The Wolf Of All Streets - Max Pain Achieved For Bitcoin Options! What’s Next? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Crypto Town Hall, 1015 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Every single weekday here on AccidentSpin, every single weekday, because even these days when I miss, we have the amazing Dave Weisberger, who is on stage, that's been covering my ass and hosting for us and doing an incredible job. Dave, we got a title here, Max Payne achieved for Bitcoin options. We hear this term all the time. Maybe you can explain it because this is one of those rare times that the market actually achieved it.

Yeah, it's actually it's interesting. So there's a large expiration. I think it's 12 UTC, which is soon at on Deribit. I think it's 12 UTC, which is soon and you know on Deribit and Max Payne is refers to the amount that the Where the price where most of the options will expire worthless and market makers make the most money? Now if one asks oneself the question, well, why do we care about this? It's because

For reasons that aren't all, well, I mean, it's pretty obvious, actually. The price of the asset when there's huge options expirations tends to gravitate toward that max pain price. Today, it looks like they overshot it on the downside. We'll see. But when it happens, what that does is market makers make money and options premium buyers lose money. It is not well understood, but in general, and options are incredibly popular, particularly

in the United States, because there's no other really good way to get leverage. There's no perpetual swap markets. But most option premium does actually expire worthless. That's fairly normal. And so these expirations are a situation where you have what we call liquidity arbitrage. Now, that's a very fancy term that sounds for something that is kind of not particularly people don't really like. What it means is the spot market or the market or the underlying market for the asset has a certain amount of liquidity and it can

be worthwhile from a profit and loss point of view sometimes to sell when you may be long and buy when you may be short in order to get the price to a level where your market making book makes more money. And so the the incentive structure on options expiration, on futures expiration, sometimes those options is more obvious, sometimes tilts in this direction. And you've seen this many times in the past. It's not a big deal. We're still in the same trading range we've been in.

And around this trading range, we've seen relative illiquidity, meaning that everyone jokes about, well, whenever the market goes up going into the New York open, it tends to drop after and vice versa. But what's really happening is the books are not really that thick. And so that's what we're seeing. So I'm not remotely surprised to see, right now it looks like we're bouncing off the bottom back towards 85. Look, I'm not, you know, going to strongly talk about technical trading, but it's important for people who are just sitting watching their bags and despairing over the crypto market

to understand that this is not a strange event. This is not an event that is unexpected. And that's really the point that I want to make here. There's an idea or thought process where people assume that when we expire near Max Payne, we're supposed to go up, correct? Or that that will happen more likely than not. I think the expiration may have happened based on the timing, right? 8.30 this morning Eastern Standard Time or something. So it could very well have happened based on the timing, right? 8.30 this morning Eastern standard time or something.

So. Yeah, so it could very well have happened. I mean, look, I don't think it means a damn thing in terms of future direction. It depends on what's going on in the market. It means, what it means is it explains the pricing action into expiration. The only reason that would go up is if you believe there are people who are waiting for expiration to end to buy More than waiting for the expiration to be over to sell right you know That's the only reason you believe that so it's more of a bull market sentiment

I guess you're in a very clearly bullish trend Maybe you get a pause in the dip on the options expiration before people buy and head up Correct, but that but the opposite is also true Which is why I do think that this is somewhat tradeable, which is to say that we've not exactly been in a bull trend, right? So we'll see. I'd say that in general, there's no reason to believe it means a damn thing. But when you've had a trend, it could very well represent the end of that trend and give you the chance

for a reversal. But we've been in a range, so I don't know that it means a damn thing to me. I just think people always want to hold on to lifelines. The lifeline to hold onto with Bitcoin is fundamentals, which are crazy positive. We can go into that later, but I'll let other people talk about that and this on the other hand it's just dominating the short term trading and you need to

understand liquidity in short term trading always to otherwise you end up making the wrong conclusions that's the reason I want to talk about it. Anybody else specific thoughts on the options expiration today. I think also Dave that there's

just some sort of optimism yesterday as usual when price pushes even the slightest bit. Earlier this week, we had a little bit of a push from altcoins, and I think people are just dying for any excuse to get long or to feel bullish once again. And it seems like at every turn, there's a disappointment when price does push slightly. And I think that's probably just market fatigue at this point. Well I mean look the nasdaq down a percent and a half again right you know it's. That's the global proxy for risk assets I was actually at a talk and got to chat with the governor of the bank of Israel last night.

And it is amazing because you know you wouldn't think they would care. He talks about the proxy for risk assets being the NASDAQ. And so it's pretty in trend. So when the NASDAQ is now going down a percent and a half, 2%, that's a much bigger move given the relative volatility. I mean, I always make fun of Mike McGlone for talking about, you know, betas if it's a, you know, kind of, you know, delivered down as, you know, on stone tablets from the mountain because obviously betas move and correlations move a lot. But on days when risk assets are getting pummeled, don't expect a big rally in assets that are

risk assets. And while we could argue that Bitcoin shouldn't be a risk asset, and at some point it might not be, you can't make that argument with regard to the vast majority of the crypto sphere which are undeniably risk assets there. You know their tech assets that are are assuming a future potential addressable market

that's huge. And that these are all potential assets that that are in that so they're going to trade like risk assets so you need to keep that as its context. Every time yeah in the meantime outside of the price action. In the options

expiration obviously we've had some more. I would say incredible tailwinds that are just. Largely going quietly unnoticed. By the SEC here officially on the I we knew it was going to happen but- officially dropping. Any

charges against crack in Cumberland and consensus we saw that they're- dropping any charges against Kraken, Cumberland, and Consensus. We saw that they're dropping any investigation or the Wells Notice into crypto.com as well. We now have legislation on the House side that's being pushed forward on stablecoins. We know that the Genius Act was pushed forward last week with Hagerty in the Senate. So seemingly competing stablecoin legislation heating up. And we have the predecessors, the precursors for market structure coming from Emer in the House as well. Everything we could possibly be asking for on their regulatory and legislative front is happening right now. I mean, anyone who heard Hester Perce's recent speech

as NLW said on my show this morning, I mean, it was just thousands and thousands of words of literal bullet points of things that the SEC was going to fix that had been wrong done to this industry. And you also have the OCC and FDIC dropping reputational risk and another further step in ending Operation Choke two point out. I want to point out two

things or one thing and ask a question for the panel because I think that the question is very important. The one thing I will point out is Hester speech was amazing the she and Paul Atkins both said something there in his testimony they're

very important. That leads to me which is that not only is digital getting digital asset regulation right important for in his testimony that are very important, at least to me, which is that not only is getting digital asset regulation right important for the sake of digital assets, but that the aspirational goal to leverage what we've learned in digital assets back into traditional finance is also important. And frankly, I think that's actually very, very true. And it was kind of buried toward the bottom of her speech.

Paul got to it a little bit more specifically. On the House bill, I'm curious what the panel thinks because I'm sort of enraged by it, that the Senate bill seems like a perfectly reasonable bill. The House bill effectively says you can't, you a stable coin cannot pay yield which to me is is is either lobbied by one of two places and either one of them it should be ashamed one is the American Bankers Association who obviously doesn't want stable coins to take away from people using demand deposits and fractional reserve banks which of course it will if they can pay yield that are dramatically

higher than checking accounts the other it was asserted by somebody else that Circle had lobbied so that they could be as profitable as Tether, which I would find kind of crazy to believe that that's what they would do. But who knows? I'm curious what people think. Pano, feel free to jump in. And I'll feel free to jump in. Go ahead, Simon and Sasha. Yeah, sure. I think there's nothing more to read into that than anti-competitive behavior and corporate trying to push something in a direction where it's no longer good for the consumer because the model that there is definitely going to be competed away, the excess profits that stablecoin issuers make at the moment by being able to keep all the yield. And then the ability to share the yield is without a doubt the key to adoption of stablecoins. So it's a really, really important one to recognize that it is great for the consumer and it is great for changing and leapfrogging. That you are actually, if a stablecoin is earning yield, then it is in fact able to pass the yield on to the consumer.

There is actually no other way of really looking at it, I don't think, other than the argument that if you back it by a money market funds, therefore the stablecoin is a security and then it moves into the jurisdiction of SEC rather than OCC. But again, you know, these are all the different debates to be had. But I think everyone should really keep an eye on that. You definitely want the yield to be able to be passed on to the consumer. The innovation that will come from that will be truly radical change in the financial system. Blasher? Yeah. And to add on that, I think one thing that is important to remind, and maybe it's just

a nice message that they're trying to convey, but the coin bases of the world, I mean, the circles and what they issue, those stablecoins, they've been wanting to give some of the yield, most of the yield back to consumers and they can't. And to Dave's point, I believe Caitlin Long also fought a lot in Wyoming when they were trying to issue stablecoins and do narrow banking without fractional reserves. And I believe that's the issue, right? It's competition to savings accounts and checking accounts that don't give basically any yield, right?

And having competition to that with something that's not fractional. I can't see the hands, but I believe David Tao and then Zillian, I think you both had your hands up. Yeah, I don't know if this was discussed on this space in February, but in February, the SEC approved an interest-bearing stable coin issued by figure while d s is the stable point if this legislation goes into effect

figure one this race that there there in an entrenched position that they will be the only forevermore yield bearing stable coin. Which is, you know, I mean maybe it flew under the radar that they got approved in terms of you know the industry's knowledge but you know figure Cagney who is the head of SoFi fame, I mean he knows how to run the table on this right? He's gonna go ahead and make sure that this yield bearing stablecoin is in with every, you know, payment processor, digital and trad fi that he knows of.

And if everybody else is foreclosed from issuing a yield bearing stablecoin, and this one yields 3.85% right now, um, you know, I, I guess he's won the race. I don't know. Does anybody know about that stablecoin? Yeah, that's the that's one. Sorry to jump in here. But that's one of the major issues with this industry is that gatekeeping is a big, big issue here. Not all good products get listed. Not all good solutions get listed. So there is a bit, I think that for a lot of practitioners out here, they will, they will feel me on this one. There is a big, big, big difference between having the right product or having any type of right solution and getting exposure. Exposure here, especially when you have such a consolidation with big players.

If they have a different agenda than you, if you have something that could interfere with whatever they're doing, if you're not from their circle, it's very hard to get exposure. Yes, I know of that, but unfortunately, exposure is a big, big deal. I'm sorry, I don't know if I'm understanding the point. Does that does that oppose what I just said about YLDS or in favor of it? In favor it's in favor but the major obstacle to such coins basically being being offered and distributed is the is the gatekeeping at the level of the listing at the level of all the distribution. Distribution here is becoming so consolidated that a lot of very good products, a lot of

things that could actually move the needle might not get distributed. And this is one of the issues. Well, look, what I'm saying is, unless someone else has a different opinion here, if the SEC has already approved this yield bearing stablecoin, and now we're going to go ahead and get legislation that forecloses any other yield bearing stablecoin to be issued, that means that while DS is the effective winner, period. Yeah, David. So, I mean, we've had a couple of models. I've been playing with all of them, actually.

Like, one, as you quite rightly pointed out is Figo created the actual one that was structured and approved as a stablecoin. The other one that I've been using is Biddle, which is the securitized offering, but that's actually structured as a security. But the interesting thing is in effect, they're virtually the same thing, except for one requires a transfer agent and one is fully transferable. My question to you, David, as a lawyer or any other lawyers on the stage, once something is approved and then legislation comes out that would prohibit that, does that mean that they then go and unapprove or do they allow a monopoly to exist? Have you seen that case before or is it unprecedented? My read on this, and Carlo is going to go ahead and give a real answer, my opinion on this is that the SEC operates at the pleasure of or the appointment of or you know the grace of the legislature. And so if the SEC already went ahead and approved this, unless there is legislation that comes out

that specifically delists YLDS, I think it's there until it's specifically removed. Carlo, please correct me if I'm wrong. No, I think you're on the right track. It opens the door as to whether we'll see an outside challenge because now you've got one stable coin that has a serious competitive advantage in the marketplace that's got a workaround from the legislation. However, the entire workaround is based

on an administrative decision, a rule or an administrative ruling by the SEC. And I'd have to agree with you that at the end of the day legislation would trump that. Another interesting component of what's being proposed is also a pause on algorithmic stable coins which I think is a very responsible thing. I am concerned, as Scott shared, that the fact that you cannot let the consumer earn yield

is just going to enable banks to continue to be banks and we're not really making any progress or headway here if this passes as it's drafted. So Carlos, does it give us basically a useful tool to say that if you approve this legislation and now one of the stable coins exists that they would be engaging in anti-competitive behavior so therefore it could be used to push back, just use this as an advantage for the industry to push back? Yeah, I think it's definitely a talking point

that hopefully someone in the legislative aid office that's presenting this will consider because you've essentially created an unfair playing field for the stable corn market. It goes to the advantage of one, but to the detriment of others. And I think, first of all, it's an excellent opening to reverse this provision in the proposed bill because this provision is actually anti-consumer

in many respects, and it's only continuing to discourage people from using stable coins because there's no real incentive. I'm struggling to think, like I know there would be ease of transfer. And that's nice. But what the hell is the difference between holding your money in a checking account or in a stable coin account if you are if you if you can't earn any yield, you actually can get a terrible yield on your checking account.

It's abysmal. But if you're getting zero yield, what's the incentive? I mean, look, Carlo, I think the reason I teed this up is because, and Caitlin Long and I agree on a lot of things, we disagree on others, but the one thing that we agree on is that the fractional reserve model of banking has outlived its usefulness. And were it to be, were competition to be allowed, it would in fact go the way of the

Buffalo. Now, just so people understand it, when I talk about fractional reserve banking, I'm not talking about zero reserve requirements. I'm saying basically the entire model that you need banks to hold deposits and then lever that up to be able to make loans to businesses. I mean, there are lots of avenues for capital raising for businesses now that don't require banks and bank loans and revolving credit could be done in a variety of ways. But the fractal reserve banking system where people get paid nothing on checking accounts,

where it takes days for things to move around the system is antiquated. Imagine a world where all you have to do is take two innovations, a yield bearing stable coin that is 100% backed and having that linked in to MasterCard Visa, et cetera, the bank chips so that you can tap to spend. And now all of a sudden, what human being today is going to use a checking account? Maybe the ones who have to write checks. I guess once in a blue moon, I'll write a check. It always feels to me, writing a check feels to me like borrowing money from my mother.

Outside of that, once you have stable coins, we know the technology rails work. We know it's way faster. And it basically spells the end of fractional reserve banking from a checking account perspective. And banks are going to have to compete with that. And frankly, most of them will adopt stablecoin rails under the covers. That is what's at stake. Even adding to that, Dave, why would I as a business owner ever at that point want to accept a credit card? Because now I've got to pay the credit card transaction fee. I've got to wait several days for it to clear and reconcile.

Well, slow your roll. The reason the businesses will do that is because people need credit. Now, there are two things credit card companies provide that are services are not going away. Can't fix them in crypto, right? Service one, credit. Okay, I'm going to have money later. You know, I want to finance this. And you know, you could say that's a bad idea, but it's still in demand. The second is certainty of purchase. You know, people you give someone how many times have probably every person on this stage has had to dispute a charge. I mean, for that service and it costs a service and as a merchant you don't like that But it's it's important right because merchants particularly anyone who's ever signed up for anything that's on a Scheduled, you know, whatever that a subscribed kind of deal, you know, you cancel it and they keep sending it to you

I mean it happens all the time So you they'll never go away, but it'll be you'll be paying for that service explicitly, which is what you should be doing. Yeah, one one of the arguments if anyone's going to be fighting this battle is that if you don't allow for the yield, then the consumer is going to end up engaging in defi and locking it up and doing more risky things with it in order to generate the yield. And so, you know, it's just such an obvious, there's zero downside and 100% upside for the consumer. So the only reason it wouldn't happen is because there's gatekeepers and lobbying and it

is just anti-consumer behavior. So everyone just needs to fight that battle if they're engaged in it. And there is an element of not fully disrupting the credit card system, but if you are able to borrow a stable coin against your wealth collateral, i.e. Bitcoin locked up in a smart contract on lightning network, then you are able to gain access to credit based upon wealth rather than credit based upon trying to meet your everyday consumption, which is essentially the change that Bitcoin is meant to bring to the world, which is to change time preferences, to encourage savings, and then enable programmatic money whereby you can access fiat currency

and stable coins without having to actually sell your wealth. And the credit markets are available based upon you saving for longer and generating more wealth, which is essentially a radical, is like Austrian economics on a blockchain while the Keynesian economic system is dying. It's funny. And you'd get a better rate. Correct me if I'm wrong.

You'd get a better rate than a credit card company because even the worst of these Bitcoin collateralized loans that I'm seeing are far better. I mean, credit cards, and there's like 20, right? These loans, I've actually been down the process with Abra, Bill Barheide, who's on here often. And I think they've been floating for the last 18 months between seven and a half to 13% or something like that. So you're way below a credit card. Yeah, I mean, look, the reality is crypto will be disruptive. The disruption comes in stages. I mean, Simon, when you're talking, I'm smiling and I'm thinking to myself, just don't talk about that

too loudly or the banks will get even more enraged. But, you know, the stable coins breaking the paper trail of checks Disruption is one that's undeniably good. Although in Europe, it's even worse not only about the yield but in Europe They're making stable coins be held as bank deposits Which are inherently much more risky than being backed a hundred percent by you know, being backed a hundred percent or the irony CBDC's it's like anyone would think that the the European Union and the European Central Bank hates Europeans because they do Well, but but but what's gonna happen here and as I said, I was having a conversation with you know

With a Wharton train, you know with a Chicago train Wharton economist who's happens to be running the Bank of Israel He we were talking about stablecoins. And his commentary is, look, they and the whole world are waiting for what the US is going to do here, because it's either going to be picking the European model or the US model, and if you're a sane economist, and he's a monetarist, so you can understand where he's coming down, you're going to pick the US model. This idea that you have to trust your assets in a fractional reserve bank as opposed to a fully collateralized bank, it's very important. That's why from a lobbying point of view, the Senate version has to be the one that wins going

forward. This issue has to get screamed from the rooftops because it's very anti-the-customer. As far as what you were talking about, in terms of Bitcoin, look Bitcoin being good collateral and it becoming widely known as such is literally the catalyst that will propel it to its next level. For so many reasons Dave. And that to me is the catalyst, I mean yes, it doesn't sound like a catalyst but it is a catalyst.

Oh it's such a big catalyst, imagine a world where sound like a catalyst. Oh, it's such a big catalyst. Imagine a world where A, every large institution is allowed to borrow against their Bitcoin and find ways to earn yield. But B, imagine the decrease in selling pressure when any wealthy person holding Bitcoin feels comfortable borrowing against it instead of selling it. Very few people are going to sell their Bitcoin if it's an asset just like their stocks or their real estate.

And that's the important thing because rich people don't make money. They have assets and they borrow against them. I mean, when's the last time Bezos had to do anything other than borrow against Amazon stock? You know, buy, borrow, die or whatever, you know, it's a very clear roadmap for the ultra wealthy. I'll never forget the first podcast I did with Sailor, which, you know, probably September 2020, right after he first bought Bitcoin.

And aside from the incredible Bitcoin conversation, he broke down that roadmap for wealthy people and how Bitcoin can play into that in the first days. He understood that. But basically said, listen, I've got five yachts. You know, I can collateralize a yacht that's sitting in an ocean across the world. Good luck, you know, going and collecting that collateral. If I default, Bitcoin is the perfect, most pristine capital. And institutions are going to understand that.

Go ahead, Simon. Yeah, and the APAC's predator, as it were, is when you can do all that in self-custody with no middleman as well. And so that's, you know, what we've got to understand and appreciate around Bitcoin is Ethereum was the beta test. Ethereum showed you that if you believe in ETH, you can lock up your collateral and then you can engage in a DeFi contract. Now once we can do that on Taproot Lightning, and I know we've got quite a way to go until we get there, but now you've also added the final element, which is privacy within a channel.

Stablecoins with privacy locked up, collateralized against your Bitcoin, where all you do is stack sats every single month and then you pull out your fiat currency to meet your expenses and you receive the yield in there and then the yield actually can be converted into Bitcoin so that if you save it you end up with more Bitcoin. So bitcoins so that if you save it you end up with more bitcoins. So it is 100% exactly how you do a complete bottom-up attack of making the system completely clean again, as it were, for consumers with the benefit of consumers and it will be the currency that artificial intelligence will choose once you get that right. You can do that now Simon with Bitcoin as well. Yeah but you have to add proof of stake risk which

means those that control the state can control the network and then you had to have smart contract risk. Being able to do that without the Ethereum ecosystem and be able to do that on Bitcoin is as disruptive as it gets in when we start to hit the, you know, when we when we start to hit the full potential of what this can be. And by the way, Americans, this is why the European model is disgusting. And the American model has to prevail to allow this to exist. So we're relying on you fighting the good battle,

and the Trump administration is the time to do it, because if you can get this locked in now, then it's going to set the standard. So we're all relying upon you guys getting this one right. Not sure. I just wanted to point out that there is a kind of version of that on the liquid side chain from, is it Blockstream? And there's a service called HODL HODL

that allows you to like lock up your liquid Bitcoin and then, you know, get L tether in return for that. Yeah, the difference for that one is that's a federated network of banks. This is Bitcoin on chain through channels like I get it we're gradually moving across but the ultimate is to get stable coins and lightning channels with privacy built in and the ability to use tap root securities. And then if people if people want to create centralized services because that's too much, then you as a financial services provider, you can do the complicated bit on chain and just put a layer on top to

simplify it for your customer. But this becomes the base layer of the financial system, even if it's too complicated for others to engage into. There was news that quietly went by that Custodia Bank, which is of course, Caitlin Long, in partnership with another bank, released the first effectively regulated bank-backed stable coin in the United States in the form of tokenized bank deposits, which is something I know she's told me many, many times they have a trademark on. And so although they're small and not fractually reserved, as you mentioned, this is an official regulated bank in the United States directly releasing a stable coin, which I

think could be a roadmap, obviously, for the bigger banks that we know will eventually do this. Also, I see Avery Ching, the CEO of Aptos in the audience, request, because I would love for you to jump into this conversation about stablecoins, since Aptos obviously is seeing so much adoption of stablecoins on their chain. But before, hopefully, he can jump up, we can continue this conversation. I think we all know that the future of stable coins is private stable coins everywhere, right? I mean, we saw it with Libra and Diem, of course, they were too early with Facebook,

but we're gonna have JP Morgan coin and Goldman coin and BlackRock coin and BNY Mellon coin. I mean, isn't that the inevitable path that this is going on? It's a question of interoperability Scott. I mean honestly there's not really every it's gonna be a click it it's no different than. Think of

it this way. Every bank individually has a bank deposit and you can move money around. As long as the stable coins are interoperable. Then it doesn't matter who the stable coin provider is but- the reality is interoperable, then it doesn't matter who the stablecoin provider is. But the reality is interoperability isn't so obvious.

And you will see probably pools of liquidity and things that get used. The battle is going to be, will independent stablecoins like Circle, Tether, et cetera, continue to dominate? Or will it go the way that you just said, because banks adopt a standard upon which they will each accept each other's as quickly? And that's not, everyone in the world of crypto understands that there's basically a bridge involved in that. And we all understand.

It's essentially complicated. But we do have a roadmap for it with centralized exchanges to some degree, right? Because most centralized exchanges accept, for example, tether on a number of chains and you send it to the centralized exchange, then you can send it out on another chain because they've done the work, but that's more centralized, obviously.

Yeah, again, there is also a both interoperability, which is an obvious problem. There's also a problem of distribution. I mean, all these, obviously when big banks, big banks can distribute, but can they create the markets? I don't know. The distribution for me, like when I saw Tether, and I think Simon was a little bit more close to the action, when Tether started getting listed, obviously, they had the advantage of

Binance adopting and other exchanges adopting and a massive adoption, right? So which is access to distribution. I think here, as we see the market getting more and more fragmented, you will have an issue of distribution. And this goes also for sovereign, privately issued stablecoins. I mean, sovereign currencies are going to start the future of the distribution of sovereign currencies. You won against US dollars or your etc. is distribution, right?

How many people in the world find your currency useful and hold it? And I think that's basically far in the future where nation states are going to start understanding that they need to distribute and to make their currencies as useful as possible beyond their borders. The US today understands that because it's the number one currency, but maybe you will have other contingents, you know, other other other other sovereigns that wants to to create that. other sovereigns that wants to create that. Avery, this is the perfect time for you to randomly show up and discuss because there's been a ton of stable coin news for you and you're building this and doing this. You're on the ground talking to all these institutions.

Do we have this right, you know, in general, or how do you sort of view the future of the stable coin market since you're literally on the front line? Yeah, thanks for raising that, Scott. So actually, I just got back from DC yesterday, where I was fortunate to be on stage with Chairman Stile as he announced the new iteration of the Stable Act. And I think from talking to a bunch of folks in Congress and on the Hill, it is very clear that the administration is very, very much forward thinking here.

They want to see the American innovation happen right at home. And we see that almost everyone is planning to launch a stable coin. Wyoming also announced their own stable very recently recently as well as Fidelity and others. It kind of takes me back to our time at the Libra and Diem though, where we really brainstormed this effort well. And I think what we're going to see is in the short term, a lot of new stables being launched, but in reality, the interoperability of that aspects that people brought up here are going to be pretty troublesome. And I do suspect that consortiums will form over time in this space to allow folks not to have to maintain their own, to allow better distribution, and really kind of imitate what

Tether and Circle and others have done really, really well in the space. And it's not as easy to disrupt as people think. There's a lot of PSPs and OTC's and other things that are happening on the ground that are very important for the actual adoption of a stable, not just the legislation. So my expectation is very much that there will be a lot of stables launching, but over time some of those will form consortiums and also some of the strongest distribution players that have worked on the ground game very hard will probably be very successful in the future. So you were obviously there for 3RDs yet, you were building it.

You guys, as I said, is it correct to say that you were just early? Like it was the wrong legislative and regulatory environment for Meta to effectively propose their own currency or stablecoin? Does that appear? I definitely think that, yeah, today it would be very different if that was the same team that was proposing it now. I think we'd have a much better opportunity at making progress, and especially with the

support that's bipartisan and also across the House and Senate and CFTC as well as SEC side. I do think that we would have seen that that and I think that's what you will see now. Lost you there for a second, I think. It's probably not ideal. Okay. So, that obviously you have your building and you have an incentive to see us win. When you talk about this interoperability or the consortiums, do you think that they're going to be basically a one chain wins scenario,

or is it going to be interoperability between different chains and they just find a way for that to work? I mean, how does from your perspective when you're trying to win this battle, how do you do that, you know, as a founder and CEO of a specific chain? Right. So if you think about chains, they're mainly just infrastructure for transporting value across the network. And all chains are doing this. So it really comes down to, I think, the way that, you know, the product is operating here. And so there are differences in terms of the fees and in terms of the speed, in terms of the scale. And this is where Aptos really differentiates itself

from everybody else because in terms of being able to support scale that can see Visa, MasterCard and every other payment processor kind of operate on a network, only Aptos has demonstrated that. Only Aptos can show a hundredth of a cent or less fees on a network, only Aptos has demonstrated that. Only Aptos can show a hundredth of a cent or less fees on the network at that scale. And only Aptos can show the fastest finality times that are available there. So you can enable use cases that just aren't possible on other networks. So in terms of product distribution, you can see a much wider use case for stable coins and for

value transfer happening on Aptos and in their network because of the technology that's underlying it. So in the end, the actual best change should win. I mean, all things aside, if it's going to be way faster, way cheaper, and way more secure, that should be the determining factor. I think that's the big part of it. The other part, of course course is the distribution alongside it. And so having the access to USDT, USDC, USDE, USDY,

all the major stables need to be issued. And then our partnership with R0, you have OFT bring on many more assets into the blockchain. We have a partnership obviously with Wormpole that brings on their native assets. I think the world is becoming much easier place for settlement to happen on any chain. I think users are definitely picking the chains that are supporting their use case with the lowest fees,

with the fast finale times, with the most security. So you'll see both products as well as the users picking the best product for their use case. Since I have you, I want to touch on something else. You and I have somewhat discussed this before, but I happen to be with a bunch of my friends from college, a bunch of almost 50-something Wharton graduate Wall Street guys. I've been trying to gauge their sentiment as I always do about crypto. And there seems to be this idea, and I think we see this anecdotally, that Bitcoin has

really become a legitimate, whatever that means, financial asset. It's part of the common vernacular. It's not going anywhere. But that in their eye, the rest of what they see is the Bybit hack and scams and meme coins popping off. And we seem to have lost the narratives, at least outside of our echo chamber about the real utility. And I think that that's maybe we're doing a poor job of spreading what's being built, but you can give us a better idea, maybe even me for some ammo, of all the things that you're building

and how important they are from a utility perspective. All the things that are being built on blockchains are gonna absolutely change the world. I mean, maybe you can tell us what you're excited about that you're building that sort of gives some fuel to that. I can understand your friends. I do see if you focus kind of more on the speculative elements and on the more casino-like elements, I could understand some of the concerns

for sure. I think it's also important to remember there are builders that are very serious about solving robot problems in this space. I will give you one example. There is a PAC consortium who have been issuing loans into emerging markets. Over a billion dollars of loans have been issued into emerging markets with over 20 million plus customers. And these loans are very small in scale, 10k to 50k, and they help real people to kind of get access to financial capital at rates that are going to save two-thirds of the interest costs you would expect from the local markets. These loans happen completely on chain.

There's an NFT on chain for the loan. There's a payback on chain for the loan. They support these open access of financial capital across the world to enable people to do things with their lives and to get the scooter that allows them to be a better driver for goods and services across the country and help them earn for their families. These products can only be really built on strong blockchain-based rails. We're really happy to see these kind of use cases happening on Aptos,

where it takes advantage of very, very low fees and very, very fast finale and security. Just as another example, if you want to take out a loan in emerging market for like a dollar, you could pay it back in 2 cent increments, over 50 payments, and all those payments and all that loan transaction fees will still be well under a cent. That's something that is only enabled with really new technology and innovation that AppDust has been at the table.

I'll tell your friends that there are use cases like this that are able to change people's lives in a very positive way to provide them with financial capital they wouldn't have access to and to do it all on permissionless infrastructure that anyone in the world can build on top of and compose alongside with. What else are you excited about that that being built that maybe some of us haven't heard about? I mean I know you guys have a new launch pad and quite a few things launching on Aptos but you know more fuel for that fire. What else can we talk about that you who's on the front line you know are seeing and that

we should have on our radar? I think the other thing that I would say is that the rural adoption use cases are starting to really take effect now. With the change in administration in the US and seeing those effects percolate throughout the rest of the world, it's becoming clear that lots of the larger institutions and enterprises are also taking a look at this space and are really coming up with their own Web3 strategies. This is also happening at the smaller scales, the startup scales for a long time. There are companies like KGen, there are companies like Stan and others in emerging markets or in India that are driving massive, massive adoption across border, across country

through things like Proof of Gamer, through things like being able to support creators across different kinds of countries and having an ecosystem that ties across all that. To really put millions of people on chain is quite exciting. And so that's something that we are starting to see proliferate much more networks that are built for that kind of scale, specifically on Aptos. We're also seeing a lot of new developments with respect to trading platforms. I'm sure all of us have been following hyperliquid in the recent HLPs saga with the vaults. But there are kind of much more decentralized

and very powerful purpose decks coming to places like Aptos that are gonna be showing off, like you can do things that are very much in the spirit of centralized product flow, but the decentralized aspect is not gonna hold you back. It's gonna actually be something that provides you a lot more capabilities and functionality for composing these kinds of high performance decks

with other DeFi ecosystem elements. We see the launch of Aave to be coming soon as a very trusted partner in DeFi to bring in tremendous amounts of liquidity, as well as high quality products into the Aptos ecosystem as well. So I would say that there's a lot of great, very reputable, and very good yield-bearing assets that will be coming out to us soon. There will be lots

of interesting use cases across multiple genres that are also already out and are starting to develop and pick up steam with the new changes in administration. And then there's also the efforts you kind of brought up on stablecoin movement and real assets that are going to be driving tremendous amounts of traffic and making this a very much of a virtuous cycle of trading stablecoins, RDBs. And then a lot of this can be infrastructure as well for new emerging platforms. So D-PIN is something we're all very familiar with right now. It's not really taken off in its final form. Like right now, a lot of these D-PIN is something we're all very familiar with right now. It's not really taken off in its final form. Like right now, a lot of these D-PIN infrastructures are very centralized. They don't really rely on decentralized rails.

And what you're going to start to see is when you have a network like Aptos that can support very high throughput, very, very low fees and do it at scale and be a reliable infrastructure that people can depend upon, it starts to look a lot like cloud. And cloud isn't great to building on amazing services on top of it for enterprises and also small businesses across the world. That's what you're going to see with Aptos in particular. And Aptos is going to be leading the way in how deep in infrastructure can be built fully on-chain.

Just quickly before I know I keep asking you questions because I have you here, but I remember you did a post at the end of the year that talked about the importance of shipping, you know, a ton, a ton of innovation and a ton of new things throughout 2025. It kind of feels like we have this Goldilocks period, whether regulation or legislation, who knows what's going to come. Like, is there a feeling of urgency right now to just keep shipping incredible product?

And if that's the case, then what are the things that you're definitely the most focused on, I guess, throughout this year? And then I'll go back to the panel. I've kept you long enough. No worries. I would say that there's a lot of opportunity here for shipping at the infrastructure level at massive scale.

There's the ecosystem side where we have a new program from the Aptos Foundation called LFM, which is really taking a lot of the projects and putting them through the kind of accelerated efforts from how do they get started with building and fundraising and the token launches and all those fun things. That's been really great. That's really just kicking off now. Then from the Aptos lab side, we're really focused on building infrastructure for tomorrow's needs in building the global trading engine.

That means faster block times. Already Aptos has the fastest block times in the market. Just recently dropped from 200 milliseconds down to about 125 milliseconds. And you're going to see those block times get even faster in 2025. You're going to see new primitives coming out that are making it easier for interoperability between financial assets moving around within the network and across networks. And I think we're also going to see many new innovations with what we call block STMv2, which will offer much more parallel transactions. We're going to see move to get more powerful in

terms of supporting many new features like Aptos Intense and higher level primitives and just making your code simpler and easier to understand, as well as support for Raptor, which is our newest consensus protocol to make the system even quicker. We have Zapdos and easier to understand, as well as support for Raptor, which is our newest consensus protocol to make the system even quicker. We have Zap Toss and Chardines, which you've already laid out as new innovations. Chardines allows you to scale to one million transactions per second and well beyond that.

When Zap Toss, you can see the finality times are going to drop much more significantly. Zap Toss infrastructure already the best today, it's going to drop much, much more significantly. So Aptos infrastructure already the best today. It's going to get only better in the future. Thank you so much, Avery. I really appreciate you jumping up and giving the perspective because we have a lot of opinions here, but not often do we get to actually talk to the people that are building it.

So really appreciate everything you're doing and can't wait to see what's coming in the future. Anything else I missed before I'm going to let Zillian jump in and had his hand up, but anything else I might have missed? No, it's been great to be here. Thank you so much for that. Awesome, Avery. Thank you so much.

Zillian, did you have a comment? Yeah, just great technology and very good with what I was hearing here. Fantastic. And this actually is a very good example for how, as you see, the example that was given here was an emerging market example. So I feel that the space really pitches for the future of America, but actually executes in emerging markets, because that's where there is a real need for this infrastructure that we're building. This is something that capital allocators

and I think understand it pretty well, but mostly builders. Builders, when they pitch to capital allocators, they pitch obviously in the US because that's where they get capital. But when it's time to execute on their technology and to build for the future, to have immediate adoption, it's in emerging markets where it's happening.

And it's going to be the same thing for the big breakthroughs that we're going to see in stable coins. I mean, what Aptos is building right now, can you imagine if these people have access to stable coins denominated in their local currencies that have had exchanges, direct exchanges to USD, etc. So this is one of the dislocations of this environment. I don't know if my message is going through, but for every single emerging market entrepreneur that is trying to pitch his emerging market tech company, just pitch for America like it was the future of America and execute them in your homeland That makes sense anybody else any further comments here because we're gonna move to wrap up momentarily I Think we we did a good job. It's a great way to end the week I want to thank our entire panels great conversation today

Especially Avery for showing up and giving us all that perspective on what's being built there. But generally, on I just can't believe you were actually there in Washington yesterday when the stablecoin bill was announced sitting there as we were discussing it earlier here. It's funny. It's amazing to have you up. Guys, that's all we got. We'll be back Monday, obviously, at 10 15am Eastern Standard Time at the next Crypto Town Hall. Everybody have an amazing, amazing weekend. See you soon. Bye.