The Wolf Of All Streets - Market Plummets As VC Funding Booms | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

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All right. So, Scott, please tell me how VC funding is dead and VCs are dried up. There's no money anymore. Projects are struggling to raise money. VC roundup, investments in Web3 startups. Look, man, I can put words in your mouth and you can pretend it's true. Investments in Web3 startups tops $1 billion, tops $1 billion in July. So there's a billion dollars that came in in July. That's the problem. That's literally the problem. Too much money is the problem? Too many things being invested in that nobody's going to buy when they launch. Literally the problem.

Yeah. They're also saying that all these VCs are dumb and they're throwing money at projects that will not do well. What are they going to do? They've raised money, they need to deploy it. And they're getting good deals. So maybe they'll make their 2 or 3x instead of 200 or 300x and retail will get absolutely destroyed. Retail won't get destroyed if there's not 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 Xs. Retail won't get destroyed if it's sitting at 2, 3 X. It'll be 2, 3 X for the VC price, not for the one that the retail buys.

Yeah, sure. But if the retail is sitting at 1.5, 2 X with full liquidity, well, that's not bad. And a lot of these projects are starting to launch. When's the last time you saw something launch that didn't go down? I don't know, man. You ask me questions, you know I can't answer them. I'm not sitting there watching the portfolio 24-7.

I'm not saying portfolio. Also, by the way, to be fair, that's what should be happening right now. Everybody got really excited when Bitcoin went up and started launching a bunch of projects into a part of the cycle where altcoins don't perform well. I'm not saying that means that they will in fall or in 2025. But if you look at past cycles, none of this stuff does anything until, you know, that the back end six, eight months after the halving Bitcoin up, and then we actually start to see money trickle down. My fear just is that there's just so many things and there's going to be so much liquidity.

Yeah, true. Maybe we will get that big of a FOMO wave. Maybe we will. Yeah, true. I also think there's a lot of that gambling money sitting at meme coins, but it can't sit there forever. So where is it going to go?

There's ICOs and there's NFTs, unless some new asset class gains traction. But for now, these are the two main asset classes been cycling through between meme coins icos nfts nfts are pretty much at least for now dead even though i'm pretty bullish on them um so what's left tokens proper projects yeah not fish tokens but there has to be people have to actually have money and i think if you look at any of the data mike m McGlone can break that down for us, I see he's here, but I don't think people have much money anymore unless you're the top 1%.

But you know, you have to start looking at, we were talking about the Habs of Combat, for example, we started to see some projects at Pixels, the metrics at Pixels are really good. And we started to see at Ethify, some of these projects are gaining a lot of traction, like they're getting proper utility. So it's no longer,

because you're always looking at the tokens pumping just because retail comes in. Tokens could pump because the project's delivering on what it promised and uses it like whatever they see, what the token's utility is. Did you just say hands-free? Yeah, the telegram game. Yeah, man, the one that's sending out hundreds of millions of players.

350 million. I think I have 30 DMs in my notifications from them. I saw the name Hamster Combat and obviously never responded to any of it. Of course you didn't.

Jonathan, you had your hand up? I was going to say, yeah, yeah. Hamster Combat has like 350 or 360 million right now. When you were talking about successful things that go up instead of down when they're launched, I mean. Does it have a token? Hamster Combat? They do now. I think it's on gate.io.

HMSTR, I think, is the... Is it up or down? I'm going to look. I haven't even looked. Dune Analytics just had a report that on Pump.fun shockingly only 1.41%

to 1.21 to 1.41% of the tokens created on there have had a successful launch. Not surprising. Yeah, but that's not... to 1.41% of the tokens created on there have had a successful launch. Not surprising. And successful launch by what metric? Like a month later or like a day later?

That's a really good question. I don't know. I do want to point out, it's the same thing with NFTs. It's like Shopify saying, hey, only 1.1% of our websites make money. It's like, sure, anyone can make a website on Shopify. Yeah, but Shopify doesn't have a bunch of people

who buy the Shopify website from that person that nobody sees. Yeah. I mean, hands down, I'm looking right now. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. I'm looking right now yeah okay go ahead yeah I'm looking at their please go I don't know if this is accurate it's on something called coin codex because I can't find it literally anywhere no no I don't think they have the do they have that on token

HMSTR and it launched it looks like this could be wrong but based on this site it looks like it launched about 62 cents and currently is sitting slightly off the all-time low at 48 ish cents but that's not that bad of a bleed no no what's it what's the what's the market cap and and uh accurate and uh ftv uh diluted market cap 4.88 billion 24 hour volume 1.06 million million yes answer listen i gotta check if this is all accurate i don't want to be throwing it out here it is from the internet so it's got to be real

it's got to be good but yeah i mean i i definitely think 4.8 billion sounds pretty high for a fully diluted market cap it doesn't have the uh circulating here so let me try to see more before i start talking about yeah um but let's let's kick it off man i think that's just wanted to kind of talk about the that article by coin telegraph that was good cvc funding coming in and i hope these people these very smart investors um agree with me and there's a lot of gems out there that are not getting the attention they deserve and hopefully we'll be celebrating later this year when finally those gems deserve the attention. I think that's the attention they deserve rather than a mequist. I still think that's pretty likely.

Oh, so now, now we're going to see the same. No, I have never stopped saying that we will see a FOMO cycle. I, I think it will actually happen. I think it's just going to be a lot more selective than in the past by the

sheer amount of supply. I just don't think there could possibly enough money where you do the dart throw and everything goes up 100x, right? Yeah, exactly. And so in the past, in the last cycle, literally anyone who got into any pre-sale had an opportunity where those things were up minimum 50, 100x across the board, right? How much are you investing at the moment? Nothing. Zero?

What was the last project you invested in? Bitcoin. You might have heard of it. No, no. I'm serious. Last private round you did? Literally no idea. I've been pretty much out.

I did a bunch, and now i'm just waiting you know months ago like uh i told you like i talked we had tom dunleavy on here we had um you know i didn't interview with arthur hayes i think in march and that was when the fomo cycle was crushing and i kind of went out of the limb and tweeted in march i thought the cycle was over for six months you know we're going to go into the summer doldrums. We're over four months into that. Since basically down only, memes destroyed, everything destroyed. And when I talked to Arthur, I was like, at Maelstrom, his family office, I said, how are you guys allocating? He says, oh, we're long done. He said, anything we wanted that was going to be quality that we were willing to take any time vesting on. He's like, we did already last fall.

Because you got to remember, like for serious investors with size, as you know, like it's one thing for a KOL, as they like to call people, key opinion leader, influence or whatever, to get like five or 10 grand into a project and then get liquid immediately and potentially make a little money or dump off. But it's a very different thing for a VC who's deploying hundreds of thousands of dollars into a project who's going to have one to two year vesting becomes really risky, I think, now to take long vesting, right? So I think more serious investors that are being selective are probably long done just

because of the time of vesting. Yeah, fair point. But I'll let you kick it off with the market overview as well. done just because of the time investing. Yeah, fair point. But let's kick it off with the market overview as well. I think the markets weren't doing too well. I'm actually interested to hear your analysis of it. What triggered it? I think markets are kind of fine. You know, we just went from, you know, on July 5th. So in three days, that'll be a month ago, we were at 53,481.

And in less than a month before the end of July hit 70,000. And now, you know, four days later, we're at 64,000. So that's like, you know, if you're looking at Fibonacci, maybe 20, it went a little deeper, but maybe we're 23, 24% retracement of that move. Get a move from 53 to 70, you expect to cool off a bit. I mean, we're sitting still in the middle of the same range we've been talking about now for four or five months, you know, kind of between 74 and the high 50s, depending on how you draw it.

And I think there's a bit of rockiness in other markets, but I don't think we've really seen that reflected in Bitcoin. Obviously, you know, like the VIX volatility for actual markets went from 10 to 20 in a matter of weeks and finally seeing some real volatility in markets, tech selling off. I mean, it's been pretty ugly out there and, you know, Bitcoin kind of has just been doing its thing sideways throughout all of it. So I mean, I just don't see any cause for concern or cause for excitement. This is exactly what happens in the halving cycle. If you believe in the halving cycle, this is exactly what I was my base case. I'm often wrong. This one thing I was right since March. And so I just,

I don't really see like, it's kind of much ado about nothing. I'll tell you actually what I've been impressed with is that Ethereum with the spot ETFs two weeks into it is basically tracking the broader market and Bitcoin as far as how far it's down. Actually, over seven days, Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin and the ETHBTC pair slightly. But when the Bitcoin spot ETFs were approved, we saw 49 to 39 in a matter of weeks, right? A 20% retracement on Bitcoin, steady selling from GBTC. And that was because Grayscale had launched with a 1.5% fee. Well, Grayscale launched their Ethereum spot ETF or ETH, they came with a 2.5% fee, way higher, 10x the competition, right? 10 times the fee of a BlackRock, many of those even having

waivers, much cheaper. We've seen over $2 billion of ETH sold, which means Ethereum sold into the market and Ethereum has barely budged. So there's clearly a hell of a lot of underlying demand right now for Ethereum. I thought, honestly, you would expect because Ethereum is less liquid, smaller asset, more volatile, that you would have seen if Bitcoin saw a 20% sell-off, a 25% or 30% sell-off. So I find it really, really interesting that ETH has performed so well when there was sort of this assumption there would be very little demand, especially in this part of the cycle. We obviously have some ETF experts up here who could probably give us some insight. But I mean, Jeff, do you mind if I ask Jeff, have you been surprised at how little sort of Ethereum has budged versus the wider market.

Yeah, I think that's a fair and astute observation. You know, I've been thinking about that dynamic too personally and wondered if there are some structural reasons for the difference in the divergence of Bitcoin and Ethereum's path since launch. On one hand, we know that a lot of the initial interest in Bitcoin for positioning pre-ETF launch was around the construct of relative value trading in the basis for which that could add a different short-term price path dependency that is maybe more of a focus point for Bitcoin than Ethereum, as I've observed. The other thing is maybe there is some relationship to be admired in the way Bitcoin is more entrenched in the traditional equities and public markets that Ethereum is not.

So, for example, we know Bitcoin does have some systematic supply that comes to market by its consensus mechanism, which is represented by the public equities in crypto mining. And you can anticipate they have different incentives and goals as to how they would think about hedging these types of catalysts and event-driven opportunities. Ethereum, though, because of the regulatory hurdles around how to think through the staking endeavor, we actually haven't crossed that path where we don't have a lot of public equity vehicles that represent that production value where they may have to manage quarterly earnings. And that makes the constituents of the kinds of supply side flow a little bit maybe different behaviorally.

And then related to that is the same notion of which ETH has been in a deflationary environment to some extent. So perhaps there is a little bit of that marginal price selling that is less affecting Ethereum than it would have been affecting Bitcoin. So I do share with you the amazement and excitement, really, that Ethereum has caught the bid a little bit better in the near term. And also on the other side, watching the outflows from ETH in the dramatic ways that it's happened, not nearly being as detrimental to the sentiment, was also a nice thing to observe from our end.

Yeah, exactly what I've been thinking here. Dave, I'd love your opinion, what you think of sort of the price action on ETH-Bitcoin. I know that I'm calling on you because you'll echo how smart I am about our trading range for months. I can't hear Dave. Anyone else? No, I can't hear him.

I can't hear him. Okay. Bill, good question for you. Oh, there you go, Dave. Go ahead. Get out of the elevator, man. All right, Bill. Bill, you and I have talked about this stuff.

There you go. Yeah. Bill, you and I have talked about this stuff at length as well. We'll go back to Dave. Yeah, sure. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, what our traders told me is, you know, clearly coming out of the Trump speech, they were seeing the market, you know, assuming that the gamma would keep increasing and vols would keep increasing, which historically since to your point since April just has not been the case. And there was no good liquidity catalyst for that. So being short gamma coming out of the Trump speech was clearly the play. And, you know, as typical, retail got crushed and smart traders were able to fade that. And I think we're going to continue to see that in kind of an oscillating fashion, like a sine wave oscillator, until there's some catalyst to get us out of this, which it could just be the summer doldrums, which would put us post-Labor Day. But even then, I think it might be a small methodical march higher. But I honestly think it's is just going to continue.

And even with the 25 basis cut, we're not seeing yet the real liquidity that we need to reset. No, I think we lost Bill. I predicted it would come sooner than it has, and I was wrong. But it has to come at some point, because if it doesn't, we're fucked. So I think the unfucking probably will be first half of next year where I would have guessed this summer. Clearly that was wrong. And I was just interviewing Vinny for Money Talks a couple hours ago. And, you know, he was doing a bit of a victory dance because I think he's right that, you know, they need more room to pad themselves for when things really go bad and when they have to do the big reset.

And they're giving themselves that room. And, you know, that just means for us in English, it means sideways for longer. And sideways is a big ban for crypto. Right. It might be a 5 percent ban for for equities, but it could be a 35 percent ban for crypto. And people need to understand the difference in an 80 vol asset versus a 10 vol asset. You know, anyway, sorry for the ramble, but that's what we're seeing. Yeah. Dave, are you back? Yeah, can you hear me now?

Yeah, kind of. I'm hearing a lot of noise. Can you hear me now? Yeah, it's good. Okay, good. Yeah, I mean, a bunch of stuff to unpack. I mean, I think I somewhat disagree with Bill on timing, but I guess we'll see. There's so many variables. I don't think it was necessarily the gamma fade, although that obviously is the beginning of it.

I think it's the shift in election odds from, you know, 70 some odd percent to almost a coin flip is what has caused somewhat of the malaise in Bitcoin. But it's a tiny correction as far as Ethereum goes. Ethereum didn't have the run-up that Bitcoin did actually if you look at the ether Bitcoin ratio it's still in the bottom third it ran just just to remind it went from like point you know zero four seven up to point zero six when a the ETF was first announced not when it when it went live when it went live it never got beyond point five three four point five four you.054. And now it's sitting around, what, 0.049 or something like that. So it's not like it's done anything crazy. I mean, it basically tells you that it's tracking with Bitcoin, more or less. But it's not like it's strong outperformance that narrative hasn't started yet, but why would it? I mean, we know that it takes time for the salespeople and all the wire houses and all of the issuers to convince people. And so you just had whatever demand was lined up before it, and then you start seeing the slow, steady increase.

I mean, in Bitcoin, like there's a piece of news today, which is actually very important, right? Morgan Stanley, I thought, maybe it was the internet again, Scott, I don't know, but we saw Morgan Stanley saying their FAs and whatnot can start talking to people about the Bitcoin ETF and selling it. That's kind of a big deal. And so, you know, look, my base case and your base case have been the same. Some are doldrums for a lot of reasons. I don't think until the election really firmly takes shape in the fall, are we going to have a clear move. You know I believe the Fed is trapped.

I think that the data today isn't terribly surprising and is far worse than people are projecting. Unemployment at 4.3 percent when the percentage of work is still being driven by part-time job means that that number is understated because people are double counting jobs when they work two jobs. And so that's a big problem. And so I've been saying the Fed is trapped and they're going to have to ease in the fall just to stay neutral. I think Bill's right. I think they've been trying to give themselves room. I just don't know if they have that room, but we'll see. So I'll say two things since you slightly disagreed. One, I do think the numbers are understated. I've been saying that they've been making up the denominator for two years, meaning they're fucking lying. But that's fine.

They're going to continue to do that, and I don't think they really care what our opinion is in that regard. So I do think they're going to give themselves more room, whether it's room via the truth or some other BS. I think that's a foregone conclusion. I do think that they're going to look to... Oh, sorry. The other thing I was going to say is I actually don't think that this move towards or slight move towards Harris is going to make one damn bit of difference when it comes to the markets. I think, like I said, the markets are a liquidity suck. And the traders that I talk to just don't think it really matters that much. And yeah, there may be some oscillations where people are, you know,

more excited about Trump for tax reasons and whatnot. But in the big picture, it historically just doesn't matter. I mean, the markets move up regardless of who's in office. And, you know, the money printing is going to continue regardless of who's in office. And I think people are overestimating the impact of the presidential, you know, cycles and oscillations in terms of what's going to happen to the markets. I mean, you know, moves in the Middle East are going to matter way more, you know, than presidential cycles. And if we end up with, you know, oil prices taking off, you know, that's a problem, right? So we'll see. But, you know,

maybe we're closer on this than I think. But I think the bigger issue is going to be the timing of of the big debt reset, which is I still think is going to come early, early to mid next year. Yeah, I don't think we disagree a whole lot, Bill. I think we're on the same page. for the complete overhang of the U.S. government not selling any Bitcoin that Trump has promised is a very big deal and not remotely in the price. And I think that kind of option style buyer who is looking for the two exit that's likely to cause in a very quick period, those people are not in the market until they know. That's all I'm talking about. You're right, though. This has nothing to do with tax policy. Honestly, it doesn't have anything to do with crypto policy per se, other than that. Although I have very strong opinions on that topic.

But I don't think that's relevant for the Bitcoin price. I think it is relevant for alts. And I think that people don't understand what that really means. And I think that it's interesting. But my point there, because I'll do Mario a favor and talk about memes, I think that memes will have will be have a real serious problem in the period of time. And by the way, this is years away, so I wouldn't worry about it too much in the period of time when there's actually reasonable regulation for for digital assets such that people actually care about a chance of participation

in some economics. Right now, in fact, participation in economics is a bad idea. And so people are just gambling. But I think that that is interesting. And that's a topic for a different day if we ever get any progress. I would say the one thing I think that people don't get about the alts now is that I think they're in for a rude awakening because in the last two cycles, whether it was ICOs or what we had the last cycle, money was moving out of Bitcoin into alts. And given how much of the new money in Bitcoin is coming via ETFs, I don't think that migration is going to happen. And you'll see, I still think that Solana is going to outpace Bitcoin significantly this cycle. But I think once you move down the stack into meme coins and altcoins, I just don't think you're going to see the rotation the same way. And you're going to be reliant almost completely on new money. And then the question is going to be, where does that new money come from and um maybe maybe some

people might be in for a bit of a rude awakening um you know the last cycle the limiting factor in in which coins you could was partially driven by ethereum fees um especially if you were trading off chain on chain this cycle i think you know i think the etfs are going to be a limiting factor in what happens with alts we'll see yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's a great point. I just want to make one point because, Bill, you and I are agreeing almost completely. As far as Solana is concerned, all I have to say is I learned a long time ago it's best to be the house. Yes, the guy who pulls the lever on the jackpot does better, but the casino always wins.

And Solana is that casino. And so, yeah, you know, the exploit. Totally agree. And that to me is a thesis that just makes enormous amounts. Yeah, that's been my base thesis in general when trying to pick, even since last cycle, is just own layer one. The odds of you choosing the one of 500,000 meme coins launched in a month, being V1 that does a thousand X and you sell it in time before it inevitably goes to zero or very low. So why not just own the picks and shovels,

which are the layer ones and see what value accrues there and what projects get launched that actually gain some traction and benefit in that way. I assume that's effectively what you're saying, Dave. Yeah. We hold a bunch of layer twos in our fund, but we're way longer layer same same theory same theory yeah yeah yeah and i think there's a really good chance our layer two holdings get crushed but it's kind of a strangle position because i think the layer ones that we hold will so far outperform them getting crushed that it won't matter so it's a good it's it's a good bet. But, but if you're

exclusively long layer two, you know, tokens right now, you know, not investment advice, but you may want to be very clear on your thesis. Let's just put it that way. I don't know. This is worth noting, I think when talking about, Dave, you said the casino always wins. And that's in the case of Solana. But when talking about layer ones, this did not surprise me at all, but has seemingly surprised a lot of people so much it's become a news story. But Tron surpasses Ethereum, 1.42 million revenue in 24 hours. And since July 23rd, Tron has outperformed Ethereum in revenue generation, surpassing Ethereum and Solana, which obviously is that meme coin casino that

you just mentioned. And this has been sustained now for over a week. And the reason is not that it's a casino. The reason is that Tron has received widespread adoption for stable coins all around the world. And so it's kind of an example there. Like if you probably bought Tron at some point in the distant past, and by the way, Tron has actually performed quite well. I opened the chart for the first time in God knows how long today. I think the all time high was 17 or 18

cents. It was at 12, 13, 14. I mean, closer than most. And that wasn't because of a casino. It's because of the actual use case of crypto, which is, you know, one of the killer apps, which is stablecoins. And the people using it don't care or know that it's Tron. Totally. I don't know if you saw this. We acquired the Tron trust from Valkyrie because coin shares didn't want it. And we just couldn't believe it. We were like, you guys are so focused on Bitcoin, which I think makes sense. But you've got a one here that in in many countries is by far the most used crypto asset yeah i mean if we assume that uh yeah and my point there was yeah yeah sorry you broke up um yeah i mean the the bottom line is that people in, I doubt that those metrics are weighted heavily towards the United States.

But if you go to the global south, although that's part of it, but if you go to the global south, certainly this is how it happens. A bunch of crypto natives think, I would never use Tron. I don't like it for whatever reason. Fud from the past. Feelings about Justin Sun thinking that it's not the safest network. But this is one of those few cases which we should sort of cheer for to a degree. We have mainstream adoption of a guy in Argentina wants to send his friend 10 or 20 bucks and wants access to dollars, which you can't get in cash without going to the black market and paying five

times too much for them, and says to his friend, dude friend dude download this app i'm going to send you 10 bucks right they don't know it's tron they don't care it's tron they're just finding a way to do this and that's happening all over the world and as a result tron is performing exceptionally well and that's because people want dollars and they just care about fast and cheap that's right well they do care and so far that people ask for it meaning meaning yeah i mean exchange is added as their default, right? When you send stable coins on most exchanges now, the default is TRC is on TRON and not on ERC20. Yep. Yep. And that's I see no reason for that not to continue. Obviously, with base and Coinbase making that default over time, the US will diverge.

Maybe English speaking UK, Australia will diverge. But I think the rest of the world is going to be on Tron for stablecoins for quite a while. It's pretty wild. Jeff, you had your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to add my own views on that comment made on the dynamic transit Bitcoin ETFs perhaps being a net negative towards flows to altcoins because I have a strong view on this.

I think that for any asset to mature, you need investor groups that can be upgraded across the path of lifecycle of an asset class. So the important service that ETFs can serve is that it allows the conduit to flow into the next grade of investors that can actually hold it for worthwhile reasons. That, I think, is primarily why everyone on this town hall would have rooted for the Bitcoin ETF to launch.

And so the thing that is misplaced there in that analysis is actually the best way to drive flows is wealth creation. There's no doubt that those who have drived wealth from having been early investors drive the gains of that community. special class of its own, even relative to Solana, in the way that wealth creation happened for that ecosystem participants that will probably not look like anything else replicable in the future. And in that same way, the wealth creation that is possible within Bitcoin is the kinds of flow through that trickle down towards altcoins in themselves. And so we have to imagine a world where we actually do have ETF wrappers for non-major tokens. And to cross that Rubicon requires a sense of maturity as to what the permanent value accrual mechanism of such an asset could be. But the ETFs are not to be blamed. I

mean, they are essentially the liquidity that is needed for the space to mature in the most asymmetric way possible to bring inflows. The question you have to ask is, how do you create wealth natively? And going back to your original point, I think that was shared earlier, the oversupply of VC capital in this particular cycle in the context to the prior is, I think, a major contrast. There was actually a podcast that Tushar from Multicoin and Ray did on Empire a few weeks back that talked about this.

And there's actually another episode that's coming soon, a rebuttal type, an argument that I'm doing with a colleague, friend of mine. But that dynamic is the part where I think there is a complexity as to where the value curl and for whom is happening with these newer projects that look different than in the past ways that a project like Ethereum would have come to life. So I just wanted to draw at least a little bit of nuanced perspective on that versus the ETF arguments.

Yeah, Jeff, I think it goes back to the idea that the ETFs and the move on Bitcoin preempted the cycle. Right. And so everything kind of is where it should be. People are just thrown off because it only happens somewhat in Bitcoin. Yeah. I mean, I agree with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I think there's this assumption that I've heard over the years that like altcoins is a great way to play levered beta. And I would always kind of ask folks to widen that observation window as to how you're drawing that conclusion. And you would have seen year to date, at least in 2024, that would have been completely wrong. Like if you were in an altcoin index, you're probably down through the end of June

versus Bitcoin. And so it's not a levered beta play in any scope. So there, agreeing with you, the idiosyncratic flows that are driving for that particular wealth creation is the most important thing. And ETFs, frankly, really democratize wealth creation in a way that I don't think the current model for these altcoins in its current existence do, which we'll solve, right? We'll get there. But I just want to point out. Yeah, Jeff, I think you can probably zoom in on that argument and say it's a high beta play in a very specific part of the cycle.

Otherwise, completely avoidable. Yeah, yeah. In fact, there was actually an academic paper that was just published. I would highly recommend all of you guys to take a look at it. It's written by a former colleague of mine from the Harvard Endowment, Gordon Liao. And it asks the question, what drives crypto asset prices. And they utilize this pretty well-studied methodology on sign-restricted vector autoregressive models to show, like, is it macro factors or crypto specific factors that drive crypto asset prices? And what they ultimately find is that in a day to day environment, it would appear crypto specific demand factors drive the price action. But over a longer horizon, the macro plays a big role. Now, I think that's really interesting because today, if you look at what's driving crypto prices, we would all agree Polymarket shows the tightest correlation to Bitcoin hour by hour.

And then you ask yourself, well, is that a crypto specific factor or is that a macro factor? Like what is the presidential election representing? Historically, you would have said, well, it's a macro factor. It's talking about monetary policies and what may be to come. And yet we know here in this town hall that the passion to cry for this debate is because we think there is a crypto specific agenda for one party versus the other. So it's then really hard to even distill, like, is the election today a macro factor or is that a crypto specific factor? I think it's quite fascinating. And history will tell us about it. Yeah, and there's probably a lot of gray area. Just Dave, I'm going to call on you right now, but just to echo your breaking news from earlier,

this is now being reported. I'm seeing here on CNBC, Morgan Stanley tells wealth advisors they can pitch Bitcoin ETFs in a first for a big bank. Huge news. Yeah, so that is confirmed. I had Matt Hogan on from Bitwise obviously this week, and he was saying the wire houses were coming, the banks were coming. And just for clarity, I'm assuming this means that somebody could ask their wealth advisor before, aka unsolicited, hey, I want you to put me into this. But the RIAs themselves and the advisors couldn't go out and actually say to their clients, hey, this should be in your portfolio, which is a huge change here. Morgan Stanley, obviously massive. So Dave, you scooped that right at the beginning of the show and seems

that should be a massive sea change with time, with time. Yeah, that's the important thing. It's with time. I mean, what does that mean? It's like everything else. If you try to do leveraged trading in front of the stuff, you get crushed. But what does it mean? I think 15,000 financial advisors and a whole pile of RIAs, registered investment advisors, who run managed funds for clients or who are directing clients how to trade, now can say,

hey, we think 1% to 3%, whatever the number is, some substantive integer percent of your portfolio should be in Bitcoin ETF and potentially Ether, who knows. But Bitcoin ETF, here's why. That's a very big deal, but that's going to take, it's the same adoption cycle. It's going to dribble in and eventually start increasing again. And that's always been the thesis that this would be an ever increasing way. It's plumbing though. Really quick though, it's kind of plumbing, right? The news is that they can. It's not that they will, but it's that they can. Right. And look, you know, the market's dropping now because correlation is starting to reassert itself. I mean, you look at, you know, the Nasdaq's down almost 3 percent. The Russell's

down over 4 percent today. And, you know, and Bitcoin's starting to drift. And for Bitcoin, we feel it like a drift. But, you know, it's when people start selling, you start selling everything. And I always tell that. But I want to go back to the paper because I think that it's interesting. I look, I read it. I think it makes sense. But I think it ignores a simple factor, at least with Bitcoin. Forget the rest of digital assets, where I think that it's kind of important because there's a lot of risk there. But Bitcoin's price right now, and I've said this a million times on your site, but I'll say it again, trades like an option on its own potential adoption. Bitcoin as money, anytime you listen to Michael Saylor,

and whether or not you believe the hyperbolic stuff that he talks about or not, it doesn't matter. For Bitcoin to replace gold, or at least equal gold, as a store of value, it needs to gain acceptance. So when you go down the things of what makes a store of value, the most important one is acceptance. The reason why PolyMarket's relevant is because a administration, and by the way, if the vice president was smart, she would be hammering the Democrat, the DNC, to put this in their platform because it would help them with, it would basically nullify the crypto vote. So we don't, which by the way, could happen. I doubt it, but it could. The fact is, when you say the U.S. recognizes Bitcoin as an asset, as a store of value, that impact is not priced

into this market because we've been at these prices multiple times. We've been there since March in this trading range. And in March, there was no way anybody was betting that the U.S. official policy was ever going to recognize Bitcoin as a strategic asset worth stockpiling, period. And so I don't think that that binary is in play in that report. I think that it's an exogenous factor, which, as anyone who's ever done quantitative finance, understands that exogenous factors happen, they're relevant, and you need to consider it. In this case, it happens to be a very important one. And that's the only point that i'd make there uh bill yeah i just listening i haven't read the report and i will read it but you know having been in

this space for 10 plus years i can tell you that you know the idea that ets are democratizing access to crypto is absurd. Democratizing access to something has nothing to do with how much the asset is worth. It has to do with how many people have access. So in that regard, Binance, OKEx, Huobi, DEXs have done infinitely more to democratize access to crypto assets than ETFs ever will. Now, obviously, you know, ETFs, because America's wealthier, may get, you know, on a dollar basis, infinitely more in terms of dollar inflows. And if that's all you care about, then sure, that's great. And I do care about it. But, you know, on a global basis, what I want to see is I want to see people who've never been able to participate in true wealth storage and creation,

be able to participate. And in that regards, it's clearly the, you know, offshore exchange, non-US exchanges and DEXs that have done more to democratize access to this than than anyone else ever will, based on what I've seen so far. I'd like to clarify, because I agree with Bill 100%. The ETFs have nothing to do with democratization of finance. If anything, it's providing a lifeline or a bridge to the old undemocratized exclusive financial system to get some of that capital into the asset itself to paper over the exclusivity in the financial system. That is true. And I know that people are probably surprised to hear me say that, but I think Bill and

I agree completely on that point. That said, pragmatically, it did unlock double-digit trillions of dollars of wealth that previously was excluded from being able to participate. Well, I'm also going to draw analogy to just general public market structural comparison points. The whole point of having the public market access versus private market is to broaden it.

So I don't disagree that the crypto native rails are in some ways the most egalitarian and that it permits the easy the the most flexible way of participation without jurisdictional risk I don't disagree with that but if you recognize that at some level in the onset of those it's a very early stage kind of exposure ultimately all these things need price discovery in a bigger pool. So if you can bring that bigger pool of price discovery and mature capital into the Binances of the world, then absolutely. We will probably see some kind of graduation to that investor group. What I'm pointing out is the graduation of the investor

group will not happen on Binance alone. You need some kind of bridging to a professional class if we want there to be sustainability and the permanence of these things being worthwhile value accrual vehicles. And so I think I agree. Maybe democratization is not the single lens to appreciate it for. But maybe the point that I will lean on is we do need some maturity of types of investors beyond just the ones that are trading on Binance. We need another group of investors that allow something like Uber to go from seed into a retirement account. And that could happen on Binance.

I don't know. But so far, the ETFs, I think, do play a useful role in bridging that possibility. It makes sense. Michaela, Jonathan, Florian, Matt, any of you guys who haven't had the opportunity to speak

or any of you have specific thoughts here? Michaela, Jonathan, go ahead. Michaela, maybe. Just real quick. Have you looked at the VIX? Yeah, it went from 10 to over 20. Last I checked, it was 20. I don't even know. That was a couple hours ago.

What is it? 50 and rising. So 5X in two weeks? Wow. Okay. Well, that's no joke. So nothing is going to be immune to that. Like day 54.63%. Wow, that's crazy. Michaela, what do you think of this conversation generally?

Yeah, I know. I agree with many of the points said, but also generally just seeing the many retail traders in Twitter, I believe that they're hyper fixated on a short-term price action and they are completely missing historical price cycles. Again, nothing that Dave hasn't said before. But July, August, September have always been weak in terms of return for both stock and

cryptos, and they have always been worse performing months. So on average, I do believe that this is a cycle narrative remains very, very strong, even on the institutional side. Again, even on my front, we're working with some of the biggest asset management, asset management firms in the space. And we believe that the narrative stays as it is. And global liquidity, M2 money supply, has hit 95 trillion really recently.

It's currently approaching to 100, to the 100 trillion milestones. So overall, again, very strong narrative. As Dave mentioned before, the elections and the first potential breakout by FET in Q4 will be a great catalyst for another price like to the upside. I personally believe a drop of interest rates is always considered with a rally on risk on assets. So the ETH perspective of Fed policy could definitely set crypto for another strong positive year. And that's everything from my side. Ganesh, what do you make of the volatility here? I didn't even see that VIX was this

high, but you know, is it mega bear time? Well, if you listen to people that think that listen to my show, they'll keep thinking that I always think it's mega bear time, but it's not. You know, ultimately, I said this today in the morning, I said, Look, last year, I was wrong. I was wrong, because earnings were better than I was expecting guidance was better than I was expecting. And I think I was early. And I think a lot of us have felt like this was coming. If you listen to Mike McGlone, who's one of my favorite people that does the show with you, the macro show, this is a long time coming. We saw this led by commodities. We've seen Bitcoin make a flush

last week. But most importantly, the Dow has erased a significant amount of gains in the last 24 hours. And for people to say, oh, it's just a normal correction is absolutely foolish. It is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. There's actual reasons for this. The yen carry trade is a big part of this. We've seen literally the biggest crash since Black Monday in 1987 in Japanese stock. The yen carry trade is a bigger part of this that anyone wants to admit. But the fact that we have seen that 0.25% increase, something that they do not do,

something that is used for leverage across the world, this is- Thank God. Say that again? Sorry. i have been preaching this i feel like for a year like the scariest ass chart out there is the yen index and and i don't know what it is people just forgot like like everybody's holding that everybody holding like the turkish lira and the yen carry are like bleeding. I mean, they probably left work forever. But anyway, sorry to interrupt. No, no. So the challenge is even explaining to somebody how the yen carry trade works.

You know, for the finance folks, the people that are always bullish, that have only lived through bullish days, they always think that the market goes up and to the right. And it does in a long enough time frame. If you keep, just like the Bitcoiners and the maxis, they zoom out. If you zoom out far enough with the S&P, it will always be going up. Yes, if you are, and I'll say this, because I know that sometimes people start acting on things that I say. I'm not saying to sell everything, get everything into cash. That's stupidity. Don't do that.

If you're a long-term holder, this too will pass. But to say that this is going to be a 5% to 10% correction, guys, NASDAQ just got into correction territory today. This is just the beginning. We're going to have pain for a little bit. I think the crazy, insane bull days are over. That's my opinion. I think this yen carry trade thing is actually a much bigger thing. And as people start understanding what's going on, anyone with half a brain cell is going to say, holy shit, we're going to see a lot of leverage, global leverage start to deteriorate, and we're going to see money supply really get tightened. This is financial, but the financial

conditions around the world are about to tighten at a level that people have not seen in a long time. So, again, go back to the Black Monday, go back to 1987 and see what happened. Go back to the fact that, so there's multiple things. Number one, employment data today, people are going to keep pointing at it, but it was bad, but it was not like something that is going to break everything. The employment data has been wrong before and probably will be wrong in the future. People are not doing this because of employment data, in my opinion. And if they are, then they're making a big mistake. That's not what should be leading this. This is very much about global flow down alongside global inflation. Those two things happening together with unemployment rising, those trifecta are called stagflation. So that's what everyone should be worried about.

I know that I'm going to sound crazy because you come on Twitter and if you're a crypto person, you say number go up. And if you're a finance person or a gold bug, you'll say number go up. But ultimately, guys, we just have to look at this on a day-to-day basis right now. The market is treacherous. We saw the VIX cross 20. This is a different world we're living in than we were living in last week. So hopefully that's helpful, at least understanding the macro econ of this. It's much more complicated than just unemployment numbers who are a little bit off. I mean, they were bad today. There's no doubt about it.

But like, that's not what's driving this. I'm actually interested to hear what Dave would have to say. Yeah, go ahead, Dave. We're going to move to the sponsorship. I hate making prognostications like this, but you nailed it. At least the antecedent. I think that what happens next will be interesting. For people who don't understand, the yen was pushing 160 not very long ago. It's now 146. That is not how normal currencies operate. There are trillions

and many trillions, I don't know the number, Danish, you might have a better sense of it than me, of people who have borrowed yen to buy assets across the globe. It could be U.S. Treasuries, certainly there's a lot of that. There's some that go out on the risk curve at the stocks, etc. The point that Danish made was this move with the yen, with the Bank of Japan basically going nuclear, not just intervening, but also raising rates to cause this significant of a move in the yen because of the way that this trade is levered. When someone borrows yen, and this is what you need to understand, when someone, when these hedge fund borrows it, they don't borrow. If they borrow a billion dollars in yen, they may lever that up 5, 10, 15 times. So basically, this sort of a move is like the effective putting depth charges. If you consider the hedge fund community around the world as a bunch of submarines, the BOJ

just threw a ton of huge depth charges into the ocean. What we don't know is whose bodies are going to be floating to the top of the ocean and what were their holdings that they were forced into selling, because a large part of what you're seeing is forced selling. And what Donish is saying, and nice enough not to put it this bloodily, but it is factual, is when forced selling starts, it's very rarely one and done in a day. That's what he's saying. And so I think that that is the important thing to people understand. This debt charge is a big deal.

Now, here's the funny part. The funny part is that the only answer to this is going to be more liquidity. And outside, which is exactly what the BOJ wanted in the first place. They wanted the U.S. to help them liquefy. And obviously, they basically decided, OK, if you're not going to do that, Federal Reserve, this is what we have to do. And so essentially, they just nuked a whole bunch of U.S.-based hedge funds. And I hate to say it, but it's like a game of poker. And, you know, that's what's going on. So there's a lot of stuff

going on behind the scenes that we are not privy to. And if you told me what the reaction would be, I could tell you how I would invest. As it is, I would say it's a very dangerous time to be in highly leveraged speculative risk assets as opposed to assets that are just purely sensitive to liquidity. Because I do think liquidity spigots are going to come on in the fall. Dave, one thing before you guys move on. Dave, is there rumors? Are they true that the BOJ and the Fed have a de facto unlimited swap going on? Because that's like in currency markets. That's the rumor. Obviously defend the currency. No one can tell you the answer to that.

I think it would be rumors are there for a reason. I think that ultimately the one thing I will say about what Dave said, Dave, I agree with you on what they want the U.S. to do. But something also happened alongside this, which is like actually painful, which is that China said we are not going to continue easing. They said that this week, by the way. So we had BOJ and the yen carry trade breaking. And then now China, they literally use the words that, by the way, is the most Asian thing I can say that because I'm Asian.

It's the most Asian thing that anybody can say, which is this is good pain. We need this pain. Do you know like that? If it's it's a that is a philosophical decision that they have made. They said they are not going to do any additional easing this year. That means no rate cuts this year. Additional no quantitative easing this year. By the way rate cuts this year, additional, no quantitative easing this year. By the way, just think about how crazy that is with what's happening with

real estate over there and with what Bank of Japan did. I think China will have to move its policy, but they have a much longer term time horizon. Guys, Dave is 100% right. The answer to this problem is bringing liquidity because as leverage dries up, you need someone to fill that hole and that hole needs to be filled. Otherwise, this actually becomes a much bigger deal. And again, I know people are like, oh, it's just a relief. Oh, it's okay. We're coming off of all time highs. Sure, all of those things could be true, but this is not the end of the pain. Just like the Chinese have said, there's some good pain coming and it's okay. But ultimately, this is not just going to be some short correction.

It seems very obvious that there are some structural changes happening here. And to give you guys the size of the carry trade, we're talking about $20 trillion, and that does not even include additional leverage on top of that. This is not a small amount of money. So how does unwinding the carry trade increase liquidity? I'm not following that. I think David mentioned that. No, no, no. The solution to it, Bill, is to increase liquidity. Right. I agree with that. But in the short term, it's going to be the opposite. It's the opposite. Exactly. Yeah. So OK. I just wanted to make sure I was understanding what you guys were saying.

So Dave was saying that, look, as the yen carry trade falls apart, or at least decreases significantly, we're actually going to see that people won't have leverage. And if they don't have leverage, that tightens liquidity, which then means that you actually need more liquidity from the sovereign. Okay. I totally agree with that. But that's going to play out over many months, for sure. I think it's going to be much faster than you think.

I think we haven't... Okay. Because black... Like I said, this is the biggest crash primarily led by Japanese banks in the last 24 hours. Yeah, Bill, when you're not talking, please mute your mic because you've got to – Yeah, sorry. Go ahead. Sorry, I'm driving. The only way to deal with that effectively is emergency rate cuts.

Is that what you're implying? Yes. This is the – Liquidity. Liquidity. rate cuts. Is that what you're implying? Yes. This is the liquidity. I think that the first step will have to be QE, not rate cuts. That's my opinion. I'm not an economist. There are much better people to answer this question. But I actually think the bigger problem here is there needs to be a conversation with the Bank of China to figure out what the hell they're thinking,

because this is literally the perfectly wrong thing to do in the face of this situation. We are, you know, China is an all, is pretty much an all out deflation or on route to it. Their growth literally slowed down. Their retail sales were 2%. They haven't had that in a decade. And outside of just like worst days of the pandemic. And this is, I don't want to put all of it on China. It's not all on China. It's an American policy as well. But this is one of those situations that if we don't have multilateral cooperation

very quickly, liquidity will dry up very quickly, Bill. That's my opinion. But I'm sure Dave has much more education. I completely agree with you. Yep. Well, incredible conversation. Michaela, please give us the final thoughts on this. And then we have you. Yep. Well, incredible conversation. Michaela, please give us the final thoughts on this.

And then we have Nexus on stage. So go ahead. Yeah, no, I just have a question for Danish. I think at this point in time, you're about to hit the 100 trillion millstone in M2. How do you see liquidity drying up so quickly?

I see the gap is, is quite huge here. Yeah. My only point is that a lot of that money supply is quite huge here. Yeah, my only point is that a lot of that money supply is coming from leverage. And so as that leverage dries up, we're going to see people pull very quickly because they want, as the markets start going down, we're literally in a position right now where we will see people pull their money out very quickly, especially because a lot of that M2 supply is from unregulated owners like shadow banks. And so we just have to be very, very careful. They will move much swifter than the retailer, the retail market. And I think that they're going to lead the way. This yen carry trade is not used by you and me.

It's used by people with a lot more money, hedge funds so on that can that will move their money very quickly to protect their assets Perfect I think it's a great place to wrap up on that and what a conversation Don is I love that you just come in like firing missiles every time amazing and You guys got me a little more scared than maybe I was, you know, an hour and 10 minutes ago. Great conversation. And I know Kyle and David, you guys are here and wanted to have a conversation with Nexus.

So feel free to take the floor. Absolutely. First, I want to say what's going on. Thanks, Nexus, for coming out. But I want to throw it over to you. Give us a little intro, what you guys are doing. Yeah, thanks so much for having us today. So yeah, we're Nexus Network. Can you hear us okay?

I can hear you guys talking. Yeah, Scott, you might want to rotate. I'll drop. Yeah, so my name is Stefan. I'm the founder of Nexus, Nexus Network. We're a layer one blockchain startup focused on the decentralized infrastructure of artificial intelligence. The main goal of us is to really protect the user data privacy in democracy, especially in the advent of AI. By the age of 13, the average individual has about 73 million data points taken on them and with the evident ai and all this data really being monopolized by the top five tech companies um becomes quite scarce in regards to ai model development um and also monopolization of those models especially in regards to the way that they

um will be advancing like once you have one ai model that gets significantly better like 10 20 better than the rest uh it learns much faster than them and also solves all the other problems to pretty much improve that model. So it can kind of really control the market in that sense for that. And one way to really counter this is by setting up the decentralized infrastructure for this that can maintain data utility without sacrificing data privacy for users as well as developers. And that's pretty much what we're focused on right now. How do you guys do that exactly? Like I've heard a lot of companies mention data privacy, decentralization. What's the main selling point from Nexus for that? How do you actually do it? So there's several key things you have to really

keep in mind. One is scalability so actual utilization of the blockchain so a big problem with existing chains is that they're not scalable enough to actually put data through them and uh utilize data graphs which ai models can utilize especially in like swarm intelligence so like that's where you have like multiple ai agents communicating to solve a bigger problem um so we actually have high scalability in that regards, leveraging zero knowledge proofs, as well as a Rust framework. So we're both upon Solana as a framework with EVM, NZK, EVM integrated, as well as aggregate integration as well.

So like liquidity and transactions are all aggregated upon them and throughout them. So this lets us theoretically scale up to 5 million transactions per second, depending on network availability as well. And that's one of the major things that needs to be in place, as well as low cost transactions. So like a lot of chains also bolster this, but it's pretty much essential, right? Because you can't have really high operating costs, since the model costs are already like 10 to 20 million just to train a new model. So we want to actually lower that. And on top of that, there's different kind of techniques that you can really implement, which is like, so providing like zero knowledge proofs, you can prove that you have certain data.

And then to a model and not sacrificing the privacy of the individual. So one really good instance is like human DNA. So you could say, these are the DNA genes that we have, but we're not going to tell you whose it is, but we can tell you some info about them. And then also leveraging smart contracts to do so. Yeah, I hope that answered part of it. Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm an in uh these kind of things but so uh when when it comes to data privacy decentralization uh makes sense what about for optimizing it for ai like is that the same kind of optimizations or is there something different when it comes to

enhancing the capabilities for ai use on the chain? Yeah. You could use differential privacy implementations, so adding noise to data and data points so that when you're transmitting the data through the different model, the outputs is protecting the individual's data points and maintaining utility there. You could also implement a homomorphic encryption or secure multi-party computation so through that which is um actually capable on our chain most then really allows for

the models to process encrypted data without exposing underlying information as well which allows them to really train and utilize that data in a really efficient manner, also a very affordable manner in comparison to traditional methods. So yeah, I hope that makes sense. Okay, yeah. So it sounds like you've got the technical aspect pretty well thought out. But what about growing the chain, growing the ecosystem, the community? How are you guys going about doing that, gaining market share, and competing out here? Yeah, great question. So we actually have a lot of um different incentive set up so right now we're

running a incentivized testnet and defnet to build on-chain user interactions um we've done pretty well so far 18 million transactions on testnet uh 12 million wallets created 5500 smart contracts deployed we saw a really big problem um for developers and also i guess retail as well um so most chains right now like if you probably notice like salon ethereum they're both kind of fighting for the majority of liquidity uh excluding like bitcoin obviously um and that's a problem because now you have a fragmented ecosystem and fragmented liquidity and it leads to lower like performance on like token launches and tokens in general like especially mean coins and stuff between all the chains so our chain

actually leverages um svm evm and ck evm integrations so you can launch applications on any of them on our network really easily and also then utilize it as aggregate or aggregate layer so liquidity can be combined. And let's say like EVM projects can actually now leverage Solana tooling. And then Solana projects can now leverage Ethereum tooling. And it's really important because Rust is a much more scalable framework than Ethereum. It's like EVM for Solidity. And it has a lot of capabilities, especially for like the metaverse and the growth of like Web3 gaming and GameFi.

So that's one kind of benefit to help scale the network is by giving existing projects more utility and abilities to scale, while also helping out existing users by having more liquidity. So for the test net, we set up different kinds of incentive programs. So one's obviously like usage, like if you're using the chain interacting with it, you earn points, and then those points can get converted into like shards. And those can be utilized to either earn nodes or whitelist spots for like our node sale coming up, as well as then having the ability to for developers to build apps on-chain, and then people can actually then delegate their NZT to that project to earn yield, and then the

project itself also earns yield to help it kind of maintain revenue. All right, love that. I love the incentivization model. So you guys must have a strong cap table since you're doing that. Can you go into that a little bit for us? Who do you guys have on the rounds with you? So right now we have a cash from capital, Medivest capital.

We just kind of started on like the raise about like two and a half, three months ago. Initially we were going to bootstrap it, but then the financial need for layer one infrastructure of this size really put a lot of constraints on us. So really, we have to raise more capital, you know, become more efficient in that regard. So, yeah, we have about nine different VCs and community VCs as well involved. And then we actually have the chain set up itself.

So a big problem for layer ones, actually, is that they don't generate revenue, right? They just raise and that's it. For us, we took a different approach. So we could do a much smaller raise and then have better outcomes post-launch and then generate revenue off of the wrapped smart contracts that are not native to our chain with a small fee on those transactions for the volume, which will pretty much build a scalable revenue system for the network itself to grow its overall TVL, total value locked, which I think is really essential because especially during bear markets, a lot of chains or projects in general rely on selling the token from the treasury to

maintain the burn rate. And that's problematic because the token is already down, let's say 80, 90% in the bear market. So it's a spiral effect down and then also lowers the value of the assets on the chain. Since your assets, the base underlying asset of that typically for liquidity. So yeah, those are kind of like the methods we set up for that. And then for the node sale now, we're preparing to bring on some really big backers, hopefully, in the upcoming weeks.

All right, sounds great. So the round's still open. Have you guys announced any total figures, how much you've already raised, how much you're aiming to raise? Yeah, so the aim, we don't really have a cap on it for the way our node sale is set up. It's similar to like an Ether kind of note sale and the other um notable projects for that because one major thing for it and that like we really realize is that a lot of these big um exchanges and everything they want to see main end adoption they don't really care too much about test and adoption so we um we set up a method that will allow us to bring as many users as we can onto the network from developers to retail to investors and so on. So we set up in that dynamic.

I think in total, we would like to see around 10 million. But if we have, like, let's say like seven, that's OK, too, because we have a pretty lean model rolling right now. 10 million users? No, like for the total raise. Oh okay yeah sorry um yeah and then uh for users we want a minimum of uh 200 000 um and then because once you get to like the 300 to 500 000 you see you start seeing a limit on the web 3 user adoption base uh So we actually brought on the head of marketing for NVIDIA onto our advisory table. So he'll help us with the Web2 go-to-market approach to really attract those users and leverage that adoption there because

it's very different because the tech on the back end has to get much better so that the tech on the front end can be much easier. We saw a very similar approach with computers and right, and the internet. It's like a lot of people want to start using these, but the tech had to get very complex on the back end so that the user interface on the front end can be utilized by an average person that isn't too technical. We're seeing the same problem with blockchain. So we want to kind of put a lot of effort towards that as well, because I think the future is bringing on more users because the original narrative of Bitcoin was to get everybody using it.

Now it's just kind of like circulating liquidity and users between chains, projects and the protocols based on the current incentives at the time and onboarding like uh like the big banks and like financial institutions which is great but we also still have to focus on adopting more retail so um all the projects and companies building actually have users oh absolutely absolutely so how do you guys compare to some of the other l1s that have been gaining traction recently like the ones that are getting these big raises in is there any competitive difference with uh you know with with the tech, with what you're aiming to do? Yeah, so I think in standards of tech, we have one of the most scalable and modular infrastructures currently on the market available to even test out, and it's live, so people can actually go test it.

Right now, we're just working on the exposure side of it but um yeah in regards to that our transactions per second out compete all the rest uh the cost of transactions much lower um the privacy features and actual implementation into real business models for artificial intelligence startups machine learning startups and even traditional web3 projects is there. The fundamental structure is there for that. And it's really easy, too. That's the thing about it is that we want to make integration really easy, well-documented. And I think that's really important because a lot of developers go to chains and they

try to get grants and stuff, and then they don't get the support they really need. And it makes it much harder to build. So we have a focus on that too but yeah we have uh the key difference is really just relying on the line tech so like no no train right now that we know of uh supports a solana framework ethereum framework as well as your knowledge implementation all in one okay great great what about your ideal user like who who do you guys want really utilizing this tech using your blockchain? Is it, you know of have lots of different users and use cases, right? You can go from AI to gaming, pretty much anything in that regards, because they all kind of have the same requirements that need low cost scalability, flexibility with development. It's more so just about how can you attract liquidity in users? Our ideal person at the moment is AI startups and established AI projects and companies

because we essentially think that if this infrastructure is not really put in place in a timely manner, we could see a lot of problems in the future because AI is accelerating so fast. It's being integrated into all of our devices. And these big tech companies are really competing. And people don't really understand that at the scale of which it's progressing and also what's able to come out of that. So it's not going to be like the industrial revolution. It's going to be much bigger than that because it's going to be in every industry changing how every industry is working, how they compute data, how they look at data and analyze it to make decisions, even to doing manual labor tasks.

So all this, when you think about it from a standard like that, it's like, okay, now how do you protect all that data? How do you protect all those systems from being infiltrated and leveraged against those companies, right? And I think having a proper infrastructure in place for this to set those standards using smart contracts so it's automated and taking away the human factor, which is a really big factor in hackers getting into different softwares and systems to take advantage of them. They use social engineering for that. So setting up infrastructure for that is going to be detrimental

to protecting pretty much everything. So my background is actually in bioinformatics and computational biology for genetics, for whole genomic sequencing. And that's a big problem for DNA sequencing in healthcare as we really push towards like precision medicine approaches right um so i think like without this infrastructure in place it could be quite detrimental because they are going to be used as a tool or a weapon

absolutely what about what about uh the token when when are you guys aiming to have the tge any any set date any plans because i know you've got the incentivized testnet going on. When should we keep an eye out for the token? Yeah, thanks for asking. So we're shooting for the next six to eight weeks max, really, depending on market conditions and making sure that the tech's all secured and everything of that sort. Right now, we currently have biweekly audits going on.

We're working with OpenZeppelin and Certiq as well to get smart contract audits. Everything has to be super tight and secure, as well as lossless IO. So yeah, we're shooting for that to get prepared for that. And then also, depending on how quickly we end our node sale, which we see a lot of interest in it. So it might actually close really fast. So yeah, depending on that, we're assuming for six to eight weeks. All right, love that. Next six to eight weeks.

So last thing that I want to ask you, we've got a lot of listeners in here. A lot of people came for Crypto Town Hall. Mario, I'm sure you've got your own community that came here today too. What are some of the main things that people can do? Main action items, main ways that people can do main action items main ways that the listeners can support you as soon as this space ends yeah so a couple of things would be following us on twitter we post all of our updates on twitter incentives whether you want to own the cryptocurrency or if you want to interact with the chain or

you just want to learn we have different things for everybody well we have courses going on to teach people about ai about blockchain what three how to learn about cryptography and everything and even how to develop too um so learning about that staying up to date uh joining our telegram is a great way as well to direct the community um and getting involved with the test net and checking it out it's compatible with pretty much any of your EVM based wallets, like Metamask, OKEx wallet, Bagit wallet, Block wallet. We have NextWallet being deployed this week as well. It's our own wallet.

So, yeah, getting involved in that regard and then just staying up to date, testing out everything, deploying applications, running some transactions, or even making meme coins. You know, that's another great thing everybody loves. It's just really cheap and fast on blockchain, too. All right. Absolutely love that. I want to thank you again for coming out today, reminding everybody, follow Nexus underscore network. Hope you all have a great day, a great weekend, and we'll see you on Monday.

Thank you guys for having us so much. Appreciate it.