The Wolf Of All Streets - Massive Shift in U.S. Stance On Cryto? w/ @mambaonbase | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

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Testing Preston, Peter, can you hear me? Loud and clear. How are you guys? Let me try to get Dave up and we've got Juan here as well. Juan, how are you? I am doing great, my man. How are you? Good, good. I think it has been. I think all the attention now is focused on the ECTS, but I think people are just not looking at the numbers when it comes to the Bitcoin ETF.

So I want to start there. How have the numbers been over the last few days? I think that's what really matters. The ECTF will be significantly smaller. I've got the numbers here. Let me see. Let me, what? Let me, I've got them written down. So the expectation is that the ECTS is going to have 10 to 15% of the assets of the Bitcoin ETF. So it's going to be 85% to 90% smaller, according to Eric. So I think Bitcoin ETFs are still the most important kind of narrative of this cycle, in my opinion, other than the elections. So I want to get the numbers. I know that yesterday's inflows were 108 million. It's the ninth consecutive day of inflows. We've had some good good inflows but also the outflows from gptc i think two days ago was like zero today's yesterday was 13 million

which is pretty much nothing um so we'd love to get an overview one on the numbers when it comes to the bitcoin etfs and how that compares to expectations in the early days and what we should expect moving forward? Yeah, Eric put out that 10 to 15, maybe, percent of assets gathered by ETFs compared to Bitcoin ETFs. I think that's reasonable. I think that could be underestimated. I mean, if we look at what the anticipated demand was for the Bitcoin ETFs. That was severely underestimated. Coming into the launch of those ETFs in January, the expectations were for inflows in the first year of two and a half to maybe five billion and not even six months in. And we're at over 13 billion. We're at about 13 and a half billion. So expectations have really exceeded. The reality has really exceeded the expectations. And I think that that could be similar with with the ETFs.

I think maybe it's it could be reasonable to expect them to gather maybe not 10 to 15, but 20 to 30 percent of the inflows from from the Bitcoin ETFs. ETH is less well known in the institutional community than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is much, much better understood. So I think there is lower demand at this point. There will be lower demand just because people are less familiar with it. But I still think it has great potential even in its first year to do really well. And on the Bitcoin ETF,

we've seen a complete rebound. April was the first month of net outflows for the complex. There was, I think it was almost 350 million in outflows. But May has turned around really, really well. We're at 1.6 billion just in the month of May for inflows. And as you said, running on nine consecutive days of continuous inflows. So the momentum is back. And now that we have this emerging political consensus behind crypto, I think it's a really strong tailwind for the asset class, given that over, you know, for most of its entire history, politics and regulation in the U.S. has been a headwind and a grind upwards. And now we're finally seeing the tide shift towards a more conciliatory approach, a bipartisan approach towards crypto that, you know, we saw SAB 121, the repeal happen. Now the FIT 21 bill passing in the House.

There's an emerging consensus behind stable coins. So I think and there was also the passing of the anti CBDC bill to the ETFs respond to that? And the reason I ask is if we see similar corrections in the future, do we expect the ETF to kind of flip from inflows to outflows? We kind of saw that a few weeks ago. I'm not sure how that compares to expectations. So how diamond hands or paper hands are these ETF holders? Well, what you saw at the conclusion of the 13F filing season was that somewhere in the vicinity of 10 to 20 percent of the assets in the ETFs are held by institutional. So there's still a large percentage that is held by retail. And that's that's going to continue to shift in favor of institutional investors, as we've talked about, as more of the, you know, wire houses and then endowments and then pensions and these big institutions come into the fore and approve the wire houses and then endowments and then pensions. And these big institutions

come into the fore and approve the ETFs and buy them because they are much more long term holders than than retail investors. But there is a significant contingency right now still of retail investors holding the ETFs that will be more, you know, day to day, week to week, week to week, short term traders that are going to move more and buy and sell with market movements. But I think that will continue to shift in favor of more long-term holders going forward as institutions continue to onboard. And Juan and Jeff, I've got a question for you. You did mention something, Juan, that in the institutional community, Ethereum is a lot less known than Bitcoin.

How much education is needed? And what is the way? We discussed this a while ago in the early days when we first started speaking about the ETH ETF. And we forgot about it. And then it came up again a few days ago as Eric and James kind of changed their expectations from 25% to 75%. And one thing we were discussing is how easy it is to educate RIAs and institutional investors, the community, about – and David will be good for that one as well, along with you and Jeff, Juan – about Ethereum. How would you explain Ethereum to that community and how receptible are they to it in comparison to Bitcoin? And the reason I ask is it kind of gives us an idea of what inflows we could expect from these ETFs and what it would mean for the markets.

Yeah, I'll give one angle and then I'll let Jeff take it as well. On our end, at Bitwise, one of the things we've been doing is trying to help investors differentiate between assets in the ecosystem, because for many, it's still hard to differentiate the use cases and the attributes of the different assets. So we've been positioning Bitcoin as the store of value, more and more akin to a digital gold version for people to understand. And then we've been positioning ETH as a high growth technology platform, network effects business that has some features that are akin to dividend

yield, stock buyback with the staking and burn mechanisms. And that has been resonated with investors, allowing them to think about in their portfolio how they can carve different sleeves for those assets, a more alternative sort of geopolitical hedge for Bitcoin, if you will, and then on the high growth technology play asset sleeve for Ethereum. That's one way we've been positioning the difference between them. Jeff? Yeah, that's a great way that Juan has led in how Bitwise approaches the distinction between Bitcoin and Ethereum. I wholly agree with that. You know, it really depends on the sophistication of the investors we speak to.

There are some that are so new to crypto that the framework can be as simple as the way Juan has described technology versus store of value. But then you do occasionally meet the sophisticated investor types as well who have been tracking crypto for a long time, and they have more specific questions about Ethereum and its total return capacity. It's worthwhile mentioning that, of course, it's a big moment for U.S. history to have the ETF land. But the reality is we've had listed Ethereum tracker funds trading globally in Europe and actually in Hong Kong, too, a month ago first. And in Europe, there's actually several billions of dollars already trading in these structures where people have experimented on how to think about passing through staking income, for example. I believe CoinShares actually recently cut their management fee to zero and actually have a rev share with the way

they skim some of the staking income to pass some aspects of the totality of ETH's total return possibilities. And of course, you have 21 shares as well, close to half a billion dollars already in these structures. So occasionally, you do meet some sophisticated investors who are curious about what that is going to look like here in the U.S. I think everyone has seen to date, at least, no one is going to offer staking income as part of the ETF structure. And then those kinds of conversations also play a role into the readiness of investor appetite. That being said, I do think that people do want options. The beautiful thing about giving people options is that you give them a little bit of a choice, an agency to make a decision.

And so it's very different to say, hey, you have the Bitcoin ETF you can invest in or nothing in crypto. Now you get a chance to say you can invest in the Bitcoin story or the ETH story. And I think that is empowering for advisors and RIAs to actually have a more acute thesis to coming into the space. And that is psychologically actually a pretty big boost for how people make allocations. So on the increment, I actually think it's quite nice that investors can play a bigger role in that agency. Hey, David, before I'm going to go to Dave Weisberger, and then I'll go to the next question, which links to whether we should start discussing Sol and XRP ETFs. Dave,

I'll let you comment on this, but also I've got a question for you do you think the legitimacy that this brings to the ETH ecosystem would that also bring more attention or more inflows into projects and solutions built within that ecosystem we know we're talking about Ethereum L2s and roll-ups, we talk about projects being built

on the Ethereum blockchain would they be benefiting from this ETF decision or is that completely unrelated? Yes, but not on the timescale that you want to hear is the short answer. I think that people need to understand that I think the events of the last week and a half, including the ETF being approved, but most importantly, a 67%, i.e., potentially veto-proof majority in the House of Representatives for the concept of, I don't think most of those people read the FIT Act. I think we all think there are some issues with it. But the concept of a coherent regulatory framework that hamstrings

and get the SEC's regulation by enforcement, I think that the market is dramatically underpricing the impact of that. Now, let me explain. I think that this is probably a bigger underprice than when Paul Tudor Jones came out and talked about the fastest horse in Bitcoin when it was trading between $7,000 and $9,000. And three or four months later, we saw a rip, and we all know what happened. I think this is arguably a bigger mistake, because 50% of the world's investable assets are in the United States. Even in the hedge fund community, the larger funds, many of them have been unwilling to do anything in crypto. Certainly nothing with onshore money. And all of them are now talking about, OK, well, maybe we can do this because this is an interesting asset class.

We want to participate. That is a big deal. And I don't know how the market does nothing from that. But, hey, markets do what they're going to do. I think, as Scott has said many times, the crypto guys aren't going to do anything. And these things take time. Now, if you look at the ETH in particular, I think that in the short run, it will take longer to get people to understand that message. I love the way Bitwise is framing it. I think it's exactly right. And that's going to require more research. Bitcoin

is a really easy story for people to comprehend. And so I think that, you know, that on a time scale, I'm skeptical that the ETH ETF will perform as well as the Bitcoin ETF. In the long run, on the other hand, probably very different. And the thing about that, Mario, is once people start going down the rabbit hole of saying, OK, I can invest in Ethereum, if fact, along, you know, six months later, we have the ability to buy and sell, you know, brokers and RIAs and asset managers are going to get punished for having people set up an account or set up accounts at, you know, Coinbase Prime or wherever to trade those other things. I think that it could be a very big deal. But all of this is sort of like the primordial ooze, and the market's kind of coming out of that primordial ooze of the United States, which, you know, from outside the U.S. perspective, sounds idiotic, right? The whole world, other than the U.S., has been available to invest in crypto. The U.S. has been blocked. I mean, keep in mind, someone posted the other day how ridiculous it is that issuers

look at the U.S. in the same way they look at Iran and North Korea. And that will change. And that change is a very big change. And I think that people are underestimating how the ETH approval is kind of part of that entire political move. And we do have, is he on yet? Ron, Ron, how are you? It's been a while, we haven't had you on, probably should have had you a lot more in the last few days. I want to ask one more question to Dave and David, and the same question goes to Juan and Jeff as well. It's just now that we've got the ETTF approved, what's next? We've got Standard Chartered Analyst, Mr. Kendrick, said that Sol and XRP may be approved in 2025. So ETS for Solana and XRP.

And that the approval of the ETF means that ETH and similar cryptos will not be classified as securities. And, yeah, that's pretty much what he said. Would you agree with that analysis? Could we see those approvals in 2025? Or is that getting a bit too excited? Maybe in 2025. But the people, I'm not a lawyer, but let me explain. The way the ETH and Bitcoin ETS have been approved is based on the CME being a market of significant size.

And that is regulated. In order for them to approve, in order for the SEC to approve, unless you had a different commissioner there, a different chair, the only route for the SEC to approve that would be to approve Coinbase and Kraken as markets of substantial size that are regulated. So they will need to be under a regulatory regime in order for an ETF to be approved, full stop. Now, should that happen if the FIDAC goes live? Yeah, it will absolutely happen. And I think that that is, but that's what's required. Consider what that really means, though. What you'll end up seeing is, yeah, you'll have individual ETS for individuals,

but you'll also start to get baskets and indexes and the actual maturation of the market, which is, broadly speaking, far, far better for the crypto ecosystem. So in the next few years, as everything develops, it's wildly bullish. In the next few months, we're kind of, you know, I don't want to go down a pejorative. Let's just say that it's getting ahead of ourselves. It doesn't mean that things can't go crazy. 2017, we all saw things get way ahead of ourselves, but it happens. David?

Yeah, I really think we need to walk before we can run. I don't know how great it would be. For purposes of full disclosure, I own Solana, but I'm not a Solana-only investor, of which there was a capitulation by Biden and those inside of his inner circle to go ahead and agree to this so that they could get some votes. Whether they get the votes or not, I don't know. Pressure was building anyway. They were going to lose, they being the administration, the SEC, whatever, was going to lose. They were losing in the Congress as well, you know, in real time. And so they gave on this. I don't know if that necessarily means they're just going to go and, you know, abdicate any responsibility regarding crypto and just allow everything to go wild. And even under a Trump administration, I'm not sure that the approval of a Solana or a Litecoin

or whatever, fill in the blank, is necessarily coming next or so quickly. I think there's precedent in other jurisdictions around the world that ETH is ETF-able or is a commodity. And so therefore, I think it was a pretty safe bet to go ahead and create an ETF for ETH in the United States, I wouldn't go ahead and bet on the fact that the U.S. is going to be the first jurisdiction to go ahead and allow for a Solana ETF. And I don't think there are very many jurisdictions out there that have seen so much additional. I want to go ahead and ascribe the benefit to the economy coming from ETFs of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ether. I don't know there's any jurisdiction out there that is running full steam ahead to go ahead and ETF a bunch of other layer ones. I don't think that's, I'm close to the

situation in Canada. I don't think that's the situation in Canada. I don't think that's the situation in Switzerland. And for the US to go out on a limb on this, that's a bridge too far for me to go ahead and cross, at least at this time. I want to go to Ron as well, just kind of talk from a regulatory perspective. We've had this debate heavily, usually Scott moderates whenever it comes down to regulation, Ron. And the you know, the panel has been pretty split, especially when it comes to what is it called, Fit21. Are we seeing the capitulation of the anti-crypto movement with obviously Trump's speech and the ECTF and Fit21? And is the SEC losing their battle?

Is Biden shifting his strategy? Or are we getting a bit too excited too quickly? No, no, I think it's um i mean regardless if this is you know crypto or health care or any issue what happened in dc um in the past week is mind-blowing for a lot of industries i mean i've had a lot of folks uh on the lobbying side who work in other industries saying how the hell do you guys do that? Because this complete 180 from the administration has been building for quite some time. And it's a lot of work to take down those narratives and to at least show that, hey, this is a losing issue to be in the anti-camp here. You're not winning any votes here. You're losing votes. And the fact that we're talking about votes at all shows that there are people who care. So it was a culmination of a lot of things here.

But I just want to stress, like, what has happened in D.C. is the political pressure from both the campaign side, which many in thought, including myself, that the idea of the crypto voter would really sway anyone in D.C. would be kind of tough. But the poll after poll, and again, mind you, they're industry polls. But from at least my sources, it seems that the White House campaign, or sorry, the Biden campaign reached out to the White House and said, hey, look, this is gaining traction, and we are not in the right side of this here. And I think a lot of that comes from A, Twitter, B, spaces like this, but also just showing that the Biden campaign is trying to win some votes here because – I mean, take the youth vote, for example. One poll had Trump up by 30 percent, which when has a Republican won the youth vote? I mean, it's been decades at this point to my knowledge, at least not in my lifetime if I recall. And I think this is one of those issues where they're saying, why do we need to be such in the anti-camp here when, you know, even though they're industry polls, it shows that there's an engaged base.

And the last thing I'll say before I shut up is a lot of folks in D.C. who I'm great friends with, they don't really deal with crypto issues. They kind of got their first taste of crypto Twitter. You know, there's political Twitter. People are always on there. But, you know, since it was crypto week on the Hill, a lot of folks said, wow, I'm getting so much engagement for my member of Congress's Twitter or through my personal Twitter, what have you. And there's a lot of people who care about this. And I was trying to tell them, I've been telling you this for a long time. We've all been. But I'm glad you're finally realizing.

But this is it. So would you say this is a turning point for crypto? This is where crypto matters politically. This is where the, if obviously Trump is pro-crypto, RFK is pro-crypto, and then now you've got Biden shifting his strategy. Could this be a permanent shift in the US political stance when it comes to the industry? Or is that temporary for the election? No, this is 100%. I think it's shipped. And I think the Fit21 vote was exactly that. It was a marker. And some folks have, we've dealt with,

on the trade side, we've dealt with several companies ranging the gambit of the industry from VCs, token issuers, DeFi, what have you, that expressed concerns of the bill. I mean, there is no perfect bill by any means. But also, this wasn't the industry wishlist of legislation. There are some areas that folks have

rightful concerns about. I think it also kind of gave a lot of cover to Democrats because Democrats are more on the pro-consumer side. That's a good campaign messaging. And this is them saying, hey, look, we're going to be part of the solution and trying to find a way to create a framework. We're not going to take the sc approach that the laws are clear because obviously that is not the case and even folks who don't know crypto that well they were they would come up us and say yeah they missed ftx that's enough for me like it's that is enough for them to debase the argument the sec saying it's all clear and everything so even though you know some of those arguments may not be as uh you know true, I guess I would say, in terms of specifics.

But I will say that the entire vibe of crypto has dramatically changed this week. And I think we'll see what happens with SAB-121. That veto threat is still there, and it has to be signed by Monday, June 3rd now. So we have a whole week to see if Biden's going to be three for three in terms of not crushing crypto or if he's going to follow through with his word here. But I will say he's got a lot of political pressure. And there have been a lot of conversations allegedly at the White House about this and the ramifications, which is incredible. We have never been this force before. And we're punching above our weight. The crypto lobby, we're an animal now. I remember Brad Sherman called us big crypto.

That's the first time we've ever been called that in DC, because we're always overshadowed by the banks and big tech. So that was really awesome to see. And again, it's a group effort here. This is not one person did this or Trump said this. This is a culmination of everything. And the debt boxes, again, I think the debt box cases in particular, I've heard that iterated multiple times as the linchpin for saying, hey, SEC, time to chill. Don't take these court cases if there's a chance you could lose because we just don't need that right now.

Jeff? Yeah, I was going to add to that. Agree with many things here. Dave, I think also had mentioned before the crux of these ETF approvals relying on the having the futures market established first and therefore then finding its way into the equities market but if you think about where the crypto industry has been moving towards the framework of it's actually in the reverse direction so there's this idea that maybe at the very beginning there is some construct of an investment contract that it could start off as a security. But the goal is that it decentralizes enough such that it moves away from

that. And what that means, actually, is that you start potentially more like a security, and then it becomes more like a decentralized commodity, i.e. a futures. So the flow is actually in reverse. I think that's worth mentioning because this is one of the intricacies of the things that need to be worked out in FIT 21. They make the distinction in the bill to have digital, quote unquote, commodities under the CFTC guidance and regulation. But then there are these unrestricted digital assets, which actually would fall under SEC's supervision. And that line is incredibly precedent setting, because in the history, there has never been an asset that moved from equities into futures over time.

That's something that I think will be a core part of the revisions to be had in the current state of the bill. The other thing to mention, too, is these CME futures came to market at a moment when both Bitcoin and Ethereum were actually proof-of-work consensus mechanism tokens. So there wasn't staking as a construct of that dialogue. The other thing that Fit21 mentions and leaves room for is that they make the definition of digital assets specifically exclude notes. And notes are one of those things that have the chance to be claimed under SEC supervision as staked assets are transformed into notes. And that part of it also, I think, makes it quite tricky in understanding where the chances are for an asset to come into the futures market as a proof of stake token. So those are two kind of interesting things I think to pay attention to as the space

develops. William, Dave? Yeah, hi. So I think the Ethereum ETF is going to be very different from the Bitcoin one because Ethereum has a greater balance between actual

usage of the token in apps and out there versus Bitcoin. Bitcoin has been primarily a financial token. It exists in a very few apps, originals being maybe the exception. Ethereum is in thousands of apps, Dapps, DeFi, NFTs, and so on. And the meaning of this is that when Ethereum starts to get locked into ETFs, this is going to have more of a pent up effect on the supply side of Ethereum, which is going to have some very interesting implications on its price, even more so than

Bitcoin. In my opinion, it's going to be the first token that has a real balance between speculators and users. And that's going to be studied for a while, at least a few months, before determining what happens afterwards with the next wave of potentially other candidates that will come after those two being Ethereum and Bitcoin. So we have to study that a little bit more before we jump into the next ones. The last thing I would say about what happened recently this week, and I've been saying this for a while, is that as we get closer to the elections, the Democrats are going to do a couple of things to make them look not so anti-crypto. And this is happening already. And it's just because they want to neutralize that topic

and not make it so much of a swing topic as we have been saying in the last few months. And to use a cliche, I mean, the good thing is that the U.S. system has so many checks and balances that eventually, eventually it meanders, but then it gets into the right direction eventually. And using the cliche that we all know is that what Churchill has said many times and we use it all the time is that the is that the US always ends up doing the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities.

And I want to ask you a question I've asked earlier, William, and that question goes to Dave. Dave, I know you have other comments as well. Just back to the ETH ETF, what it means for the markets, what it means for the ETH ecosystems, what it means for projects building on ETH. I've asked that question to one of the panelists earlier that said, I think it was actually Dave. I think, Dave, you've asked that question to one of the panelists earlier that said,

I think it was actually Dave. I think, Dave, you've answered that question, is that it will have a great impact, but not in the timeframe that I'd like, which is the short term. So I think it will take time before that impact kind of starts to trickle down. We'd love to get your thoughts on that question as well, William. Yeah, it's going to have an impact because there's lots of capital equity with the ecosystem.

So let's take the best case, which is the price of Ethereum goes up. This capital is going to find itself, part of it, is going to find itself back into the ecosystem. It's going to fund more startups. It's going to fund more projects. Every project out there is going to feel more rich. It's going to feel that they can do more. And that's going to have more of an effect, of course, more than Bitcoin.

Again, because there is more of a balance. There are thousands of Ethereum developers, thousands of startups, companies, projects. All of them will benefit. Imagine more investments and that's going to be good for everybody. And then your thoughts on standard charted analysts that said that we'll have a Solana XRP ETF coming in next year potentially? Because if you believe that would happen, if that does happen, obviously the advantage that Ethereum has is limited. But if there is no ETF, at least for Solana, by next year, it just gives a massive edge for Ethereum over their competitors and Ethereum will continue to be king. I would say currently it gives an edge to Ethereum definitely.

It's going to distance itself a little bit more over the next few months. But I think before we jump into making predictions, of course, you go down the line of the ranking in the coin market cap and you would say, OK, these are the next ones and next one. But this is just a speculation. I think right now we need to study what's going to happen over the next few months and see how the Ethereum thing pans out. And maybe there will be dozens of them that become, that find themselves into ETFs next year. And maybe it's not just two or three of them. But let's study it. Let's see what happens. And then we can make better...

The shift, Ron, it's just starting to hit me how massive that shift is. Like, I'm starting to get kind of a... You remember the discussions we were having less than a year ago about the stance of the SEC kind of killing crypto

and people starting to think that this is the end of crypto in the US. And now we're suddenly, we have an ETH ETF, we have the SIP and SAP, whatever, all these different bills passing, and the SEC is slowly losing power. So it's just fascinating how fast things are moving.

Ron, I think you glitched out. It is pretty insane. But we did have a few panelists in the last couple of days, William, come on and say, I think Bruce Fenton being one of them, that we are getting a bit too excited that this isn't as significant as they're making it out to be. This isn't a win for crypto. But it seems you disagree with this, Ron disagrees with this, and most other panelists disagree that this is not monumental.

It is. I mean, one thing we haven't seen yet is retail come in. So I would say that is the caution right now um let's see if they follow because many of them have been burnt in 20 parts of 20 and 21 um so let's see but they've been but they've been burnt in every cycle and they somehow they come back like humans will always be humans like they get burnt but then they see new all-time highs they see it again they see it again, constantly in the news, and then eventually they come in probably too late and get burned again. Hopefully. We'll see. I cannot predict that one yet, but we need retail. We need everybody to be enthusiastic, not just about meme coins, but about real applications.

Again, I'm a proponent of seeing tokens in apps. I know some people will say, oh, no, it's not gonna happen. It's just a financial instrument. But based on what I'm seeing, we're going to see a lot of use cases inside apps. And that's the next thing that's upcoming right now. Talking, you did mention briefly Memecoins.

The partner for today's show is a Memecoin, it's Mamba. It's been getting a lot of traction. Built on base in Ethereum L2, there's gonna be a good discussion about the the eth ecosystem the response after the etf approval beyond just eth itself um and that includes meme coins let me go to dave and david to get your thoughts on what william was just talking about dave yeah there's a there's a bunch of stuff here um you know i just want to respond on the the ether yes he's right that No doubt I agree with William that if Ether does go up significantly, that will help ETH development. There's no doubt.

When it comes to vis-a-vis Solana, I think that battle and vis-a-vis base, I think that battle is based upon number of developers, number of projects, cost, efficiency of the chain, efficiency of the ecosystem. Level 2s ecosystem, you know, level twos, you know, Arbitrum, et cetera, can make Ethereum more efficient. But, you know, never forget that that's not the same thing as a native token. And I don't want to get into the debates, but it is what it is. The one thing that could actually be interesting, an interesting player here is if the CME decides to go to the CFTC and says, you know, I want to, they want to list futures on Solana, or they want to list futures on Dogecoin, doesn't really matter what they want to, they may feel empowered to actually push for that if they

have demand. Now, if that happens, then ETFs will, you know, follow fairly quickly behind that, you know, three to six months, you know, whatever. I think people need to understand that there's some gamesmanship being played here. You know, in fact, you know, the whole, whether it's the CFTC or SEC from outside the United States, this must look really dumb because we're the only country in the entire world that has two providential regulators. And the reason we do is because of money. And never forget that. The Agriculture Committee is the one that oversees the CFTC, and the Finance Committee oversees the SEC. And they both are very important committees because of the donors and the industries that matter. And neither one is going to give it up.

And that's why we have two. And when you get these food fights between agencies that cause a lot of angst, it's going to, A, slow things down. So this is going to take a while. And B, don't be surprised to see moves like in a chess game. So I would not be surprised to see a CME try to introduce, and I haven't talked to them, so I have no information on this, to try to introduce others. The other thing I wanted to make a point of why the time scales are important to keep in mind is, well, I agree with Ron. I mean, my exact quote yesterday was if you had told me two weeks ago that what happened was going to happen, I would have thought you were on some unbelievable drugs. And I'd be asking about what the side effects were to know whether it would be worth trying because, frankly, it is mind-blowing. I thought Ron nailed that perfectly. The one thing go ahead i was just going to say the one thing to keep in mind is pay attention to what happens if sherrod brown and elizabeth warren

are capable of stalling this act in the committee and not letting it get into real markup or to the floor of the senate where they couldn't you know, start. Sorry, someone was just calling me. If that if that gets stalled, then it is still going to be a very, very important political issue. If Gensler does not drop the cases against Kraken, Coinbase, Uniswap and arguably Robinhood, it is still an issue. Now, by the way, if this act was in law, he would be forced to. Those cases would just go poof. So watch this space. We don't know what's

going to actually happen. This is a great first step, but it's like, I don't know, use your pick your sport analogy. It's certainly nowhere near to the end of the game yet. Yeah. And I do want to ask Peter and yourself, Dave, just on the market's response to all the positive views we've seen over the last few weeks and months and whether you think the markets have priced it all in. But let me just get Dave – sorry, Ron and David's thoughts on the topic, and then we'll move to the markets and then get into Mamba. I have to go first quickly. Dave, you're 100% on the money there, especially when it comes to congressional dynamics. We did have some folks, and I saw some folks on Twitter saying the FIT bill is not perfect because it creates a bifurcated market. And a lot of the folks in D.C. are like, hey, look, this is just the reality we're in.

We have a bifurcated market, and this is not the bill to fix it. This bill is already doing a lot of other things that are brand new for Congress. We can't throw it in the kitchen sink, at least at this stage. Which, again, I came across that when I was writing crypto legislation back in 2017. That's Zaffer. Like this just comes up all the time.

That's the unfortunate situation because the Ad Committee wants that jurisdiction. It's a powerful committee now because of looking over the commodities. But when it comes to the Senate, I will say there is no companion. So there's no like direct same text bill or version of it in the Senate.

There's a similar one with Lummis and Gillibrand. But if you look at the comments from the Fit21 authors like French Hill from Arkansas, for example, he's even saying this is a 2025 bill. This is a momentum bill, largely, I think. And I think this is going to see we'll see how that affects the SAB 121 veto before June 3rd. I think this also makes stable coins now a lot more viable in play. It gets covered. Schumer is saying, look, you actually have a pretty large set of folks in the House and Senate. And also, lastly, this is election year.

So there's a thing called a four-corner sign-off. If you're going to sneak something into a big bill, a big spending bill, which will probably have one, maybe two big bills left the rest of the year, you need Maxine Waters and Sherrod Brown and Patrick McKendry and Tim Scott all to agree. And Maxine Waters is already against FIT 21. So you can pretty much assume a FIT 21, at least just with that right there, means it's not going to be attached to another piece of legislation. And I want to stress to folks, though, this is not Maxine Waters personally. And at least just with that right there means it's not going to be attached to another piece of legislation. And I want to stress to folks, though, this is not Maxine Waters personally. This is the SEC through Maxine Waters, and she's just the surrogate here.

But stablecoins, I think the momentum is there, and that's going to be a lot more likely here in D.C., but probably towards the end of the year. Ron, let me read out. I just want to ask Ron a real quick question. What do you think is going on in the conversations between the administration, congressional leadership at this point, and the SEC? Because this bill, specifically if passed, would literally get rid of those enforcement actions where there's no investor harm alleged. Do you think those conversations are taking place? I have confirmation they have been happening. Allegedly, the White House has been a little caught flat-footed here.

But again, even the folks on the pro-industry side like myself, we were shocked by the amount of votes here. And I mean, our count, I think my guess is 54 for FIT 21, which is high among most folks. And we got 71. And then FIT was even higher then fit was even it was lower but obviously it was a different circumstance um so there is a shift we have been told the white house has made that call the sec who it was what you know it was a you know someone else in a pretty high up i don't know uh i'm sure we'll probably not know um but yeah the the white house is feeling

the heat and it's actually kind of weird to hear these conversations and be like, wow, we got some wins in a lot of that. And again, I've been told, at least from the legal side, that to Dave's point, that is the next major thing to watch is to see if the conversation that got the ETHF to happen via political pressure, will that trickle down to the court cases? Because those do have huge significance, obviously. Ron, let me just read out a quote here from gabriel shapiro um illegal expert it's kind of playing devil's advocate and now similar to to bruce fenton's psyop arguments i'll read out his exact quote about the sip 21 he says the following and let me open it up there it is it does not even shift agencies the sec would still have huge power it provides for a dual regulatory regime split between the sec and the cftc it does this by giving the cftc authority it never had uh never had regulatory authority over a spot commodities market man we

have been psyoped so bad on the so bad on the on the fit 21 thing um so would love to get your thoughts again run on that argument like i said yeah so i i like gabe he's a good guy uh he has a some great takes uh he has dunked on pretty much every single uh piece of legislation at least when it comes to market structure uh whether you're republican or democrat uh and take me for example when i had the token tax on me acts i had a gabe shapiro tweet uh sent to me in back in like what 2018 2019 uh just ripping it apart. I'm like, dude, I'm on your side here, man. I'm trying to help you guys out. And so that was a little, you know, I do have some of those reactions

from the Hill staff and the members of Congress who are saying, like, hey, I'm getting a lot of heat from the industry. Like, I'm trying to do what exactly you asked me to do, which is create a regulatory framework. And I'm trying my best to, you know, thread the needle here to get the Democrats on board with consumer protection and stuff. But again, at the same time, this is kind of what it should be like. This is what legislation is like.

And we have serious concerns with the tech still, at least here at the Blockchain Association. We've had several members from all over the ecosystem say that there are very keen issues that they need addressed. But at this stage, there's not something that we're a fit 21. The text itself, at least as we see it right now, has a way to get snug into a piece of legislation where we sign the law in 2024. The dynamics aren't there yet. So we're looking at folks in the Senate like Hagerty from Tennessee, Lummis from Wyoming, Chilobrand, New York, Cinema of Arizona. These are the folks who have already been engaged on crypto issues for several years now and saying, hey, look, this is a great step from the House.

Let's build on this. Let's get some stable coins because that's almost the finish line yet. And again, lastly, at least when it comes to stable coins, the admin's been the one that's been holding everything up from all conversations. Congress is ready to move on some legislation they want a state pathway and allegedly the fed and treasury uh are been objecting saying that

there should be no state pathway um they should have federal uh authority uh entirely um or at least some market cap of like 250 million so the we have the power which is has not happened ever before in my experience ever working in the eight years in crypto in DC, that we actually have political power. So this is a situation where we maybe have the upper hand and this can force things like the stablecoin bill to move forward. Hey, Mario, can I make one other point? The single thing that most of the entrepreneurs that I know in the industry, certainly infrastructure companies like CoinRoutes, where we're trying to help people execute and trade better, right?

Coinbase, there's lots and lots of companies working in this space. The thing that everyone has wanted for six years is a safe harbor where you effectively have, as the regulations are being built, you can build your business as long as you adhere to certain key principles. That is literally enshrined in this bill. Now, it doesn't mean it's going to get done, but it is an idea, and it is the key idea. And if you want to understand whether or not you can raise entrepreneurial money to build things in this space, it's a question of, do you run the risk of arbitrary and capricious enforcement actions from the SEC to derail you. If that risk is taken away, then it is an incredibly bullish thing for it. If that risk is not taken away, then it will still be a ballot box issue in November. And that's what needs to get clarified, and that's what needs to move forward. So yes, it's not clear yet. Ron is right. We're not going

to likely get rail legislation this year, but we might see movement against the enforcement and don't underestimate the impact impact of that when uniswap is getting wells notices david i would love to get your thoughts on this and then we'll get just an update on the markets from dave and peter david yeah i just wanted to first thank ron for all his hard work um And I want to go ahead and agree, the stablecoin parameters and regulation, to me, are the layup. Even though, for some reason, they seem to be harder to get than the ETH ETF approval now. But that to me, although most people won't see it that way because they want to see their whatever coins,

you know, appreciate a thousand percent. You know, the stable coin legislation to me is the watershed event really for the sector. I think you've just got out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll be back. Sorry. It's a watershed event because it solidifies the U.S. dollar.

By the way, I don't know if we spoke about the fact that we're not getting a CBDC in this country, which I think is great. I don't think we should ever have a CBDC. I have privacy issues with that. I think the right way to solidify the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency is through stable coins denominated all in dollars. The stable coin companies buying treasuries. I think it's it is such a win win all around for the stable coin legislation to get passed and for stablecoins to begin to explode, not only in terms of the holdings of them, but also in terms of their usage. And I think it is going to be

a vector of force that until now, a lot of people in the sector, a lot of crypto degens haven't thought about in terms of appreciating the value of the cryptocurrencies that they hold, that hold the stable coin, you know, channel is really going to bring players into this industry that we wouldn't have otherwise thought would enter this industry and certainly not in the way that they're going to enter this industry by the use of and holding of and investment in stable coins let me go to dave and and peter peter i'll go to you first we'd love to get your thoughts on the market's response to the etf news the market's response in that regulatory shift the sentiment shift here in the u.s as we get close to the elections And do you think it's all been priced in? How much of it has all been priced in? I mean, keep in mind, I'm Bitcoin. So once we get into some of these other things,

I mean, I'm Bitcoin focused. I mean, full disclosure, outside of real estate that I own, Bitcoin is my single largest holding in my wealth. And so, hey, I'm biased. I'm singularly focused. But I look at Bitcoin. I put out a report. Many of you have read it where I'm saying, hey, there's a 25% chance that we've seen the high in the Bitcoin for this entire bull market cycle. And I will continue to point out that we have not taken out on an inflation adjusted basis the 2021 highs in Bitcoin. we do not have new highs.

In fact, we are below those highs. And we are below the highs from March, actually, especially when you look at a Bitcoin gold ratio, which is something I'm increasingly looking at. And so the longer it takes for us not to charge in the new highs and thrust up, the more as a Bayesian, I'm starting to think, well, 25% might be low. I need to rise that up. Now, that doesn't mean that we go into a massive bear market in Bitcoin. But I can build a case that if we stall here, we could go back to 50, possibly even 40. As a matter of fact, long-term based on my charts, there'd be nothing more bullish than a correction in Bitcoin back to 45. That is something I really would start drooling over.

So, you know, that's where I'm at. I like the market. I love the market. I'm a Bitcoin guy all the way along. Let me just make a point here, too, Mario, relative to young people and their attitude for what's going on in Washington. I will point out the overwhelming support of CBCD

by the Democratic Party on the Emerald Bulletin. You know, that will tell you what the Democratic Party really thinks about crypto, folks. Pay attention. You know, support for the Fed to move into that sort of invasion of privacy and involvement in the crypto market is very, very dangerous. And so I do not want to hear about how the Democratic Party is embracing all of a sudden the crypto generation, because it's not happening. It will not happen. So I think it's really important for the crypto and

the halving cycle to get on track to start charging in the new highs. The longer we don't, the longer we remain under the 2021 highs on an inflation adjusted basis. The more I start stacking on steroids, my 25% probability that we stall here and head back to at least 50. So that's my two cents. I appreciate it, Peter. And Dave, we'd love to get your thoughts. I literally think exactly the opposite. Go ahead.

I literally think. OK. Please go ahead. I think we have stalled. We are likely to continue stalling. And I think the longer we stall, the tighter the spring gets wrung. Basic economics, supply and demand. We're sitting below those highs, having taken enormous amount of supply off the market into new demand. At the same time, if you compare to 21, where the network was and you adjust it for Bitcoin's value relative to its network size, we're one-fourth of the highs.

One-fourth, 75% below. That's a big number. Not just inflation adjusted. Most cycles in crypto, and I know it's not statistically significant, but most cycles in crypto, when the doubts over the miner cycle are eased. That's when the next rally happens. This is happening at the same time as we have an enormous amount of capital that our friends from Bitwise and Fidelity and BlackRock are talking to on a daily basis about it. I actually look at what's going on in the market as Bitcoin is stalled because there's significant underlying demand that meets every wave of crypto bro selling. And, you know, we've seen this in the market. Just like I said yesterday, that Ether had a snap correction back to the middle of the range, which is exactly where we still are, you know, 0.055, 0.054. We saw it go a little bit over and it's back down. There's a lot of motion that's going on and

volume, the amount, I can't speak to exactly why I know this, but I do. The amount of volume that's from professional or traders who are dedicated to trading, not necessarily incorporated, compared to normal degen activity is actually high. There's a lot of brownie in motion going on in the market and a lot of people getting into trading. There's a lot of brownie in motion going on in the market and a lot of people getting into trading. And I think all of those things are setting us up for a pretty substantive rally in the fall. I do think that there's a lot of things going on here. But the thing that I disagree with Peter on, I think the longer we stay at these levels, and unless there is a macro market crash, which of course could always happen,

there's no chance of going to those levels. In other words, if you took Bitcoin relative to the S&P, if the S&P stays at these levels, Bitcoin is not dropping into the 40s or 50s. No way. The supply-demand curve just doesn't look for that. On the other hand, if there's a market crash, all correlations go to one. So it's really important to understand all of that. Let me read out just a couple of tweets here. One about Bitcoin archives puts out a chart says Bitcoin is looking more like the 2017 cycle every week. Similar price action, similar RSI, everything's lined up for bullish momentum to surge through the US presidential election

and powered by ETF on ramps. Are you ready? And another tweet here by Mags, four year bull cycle is still on track and is exactly where it is supposed to be and they put out the charts again i'm not a chartist but peter they look exactly the same it's like it's looking identical to the last couple of cycles and it's true we are exactly where we should be despite all the news that scott says no matter what happens from a news perspective every history is repeating itself now i don't know what uh what events could change that you know you're talking about the the smp uh having impact correlation going to one, Dave. I'm not sure how much of a correlation

there'll be this time around. Like, would it have enough of an impact to break that correlation? Could we see history not repeat itself if the S&P takes a big enough hit? It depends how and why, right? If the S&P goes through a grind, you know, all of a sudden,

people start worrying about higher rates and the market grinds lower. Yeah, the correlation can break pretty easily. That correlation, in fact, is very high. The correlation is extremely high if you get 10, 20 percent, 30 percent corrections in markets when everyone basically sells whatever they have to sell in order to fund themselves. So I'm talking about a crash. If that happens, then all bets are off. I just don't think the likelihood in a presidential year where I think the Fed is going to inject liquidity, even a hint of a stock market contagion will happen.

But that's the difference. All right. So I'm going to shift the discussion to our sponsor kind of talking about a topic we've talked. Let me change the title as well. That's meme coins. I think, William, you've been pretty vocal on meme coins and your stance shifting similar to me and Scott shifting gradually

on what your perception of meme coins is. Actually, William, before we go to Mamba, I want to get your thoughts on what your perception of meme coins is now. Has that changed at all over the last couple of weeks or is it still the same? Like there's value in decentralized communities. No, it hasn't really, except that I think some meme coins are going to find themselves more useful than others.

That's going to be remaining the case. And we tend to be judging them very quickly based on their takeoff kind of timing. And yeah, it's easy to have some really great takeoffs. It's a lot easier to maintain what happens afterwards and then to therefore expand the usage and to see how many holders really hold the token and what they do with it. So I think the jury is still out as to which ones are going to stay,

which ones are not. But it's definitely interesting. And they are trying to do things in reverse, as I was saying before, meaning that they go for the community right away. But then the community has to do something. Either they keep pumping it for fun or they have to start using it. Yeah.

Let me go to Mamba. And this is a pretty cool story. So Sigmund, who works with us, he's part of our meme coin department or team or group. And he brings a lot of meme coins to us to come on the show to work with our marketing team. And we've invested with a few. And he calls he goes mario i was in dubai he goes mario and there's guys behind a coin called mamba um you know i think he was in a spa with one of their founders want to come meet you i've just

missed meeting them unfortunately um and then a few days later kind of dismissed it and then a few days later he's telling me about the the team behind mamba who's on stage now we're going to have a back and forth with um and i start looking at the background, asking him a few questions. And the guys launched another meme coin called Keys that hit a market cap of $330 million. And then they launched an NFT project called – I remember it from before. I can't remember the name of it now. I'll ask him now to tell me the name. That raised $10 million.

I remember – Mario, Meta Mansions. Meta Mansions. Keys was not a meme coin it's a utility real estate token okay so my bad so keys was a utility real estate token hit a market cap of 330 million dollars in the last uh in the last cycle i think it was and then the nft project raised over 10 million dollars meta mansions i'm like holy shit like these guys know how to build a project now how to build a create hype know how to build a create hype. And then one of my team members called Bob, he goes to me, he's like, Mario, have you heard of this coin called Mamba? It's everywhere. They've been marketing for the past

month. I'm like, shit, I think Sigmund's talking to them. And here they are. I jumped on a call with him yesterday. We ended up investing in Mamba and we got him on this show and a few other shows. I think they're coming on at least one other show later today. And let's focus purely on the meme coin show as well so so guys uh before digging into i've got like three things i want to talk about first the meme coin market as a whole second is how the i'm just being very direct as selfish questions like how the hell did you do i'm genuinely curious how you've managed to do it twice and now um potentially the third time around building a project and getting so much traction with it another third question digging into

mamba itself the project you guys are working. But the first question is the meme coin market in general, especially on base, because you guys are building on basis, Mamba on base. And we work with a lot of base projects, base meme coins, including Brett. So we love that ecosystem. My question to you is your timing. It looks like meme coins are pumping again. We'd love to get your thoughts on why that is. And then why did you choose base? Yeah, it's a great question. Mario, really appreciate you having us here. Thank you, everybody, in terms of listening and obviously believing in the vision that we've created as a team, as our character Mamba. And I think one of the most important things to look at at the market as a whole is if we look at meme coins in general, it is absolutely exploding astronomically. I think

there's over 62 billion in market cap. I think 13 billion or 14 billion in volume the last 24 hours alone. And we see ETH in terms of meme coins absolutely taking over. You look at Pepe, I believe they're at a 5 or 6 billion market cap. And in terms of just the ecosystem as a whole, much, much stronger than Solana. And where we come into base is we look at the founders of base, Jesse Pollock, as a very, very clever and innovator and inventor in this space. And what is he doing over there? Well, what he's done is he has launched a creator fund and he is trying to onboard as many users over to that ecosystem as possible. Base is really unique because it allows us to have lower transaction fees, allows us to speed up transactions. And what he's trying to do, like I said, is onboard as many users as possible.

So where we come into play, we see a massive opportunity is base. If we just look at the facts of the market, if we look at March, there was $9 billion in volume and new influx into that ecosystem. Then coming into April, there was $14 billion in volume going into there. Now, May, we're obviously, I mean, I don't want to say we timed it just perfectly, but if you guys look at where we're at, and obviously our last move that we made, we timed it actually when ETH hit all-time highs. So with this being said, we see that base is going to be up next. We have an on-chain summer coming. It's the narrative of the entire crypto space. And if you just look at the fact that there is literally 400,000 new wallets onboarded on the base over the last, I think, 72 to 48 hours. So base is definitely up next.

Yeah. I'm just looking at your previous project that did hit just over $250 million market cap. So my next question is that you launched a utility token, the real estate token first, you launched an NFT project, the Meta Mansions, which i've heard of before we we didn't invest i wasn't involved with nfts too much in the last cycle um and now you're launching meme coin i'm curious like obviously you guys are great at marketing you guys are great at building communities why build a meme coin what do you think is the strategy now to building successful meme coin so there's really two aspects to it and the first one is we actually believe that meme coins are this cycle's most attractive um community driven projects meaning that's what people care about and our previous project is still active in full transparency we're still

building a metaverse there we're trying to bring real estate on chain. So Keys token is still fully active. Meta mentions we already have over 300 assets on Unreal Engine fully built. But people just don't care right now about Metaverse or in fact, even blockchain. A lot of people right now, the reason memes are going absolutely crazy is because it makes them have fun while they're trading. They enjoy their time. They obviously connect with new people around the world. So for us, meme coins is actually a strategy. And not only are we getting to become familiar with the base network and building a variety of games with Mamba's character, we also actually believe that this entire cycle narrative

for the next 20, 24 months will be driven by meme coins and projects that know how to bring people together, keep them excited, give them something to look forward to, obviously build projects that they could be a part of, prototype products. That's essentially what's going to get a lot of people to stick around and not necessarily be just a 10 day project. So meme coins for us is essentially just community building and bringing products to them. Okay. So meme coins for us is essentially just community building and bringing products to them. Okay, but you've done it twice.

You've managed to build that massive community, bring up a lot of buying power for the project on two occasions. This is your third. Now, remember, just for the audience, when I spoke to you personally last night, guys, before going to bed, Sigmund was vouching for you, someone I trust and I've worked with for many years. You guys were brutal.

Like you guys are very aggressive markets, very aggressive business people in a good way. And that kind of gave me a vote of confidence. Like I've never been negotiated the way you guys negotiate. It was actually pretty fun. But I want to get a bit more technical beyond you guys being driven, because beyond working hard,

beyond building a community, I just want to like, what are the things that you're doing that you could share to kind of build that momentum because no matter what solution we we invest in vc vc back projects on a daily basis at least a couple of projects a day we're very aggressive there and no matter how good the solution is that's not enough you gotta get attention you gotta get the token price matters no matter what anyone says so my question to you is how do you create this much momentum how did you do it twice and how do you how you're

doing it this time around because mamba's getting a lot of traction i think there's really three ways three important factors and the first one is content and that's why we have a full-blown animation team we obviously have a lot of people working on Mamba's character, the games we're building. The second one goes back to the concept of just building a team that is all on the same page, all working towards one vision, one goal. And essentially we have a team of 20 people involved. I mean, we're here right now with around 15 of us in this house as I'm speaking, and we're all working. Everybody's putting 10, 20 hours a day and we're all just building this out. And the third one is conversion methods. The only way that you could

actually turn attention into interest and get people to become a part of something bigger than just making money is to convert them, to buy into this character, to want to take Mamba to the moon, to play these games and obviously tell their friends about it, share. So our community size is already over 20,000, and our target by the end of the day today is 50,000. So our mission to become the biggest on base is backed by data, by a lot of people working, by a lot of systems in place. And every day we just show up and we work. This project started about seven weeks ago, in addition to the four four years five years of experience we have in this space so we're excited for a big day and we're excited to probably do it again and again it's crazy it's crazy how you can build such a massive

community such an engaged community in seven weeks i'll probably dig into this a bit further um but from the so creating the content creating the narrative um kol's um just straight to the point how effective are they i think a lot of people love to dismiss KOLs, but I still do believe, not any KOL, I think you guys were even selective on who you want to bring on board. You were very selective on which ones you allowed in your private sale. And we'll talk about the numbers later, what you're raising out, what you're launching out, your public sale. I think you're listing at like a $40 million market gap, if I'm not wrong. We'll get into that later. But first, I want to, are people aren't still to this day underestimating the value of um trusted kls trusted key opinion

leaders people that that kind of don't shill anything for a buck they kind of believe in a project when they talk about it do they how effective are they they're effective and they come in different levels because in reality we're living in a day and age where social media has created KOLs regardless of what your audience is, whether it's 10 people, whether it's 10,000 or 10 million, KOLs are all around. And for us, the most important thing is the message we're trying to spread, which is essentially why we made it so simple. Mom was on a mission to go to the moon. We're all coming together. And obviously in Web3, to the moon is a slang that everybody gets excited for. And when it comes to KOLs, it's a mixture. Because if we spread the right message and we're building a real community with real products, a real brand that people could build their own projects and IP on top of,

KOLs essentially become just community members. And that's the best form of viral marketing we can get. As for the different levels of KOLs, obviously, there's a lot of big people, including yourself, that need to have more than, let's say, financial or some sort of short-term gain that gets them involved in a project. So when we look for partnerships, we're essentially looking for who else can bring value, both in terms of audiences and communities, but also in terms of ideation, experiences, the negotiation we have. These type of experiences add value to the project and our confidence in our ability to do it bigger and bigger. Yeah, I want to, actually, I wish Ryan and Scott,

they're both on a separate flight today, but I'd love to kind of have that discussion with Ryan and Scott there. We're having the whole flight today, but I'd love to kind of have that discussion with Ryan and Scott there. We're having the whole discussion on KOLs and crypto and their place in crypto. I'll bring you guys on there because you guys have really leveraged KOLs in a smart way. I've got two questions. One of them is about Web2 versus Web3 KOLs, how effective each are. And then it's a very short answer. And then I want to go to one of your claims.

You said you're going to onboard a million users onto base. This is a pretty outlandish claim. so i'd love you to elaborate on that so in terms of how we're going to onboard a million users onto base it's no it's very simple we do this through community building partnerships and gaming we do what we do best and we already have many partnerships locked in with some of the biggest brands. And the way I look at it is the community becomes the partnerships that we want to bring in to obviously take this to the next level. So with gaming, right, gaming allows us to onboard as many users as possible in different ecosystems on the base chain. So what we created is one of the first play to earn games on base that allows us to have mamba integrated as a play to earn mechanism and also have partnerships with say brett tushy normie and all the other base uh ecosystems and the the question i have for you

before i go to the next one here, a lot of meme coins, like what's the difference between launching a meme coin and saying, hey, this is a meme coin, this is a community, there's nothing more to it versus launching a meme coin with a clear utility from the get go, especially when it comes gaming, which is one of the easiest utilities. Is there examples where this works, where a meme token with a community, it starts as a meme token and then builds into a game because we've invested i'm one of the most fucking passionate guys and when it comes to web3 gaming and we invest

extremely heavily in that ecosystem um but i'm genuinely curious does it work going from a meme to a game and is there case studies where that's worked great question in terms of its utility i think any token that could be matched with the utility just not only adds value, but gets people to want to be more involved in it. And when it comes to meme coins, the narrative with meme coins goes back to the whole content community slash culture and conversion. So once you've built a community, whether it's around a character an idea a concept it essentially you could literally build anything you could build games you could build any type of consumer good products you could build basically anything and branch that out into as many different um industries or any different place that you want to from our end

we believe that the hype that's happening with meme coins, the ability for people to come together. There's been a lot of meme coins that Project Devs have actually left and there's been a CTO community takeover and the meme coin ends up going absolutely crazy because a group of people come together. I love when that happens, man. I love, this is what meme coins should be.

I think just, there is no leading team. I think it should evolve eventually to a fully distributed community with a financial incentive to build something. I love that example. That's exactly it. Can I dig into some of the tokenomics? What is your total supply? How many are being distributed? What percentage is in the liquidity pool allocation?

What's reserved for sex listings? Just give me a bit of a breakdown of the tokenomics. Great. Yeah, happy to go over it. We have 2.48 billion token supply in total, MambaCoin. And 70% of that is going towards liquidity, 10% to exchange listings, 10% marketing, and 10% treasury. And the project started with the 10% treasury raising with a private group of people, very selective, all of them are marketers or

developers that are adding value to the project. And essentially, that was the beginning. And going back to my point quickly as well, it essentially started as a cto this project was essentially a community of around 200 people coming together and starting it and our ability to take meme coins and ct sorry man cto community takeover community takeover yes essentially us getting together and saying we should do this now because that's what people care about and on a final note the convergence of gaming and memes right now is unheard of floki is a project that's done it but the convergence of this is unheard of and that's essentially what we believe it takes to become the biggest on base let me dig into your pre-sale so

how are you guys raising money you do a private round then you're doing a public round and then you've got the listing in a couple of days. How much you're raising? How much have you raised? What's the plan? What's the strategy? And some of these questions are more like just questions for you guys to talk about. Mamba and others are like genuine questions. Myself, like curious to see what strategies work now. Yes. Raised 1 million at a 10 million valuation, which is essentially the treasury. And now going into pre-sale, our soft cap is 3 million. And our hard cap essentially is open due to the fact that the bigger the pre-sale is, the bigger the project becomes with our ability to develop and market

at a larger and faster scale. And what's the valuation for the next round? It starts at 15 and goes up to 40 plus based on how much is raised. And you're expecting to list at 40, I guess? We're all going into this with no expectations, but in terms of Mamba mentality, we're all in. And everybody's bringing everything they got. So we do expect a great day in terms of like targets and goals. Our number one target is to reach the 50,000 community member size. And that's essentially what we're all working towards.

Okay. And when is the listing? When's the airdrop? May 28th will be the TGE and airdrop for presale immediately after. Private will be vested at 40 on TGE. 20, 20, 20 for three following weeks. All right, man. And is the presale strategy still working when you look at tokens?

Because I know there's a lot of meme coins doing a fair launch, but even that's not really that fair when they snipe it at launch. How is the presale narrative work? So in terms of the narrative, it really goes back to our positioning. And the way we designed this project six to eight weeks ago when it first started at Ideation was essentially looking into the future and saying, what do we believe we need to make this as big as possible in terms of a project's introduction. And essentially, it's been a combination of animation, content, community building across all social channels. We have an initiative called Base Camp,

where we onboard users, have custom Mamba merch, and we basically help people get set up with base and get set up in Bridge ETH and essentially get them ready for our play to earn games. As for the ETH ETF, that obviously adds a lot of hype for the entire community as well as what we're trying to build overall because we are committed to this long-term.

We've been building on ETH for the past six years now with keys and meta mansions. So moving forward, right now we're at a position where we're literally doing our pre-sale today, preparing for token launch and then preparing to get our Web2 communities involved, Web3 communities highly active. And going back to the KOLs, that's essentially been how we communicate this project with the entire ecosystem. And we have a lot of people in this space that are supporting Mamba. So when it comes to a pre-sale strategy, essentially, if we could build a community, give them something to look forward to in terms of the games that we're building, the narrative with Mamba, story from rags to riches that they could all relate to. We've essentially turned that into a project that we do believe will have an immediate impact on

both how the market's doing as well as what's happening on base and some of the people we've been talking to actually believe that we could be the reason the meta comes to base from solana which is where a lot of the meme hype and a lot of the action is happening now we're trying to bring that narrative and get everybody excited about the next thousand play on base yeah like i just remember the days about a year ago me and scott when i think ran and david who works getting sponsors on the show brings a meme coin on the show and like me and scott kind of get into a whole fight about it and we didn't want to bring them on and then it just took us a while to to kind of start seeing hey shit there's something here same thing with nfts same thing

with icos in 2017 i'm just gonna learn not to be slow in these and i just think that um if done right um the potential and you know me and william have talked about this a few times before if done right is this massive potential for meme coins um and and the concept of decentralized communities now the reason why i brought you on this show we don't bring many meme coins on the crypto town hall just because it's a very different audience to the other shows that we do including the meme coin show but the reason i did is we are bringing more, especially bigger projects that have that momentum on the show. Because they've kind of, you know, beyond just a startup. Now, you guys haven't even listed, but the reason I'm confident with it is that considering your background and how much traction you've built with Mamba, the amount of traction you have,

but also the success you've had with two previous projects, a token in the last cycle and the NFT project. So I'm going to be really watching closely. Obviously, I'm invested, but just more of an observer, kind of watching what strategies you're doing and learning as well. So pretty keen to see how the launch goes in four days. Good luck with your raids. We'll see you again in a couple of hours, I think, in a few hours on the

meme coin show. Kind of digging into it further with a more DJ and audience. Siggy will be there moderating the show with me. But guys, congrats on what you've built so far. Congrats on the meme coin show kind of digging into it further with a more dj audience as ciggy will be there moderating the show with me but guys you know congrats on what you've built so far congrats on the drive that you guys have um just kind of final quick words for for the audience about mamba and mainly focus on on the listing in the private sale yeah much appreciated thank you everyone for your time and just on a final note in terms of what you said about the right timing the other aspect of it is surrounding the project with the right people that support so that's

essentially what mamba's mission is right now he's at the position where he's collecting support and the more support he has the bigger the launch is going to be going into tuesday so we'll reconnect at three excited to send mamba to the moon thank you guys not at all man thanks a lot man appreciate everyone we'll see you again on monday morning and for anyone else who wants We'll reconnect at three. Excited to send Mamba to the moon. Thank you guys. Not at all, man. Thanks a lot, man. Appreciate you, everyone. We'll see you again on Monday morning. And for anyone else that wants to learn more about Mamba, we'll be having them on the show in a few hours on the Meme Coin Show.

Thanks a lot, everyone. Really appreciate it. And see you on Monday. See you, Mamba. See you, everyone.