of those things are ever real. They will never last. And obviously, DeFi Summer more or less ended when Sam Bankman Fried and Matt Levine got

up and talked about it. But and there's a huge but there is a massive market that is going to get tapped that is a multi many multi trillion dollar markets in the financial world that DeFi will ultimately disintermediate and the question is will it be on Ethereum will it be on Solana will it be on XRP god knows the XRP army believes that's the case Or will it be on some other chains or a set of chains that have yet to be developed? That's the real question. Mark, you had your hand up or was it Amateo first? I didn't see.

Amateo can go, yeah, go get him Amateo. Yeah, I was just gonna say that when we look at the historic outlook on Ethereum, it was always designed to be a public good. And it was always designed to be a public good. And it was always designed to be a model of if you build it, they may come. And I think what you actually see with the struggles of Ethereum is representative of the evolution of the entire crypto industry that now has sophisticated capital market structure.

It's becoming even more sophisticated. It's becoming more adopted by TradFi. You have a competitive startup environment with VCs, funding, and efficiency wars. You have liquidity pools and competitive user adoption and cost for customer acquisition for different apps and different platforms. That was never in Ethereum's design model. And rather than wanting to compete in that model, I think they've sort of doubled down on, hey, this is a public good and it serves this purpose.

And I don't think we've seen any emergent leadership that has any desire to challenge that or change that. And I think that it still serves a very fundamental purpose in DeFi and will continue to do so, but it's a more competitive environment. And as long as they just determine this to be a public good and don't want to take a competitive edge, that's just, it's going to find its place within a highly competitive market with a lot of aggressive builders looking just, it's going to find its place within a highly competitive market with a lot of aggressive builders looking to get people's liquidity and attention. Sorry. Yeah. And sorry. Go ahead, Mark. Thanks, Dave. Who was that speaking right then?

That was Amateo. Hey, Amateo. Yeah. So listening to you, you're sort of saying that they that they lost their way a bit and in following up with I think it might have been Alex speaking about the mall analogy, which is I've adopted that as well and and we all know that every town has two malls, you know, the one everyone goes to and the one that people used to go to and there was an analyst I worked with when I was at 3iQ who was excellent. He came up with Ethereum has become the middle child in the blockchain family, overshadowed by Bitcoin's unique, as Dave said, qualities. It is the only truly decentralized, you know, blockchain and utility

will come over time. That's what, you know, Bitcoin people think and I do as well beyond just the store of value. And then you have the modularity of Solana, which is just servicing and has so much promise. I think Ethereum is in an existential crisis because it did a lot and then it's giving nothing right now because the potential rollback that was even suggested after the buy-bit hack, there's no trust there that a transaction could be blocked or excluded if the foundation deemed it or the population deemed it to happen

and yet it still can't provide the speed of Solana. So I agree. I think there's a chance it's going to become that second mall unless it does get a reboot from a business standpoint as I think Alex was mentioning. In my mind the most important question with with any of these blockchains is what is the TAM and what could they actually return to the token holders in value. And at some point that matters. I mean, we we saw an interesting lesson from the internet bubble was when people the most stocks started to get crushed the day they got earnings.

And you would think that wouldn't be crazy, but there was this ridiculous thing that all these pre-revenue companies, the stock values were huge. The instant they actually had revenues, people looked at those revenues and said, wait a minute, that's not enough to justify this. And they got pummeled.

And that was really the start of the fraying of the internet bubble when you saw that. There are bears out there who are making the same claim about crypto saying, well, wait a minute, you have all these chains that have all this enormous promise if you look at the total TAM for what the market could be. But all the analysts are looking at Ethereum,

for example, and saying, okay, great. Well, it's the leader right now in terms of what it's doing. But if you actually look at what it's doing, it pales in significance to its market cap. I wonder how much of that's going on. Gareth. Hey, sorry, Dave. I was having some connection and sound issues there, but I finally got you. Yeah, I just wanted to weigh in on this conversation. I've had the pleasure of interviewing Joe Lubin from Consensus and obviously one of Ethereum's co-founders a couple of times. Last year,

we had a fascinating podcast hour-length conversation about the entire Ethereum ecosystem. This is actually something I asked him more than a year ago was this shift to a layer two Because this shift to a layer two ecosystem that's dependent on layer twos to bring scalability and speed and cost efficiency, what would that mean for, you know, stakers that are putting down 32 ETH to be validators of the network? And what then is the financial incentive for all these people to do that, if you're shifting all of the economic activity to a layer two, and a lot of the value is being locked up there, and a lot of the money is being made there. And this for him was one of the key reasons why Ethereum has been wanting to

get to chain abstraction and intense based architecture where a lot of things happen in the background. You know, moving to sort of a web to experience where whatever you want to do, like let's say you want to, you've got some Ethereum and you want to buy Bitcoin, you should be able to do that in two or three clicks and you shouldn't even be aware that some cross-trained bridging is happening or token swaps are happening. And what that would require is a very connected ecosystem of layer one protocols and layer two protocols. But it still didn't answer the question well for me in terms of what

does everyone who has invested in staking at the layer one get when all of this value moves to a layer two. And to be honest, I don't really know if there's a great answer yet. And this is why we're getting to this element of disillusionment with the Ethereum ecosystem. And look, I have a great appreciation for all the different blockchain protocols exist. I really am a big Bitcoin advocate because I believe in the value proposition

and its fundamentals and how it works. But I also believe that these other chains have value. They're designed to do specific things. And there's some things that Bitcoin can't do, and that's just by design, and that's okay. But when you look at something like Solana versus Ethereum, it does everything on L1. It's got the throughput, the speed, the cost efficiency that Ethereum doesn't have. But arguably, the tradeoff there is security.

So, there's some trade-offs that are involved, but at the end of the day, people have put a lot of money down on the table to be validators, and they're looking long and hard at that 32 ETH that's going down in value, and they're not getting so much return for being validators on the network. And sooner or later, these people are going to start looking at moving their capital elsewhere and that's an existential threat in some sort of regard. But at the same time, a lot of people have built amazing tools and amazing technologies on Ethereum, so I don't think it's just going to die. There's been a lot of doomsday saying about that. I don't think that's the reality either, but there definitely needs to be a lot more clarity and a lot more sort of groupthink going on now than there is for Ethereum to really gain the trust and its position in the market because at the moment

everyone's just dunking on them and it's hard to argue against that at the moment. So yeah, that was just my thought jumping in on this space and hearing Alex say what he had to say first off. Yeah, I'll go to Zillion and then Alex next, but I have one question for you, Gareth, which is how important in your opinion and in the people you talk to is Pectra, in particular the validation side, not just the trading or the execution side? Look, I think the validators are everything to the Ethereum network. And one of the things that Vitalik has spoken about at length was, and this was part of

the roadmap a couple of years ago, and I haven't heard too much about it in recent months and years, was sharding and the shift to being able to essentially run a validator or an Ethereum node on things as small as a smartphone. And this was supposed to bring tremendous scale to the ecosystem and the network and really help it address some of the scaling issues and the cost issues. But again, it begs the question,

all these validators, people that are putting a huge amount of capital down to get some return for maintaining the network, it's a business at the end of the day. No one just strings up a node or sets up a data, like a warehouse, a data center if they're not in it to do business, to provide computing to AI networks or whatever. So, yes, at the end of the day, it matters. And I think this 32 ETH was there for a reason. They wanted to give people a real incentive to be validators in the network because that ensures the certain level of, you know, like there's a bar that you have to you have to reach or you have to meet in order to be a validator and that is 32 ETH. And in terms of capital, that's a lot of money. Most people can't afford to do that. And it means that

the people that are serious about it are going to do it properly. But now the people that are serious about it and are doing it properly want their return on investment. And if all of this value is just going to a layer two and everyone's transacting on layer two, I know if I had put down that money to run a Validate at some point, I mean, like, listen, is this worth my while to have my money there? I might as well take my 32 ETH and go in dollar cost average into Bitcoin and go to the OG network and invest in something that has proven hard money and something that as decentralized as it is,

has a very strong reason to be. So yeah, I think the validator question is still so important in the network and all these layer 2s are fantastic. They do great things, but investors are trying to figure out where they're gonna get the most return for their money. Sure, but the Pectra upgrade is gonna allow up to 2048 to be staked in one validator, right? Or did I read that wrong? I mean, that's-

I'd have to go, I'd have to revisit the numbers. I stand to be corrected there as well. No, no, it is 32 right now, but that was the whole point of this, was to allow significant more centralization. I hate to say it, but I guess, you know. Well, that's the trade-off now, right? Because at the moment, you have a significant amount of decentralization in the Ethereum network. And like, people can argue the merits of this. The other blockchain protocols, you know, Solana and Ripple in terms of centralization versus decentralization are probably a lot more centralized.

They're still decentralized, but they're not as decentralized as Ethereum is and that has to do with those validators. That's an important part. That's why all the layer twos in the Ethereum network settle on the Ethereum L1 because it's highly decentralized, it's very secure for that reason, and that's why they settle there. So they roll up all their transactions for really cheap cost and they tap into the promises of security that the Ethereum L1 gives them. So all of these changes are a lot to consider.

And I just don't think that there's any real consensus on what needs to be done yet. Okay, Zillian, then Paul, then Mark. Yeah, thank you. And good day to you all. The Ethereum question is very personal to me because most of my net worth, Ethereum did a lot of things to me in my life, but they recently just destroyed it.

So it's like a net gain. But look, the Ethereum Foundation, the Ethereum ecosystem, the Ethereum blockchain itself has been a huge success story until this cycle. Simply because I really, you know, obviously when you have most of your net worth in something, you think about it very hard because you're taking a huge risk, especially when you have children, etc. So it's important to, it was very important for me to kind of figure out what went wrong, just to learn a lesson. And for me, when I do the analysis really from that standpoint, I just see that

until what happened in Ethereum is that obviously it is the most secured smart contract chain out there. And that could be a very valid use case and a very valid point when you have a global settlement layer for the world's financial transactions. Because you want something that is secured, decentralized to the max, as much as possible, etc. But unfortunately, it missed. But fortunately, fortunately, and unfortunately, fortunately, Ethereum has been lucky or was organized in a way that it had two cycles where the killer in 2017, the killer application was ICOs. So there was a lot of traction, a lot of interaction with Ethereum. The last cycle, it was NFTs started there and even the meme cycle this time around started in Ethereum with Pepe. So it had this basic

marketing poster where we don't do marketing type of thing, but we just manage to back the killer applications that basically drive utility into our chain. This time around, there was no narrative. So obviously the killer application started in the Ethereum network, but moved very quickly into Solana, simply because the requirements from a feature perspective and the requirements for the user base that it was attracting did not require that much decentralization and only required very cheap fees etc. So for, obviously, if you build anything, especially when you have these

high valuations that Ethereum is trading at right now, you have to have a certain use and certain intensity of use to the people that you are, to your audience. And today, the audience up until now is mainly retail. So obviously value is going to be driven wherever retail decides to interact with. And from this, and what happened to Ethereum from my view was basically this Ethereum kind of got stuck Ethereum kind of got stuck into this seniority type of thing and completely decoupling the proning itself and remaining a developer first type of chain where your developers really they're building technology and build it they will come. I think the competition right now is a lot more focused,

a lot more structured as corporations, if I may say, a bunch of people having a same coordinated mission statement, pushing for the same goals and achieving those goals. And I think that it's time for the Ethereum ecosystem as a whole, either to advance very quickly and to find a solution to this or people are just going to move their value elsewhere because I can tell you from my personal experience I mean I believe I was I'm still a big believer in what Ethereum can bring to the world

but I'm destroying my life at the same time. So there is, you know, so Ethereum made a lot of things for me, but also destroyed a lot of things for me lately. And that is simply because Ethereum needs to understand, Ethereum Foundation, whoever is influential in that organization, because at the end of the day, we need to stop living in utopias of decentralized, complete decentralized organizations. At the end of the day, you're going to have some influences, you're going to have some cohorts, you're going to have power of influence, power of execution, and power of pushing certain points

over others. So the people that have influence in the Ethereum Foundation or in the Ethereum ecosystem in general have to wake up. They are still in the retail game. They have done mistakes as it was pointed out of layer 2s not paying their dues and basically just capturing market share for free. They will not be the money of the future. They are a smart contract chain. They should behave as such. They should push projects that can bring them users onboarding, that can bring them user the narrative. So it's time to move on and find something else. And that's all I have to say. That was a mouthful. Can I comment on that, guys? Yeah, absolutely.

So there's really something important that Zillian just mentioned now. And I agree with you on the security, safety, decentralization. But the issue is the safety and security of the Ethereum chain is not a unique value proposition, does not have a unique value proposition. It does not have a unique value proposition. It's not a USP. And what I mean by that is, think about the safest and most secure countries in the world where you're going to have Iceland on the top. Is Iceland a place where everyone here wants to live and do business? Absolutely not. So safety and security is very hard to monetize. It's very hard to create an incentive model, especially when you have Bitcoin,

which is way more secure as a network. So that particular trade in Ethereum to me is worth zero because if you really want safety, the only thing that you want full security and safety is for storing your assets. So like custody and you have ledger for that. You have way better technology that with multi-signatures like MPC that can secure your assets. So where I agree with Zillian is they have to come up with a new

model. They have to come up with a way to really make their mall or their island or their world to attract more activity because the safety and security is not a unique value proposition. It has zero value to most people and the decentralization angle of it. Of course, it's great for the libertarians and for the maximalists. But I'm telling you guys, when you look at safe countries that have activity, so let's say Singapore or let's say Dubai, those are countries where people want to live in. They're probably not as safe as maybe Iceland, but there's more activity and that's what creates an economy. But I want to go back to what Gareth said, something really, really important that we probably do not discuss enough. Gareth was talking essentially about the whole concept of open source code. The problem that I see with what Ethereum is doing

is that a lot of the Ethereum guys, they're libertarians. A lot of them are socialists. And I say that from a good perspective, as in they want something fair for everyone. They want it to be free. They want it really to have justice. And they're living in their own utopian world, which we talked about earlier when I was comparing to Solana. And this is a really good point because

Gareth, what he's asking essentially in other words is, does open source actually work? Because the core component of open source, other than forking codes or copying codes, or being able to build on top, essentially was for us to build on top, right? We're supposed to all be a part of this world where each person, each one of us is adding Legos to our Lego piece and building on top of each other on the side to help grow and on chain and the future of finance essentially. But that's not what's happening because open source code would work ideally if you are a liberalist or even a socialist where you're like, okay, I'm not a shark or a capitalist who's trying to do everything by myself and own as much market share as possible. So I think that's a study that I would love to see.

Does open source actually scale in the way it's designed to, which I believe it doesn't. Because as what we see with these L2s, people will fork and they always want to own everything. And it's just the typical man's behavior of always wanting to colonize, take more and more and more, and have that capitalistic mindset, which is in some ways, defying the concept of open source code. And one more example that I can give to that is, for instance, guys, so I love Coinbase. It's a great exchange. I love the team, many friends there. But why would Coinbase have to start its own chain? Like why?

Like literally, I'm asking you guys why. Why couldn't it build its applications on some of the code that already exists? And then another question here is why would every single exchange launch its own chain rather than building on top of the open source code or providing ways to connect or interact between the chains, add some interoperability, build some tooling that does not exist on a chain. It's just that by nature and by the capitalistic instincts that we have, people want to own everything, they want to dominate everything, and they want to just increase their market share, which goes against the concept of open source

code, which is building together to enhance the overall experience for the user. I mean, before I let Paul go, I just want to point out the most obvious example, which is Linux, which is arguably the most successful open source project ever. Yet all the money was made by people who adapted that code and used that code. It's just pretty damn obvious. Paul, you've had your hand up for a while. Thanks for your patience.

No problem. I feel like stuff that I had to say morphed over time as people chimed in. So ending with that thought on Linux, now while a lot of the money was made by other companies that use Linux, realizing the open source ecosystem, how open source is able to succeed is that a lot of the people that extract value contribute back into the open source code. And so lots of companies, large companies contribute back into open source, IBM contributes back into CouchDB, which is a database that we use at our company. And that's how you proliferate the open source narrative as opposed to being an end product.

It's an end product for multiple companies to contribute back into. And I think that can as well work its way into the crypto ecosystem as we know different companies do contribute and pitch in dollars into the core development of Ethereum into Bitcoin as well. But getting back into something that I think Gareth and Alex had said with respect to why Ethereum is failing from the viewpoint of it's just raw value, right? Raw value and what it's bringing to the ecosystem is truly, I fundamentally believe, I don't want to sound like a broken record from what I said yesterday here on Crypto Town Hall, but the L2 ecosystem has really kind of destroyed it.

And what it's done is truly extract value from the validators. The validators are at the core and I disagree that you don't need validators and that the security, this is a little disagreement that I have with, I think it may have been Alex, that the security isn't important. is a little disagreement that I have with, I think it may have been Alex, that the security isn't important. I think the analogy of a safe country is different from a safe blockchain. Having enough dollars securing a blockchain inherently increases the ability to have higher total value locked. The TVL on a blockchain should not exceed the security budget of a blockchain. By a theorem, having a higher security budget, can hire handle higher TVL on various DAPs So that piece is important. However, these L2s are extracting a lot of value for the coinbase on base alone

extracted about 15 million in fees over Q I think I was Q4 of last year and that's continually growing and that's only one of the L2s so if we want to see Ethereum actually achieve kind of its new all-time highs and recover from this narrative of oh it's kind of dying it's that middle child it's kind of forgotten and surpassed by their chains I feel like it significantly needs to do one thing which is go back to focusing on its L1 and scaling its L1.

And you mentioned the Pectra upgrade, Dave. Unfortunately, that is just another upgrade to help the L2s. It's designed to increase blob size, which is really what the L2s use to stamp and secure their data onto the mainnet blockchain. So it's basically reducing fees even further for the L1 as opposed to scaling transactions on the L1 itself. So I think fundamentally I'm not seeing good signs of it refocusing on the L1. And that's the number one thing I'm looking for before I feel like Ethereum

will once again achieve kind of top, top mind share in this narrative of functional utility blockchains versus the story value narrative of Bitcoin. of functional utility blockchains versus the story value narrative of Bitcoin. Boz, I see you joined. Hey, Dave. Thanks for having me up. Paul, I wanted to ask you a question on that. I mean, over the course of the last, I'd say even year, Ethereum has kind of been criticized just culturally by a lot of people that are, and I'm talking about more so retail users and advocates of

Solana, just due to the culture that it's forming. A lot of people calling Ethereum sort of the the woke culture chain in sort of the way that Vitalik moves and and how he speaks. What did you think about the Solana news yesterday where Solana was criticized for the same thing when they deleted that advertisement? Do you think that's perhaps a shift in culture between the two chains?

Honestly, I think that is just a distraction from the viewpoint or an excuse as to why the chain succeeds or fails. At the end of the day, if people are able to launch the apps that they want to and are able to use them, that seems to drive the actual utility. There is a marketing need. So Bitcoin didn't need marketing.

It was the first of all the chains. So as soon as it came out, people had their eyes on it. After that, you need some level of marketing. And the marketing is to bring at least awareness. Once you've brought awareness, then you actually have to bring utility. And I think everyone's aware of Ethereum. I know people in the streets that don't own any cryptocurrency, but they know what Ethereum is.

But then you actually have to drive utility to it. And I think that's where Ethereum failed. And let this be a warning for Bitcoin as well. Both Ethereum and Bitcoin ran into exactly the same problem. They both ran into scaling. The difference is Bitcoin had a secondary narrative to lean on. It had that store of value narrative. And while people think that is what Bitcoin is for, don't want to bring back the scaling

wars, go back to the original advocates of Bitcoin, they also wanted as a utility chain, they wanted to build a spend with it, transfer of value, digital private cash. Ethereum was also marketed as a utility chain. We can actually create decentralized applications, but it doesn't have the fallback narrative of pure store value. If another chain, and I know this is a big, big if, if another chain truly accomplishes a utility narrative, it has the ability to creep on the story value narrative.

So once again, a little bit of a warning to the pure play Bitcoiners out there. Don't rest on your laurels just like don't rest on the laurels that Ethereum tried to with utility, but not actually achieving scalability. So both use cases do need to achieve scalability. And regardless of the, you know, is it a woke chain or not a woke chain, You know, whether or not I sit on one side of that political spectrum to me is irrelevant. I'm all about making sure something is actually usable to the mass market. Zillian, I saw your hand go up as Paul was talking. Did you have a comment on that? Yeah, very quickly. Yeah, definitely. I think from fundamental, I totally agree from fundamentals.

Unfortunately, this environment is built on sentiment. And I think from a fundamental, I totally agree from fundamentals. Unfortunately, this environment is built on sentiment. And I think from like an outside the US view, I think the shift that is happening in the US from a, you know, from a dominant type of stance, walk versus non-walk, etc. I think Ethereum is definitely it's definitely priced in right now in Ethereum a little bit. So yeah, the walks now are the bears basically everywhere and the bulls are the other side. But this is just the fun side of it, the sentiment side of it. But on the marketing subject, this is really something that a lot of people

that were trying to build blockchains were advised against because that was basically advisor would tell you, look, if you're building a chain, try to make your marketing very discreet or completely dissociated from your foundation model simply because you'll be deemed as a security, et cetera, et cetera. from your foundation model, simply because you'll be deemed as a security, etc. Obviously, a lot of people copied what Ethereum did from a setup perspective,

from a corporate setup, like an organizational setup perspective. But a lot of chains really kind of understood that marketing is important. You have to be able to build awareness and to also be able to pick winners because a lot of maybe this is not like out in your face but these foundations, these chains, they do pick winners. They do support certain projects over others which they believe they will bring as much traction as possible to the blockchain or whatever their value, whatever their metrics are. But there is a force that picks winners and that force, it could be obvious, non-obvious. And what really makes a difference here is how quickly

certain chains are able to adopt certain narratives and provide the infrastructure that will make that narrative even more proliferate, push it as much as possible, allocate capital to it, et cetera, et cetera. So marketing is very important, is becoming more important and more as we have a lot of competition obviously. So these chains, when they become like having the illusion that they can continue to exist without having an actual sales force behind to sell the features of their infrastructure, they're leaving a lot of land for me.

That's all. Amitaiya? Yeah, I just add that we're talking a lot about two main things I see, which is the Ethereum design flaw of L2s, which is an actual design flaw that will require a structural change to accrue value back to Ethereum. Right. And I think many of us agree with that, depending on where we're at. The other piece of like marketing and growth, and it's just coming back to my last piece, is that you have to want to do marketing. You have to want to invest in marketing.

And I think when we see the Ethereum Foundation consistently selling down ETH on validators and holders, the big question is, it looks like a lot of that money is going into Infrateam, not into marketing. And I just go back to my previous point that this thing was designed as a public good. It wasn't designed as a highly competitive market performing blockchain that was going to dominate, led by people with that mentality. And I think the philosophy that we look at when it comes to the founders with Vitalik and these other people all agree. And many of the others who have had that mentality and have wanted to be competitive haven't stayed.

So I think that the underlying desire to actually compete in this market has to be demonstrated. And until it's actually demonstrated, the people who are coming along with great tech and the desire to compete will continue to outperform when it comes from pure growth in the short term and in the midterm. Yeah, just quickly, I just want to give a very quick example. Polygon partnership team. in the short term and midterm. Yeah, just quickly, I'm just wanna give a very quick example, Polygon partnership team. I'm just gonna give you a very simple example. Bunch of guys that are determined,

they are in a setup like a call center, they work 12 hours a day, they're on the phone all day and they're making partnerships. Same thing with Chainlink guys, it might not be appearing, but they enabled. When we wanted to onboard with Chainlink, they basically told us, you do nothing, we do everything. Can you imagine? So there are projects, there are people that are really building this infrastructure, they're really pushing the solution and pushing the adoption and for me that's essential. Obviously a public good blockchain is a great design

etc. It is a great ideal but in a competitive market when there is a price on the thing that you provide it doesn't live long. It dies at a certain point because simply there is no one pushing and everyone is pushing something else. Well, it's a good thing that the Bitcoin Foundation and Bitcoin CEO are marketing so hard. Well, they were first, right? So first mover and the right narrative. Couldn't resist. Well, we're getting up against time. Anybody else have any final thoughts or should we call it here? You know I just wanted to stress the Linux example because I thought that was a brilliant one guys on what Ethereum could become and I know Ethereum has really really changed

the name of the game being the number one smart contract platform bringing the EVM you know compatibility, solidity and tons of really cool things. My only big concern is, you know, I think it would be a pity if Ethereum would become just a small tool for the future of blockchain, like being a CPU or being, you know, GPU, right, or something like that, not the the part of the supercomputer. So yeah, I just wanted to summarize that Linux is a really good analogy because, you know, Linux, at the end of the day, you need the business team, you need a commercial team. And I don't think it's just business and marketing, by the way. I think it's

also branding because, you know, Solana doesn't necessarily have a very strong business development team. They have super teams, but, you know, companies like Apple, they've managed to create such a cool brand where the products sell for themselves. It's more support that you would provide in terms of grants, maybe sometimes, or just having that tech support when you're building stuff and being available. But yeah, I really wish them best of luck. Well said. I think Zillian, you had a comment there? Yeah, you know the worst thing about Ethereum foundations is that they don't care. Okay, so we talk about them for hours, we give advice, they don't care. They're in their bubble, unfortunately. But thank you for this talk, this was great. Thank you. I did find it ridiculous up until a few months ago, learning that the Ethereum Foundation was actually not staking any of their ETH.

I thought that was almost humorous to learn. Or not using Aave. Can you imagine? The people that invented DeFi are not using it. Yeah, at the time I looked into what the yearly budget of the Ethereum Foundation was versus what they could have been earning using Aave and just liquid staking for the amount of ETH that they own. And I want to say that the numbers came to that they were operating at about 75% over budget in terms of what they could be earning per year just passively using Aave and Lido.

It's crazy. But Dave, I'm kind of hijacking your space here. I know that you were looking to wrap up. I just want to thank everyone and all the speakers for joining. And we will be live again tomorrow at 10, 15 a.m. So if you're tuning in, make sure to follow all the speakers. And thanks to Dave for really killing it this week and hosting these spaces in Scott's absence.

Yeah, no problem. Thanks, we'll talk again tomorrow morning at 10.15 on Crypto Town Hall. Nice, thanks all. Thanks everyone, have a great day. Thank you. Thanks everyone.