The Wolf Of All Streets - Kamala To Beat Trump? Crypto Leaders Debate | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Crypto Town Hall is a daily X Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in crypto and bring the biggest names in the space to share their insight. ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/    ►► OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $10,000!  👉  https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd ►►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    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.

Big day in the legal world for crypto again. Glad we got you here, Fred. We need at least one legal expert on every panel to unpack these things for us. I had met a lawman, James Murphy, on my YouTube show this morning. We went pretty deep into both the FTX and Ripple situations. Just waiting to get everybody up on stage and we'll dig into it further. I guess we can give a quick market update while we're at it. Bitcoin currently trading $57,577-ish, about up almost 3%, 24 hours, still down 10% on the day. Ethereum still largely underperforming. Solana up 3.7% on the day, 157, and then kind of a laundry list. I think the bigger story, obviously, is that Ripple is up, or XRP more specifically, 20% in 24 hours, which leaves it flat on the week. One of the few things that's actually in the green for the week. What's up, Mario? You here? You among us? Are you a real person? Like Mario's in the glitch. Mario's in the glitch. So before we dig in even further here, just I guess we could do a, you know, let's just start. Let's talk about XRP. Fred, maybe you're the best person here to sort of

unpack this. You had a great sort of tweet about it. I mean, just the sort of summary here is they're paying $125 million fine, or at least that's proposed if there's no appeal. It was originally up to $2 billion that the SEC was asking for, getting $125 million. I think obviously a drop in the bucket. No disgorgement, no sense that there was any fraud, no sense that anybody was harmed in any way, shape or form. Really pretty, pretty big L again for the SEC. Is that a fair, fair summary? It's 100 percent fair. Don't you just feel so protected by the SEC, your friends there?

I feel protected. I feel much safer in markets with them having protected us from amazing things like FTX and Ripple. Right. Go ahead, Fred. So I was just going to say, youipple, that if four years ago when this started, the SEC had said to Ripple, pay $125 million and the secondary sale of XRP won't be a security. There's no fraud, no wrongdoing. They would have literally taken that deal without even blinking. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, they would have also paid the SEC more money, too. I mean, I bet a lot. Yeah. Gone up to half a billion even or a billion. I mean, people remember there's obviously a big factor with Ripple in general is that they hold a massive amount of XRP.

You know, however you think about that. Again, you and James mentioned this. Maybe not even five minutes. Maybe a minute was all it took for them to raise five times that $125 million yesterday. Yeah. My question, yeah. There's a lot of actually interesting news today, surprisingly, especially on the political front. I'm not sure if you saw Polymarket had Kamala over Trump for a bit of time. But I was just trying to jump in quickly to talk about that before you dig into ripple but the the question i have for you fred is um what does it mean for the rest of crypto instead of just ripple oh man that's a great question i was gonna wait later to get into that

i'm glad i'm glad i i'm glad i asked the good Sorry, it took me a while to jump in and ask good questions, quote, institutional sales. And so this is, you know, an opinion that is going to be reported, citable. It's already being cited in a lot of other cases that the SEC is using. And, you know, they're just going to hammer their targets with the fact that degenerate contracts, you know, with these sophisticated buyers, you know, hedge funds, any other entities, and did you have any of these similar types of structure agreements? And hey, look, the court said Ripple was violating the securities laws when they did this. You're kind of doing the same thing, if not the same or worse. And so, yeah, just do what this other judge said. So that's as far as it'll go.

I mean, that's the argument that will be made. And by having that in the books, it's a risk for all these other companies. So can you expand on the risk, Fred or Dave? By the way, Dave, I'm not sure why you changed your name to DW. It doesn't make you sound cooler. Dave is not. why you changed your name to DW. That doesn't make you sound cooler. Dave is not. It's fine. But, yeah, so what does it mean for other project choices?

He's going to absolutely roast you now that you said that. I hope. You wouldn't destroy me. But, Dave, please go ahead. Or DW, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, Dave is fine. Whatever. I was just trying to be shorter.

There's no story there. The simple fact is that this is bad for token issuers, good for trading platforms in terms of precedent. And that is not necessarily good for the industry. It also dramatically increases the stakes in the election and the efforts of people. Scott, I saw you lumped in with Ro Khanna, which I thought was kind of funny, to get towards a fit 121 kind of safe harbor, like Hester Peirce had been saying for six years. So you consider that every issuer out there that's raised money and made representations of future profits to investors, all of them now are ripe targets for the SEC. But the issue of secondary trading does mean that the actual cases the SEC has going for the most part are all going to get crushed. So it's kind of an interesting bifurcation. But from a capital raising perspective, the need for an actual ability to, quote, come in and register and the ability to have disclosures that are meaningful, it's just up the ante there. Because, you know, Ripple may not have cared about 100 and whatever million, 125 million, 200 some odd million.

The average issuer does care and many small companies in the same situation are gone uh and the sec does this without any any mind to it as you said toward investor harm no allegations there fraud no allegations there so you know i would call the decision mixed. It's clearly good for XRP and good for Ripple Corporation. But I think as the industry goes, it actually ups the stakes and the need for real legislative action and real agency or White House action. So what does it, can you expand more when you say it's just not good for the rest of the industry for projects that have raised capital um what do they need to do they've already done the way they've already raised the capital why should they be worried

and what could happen next i i you'd have to talk to the lawyer about statute of limitations but the fact is if a issuer raised money and made statements to individuals like was documented in the industry to give a case that you should buy this because it will go up in price, particularly if they use words like guarantees or other things. And if they claim that they're a doubt, but the founders were actually making money at it. I think they're going to have a problem. Because that's basically what this case is about. The case is about selling the token to raise money

for the expectation of profit. I mean, I don't want to go through Howie bullshit because I'm sick of talking about Orange Groves in 2024. We should be talking about computer platforms, right? But that is the essence of the case. We've always commented that it's odd that the SEC has not gone after issuers. They've gone after trading platforms.

In the case, it seems stronger for issuers. I think this basically makes it even more obvious. And Matt and Norman, maybe on the legal side and the statute of limitation, is that something you could give us more clarity on? Because I think a lot of projects in the audience are trying to get some sort of clarity. And you could always say that's not legal advice. It's not legal advice. It's not legal advice. The statute of limitations is a little bit weird in that the SEC, if it is seeking disgorgement, has a 10-year statute of limitations as a consequence of legislation over the last 10 years. But typically it's three years or one year,

depending on what statute you're talking about in the Securities Act or the Securities Exchange Act. So I would encourage, I think Dave is correct, you know, if you issued tokens to purchasers pursuant to contracts that have provisions that, you know, that are in effect after the consummation of the deal, holding periods and whatnot, then you should get legal advice about how this impacts you. But remember, this didn't happen yesterday. This happened in July of last year. The judge rules on summary judgment that does offers to the institutional investors constituted investment contracts. And let's not forget also that this decision is merely a decision of a district court judge. And we've got other decisions from Judge Phelan in Coinbase and Judge Rakoff and the Terra Luna thing that are very hostile to even trading on the secondary market transactions and finding that it's very plausible that those are security

transactions. So that's why I believe that we're in sore need of a case going to the Court of Appeals. We have no Court of Appeals case on the question of whether crypto traded on a secondary market constitutes an investment contract. In my view, it should not. It does not. But we don't have a binding precedent. Decisions of district court judges have no binding effect on anybody other than the parties that were before her. You could choose to follow or choose not to follow. The judge in Binance, to her credit, did follow Judge Torres. The judge in Coinbase, Judge Fela, expressly chose not to follow her fellow judge in the same courthouse,

Torres, and instead followed Rakoff. So it's all wacky. This is not how it's supposed to work. The way it's supposed to work in our country, in every country that is governed by the English common law, is there's supposed to be something called the rule of law so that it is crystal clear to everyone what is prohibited and what is allowed. We don't have that here. And it's an untenable situation. And, you know, Congress needs to step up, blah, blah, blah. I won't get on that soapbox. but we have a confused situation right now. Talking about Congress stepping up, and maybe you can shift to the political landscape as well, Simon or DB, just especially with the report that Kamala is really getting traction. A lot of polls are showing that, and Scott loves polls. And even Polymarket that um as a proponent of

um and ran just jumped on so it's a good question to ask him um let him just load but essentially polymarket had now they're pretty much dead even at trump is at 50 and kamala's at 49 but polymarket had at one stage kamala just beat trump and the likelihood of being next uh presidential candidate so a president the next president um r next presidential candidate, the next president. Ryan, your thoughts on Kamala's traction in the polls? Maybe you could talk about the pro-crypto event she's doing with Mark Cuban and our friends Karam Ritchie. I think that if the Americans vote for Kamala, then they deserve everything that they get in the next four years.

I think it's absolutely, absolutely crazy. And I just cannot understand how she's winning in these polls. Either I am completely, completely, completely out of touch with what actual Americans think, and maybe I live because I live overseas and I live in my frame of references, Twitter, YouTube, and the things that I watch. Or, I don't know, all the Americans are just suckers for punishment. But I just cannot imagine.

Pretty straightforward, actually, Red. Just like I think from being here on the ground, I think the groundswell for Kamala has nothing to do with her. I think you have basically two kinds of voters in the United States at this point, you have like Trump voters and you have anti-Trump voters. And so that huge gap of people who were anti Biden because of Biden's situation, I think are defaulting to I'll vote for anyone against Trump now that it's not

Biden. To me, that's the only way you can explain this gap closing. I'm not saying that's right, wrong, not my political opinion, but I've seen it anecdotally. There were so many people that were going to just do Trump because Biden was literally incapable. Or you just got to say that the average american is a dumb socialist like because if maybe maybe we just live in in in a place where we're surrounded by capitalists and stuff like that and the actual when you go down to it like like the average voter like you know like let's let's take an example south africa right so africa is a very extreme country you've got 50 50 million people that live here of which probably there's

three million taxpayers in the whole of South Africa just to give you an idea out of 50 million people um and and probably the majority of the tax comes from 250,000 people if that so you know like and we're surrounded by the 250,000 people and that to us is the experience of what South Africa is but the reality is to most people who live in South Africa, South Africa is a very poor rural type place. Maybe it's the same in the United States. And maybe in the United States, the majority of people are actually woke left-wing socialists.

I don't think it's that simple. I mean, I hate to do politics. I don't think it's that simple. I think that there, it depends on, once again, I hate talking politics because people are going to assume that these are my beliefs. But I'm telling you, from a third party perspective, there are a lot of people who rightfully or wrongfully have no idea, believe that Trump is a literal threat to democracy and will vote for anything other than him because of January 6th and other things. I don't think it's I don't think very many people are voting for their own beliefs in this election. I think they're voting because they hate someone more than the other person. But they need to understand that by doing this, they're putting

themselves into four more years of Bidenomics. Like, look, one thing I've learned about politics is that it's not rational. And that certainly our view isn't the view of the mass voter. And that's just what we have. That's that's just what we have to understand and live with. Like, that's it. Our view is not the view of the mass voter. There's one point you're missing, Rand, which is, I think, very important here. And it's sort of what Scott's saying, but just understand that the media has gone on an all-out blitz to portray Kamala as pivoting to the center, precisely because they know that if people really thought she was a far-left socialist, as you call her, she would win. And they're going to do everything they could to keep policies and whatnot away from the away from it and that is what's going on and that

is what's happening in the polls as well so we'll see if policies actually do get debated here yeah DB and Simon. Hey, good morning. Sorry. I'm in the car. Hopefully audio is not bad. You're good. Yeah. Rand, I think you give people far too much credit, especially in the U.S. I don't think most have any clue whether they fall in the socialist or capitalist camp or can probably even tell you what either is. And to what I think that was Dave that was just saying, it's all media propaganda. They believe what they see and what they're told to believe. So I don't think it really has anything to do with what they think they know. And it's just, it's the way the U.S. is built.

Yeah, I mean, look, as I said, I think that's the way the U.S. is built. I think we don't really understand the politics, and I certainly don't understand how people would – you're voting for what you've had for the last four years. Everybody's unhappy. It's probably the most – I don't know – most unhappy I've ever seen my U.S. friends. Most unhappy I've seen – I think you're using a very small exactly exactly people to make that judgment i think a lot of things surprised me as well especially the poll numbers and how fast camilla shifted things and obviously some people just don't want to believe the polls dave you've

mentioned the the media blitz pro pro camilla media blitz which we've covered heavily um i think if you check on uh there's a tool that allows you to check all the media headlines, and the vast majority of them were Kamala. And we posted and Elon – we tweeted a couple of posts about Google News. If you search – you can't Google Trump assassination. It's censored. You can Google it, but it won't show in the recommended searches. And if you search Trump rally, you get results of a Kamala Harris rally. So, yeah, you could talk about the kind of the Democrats are riled up again.

And, you know, they're gaining traction. Is that enough? We don't know. But it's a lot more complex. And there's the All In podcast. One of the speakers there gave a good overview. It's like four camps. One of them is pro-Trump.

One of them is anti-Trump. They'll vote for anyone but Trump. Those of them is anti-Trump. They'll vote for anyone but Trump. Those ones were already in the Biden camp. They shifted to Kamala. And then you've got the Democrats, the people that usually vote Democrats, and the people that just despise Democrats. The people that despise Democrats or Biden, whoever it is, they vote for Trump. And then the people that like Democrats, those ones were very split because they didn't like Biden. He was just too old, but they want to vote for a Democrat. And now they've got an option with Kamala. And that's why the poll numbers changed.

Because remember, Biden was a lot closer than many of us expected, at least what I expected to Trump. I'm like, there's no way the poll numbers will show Biden to have a chance. But, you know, some polls showed that he did have a chance and he stayed in the race for a while.

But I think what matters more is that we can't, you know, it's anyone's guess who will win. But more importantly, what it means for crypto, because I know Kamala's doing, I think an event or a roundtable with Scaramucci and Mike. They did already and have another one that was, I think, supposed to be today and got delayed. What's her stance? That's the question.

What's her stance on crypto? And how? I don't think anybody knows her stance on anything yet. What do you mean? Number one, she doesn't have a stance on anything. Number one. Number two, worse than that, she's been the vice president under the worst regime for crypto in the history of crypto. She's been the vice president.

The question is how much influence over decisions does the vice president have? So, you say that, that right but how much has crypto accomplished in the last four years we have bitcoin etfs we have we have ethereum etfs we have how much could crypto have accomplished how much could we have accomplished how much could we have accomplished if how much could we have accomplished if we didn't have these fuckers in our way? Honestly. Oh, I agree, but I mean, you're comparing this administration, which I see

a lot has been accomplished, to the last administration under Trump, and they didn't do anything that helped crypto. They had people that were in their administration against crypto. Nah, I think, to be honest, I don't think that's that's a that's a ran can i take this one that that may be one of the silliest things i've heard on this

on this space ever i don't want to say the only reason that knowledge no no no the trump administration was anti-crypto for the first three years you don't remember that oh i i believe me i was in washington down talking to the sec three times during his administration so yes i'm aware it was i don't believe in it i don't see it show me the beef we had the ico mania etc uh there is a difference the only reason this administration had anything done is because they were forced to by the courts and oh by the way the state of policy one of the things we do know about kamala because she is on the record is she does want to change the constitution and the construction of the court system so the only reason we got anywhere

under biden was because of the courts and his vice president wants to change the courts so you can say whatever you want i'm not trying to argue your policy until we get nowhere i'm not trying to argue that biden is friendly to crypto because I don't think he is. And I think that that's a mistake. But I also think that we can't ignore the fact that Trump was afraid of crypto. And rightfully so, I think it changes his stance. I mean, come on. Hold on.

Are you really arguing? Are you really comparing the last four years under Gary Gensler, Elizabeth Warren, and the scum Democrats to the last regime? I mean, are you really comparing? this was a prank i thought this was a prank but now i've just gone through your timeline and i realize that you are one of these extreme uh left-wing woke people that i mean i can't even have a serious discussion with you because because i i mean i'm i'm just discussing the topic do you do we remember around gensler when gensler was appointed even those in the right were like oh this is great for crypto. And he ended up being somebody that wasn't great for crypto. And Trump was the one that said crypto was a scam. I mean, people evolve. And Harris hasn't come out with what she thinks of crypto. But there's been a lot of people, including myself, who are pushing her to be more pro-crypto, including Mark Cuban, Anthony Scaramucci. They have a crypto for Harris

event coming up next week on Wednesday, I believe. And I think if you're going to be pushing people away like you are, Ran, you're not going to have Democrats embracing crypto. You're going to have them fighting back and seeing this as a divisive issue. That is true. I think Belay had an amazingly well, well framed out, you know, tweet this morning, I responded to it. I don't know how to pronounce his name. Okay, biology had an amazingly good, you know, post about this. The simple fact is the Biden administration and Harris can make public comments absolutely about it, has put forth Carolyn Crenshaw to be renominated. She literally wrote the dumbest.

And I've used those and I back this up. I've actually written this through. She literally wrote the dumbest, most ill-conceived counterfactual dissent against the Bitcoin ETF ever. And they have her actively proposed to be renominated. At a minimum, that should get pulled. And Harris should say, you know what, maybe we should reconsider that. You could talk about Gensler, the court cases that have no allegations of fraud that would hurt investors if the SEC won, and there are several of them, should be stopped. And there are many other things that she could make statements on. If those roundtables do not

result in those sorts of statements in a platform, such as the Republicans have put in their platform, we've talked about this, then it is a partisan issue. It shouldn't be. I agree with you. It shouldn't be. Frankly, I voted both Democrat and Republican in my life. I've been registered both in my life. I don't like either party. But the simple fact is that there are things we have to do. The other thing to keep in mind is freedom, and freedom to act and freedom to talk and privacy rights. And she just nominated a vice president who doesn't believe in any of those things. And that's all coming out now and

will come out a lot more over the next few months. So it really is important. I think it's important. And I say this coming from somebody on the left, and what I'm seeing from people on the left who are anti-crypto, is that when you make this a political issue and you start dividing people across political lines, it's going to make Democrats anti-crypto because it gives them a talking point. Oh, Trump wants to do this. Trump wants to buy Bitcoin with the treasury, or he wants to hold it in the strategic reserves. And then people on the left are going to want to attack that and use that as a talking point. Whereas if you instead include those on the left, and I think a lot of people are realizing this, especially Scaramucci, is that if you include them and you make them see that this is a positive thing for themselves and it doesn't have to be a divisive issue, then they can embrace it too. Maybe not to the same extent. Maybe they're not going to say, oh, we're going to – But that point isn't up for debate.

I don't think anyone here, certainly if you do, then I agree with you that would be stupid. You shouldn't be pushing people like Gillibrand or Ron Wyden or Richie Torres or Ro Khanna away. You can agree to disagree with them on some issues, but I don't think that there's

a whole lot of difference between my opinions and their opinions on crypto. It shouldn't be partisan. The issue is, if you have to vote, and you have a choice, well, then you have to make that choice. If that's the most important issue to you, it's economic freedom matters. And if your company is being pushed offshore, like, I'll be blunt, I mean, my company has to basically move out of the United States, if

this election goes down to be four more years. Now, will it be four more years? The obvious best answer, as you say, is let's see them actually not want to do the opposite. Dave, let's just take a step back here. Kamala cannot claim, first of all, what we realize now more about the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Democrats are puppets controlled by people at the back. And if Trump wins, Trump is controlled by Trump and what Trump thinks. I think we can all agree that. He's controlled by his lobby groups. He's no different.

I don't think so. I think if you want to talk about who Trump is, for me, when I think about voting, don't get me wrong. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think if you want to talk about who Trump is, like, for me, when I think about voting, don't get me wrong. I don't think that Trump is great. I think the fact that America can only give us Kamala and Trump out of 300 or 400 million people is already a problem. But we are where we are, and we've got Trump versus Kamala. Trump, to me, is if you vote for Trump and you get Trump in power, you're getting his policies the way that he sees things. Kamala doesn't have a view. She's a puppet that's acting on behalf of the powers that be.

Number two, you cannot put your hand on your heart and tell me that you are genuinely believe that all of a sudden the Democrats are going to be doing a bad turn whilst the person who was the vice president in the most hostile four years to crypto and the most irrational four years to crypto is all of a sudden going to do an about turn, regardless of how many roundtables there are. Third, the only reason why Scaramucci is all of a sudden a Democrat is because he just fucking hates Trump. And so he's chickened out and he sold his values and he's gone and become anything that's not Trump, which in this case is Kamala. I guarantee you that if Trump wasn't running against Kamala, there's not a chance in the world that he would be supporting Kamala because he's a sane individual. But the problem is that he hates Trump so much because of what happened between him and trump that he will do anything to get trump out of power simple and yes we can have round tables of them and they can us that they actually uh are going to uh be pro crypto it's garbage it's garbage there's

going to be gary gensters and elizabeth warren's in the background and if you vote for elizabeth if you vote for for carmela you are voting for for four more years of Gary Gensler and you're voting for four more years of Elizabeth Warren. That's what you're voting for. And if, and to be honest, if the U S voters are dumb enough to do that, then they deserve everything that they get. There's nothing else I can say about it. Yeah. But, but you're giving the benefit of the doubt to trump but not to harris because trump said it was a scam why can't the why can't harris now that she's actually the going to be the president if she wins change the stance of the democratic party she can't possible but it i mean she can and she's in power. She's in power.

Stop. Look, the Democrats have two factions. Under Biden, the Warren faction, the deeply progressive faction was in power. They called it progressive. I hate that word because it really is a misnomer. But they were in power. All Kamala has to do is disavow that and break with that, which she has not been willing to do and may not be willing to do. But if she does, then I agree. You should get the benefit of the doubt. She hasn't said anything yet. The convention is coming up.

We'll see what their platform is. If it has it, it does. If it does, it doesn't. What can't happen or what you shouldn't, what we shouldn't as an industry do is believe anything if it's not in the official platform and if she doesn't break with that. We'll stop. David? I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I know you meant an assumption of Scaramucci's stance as just being anti-Trump. I wouldn't go that far. I think.

Look, I know, I know, we've know Mooj. We've had these discussions. We've had these discussions. At one point, he was a Republican against Trump. Now he's a pro-Democrat. I mean, the guy, you know, like you've got to remove personal things from, from, from, from, this is a personal thing. This is between him and Trump. Up until a couple of months ago, he was a Republican against Trump. Now he is all of a sudden a pro-Democrat.

I mean, he just doesn't want Trump to win. Let's just face it. He doesn't want Trump to win. And I understand. I understand. Trump humiliated him. I understand. It was humiliating for him.

It probably would have humiliated me if I lost in the White House for 11 days. David? Yeah. Yeah, no, i agree with ran i won't i won't say it as emotionally regarding scaramucci but you know he's got to put on a brave face and do what he has to do in order to salvage whatever he's got the guys gated his fund you know he's persona non grata in so many real ways that are not media based. And I believe, yes, this is I mean, he is part and parcel of this entire Trump world. He entered knowing what he was getting himself into. He got stung very bad. He has no choice, frankly, at this point to go the other way if he wants to remain relevant in any respect. And so that's where he is right now in terms of why Cuban is on that side. Again, I think, you know, look, what people care about most, I'd love to believe that they care about crypto as their highest priority in life. It's not. There are certain policies,

there are certain values that people go ahead and hold higher than that, and they will go ahead and vote that ticket based on those beliefs. And they're just going to try to go ahead and make the candidate that they have chosen because of those higher ranking priorities and beliefs to go ahead and be as favorable to crypto as possible. I don't think going ahead and talking about what happened under Trump's presidency, a number one vis-a-vis crypto is really helpful at this point. First of all, we know, you know, Donald Trump can reverse on a dime. He's, you know, he wakes up on the other side of the bed on a given day, and that's what the policy is going to be. And also, we're in a different point in time in history, in terms of crypto development, in terms of what this community is, and so on. And so I don't think it's very helpful to do that. But clearly, I do agree with the point that Kamala Harris at this point has no policy on anything other than women's reproductive rights, not saying that that's not a valuable and important

issue. And frankly, it's an issue that she's been able to go ahead and use to raise an incredible amount of money and an incredible amount of excitement. But beyond that, we know nothing at all about her platform and her stance. And by the way, I do believe that she is going to say from here to the finish line as little as she possibly can, because frankly, at this point, it seems like with her mouth shut, it's her race to lose. And if she opens her mouth, she risks alienating a lot of people that are now behind her that really have. I think Dave dropped out. I think you're right. Brian, your thoughts, maybe a question here, because a lot of people are saying she doesn't have a policy.

She's just being very quiet. Is that part of the strategy? Is it too early to have a stance or could this continue until the election? She hasn't announced her campaign up until 12 days ago or 13 days ago, right? So, I mean, she didn't have a policy written out because she didn't plan to be running on a policy. It takes time to actually formulate what your policy is. Of course, she knows where she stands on issues, but that doesn't mean you're going to have a well-written policy and if you know where you stand on an issue and then you're part of a regime that goes against what you stand for. Right. Like I'm just like I'm just like, you know, like that's like that's like me saying, you know, I'm part of a regime that goes against what I stand for, but I've never spoken up against it. And now all of a sudden, I expect people to believe me

that I've changed my views about something which is quite serious and quite fundamental. Like, I just like, who are you trying to fool, honestly? Who are they trying to fool? I mean, that's a pretty broad swath of information you're throwing at me there. I mean, are you talking about specific topics?

Brian, I'm saying this is bullshit, I'm saying this is ridiculous. Yeah, I agree. I'm sorry, man. Imagine if this is not the case. Imagine if Biden was the most racist administration in the history of the United States and Kamala Harris was the number two person under that administration. And then something happened to Biden, and Kamala was going to run for president, you would not say that she was a blank slate for her policy on racism.

Your argument is, I would say, if Kamala didn't speak, that's not it. That's a false equivalency, man. Like, just from a from a third party perspective, those are two very different issues. That's the assumption that crypto is so important that it can be compared literally to racism. It's more likely that most politicians have no opinion on crypto because they've never bothered. That is a false equivalency. I'm sorry. That's not the same thing. Do you honestly think that when Trump went to that crypto conference in Nashville a couple weeks ago, do you think he actually knew what a blockchain was? Do you actually think he knew the terminology?

If you sat down and you asked him about a CBDC, would he know why that is? He said he'd do what every businessman does. He said he'd hire a council because he's the CEO of the country. I don't think he does. He doesn't have an in don't think that he doesn't have an in-depth knowledge he doesn't have an in-depth knowledge he knows the basics let's let's get the facts straight right um in 2016 if anyone was in this industry um it consisted of a bunch of exchanges in us and what do those exchanges do they registered

with finsen they got themselves a bit license at some point if they wanted to do business in New York. And then they get 52 money transmitter registrations and they'd be in business. And they could list every single coin on CoinMarketCap. And they were in business. They didn't feel as long as they complied with AML laws, they knew they were in business? Then we hit the ICO bubble. What did you do if you were in the ICO bubble? Well, you tried to comply with the Howey test. And you said, if I have a utility token, then I'm going to create a white paper. And I'm going to sell it to anybody. And initially, they did it without KYC, then they did it with KYC.

And so they tried to comply with the money laundering regulations. And then a bunch of them committed fraud, those that just said, I'm going to sell my token, I'm going to I'm going to comply with the Howey test, so it can trade on the secondary market. And then I'm going to register it with a form D to the SEC. And then I'm going to register it with a form D to the SEC. And then I'm going to sell it to accredited investors only in the pre-sale. And then I'm going to find an exchange that will list it. Right. Those people didn't get sued. And those people launched tokens. The ones that didn't comply with those, they got all done for fraud and the SEC came after them. Then during the Biden administration, nothing was clear.

All of a sudden, if you're an exchange, you were like, okay, well, can I register with the SEC? They said, yeah, please register with the SEC. You need to be a special purpose broker dealer. Yeah, how many of those are there? None. All right, now there's this new virtual asset registration. Okay, and now we're doing staking what how is that classified is that a security is it not and then they did massive regulation through enforcement with the companies like coinbase that have tried to comply to the best their ability bought broker dealers and said to the sec and then gary ginsler decides that the only person he's going to meet is spf because they bribed and they did,

they used lobby money. And the industry just did not know what the hell it, what the hell it was, it was meant to do. And everything was regulation through enforcement. Now look back at Trump's time. Yeah, he didn't, he didn't get Bitcoin. He said Bitcoin is a competitor to the dollar. Actually, he did get Bitcoin. And as a president of the United States, that's probably a good thing to say at that time. But now he's realized that this industry has grown. And so under the Biden administration, this industry was so big. And there was all these multi-billion dollar frauds. They allowed those frauds to happen because of the regulatory uncertainty. And then they said, just give me a few billion dollars at the end of it. There's no comparison because the industry was working under the Trump administration, and then it broke under the Biden administration. And now they've

realized that this industry is something. We've got this very buoyant Bitcoin mining sector. We've got this energy play. We want America. There's 50 million accounts. We want America to be a part of it. Set your policy right now. So if Biden and the Democrats believe that this is an industry, prove yourself. You're in power right now. Do it because you've got a massive advantage over Trump, which can only say what he's going to do.

And Trump, even if you don't believe a word that he's going to say, clearly there is a movement or a policy towards deregulation. And there is a movement and a policy towards pro-business and making business. I agree with everything you've said. Just a direct question. Do you think Kamala, if kamala shifts her stance on crypto actually first question do you think trump shifted his stance on crypto from calling it a scam to where he stands today and i think don his son has already supported one meme coin is launching his own i think in a few days um is that what it is because eric eric trump tweeted something about falling in love with DeFi, and then Donald Trump Jr. said something.

That's the biggest red flag to me ever. Yeah. But the question is, do you think Trump shifted his stance for political purposes or because of his belief in Bitcoin's ethos? Yes, he did it for political purposes. Do you think – okay, so next question. Who cares? I agree. I agree.

Exactly. Next question on political purposes means because people are supporting crypto. So they're listening to the to the to the citizens, which is what counts. But then can Kamala do the same thing for political purposes, even if she doesn't care about crypto? But if she does, would you give her a benefit of the doubt? Yeah, but there's there's a big thing. There's a big thing with the current administration. You need to say if you want to really win over the voters right now, you have to do it. You can't say it because you've got the power.

How much is a vice president? Trump can say whatever she wants. She has to do something. I know she doesn't have power, but they could make some sort of moves that are not just political promises for another, you know, for six or 10 or 12 months down the road. Any move, any move. It's just when you're in power, whether she has the power or not, she has to do something. Any move she does is more for optics, though.

The ECTF was blatantly, oh, shit, we need to do something here. And in a week, they just completely changed the stance, showed that actually this is nothing about regulations and all about politics. So if the Democrats want to prove it, support our industry now. They can. You did it with the ECTF.

You can do it with the strategic Bitcoin reserve asset. You can do it with firing the people or at least engage and signal in the process for the people that shouldn't be here and start just showing. That's for Biden to do, his administration. But if you see Kamala trying to push for that and be very vocal about it, would you then give her – so I'm trying to find out is what threshold would you start giving Kamala the benefit of the doubt?

Because I know it's very difficult considering she's part of the administration. I'll tell you, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. I'll tell you, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. Before the elections, Gary Gensler is gone. Fired. They dropped the lawsuit. Sorry, but... Kamala cannot...

But guys, but she cannot... Kamala cannot do that. It seems like I'm back... She could easily announce that she's not going to reappoint Gary Gensler as chairman. She could easily announce Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset or the process that's required to just take everything that RFK did and said and everything that Trump said and put the wheel in motion and show that you're actually going to do it. But I'm trying to figure out what is within her power. Could she make such an announcement even if Biden disagrees with it? Her entire party would turn against her a large part of her party would turn against her if she came out and was very strong

in support of crypto. For the very simple reason that Democrats believe that politics that the government should have monopoly control over the financial system. Every age, every organization is registered, every user is tracked, every transaction is tracked, access to the system should be shut off if you're uh somebody the government doesn't like that is part of their core belief uh and for democrats to really support crypto and bitcoin as an open platform that competes with the government and

allows people to have economic freedom and do things privately and have the freedom to transact it goes against the Democrats' core belief. And they can't reject that. And I want to stress here, I'm talking about Democrat politicians, not necessarily Democrat voters. That's the core problem. Quick question on that front. So where does this become a problem? If this ends up playing a role in them losing the election, at what stage could Democrats themselves shift? Because obviously, Biden is not making the calls. Kamala only has certain powers at the moment. So for the administration to shift stance, where does

the current stance in crypto become a liability? Because it feels like we're getting close to that considering what happened with the ECTF. I think it's going to take multiple election cycles and a lot of churn in the Democrat party for them to actually sincerely support our industry. I think that is a fundamental issue for them. Most of the comments agree with you. Just kind of give you a heads up. Most of the comments agree with you and Ron. So Mario, I disagree to some extent. I think it will be more difficult, obviously, for Democrats to push forward policies as extremely positive with crypto as say RFK did, right? But they will push forward policies, I believe, that will be beneficial to the market. I think they will push forward policies that are going to allow for more clarity, more clarity tax-wise, more clarity regulation-wise. I think

that's where they will stand. I don't think they're going to say, oh, we're going to buy billions of dollars in Bitcoin for the strategic reserves or anything like that. But I do believe that Harris will pivot in that direction. And we probably won't get much until after she's elected. If she's elected, I'm sure it's going to be brought up and she will speak about crypto and speak about it in a more positive light than I think most people in here expect her to. But I don't think Biden's going to be doing anything. I don't think Biden's going to fire Gensler But I don't think Biden's going to be doing anything. I don't think Biden's going to fire Gensler. I don't think Biden's going to come out with new policy right now. And Harris wouldn't want that. Harris would want to be the one to make that decision and take

credit for when she does announce it. But I do think a lot of you are too negative on where she will stand. But we'll see. Scott, can I do you think Brian, Brian, Brian, I know you're extreme left wing supporter. I know. I mean, you literally run a podcast called what's left. Literally, I mean, why wait? What? No, I don't. I mean, you don't join your brother on a podcast or something called what's left literally i mean wait what what no i don't i mean you don't you and your brother run a podcast or something called what's left or something crafting cast casting cost okay cool where did i get what's left from there was an oil podcast defending what's left yeah because

i'm left i'm left leaning i'm not i'm not extremely So give me one reason why we should believe that. Just give me one reason why why we should believe that karma may change and we've just like, we've told you why we don't believe it. Give me one logical reason why you think that we should believe that karma may actually change your views. Because I Democrats are traditionally very progressive, they take on new technologies, they realize that things are changing, and they embrace them oftentimes. Now, Bitcoin,

up until a couple of years ago, it wasn't a mainstream word. Most people didn't know what Bitcoin was. Now that is changing. And I think the Democratic Party will adapt with it. Does that mean that we're going to have no regulation at all and allow for people to be scammed left and right with meme coins? Probably not. I think Elizabeth Warren is obviously way, way, way too far left on this. She has a background in protecting consumers. But the party in general, it's a younger party. And a lot of these people are pro-crypto and they are pro-technology. And Harris herself, she is very intertwined within the tech space, within the AI space. So I don't see why she wouldn't push more towards being pro-crypto. Is it going to be what Trump suggested or what RFK

suggested? Probably not. But I do think that clarity, I think clarity is important. Clarity with taxes, clarity with regulation. And I think we will get that in the next couple of years if Harris wins. Do you think that Harris would support, come out and say that American citizens have the right to self-custody and the right to transact without government surveillance, like it says in the republican party platform um i i think that she probably isn't going to use language like that yeah she's going to come out and she's going to tell you the rules in which you're allowed to transact the rules in which you need to declare your assets to the government these are not these are anti-bitcoin ethos anti-crypto ethos and i i you know i don't mean to be disrespectful to you

but it just really feels like you're severely delusional about this topic you really want to believe something else and you really want to convince other people to believe something else that is very very far from what's happening i i you know i'm just telling you my i'm just telling you my thoughts and i don't think she's going to be like, oh, you can just hide your Bitcoin wherever you want and you don't have to ever report it for tax purposes or anything like that. I think that you're going to be able to self-custody your assets. I don't think that's going to be something she's going to be against. Elizabeth Warren has literally said the opposite. Elizabeth Warren has literally said the opposite. Elizabeth Warren has literally said the opposite.

Wait, wait, what? Elizabeth Warren has literally said that transactions, she said that Americans… Elizabeth Warren is the far left extreme of the party. That's like me saying whatever Marjorie's telling me. She's the head of the Senate Banking Finance Committee. She's not some fringe element. More to the point, if Harris broke with Elizabeth Warren as opposed to wanting her to support her, which she is, that would be a signal, a very important signal, Brian. And I think that, you know, frankly, Scaramucci and Mark Cuban have both kind of both pushing her to do exactly that.

And if she does that, it's a different it's a different situation. And people wouldn't. I agree. I agree. That's the issue. I mean, what I was going to say, there's two things. First, if you really care, the one thing that could save the Harris presidency, what happens if there ever could be an opinion poll that showed John Deaton closing the gap or leading in Massachusetts, then Warren's power would fade. They would drop her like a hot potato and that would make it easy. But it's- Hey, I would vote for him. I would vote for Deeb. Right. This isn't about you personally. You and I disagree on some, agree on quite a bit,

and that's the way it is. And you've center right, center left, whatever. I mean, we could have rational conversations for sure. I mean, this is not a personal front. My problem is ignoring the fact that Harris could easily take a position and a platform under normal rules of engagement. The Democrats should have a party platform which defines their policy. They should. It should have been articulated already. It should have been well underway. And their convention is in a week and a half. And if it's not done then, then we know they're trying to pull a fast one. That's the reality. That's all. So, so it could, and you're right. Like it could go that in that direction. Do I think it will? I don't think it will. Um, and, and I, I do think we're going to

hear more about it. And, and there's these groups that are pushing her and she's reaching out. Her, her campaign is reaching out to multiple people that I'm aware of. Which is why I agree with you. I mean, Brian, we agree on this. I mean, not everyone on this panel agrees. I mean, I'm definitely a centrist. There's no question. And I think building a big tent is important for crypto because it will help. The question I was going to ask to the audience, because it hasn't been brought up,

is there anybody who knows whether the 30,000 coins that were moved the day after Trump just said that he would never sell one of them that were moved the wallets moved have any of those been sold because one of the audience that we know a lot they haven't been sold on chain but remember they were moved to a coin based wallet so they haven't been sold on chain and again remember that the the the u.s marshals have uh agreement with coinbase for compliance, for storage, right? Right. Oh, I understand that.

That's why I'm asking. There's a question. I legit don't know the answer. That's why I was asking. That would be a big red flag. If those coins sell, that would be a big red flag for me because it would be by pulling Harris over or by knowing that Harris is going know, be pro-crypto. Right. But that's my point. That's why I asked it as a question. And it is a legit question. It's not a leading question. It's not rhetorical. I just don't know. And to me, that matters. But we'll see. Fred?

Oh, I was just going to say, you know, what the Democrats will do to change. And I think it really is as simple as that is really what my good buddy Rod Tidwell would always say is show me the money. And with all the money example of that with Cori Bush. You know, there's obviously you don't have to get into it. A lot of talk about where she was on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the money that went on that side. But some people are sleeping on the fact that Fairshake gave spent a significant amount of money, millions to go against her because of her anti-crypto stance. And now she got primaried out so early. So there's a lot of money that's being spent. Democrats want some of that money. And it'll come back to, as everybody's already brought up, doesn't need to be repeated.

Are there going to be concrete actions by the party in power to be pro-crypto? And Harris just can't get a pass saying, I have no ability to control that right now. One last question here, getting your quick thoughts on this before we kick off the discussion with Libeta. Anything to comment on this one and maybe a quick update on the ETFs as well? Yeah, sure. I'll go through the ETFs first. I think it's been interesting to see the first two days of this week. We were seeing net inflows into the ETH ETFs and outflows out of the Bitcoin ETFs. Yesterday, that reversed with 45 million inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs and 24 out of the ETH ETFs.

So through this week, ETH ETFs are still ahead with 123 net inflows, Bitcoin ETFs, 272 net outflows. So people have definitely people buying ETFs, which are largely institutional investors, have definitely been buying the bigger dip in ETH than Bitcoin. But at least for yesterday, those those trends reversed. We'll see how it goes through the rest of the week. I think people are seeing the opportunity in the moment and taking advantage of that, even though the price action in ETH is not reflective of that, at least not for the time being. So I find that interesting. On the political front, I'm not going to comment too much more than a lot of what's already

being said. I just think that, you know, I think in terms of the price action for crypto right now, it's been hit by a double whammy of the macro conditions, obviously dragging it down. And then on top of that, since Trump has been so clearly pro crypto, that had been favoring crypto price action. And now that Kamala Kamala has been catching up, I think that's been pressure in crypto as well. I think I can foresee, given what we've seen in terms of some Scaramucci and some others in terms of what they're trying to do for the Harris administration. I think I agree that we could see some more favorable statements coming out of the Harris administration. And if and that may sort of ultimately be better, be good for crypto as maybe both camps will end up coalescing to a more accommodative crypto stance. Either way, once we get an administration, we'll have to see which one follows through with what.

People say a lot of things to grab votes during the campaign trail. So I take both sides with a grain of salt right now. Do your investors voice any concerns about Kamala's poll numbers improving when talking about Bitwise investors? I think a lot of the investors worked that are more focused on the bipartisan coalition that's been building in Congress and the bills that have been passed in the House. And so if that continues, which is likely the case, I mean, even with the Biden administration this year, we've seen Democrats breaking rank from the administration and starting to support crypto as they see their voter base largely calling more for it. And

they're also getting pressure from their large Wall Street Democratic donors. So I think the bipartisan coalition is even more important than whatever we see on either side of the administration. And that's what more of our investors are focused on. I think, Brian, when Rand asked you the question, he convinced me that Kamala will change her stance on crypto. The best answer would have been just the election. Yeah, I mean, I can't convince anybody that she will because i don't know but most people will be convinced by that answer in my opinion is that it all depends on what will win her the election i think that's the most important goal that she has right now and if it

if her shifting her stance on crypto is you know will play a role in that i think that's enough of a reason to do so and that and as said already, that was the main reason that Trump shifted his stance. Yeah, and not just her election. It's going to depend on the election of people in Congress as well, especially Elizabeth Warren. Yeah, I think this will continue to become more political as we get closer to the election. But let's quickly shift to the discussion with Liber discussion with libera libera appreciate being patient on the space um let me see if you're on stage yes you are how are you libera are you there can anyone hear libera brian can you hear him or is it glitching on my end well i can't hear any i can't yeah i can't hear you libera we cannot hear you let me go to simon if libera can't fix your mic in the next couple of minutes,

we'll have to do it another time. Simon? Okay, cool. Sorry, I was just going to... There is some news that just came out, and it's interesting on the political side, because obviously with Bitcoin, it's important to remain geopolitically neutral across countries that are enemies,

so that one country can't take over bitcoin and have too much hash power but russia just announced the legalization of bitcoin mining and i'm wondering whether that makes things more difficult with the the political process in america right now or does it just kick in the game theory of people accepting that this is something we have to win the race? I guess it's just but that was just announced that they've just signed in the legalization of Bitcoin mining in Russia. And I think China would follow shortly after with that. Yeah. One thing that's interesting, Simon, is that we were discussing not long ago is that the days of the administration, whether left or right, being anti-crypto are over, especially after the ETH approval. And now with Kamala replacing Biden,

isn't that another indicator that we're getting closer to a position where both administrations will become pro-crypto, maybe one more than the other, but it's just become too unpopular to be anti-crypto for both Kamala and Trump? I completely agree. It's all about the game theory. Look, this shouldn't be a partisan issue, but let's use it as a partisan issue because there are, I think, people on the left and right, Democrat, Republican, Labour, Conservative. You know, crypto is a neutral issue. If you believe in freedom, if you believe in owning your own money, spending your own money and being able to to beat inflation then anyone should love that whether whatever your ideologies are so i think it's important to use the game theory and so the geopolitical game theory that's happening with bitcoin mining should also be happening and you should be encouraging and everybody should be encouraging the democrats to make moves and then the Republicans

need to do something better and just create the one-upmanship because there's no point holding back. You've got to be involved in this, otherwise someone else is going to take the opportunity. Dave, that same question to you. Are we at a stage now where both administrations are pro-crypto and maybe getting your thoughts as well, kind of linking that to the current state of the market with the macro difficulties that we're going to be facing moving forward, plus the shock Black Monday that we went through versus obviously the Bitcoin ETF, ETH ETF, Kamalat potentially changing their stance on crypto. Have you become more bullish, bearish over the last month or two?

Personally, I don't think I've ever been more bullish. I don't think the market's pricing in any of what's really going on. And if you think about it, all roads lead to more monetary printing. You know, people don't talk about it, but this week is, if it's not conclusive proof, that... Sorry? Yeah, go ahead, Dave. Yeah, I was going to say the one piece of conclusion this week. All right, Brock, can you just wait for a second?

David is talking a little better. Yeah, I'll be done. I just want to make one quick point. We learned very conclusively that the ETFs do not exacerbate volatility but actually dampen it. And you can see that. And dampening it is in both directions potentially, but actually dampen it. And you can see that, you know, and dampening it is in both directions, potentially, but that's important. The fact is that the macro situation, you know, I've talked about the uncarried trade, we talked about, there's a lot of

risks in our financial system. And pretty much the only possible solution to most of it is more liquidity. And so, you know, and you can look at all of this stuff very simply. The most bullish thing that could happen would be the Democrats jettisoning the extremes on the one side. And then even if you don't have a massively pro Bitcoin administration, at least you're not against it. I think Simon is right. I mean, I think he's completely right. I think that it would be insane for the US to look at Russia and China legalizing mining and say, oh, well, we should push it all there. That would be insane. And I think that that would be insane from a political point of view if they even made the point.

I think that's a question that has to get asked. The most likely scenario is it's, uh-oh, you know, who's going to be first to make it a national store of value. And that's the kind of thing that is totally not priced in the market. Libera, are you there now? Yes. I hope you can hear me okay. We can. How are you? Yeah, I'm great. Trump or Kamala? I'm libertarian. That's one of the reasons why it's called Libera.

But anyway, I am a U.S. citizen, originally from Austin, Texas, but I spent my career in emerging markets, mostly in Asia, working on emerging market supply chains and happy to tell you about our mission. Good answer. Avoid answering this because you don't want to alienate half your investors. Well, good to have you, man. Let's dig into Libeta. Pleasure to have you on a political show. I'm just trying to understand exactly what you do. Just another AI play linked with retail, with e-com. Can you just explain further on how you incorporate AI and obviously something to do with data, the sharing of data? That's my assumption. How do you incorporate that into retail? So basically, there's about a billion dollars of retail commerce in emerging markets, which is offline. So it's essentially invisible to the consumer goods brands that make those products like Nestle, Unilever, Colgate, you know, basically they're distributing consumer packaged goods to billions of new consumers in countries like Indonesia, South Asia, Africa, etc. So we

digitize the small merchants. These are basically millions of small mom and pop shops. And we allow them to monetize their sales data, which these big brands increasingly need to amazonify their supply chains to predict what consumers will buy and make that so that they can make less of what is is not needed and make more of what is actually going to generate into sales and we also take continue yeah we take these we take these data insights also back to the originators. So your typical mom and pop shop in Indonesia, where we just got to go forward with some very big brands, including Procter & Gamble on a 20,000 store deployment. The typical mom and pop shop is selling about 80%. These are the stores that are selling about 80% of total consumer packaged goods sales in the country. But they themselves are earning a few hundred dollars a month, basically, on a 4 to 5K top line.

And we can help them to know what and used as discounts to buy more products. So we help millions of nano merchants to monetize their data, and we help the world's biggest supply chains by volume, which are emerging markets, consumer goods supply chains, to become much more efficient and help the brands themselves to make more money. Okay, so let's go through the first value add. So essentially, you've got all these different mom-and-pop shops. Obviously, e-commerce has been centralized with Amazon. But now you've got all these mom-and-pop shops. Are you talking about their online sales or their direct consumer sales in the store it's their direct to consumer sales in the store and also also how they order they do

some online ordering but they're still generally served by legacy distributors and wholesaling sailors who are also helping to digitize so we So we really digitize the bottom of the pyramid. This is where up to 2 billion people shop, even excluding India, and tens of millions of merchants that sell the bulk of volumes today. So that's really where most of it's happening. Not everybody in Indonesia and Africa is going on to Amazon,

especially to buy their daily items, your shampoo, your toothpaste, your basic household items. Okay. So then that data is stored in the POS software they use, correct? Yes. We started off with the POS when we got our first investment from Animoca Brands a few years back. And we've now transformed that into a conversational interface for the stores. So they can share data through text, through voice and other means, and they can get recommendations in their local language about what products they should buy and put in the store.

Okay, so you've just essentially added a value proposition for the store. It's like, hey, our AI algorithm will help leverage your data to help you determine which products to sell. And then they share the data, and then you've got that data, and then you share with the larger brands, and eventually the suppliers, correct? Yes, we're competing head-to-head with Nielsen. So Nielsen, so Nielsen in the US would have a very granular view almost real time on what's selling at CBS, Kroger, Safeway, wherever you go to emerging markets like Indonesia and Nielsen will say, well, we'll do some surveys. So they'll look at maybe 7,000 stores approximately in Indonesia where the total store universe is over 4 million stores. And that's the very, very tiny percentage of the market that they're gathering information on. It's also very centralized. They use cash to get that data.

It's not very well trusted by the brands. Our data is a little bit decentralized. And we can show really that we bring some of this data on chain. We can show there's a smart contract from Nestle to buy the data. 25% of the value goes back to the ladies running the shops, to the community. And that really is just a total game changer in terms of the trust that people have around our solution, both from the brand side and the stores themselves. Interesting. Nielsen doesn't have anything, like you guys offer that assistance for the store

to choose what products would work best for their customers. Nielsen doesn't offer that. They just offer generic data, because I used to use, I have a pretty large e-commerce company. It's my first business. And I used to run it before. I don't run it now.

So I've been out of the loop for years now. But I used to use Nielsen, among other. There's all these different providers that sell all their research studies and stuff. Essentially, they don't have that ability to assist the store and help. Unless they've introduced it now to help them decide what products would work best in their store, or maybe they've introduced it more recently. I'm not aware of it. No, our, our solution,

the whole concept is completely different because, you know, we're, we're giving a cut of the value of the data back to the stores and we're giving them basically a data science team in their pocket through the new libera app they can get insights about what's selling in their community and where they can get good deals and we're really excited about the future because we've got a lot of fintechs interested in this data because they wanted to start providing merchant credit so all these mom and pop shops that have been trying to get very high interest loans in order to, you know, really get the working capital byproducts.

A lot of them are unbanked or semi-banked. We can really start to extend very reasonable costs of capital to these merchants because we know also what products are going to sell. So you're really, you know, yeah. Yeah, I was going to ask, what type of data do you collect? I'm trying to figure out the value of that data.

Sales data. Sales data. What products are selling? How much toothpaste? What SKUs? What's going into the stores and what's going out? And the prices

that are being paid. It's not really... Sorry, finish. I was going to say, wouldn't that data, the supplier would know that data since the store needs to reorder anyway, no? That's pretty basic data.

Doesn't it? You would think. And in the US, absolutely, that's the case. But so let's take Indonesia, for example, which is our biggest market. You've got 4 million nano merchants that sell 80% of total sales for product sales for Nestle or Unilever, for example. They order from distributors, the big brands in that country. And it's the same in every emerging market that has over 100 million people and GDP per capita between 2K and 7K. It's just exactly the same they order primarily from sub small

distributors and about 15 to 20 percent of that sales data is shared with the brands they're really missing 80 percent of it these are just tiny wholesalers selling to mom and pop shops and they've just been using cash only for forever. And now they have smartphones and we basically take them from web zero to web three. Then another thing you didn't touch on is the efficiency that you guys introduced. So when you have that data go to the brands and the suppliers, so manufacturers in China, that's data that allows them to focus on the SKUs that work best. Is that another fair selling point that you guys bring as a value add to the entire chain?

You can start maybe making the environmental argument as well. For sure. Everybody in the supply chain makes more money with Libera. These massive supply chains are moving from a push to a pull so the u.s is basically starting to work that way as well in europe also you can sort of understand you get the data you predict what people are going to buy and you optimize inventories continuously with machine learning there's real ai in the supply chains in mature economies and now that flip is going to happen in emerging markets too. So these are countries with solid demographics, there's lots of growth, new middle, huge middle classes are

being created and demand-driven, data-driven supply chains are being created as well. So that improves profitability and it reduces waste. So the key use case is you tell the Mondelez distributor, you do machine learning for inventory optimization, are these Oreos going to be enough based on demand? Do you need to reorder more of these particular types of Oreos? You might have too much of this and need more of a different type. And so optimizing those inventories really reduces waste and just improves life for everyone at the bottom. It also helps the brands at the top to make more money. So it is a little bit less waste, but I would say the number one positive impact that we can deliver is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number one.

And that is poverty reduction, because I have spent quite a bit of time doing this, researching and deploying and fine-tuning this. And particularly in Southeast Asia, which people might forget, Indonesia is 300 million people, Philippines is 100, more than that now, Vietnam is over 100. So you got basically a population bigger

than the european union in those countries and i'm doing millions of these stores and there's always kids running around and i'm just doing the math on what these these people are earning and we can really help a lot of families and one of the things we're actually going to do this might sound a little bit crazy we're going to do the libera challenge. And if anybody's interested, just send me a note. We will fly you to Java and give you enough working capital to set up a store and live on it for six days. And then we're going to film these people like a reality TV show. And then on the seventh day, after you've been eking out, you know, about $10 a day, we're going to give you two kids to look after. And then the white guy like me and

Java, that's impossible. And I say, well, all these other people do it. How do they do it? They do it with community. And then let's do this with insights around what products to buy and how to do that. And a little bit of extra cash. And it's going to be a heck of a lot easier. And people can really understand how a lot of the world lives and how many people we can impact with this solution. And in addition to making a a really solid profitable business hold on i might i know bali really well in indonesia well because i used to live in australia which australia is always go to bali java's next to bali isn't it that's absolutely right yeah i was just uh we're we've got a whole flying the whole company to bali now yeah things are really going well we've got a whole final company in Bali now. Yeah, things are really going well. We've got some got some great supporters

I'm going I'm in KL for this crypto nights TV show. It was really fun. I appreciate being on there We had some new new offers. I just I'm in the lobby of the hotel just ran into One of the new investors from which which country you know I'm in Malaysia. I'm in Kuala Lumpur. And I'm going to Jakarta Saturday to work on this. Yeah, big deal. I'll be in Jakarta, work on the deal

and then going to Bali for CoinFest and really enjoy Indonesia. But it's just so... When's CoinFest in Bali? I love Bali. So, I can go there. I'd love that. When's CoinFest?

21st. Okay. Oh, wow. This month CoinFest? 21st. Okay. Oh, wow. This month. Shit. Oh, shit. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, it's going back to the past. So essentially you have a competition where you're going to choose somebody. You're going to give them working capital to open a shop and operate in Java. I'm guessing you're going to film it to kind of talk about the selling point, the Libera selling point. Yeah. And film the process yeah are you serious about that he's making as a joke i am actually serious about it i love it i swear anyone in the audience should really take up that offer um like if i had the time i'm not

kidding i would um it's such someone to pay me to open a shop and try to run it in java that'll be in indonesia that'll be insane an insane experience yeah so we will pay yeah we'll pay we'll pay for your flight to java and you got to be willing to be filmed and then uh you know you don't have to really look after the two kids on the seventh day but you get a you get the idea basically um how do people get by like you know could you do it could you get by on ten dollars a day um it would be tough right and then be pretty frustrating well could you take care of a family well one of the our objectives is we believe that we know that we can monetize this data we know we can give a cut to these moms and and dads that are running these shops we think we can basically double what I call the mom EBIT

or a million small merchants across Indonesia and around the world. And we can take that data, which is increasingly valuable, and put it on our balance sheet. So we're going to give Nielsen a run for their money and do something really interesting with this. We're really happy to have the support of Animoca and also Singularity DAO. We're in a pretty cool project, which is the Blockchain for Good Alliance created by Bybit. And we've got a TGE coming up in a couple of months. And, you know, looking great things to come and just so fantastic that the product now is being adopted by some pretty big names in the FMCG. Yeah, I'm pretty happy about it.

Are we, just last couple of quick questions. First, are we on your cap table? Am I, is me, IBC on your cap table or not? Yes. Oh, sick. Perfect, perfect. is me ibc on your cap table or not yes oh sick oh perfect perfect and second question is um um the the uh oh yeah when tge do you have any launchpads exchanges um who what and you said the date but who are your investors you mentioned a couple of them um and any launchpads or exchanges that you can announce? Yeah, investors are Animoca, Singularity DAO, Gains in Dubai, Pools. Those are also launchpads, some of them.

Nicholas Black recently made a significant investment. We've got an exciting promotion with him. There was just on this Crypto Nights TV show, which was filming in KL and got a couple of offers from some of those judges. I think we will probably announce those soon, but those are pretty, pretty big names. The exchanges we will announce soon as well. What's Kyle on that panel?

Yeah, I just saw him in the lobby, so I don't really want to name names. But yeah, there was an offer. I don't think he would mind me saying that there was an offer from him and we're expecting to sign that. So I need to go and meet him now, actually. Nice, congratulations. Paul, congratulations on what you've achieved.

I'm glad I'm on your cap table. It would be good to have Kyle. I'm not sure who else has made you an offer, but congrats on what you guys have built and the traction that you guys have, the adoption that you guys have. And yeah, man, I think it's going to be an exciting journey. Anyone that should take you up on that offer

to open a store, all expenses paid for six days. I'm guessing flights covered as well. I'm guessing, maybe not. In Indonesia, message Libera, who's on stage, and they'll take you up on your offer. I highly recommend it. Indonesia is a beautiful country, especially anywhere near Bali.

But yeah, man, congrats on what you built and thanks for being on here. For everyone else, good to have you all. We're going to see you again tomorrow. I'm not sure it's going to be as political as it was today. We'll change the title back to what it was now and wrap it up. But it's a good discussion, Ibera. And it was a great debate earlier, even though Scott hates political debates.

Do let us know in the comments if we should do more political debates. I enjoy them. I think it's getting more and more important as we get closer to the election, even though Scott tries to avoid it like the plague or like COVID for Scott. I appreciate it, everyone. Thanks a lot. And we'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.

Thanks.