The Wolf Of All Streets - Memecoins Go Wild On Tron. Is This A Sign? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

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We're doing meme coins on Tron now. Bro, it's the sand pump. There's a meme coin called Sand Dog. Making millionaires, sir. Making millionaires. I mean, as you know, this is totally off my radar. But, I mean, it makes sense, right? I mean, every chain is going to try to capture some of the meme coin action. And Tron, I guess, is fast and cheap, right? I mean, every chain is going to try to capture some of the meme coin action and Tron,

I guess, is fast and cheap, right? So it makes sense. But it just, I mean, are Solana people going over to Tron to trade these things? Is the casino moving? That's it. The casino is moving. The casino has moved. We've got a saturation on Solana. So the meme coins on Solana just became too much. If you think about meme coins, meme coins are an attention economy. And the rule of an attention economy is that when the attention is spread too thin, the economy is no longer fun. And so what happened with Tron, with Solana, it became a shit show. It became saturated.

So the D-gens moved over to a new chain where they thought they actually could make money. And they were looking for a chain that was fast. They were looking for a chain that was cheap. Base tried to achieve the same thing, but didn't really achieve the same thing. Base Summer, I think, was a bit of a disappointment. And so, Justin Sun, being who he is, being an absolute marketing genius, he's capitalized on the whole thing. He's got a chain that's cheap, and he's got a chain that's really, really fast. And the chain is very, very, very good for stablecoin transfers.

In fact, what I didn't know, I mean, I knew that Tron was very, very good for transferring stablecoins. What I didn't know is that mean, I knew that Tron was very, very good for transferring stablecoins. What I didn't know is that 60% of Tether is on Tron. Yeah. Well, $60 billion worth of stablecoins are actually on Tron. I didn't know it was that big. So one third of all stablecoins, more, 40% of all stablecoins are actually sitting on tron and so you know where we're at today is that you know there's the sun pump which is the the the it's like the pump.fun but it's on solana and uh on

uh on tron and um essentially uh um uh people are now moving to tron uh to to try and capture as much of the value as possible big influences and you know big meme coin people are now moving to trump and i think the big question is whether tron is the solana killer or tron is the next solana and i thought i did a show about today my show was around i analyzed tron and said like is this real or is this not real and you know came to some conclusions okay well i first i'd love to hear the conclusions but it's funny to hear tron as the next solana because tron's been around and steadily chugging along long before well not actually right well not actually because if you think about tron tron is almost almost almost at its all-time high and how many other tokens can say that they're almost almost almost and and for a fundamental

reason it should be noticed this is a hated pump nobody wants to almost... And for a fundamental reason, it should be noticed. This is a hated pump. Nobody wants to hear it. But for the exact reason you said, the majority of USDT transfers happen on Tron because people all over the world just want fast and cheap. And you say, I'm going to send you 10 bucks. And your friend says, how? And they say, download this thing, right?

They don't know it's on Tron. It's becoming actually mainstream to know it's on Tron. It's just, it's becoming actually mainstream to use it for sending stable coins. If you think about where we are in the blockchain world, the biggest application of blockchain to date is the ability to transfer US dollars around the world at the speed of sound and at the speed of data and at low costs.

And the leader of that is actually Tron. I mean, you can't deny that. Now, Tron is 10.62% away from its all-time high in terms of token price today. Not many tokens can say that they're 10% away from their all-time high in terms of token price. In terms of market cap, I think Tron is at an all-time high i'm just i'm going to quickly just check it i might be wrong though because they may have had token burns um it's uh it's very very very close to its all-time high i'm just trying to make sure that i'm right here i mean there was a pump in 2017 the launch pump where the market cap was a little bit higher but otherwise yeah tron is now at an all-time high in terms of market cap.

So, you know, people say, oh, just chugging along. You can hate the pump as much as you want. But one third of all stablecoins are happening on Tron. And Tron is, as far as I know, the only token right now that's trading at an all-time high. Yeah, I was saying actually similar to what you're saying. It's funny to say that it's the next Solana when you could have said it was before solana that was kind of my point is that it was always there it's been you know gathering uh you know transactions and i mean you made all the points so it's you know it's interesting because it's

like people talk about what's the most hated pump you get this sort of negative vibe from people on Tron, but it's actually always, it's one of the few that's had legitimate adoption for ages. Yeah. Not many people like Justin Sun. You know, he's quite a polarizing character. Like most people don't really like him. You know, I've met him many times.

I think he's a great guy. I think he's very, very, very smart. Very nice guy. I think he's very, very, very smart. Very nice. Very nice guy. Very cool guy. Very, very, very smart. Wise beyond his years. He actually started off his blockchain career at Ripple doing an internship almost, which him and Vitalik were both going to do, but Vitalik couldn't get a visa. And so he did it. That's where he made actually most of his money. He got a whole lot of Ripple tokens. He became the China, he became the China Ripple guy back in the, in, in early, I think 2017 or somewhere along those lines.

And then he launched Tron and then later on he bought the torrent or Tron bought the torrent. I'm not sure which entity actually bought it. And he's done a lot of amazing things. He, you know, he's always, he's always had a bit of a shadow on him as well. He is wanted by, I don't know if he's wanted by the SEC or dealing with the SEC, but the SEC did go after him at one stage. And as far as I know, that's still in play.

They still are. Yeah. Yep. They're still going after him and Tron and for Bitcoin for selling unregistered securities. And also, Circle left Tron earlier this year because there was a lot of research into Tron and half of the illicit stablecoin transactions in illegal Paris financing are through Tron. So, yeah.

Well, to be fair, if they have half the stablecoin transactions, wouldn't they have to elicit finance transactions? I mean, I didn't check. That's just math. That's just math. And so, look, the SEC are after him, like all good blockchain founders, specifically like all good Asian blockchain founders. The SEC must go after those because, you know,

the SEC has got that spice, that racism in them. And, I mean, again, do I think that tron is a solana killer or the next solana i mean i think justin sun's gonna pump tron to new highs now no doubt and i think that there is probably you know there's a it's like when you arrive at the party there's still probably another good month of this party. And then at some point, I just think, I don't think that there's anything really substantial to make this chain the next technological breakthrough.

I think there is something here, but I mean, do I think that there's a 10x in this chain? No. Do I think that this chain can carry on its momentum? Well, Justin Sun is a marketing genius. I don't see why he's not going to be able to do it. Yeah, but, you know, and there's also a difference between, like, price movement and actual adoption.

Well, there's both here. Here you've got price movement and adoption. You've got a double whammy here. Like, you've got one of the most used chains by one of the most biggest number of active users, and you've got price movement movement so i mean love it or hate the pump it doesn't really matter what you think the reality is you know we've got fundamentals uh fundamentals here that that do the talking carlo the lawyer we got the lawyer squad i

like it go ahead carlo good morning scott ran you bring up great points. And I think to add to your point, not only are meme coins when it comes to crypto and attention economy, I think it could be said that all of crypto is an attention economy. And it's a massive bubble of ecosystem players who move their liquidity on a weekly, daily basis, depending upon what is trending. It's always the challenge with any of these chains as far as whether they're going to achieve network adoption. But you have seen movement in liquidity from Solana meme coins based on the floor prices, now to this Tron meme coin cycle. You're seeing renewed interest in NFTs, crypto punks are flying off the shelf,

a huge amount of sales of those NFTs yesterday. It is an ever moving attention economy here where liquidity goes where the attention goes. And of course, the game that is played is either trying to time that change in attention and movement of liquidity, or holding tight and waiting for the attention to ultimately go back. And that's kind of the dilemma that everyone faces who plays in this space. It's a matter of attention and liquidity. And there's only so much liquidity in this space because we still haven't reached total network adoption. So you've got the same tranche of people moving their liquidity around based on the trends they see on crypto Twitter.

Yeah, it's the washing machine. Lawyer. Yeah, all I wanted to add is just because of the way we got into this conversation, just to decouple the, you know, is Tron going to do well versus should we play on Tron's pump fund? Even just to say, you know, maybe meme coins might be a good thing to we play on Tron's pump fund even just to say you know maybe meme coins might be a good thing to speculate it on Tron I personally would be careful like see even if we go as far as to say that some

of those big meme coins will have been born on the Tron pump fund your odds of sort of getting in early and staying in are just so low and if you look at the statistics of the pump fun on Solana, I don't think most people won. It's fun. If you like the game and you can get good at it, then go play it. Yeah.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but Ran had those stats and they're pretty astounding. He shared them the other day. Yeah. So that's all I wanted to say. Just a happy couple of those conversations. I think Tron's great. If you want a long-term bet,

it'll be around in the long term. In a long time, that's it. But, you know, as far as playing on their pump fund. Ran, wasn't it you that said it was like 1.6% or something of everything launched on pump fund? I mean, the numbers are crazy. The numbers are crazy. I think like only one, I don't remember the numbers offhand,

but like only such a small amount actually even make it to radium or you know like that's how that's how crazy that's what it was it was like 1.6 got to the required market cap to even be listed or something yes it's it's absolutely crazy it's it's it's like the game is is is crazy so i mean is that we're just going to see that on Tron? No, I think it's short term. I think, to be honest, we're at the end of this crazy meme coin. I don't think meme coins are dead at all, just to be clear. I really, really, really don't believe

that meme coins are dead. But I do believe that this launching a meme coin out of nothing with no community and expecting it just to pump. I think that those days are pretty much finished. And so I think like we're catching the last desperate attempt of people to make money in meme coins. And it just so happens that it happened on Tron.

I think, to be honest, the meme coin game is no longer fun. And I don't think Tron's done anything fundamental to make it fun, other than it's not as saturated as Solana is. That's it. And so I just think that memes are ready to go into Generation 2. Okay, so let's talk about, is Generation 2 the few sole survivors that made it through this cycle, start to add utility and receive the pepes and the box and the few i don't know i

don't know what i don't know what generation two is i i think it's something completely different from what we know um right i think it's something completely completely different from what we know uh i don't think that it's uh that it's it's's like the current meme coin. It's something else. Is it two-bit wrappers? I don't know. I have a hunch as to what it might be, but there's a couple of holes in my theory. I'm willing to tell you what it is, but I want to just state for the record that my theory i'm willing to tell you what it is but i mean i want to just state for the record that my theory is not is not is not complete yet so the way i'm seeing meme coins at the moment is that meme coins are effectively an attention economy right so what you're doing is you're speculating on where the attention is going to be either in the next day minute week month

or whatever else like that's what meme coins are, right? There's also a secondary trend which is happening right now. And the secondary trend which is happening right now is prediction markets. And that is also effectively, if you think about it, it's betting on whether something is going to happen or not. So you have one market which is people betting on where attention is going to happen or not. So you have one market, which is people betting on where attention is going to go. And then you have another market, which is betting on outcomes of random events. And the random events can be who's going to be the president,

whether she's going to use the word coconut in her speech, et cetera, et cetera. Now, I think there's a convergence somewhere, and I don't know where this convergence is, but I think that the next iteration of meme coins is actually tied to prediction markets. So it's a combination of attention and prediction. So I'll give you a very random example. And I don't know, this is just a random example.

If I think that the next summer color is going to be blue and Scott thinks that the next summer color is going to be brown, we can bet behind whether it's going to be blue or brown. And that could help fabric producers who believe blue and fabric producers who believe brown. So I'm talking about a combination of attention and think, but with actual real world stakes. So, you know, memes don't have real world stakes. It's just, where do you think the attention is going to go? Prediction markets have real world stakes based on outcome. And so I think that the future or the next wave is actually a combination of predictions and prediction markets and attention markets. And that's like,

I'm still looking for what that actually looks like, but obviously for the Americans, you probably go, oh my God, that sounds like a security. And it definitely is, but I'm trying to find what is the application that combines the attention economy with the meme coin economy. And in my mind, that's the next thing that I'd be interested to look at.

Interesting. Why is it? Why are you? So when you see that as the future, what about them? So it seems to me like you're trying to save the meme of it all, the memeness of it all. Because you see that it's attention and you're like okay we've got a prediction markets are cool there'll be attention there and then we're sort of

shoehorning memes why do you why is it and i don't disagree but why is it that you think memes are going to stay as part of crypto culture no i don't i think i don't i don't but what i do think is that um i don't think at all that memes are going to stay. I think that memes were the ability to – so let's go back to what is blockchain. Blockchain is the – let's go back to the roots of this technology. The roots of this technology are the ability to create value where it did or didn't exist before, to trade value, and to move value. That's really what blockchain is. And everything else is bullshit, right? Like everything else is bullshit, right? Everything else is distraction. The technology is about creating value, trading value, moving

value. Now memes are a combination of all of those because we created value where it didn't exist before and we created it out of something that was very hard to create value from in web 2 which was attention um and then it's the ability to to to trade attention to trade micro attention tokens right and what prediction markets do is they assign a probability to being able to trade micro uh micro attention tokens. And so I think that's why I say I think there's a combination. There is a combination of the two in the baking. I just haven't seen it.

I just don't know what it is. But there's definitely a combination of the two in the making. Yeah, I think my problem is that I was thinking of memes as Internet memes, and it's really much more than that, right? It's just culture in general. It's much bigger than that, Joe. It's much bigger than that. It's much, much, much more than that, right? Just culture in general. It's much bigger than that job. It's much bigger than that. It's much, much, much bigger.

Yeah, go ahead. I don't think there's anything like this that's succeeded or gained any kind of meaningful adoption so far. But there are a bunch of projects that are trying to do something like creating tokens that reward you for being early to some social trends. So you like a piece of content or you share a piece of content. And then if that content does well, you get extra rewarded. And like, if that were to take off, I could see that being sort of the next generation of this meme attention economy. Yeah. There is something around prediction markets times attention. And I just don't know what that application is and i think that that to me is the next you asked me you know scott you asked me you started off by asking me what the um uh what the what what what the next thing is and like that's what i think the

next thing is guys i have to jump i've got to jump to quote. I will be back in 10 minutes off the mic. Great. Yeah, because I want to talk about, you know, if the meme sort of, if this, I guess, season of memes is ending, we know that there's always another season of something in crypto. I mean, August, September, traditionally down months, but October, usually we start to see things fly. Yesterday, Rand was saying he thought it would be some of the older coins with bigger communities. Does anyone have a particular thought on if these memes are actually sort of fading away, which I think they have been for six months, what's going to be the next sort of driving trend or narrative, even if it's temporary? I think we haven't been seeing a lot of big gold tokens that people actually think have good projects behind. At some point, the VCs and the teams are going to just start launching when the market's

right, I think maybe in the next big Bitcoin rally. And then you're going to get that feeling of FOMO where it's like, I wish I was in early. I don't think it'll be like the last one where sort of every previous times where everything did well. But I think there are some pretty strong projects out there that either haven't yet that could see some real adoption and then some FOMO in the future. I don't know when that is. Jonathan. I think for big money, I really anticipate that the DeFi space will more in a lot of the passive income yield generating opportunities. more real true due diligence and research into some of these networks and lending chain. Actually, the lending side of crypto has been exploding despite that whole index dropping. But lending has exploded over these networks. So I think a lot of the lookout for income generation will likely stimulate a bunch of interest in not just staking, but in liquidity pools and other things.

So do you think that that's a rotation back to the, I guess we'll call them blue chip DeFi tokens? Or do you think it's a new round of DeFi? I would look at it as a new round of DeFi, especially because when you look at entities like BlackRock, Infidelity, when the real brains over there start looking at outside of just those two, and they start to realize, well, there's a lot more to this than just Bitcoin and Ethereum. There's an entire financial sector here that targets unbanked billions of people on the globe that is growing daily using these lending platforms.

And it's going to be really interesting. People don't talk about it a lot, but I think it's going to be the next quote, like not like big, big, big, big, big thing, but it's going to be big. It's going to be a lot bigger. We're going to see it come back. I would think real yield factor.

Oh, I was going to say, I think real yield tokens. I think the tokens that sort of did not take the path of neutering themselves because of worries about the SEC, and maybe they have legal troubles down the road, but they actually pass lending protocol or derivatives trading protocol or whatever, where they actually pass on the revenue in a meaningful way to token holders, I think people can justify crazy valuations on those because it's crypto. And I think as far as staking is concerned, I think a lot of networks are going to have to compete

because you take the last bear market. If you were staking Ethereum, Polkadot... Well, I guess Ethereum is kind of like the extreme. It's like you were watching your fish in a water tank slowly suffocate and die. And there's nothing you could do about it because it was just locked up forever. But you've got these... You got Polkadot as an example. I think Polygon is another where your stake is locked up for a certain amount of time or you can't get rewards after a certain amount of time.

I think we probably will see that disappear because there's like Cardano and Tezos. That is liquid staking. Well, but how can your big lure be staking? Isn't that the lesson we learned last cycle with like the OM forks that like if your whole use case is ridiculous APY on your own native token, that that is just a scam, right? Yes. I would strongly differentiate being able to get yield in a different token, right? Yield in ETH, yield in Solana, yield in stables,

I think is very different than inflationary yield in your own token. Right. Yeah. And I guess what I'm saying in the staking rewards is that you don't buy it just for the stake. Because the purpose of the stake is to be rewarded for maintaining the network. And so unless the network has use, if its only use is speculation and trading this and that, then probably not something people are going to be attracted to for long-term holding. But if it is a network

or a platform where there's a lot of activity on it because of, I don't know, NFTs or you have a lot of lending going on, if there's some type of use case that is supporting the stake and it's not just being supported by a treasury or that kind of jazz, I mean, that's going

to be something people are going to be looking at. This conversation will delve into the fundamentals of and the health of these blockchains and who makes them up and are they sustainable. I mean, like Cos cosmos or adam i mean it has a i think they dropped but it used to be like a 20 percent you know yield and wow that

sounds great but and they've kept it going for a long time but how sustainable is that i mean really and yeah that's i want to continue conversation, but I do also want to mention that they just finally released the job number revision. If you guys are paying attention, they basically said, oops, years worth from 2023 until about April 2024 of job numbers were wrong. We need to revise those down 818,000 jobs, which means that those monthly reports that everybody was, you know, holding for with bated breath and that were rocking markets up and down were completely fake news of a strong job market that was much weaker than indicated. So next time you decide to listen to the government's data, pay attention to the quiet revisions that happen when nobody's watching later. Back to the other topic, Simon, go ahead. Yeah, well, that's pretty wild. So I do think,

finally, after how long we've been waiting for 56 five, six, seven, since 2017, I do think the security token is the next one that does come through. And the reason I say that is, so we got a bunch of institutions into Bitcoin. And a percentage of those are going to like or eventually like the returns that they got on their Bitcoin ETF, maybe. And then they'll get into the Ethereum ETF as a bit of a diversification. And in that journey, I think they're all going to be thinking about what securities and financial products they can build. And naturally, I think because of the Ethereum ETF, they'll choose Ethereum or Bitcoin will be in a position where they can build on top of Bitcoin. I think it's only going to be those two they'll be choosing from in the professional, you know, TradFi markets.

So I've got to do one of those full disclosures, Scott. Sorry, full disclosure, I'm a shareholder. Rand's the one who mocks your disclosures, not me. All right. Well, I am a shareholder in Securititized but securitized did the whole um ethereum yeah blackrock uh fund and what became really interested in that in you know is you get like a billion dollars of volume i think it's approaching not volume sorry um market cap yeah into the treasuries um but then the announcement came from the algorithmic stable coins that they're

going to back some of their reserves with the security token so now you've got the algorithmic stables that are backed by partial securities which are backed by u.s treasuries um and i think you get a really nice wave of um you know, innovation that can come on top of that on a real solid regulatory foundation. And then if we also start to get the next generation of, you know, virtual asset service providers that are registered with SEC that do have the virtual asset permissions and the special purpose broker dealers which i think will only come if we get a republican government um then uh then i think you could i think you could get a bunch of traction built on top of ethereum based upon securities and probably the etf providers will be the largest stakers eventually um and i think it just becomes a trad five rails for CBDCs on the centralized side,

securities on the regulated side, and then a bunch of decentralized stuff that may rely upon those. So it's going to be, I think it's, I think that's where it goes. It would take a couple of years to get there. I think. Makes sense.

Thought someone else had their hand up, but I missed it. Dan, did you have your hand up? No, it wasn't me. Do you have thoughts anyways? Not so much for this one. I wanted to say, I just arrived in Bali today. If there's anybody in town for the conference in Bali, hit me up. My DMs are open.

My invite must have gotten lost in the mail. Yeah, CoinFest in Bali's annual conference is pretty good, coming up in the last three years. Yeah, no, I basically can't really add't really add anything, um, of any value. Unfortunately. Um, I agree with what's been said. Jonathan, go ahead. And then actually we, I do want to just kind of talk about these revised job numbers, but

go ahead, Jonathan. Sure. This is kind of a more like a question back to Simon. Um, you think BlackRock and, uh, some of those other entities that are moving to Texas. I mean, there's been like on StockTwits with the classical footy-duty traditional finance people who are the users on the stock side of the app. A lot of questions popping up about are they going to like their new exchange that they're making?

Is it going to be entirely tokenized and 24 7 over there um yeah i've got no i got no insight other than speculation but i think they'd be crazy to be able to to not do that um i think you know they were hinting a so before the blackrock approval he was obviously going around saying oh i've changed've changed my mind. Crypto is pretty cool. And it was really pushing the whole tokenization, real world assets and securitization and all that stuff. Then he was eventually able to say, oh, I can say Bitcoin now. Then he got the Bitcoin ETF, then does the ETH ETF. So I think the natural next step would be to launch a stock market. And I think you're

either going to, this is either a beta test for their own private blockchain, but that's failed for every single financial institution that's tried it to date. Or he's just going to bite the bullet and say, right, we beta tested Ethereum and we invested in Securitize so that we could figure out the information and now let's launch our own one. That would be my guess. Dave, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to talk about the specific technologies, because whether

it's Ethereum or Tron or Solana, it doesn't really matter. But what does matter are the economics. And I have no idea what they're going to do in Texas. And I've tried to find out some, and I actually know a bunch of the people involved and no one's really talking. I think it a lot has to do with the regulatory environment. But just go big first principles. completely revolutionized is the OTC market, the so-called pink sheets, bulletin boards, OTC markets. I know the guys who built it. They've done an incredible job making that market slightly more professional, but there's a lot of crap. And the fact is there's two things that people could do in a tokenized world that really can't be done any other way. The first is to create a clear, you know, blockchain based ownership structure as well as disclosures structure. So for investors to be able to invest in, and the second is to allow for trading

dramatically cheaper just just to give people an understanding because your stock puts Jonathan, you guys know this, when you're trading the OTC stocks, a lot of them are foreign. A lot of them are really small. And the spreads that market makers make in that market are 10x or more than they make in the other markets. When you get to foreign companies, and it gets toward what's called gray market securities, the spreads could be 10 to 15%. And so it would be not to mention the fact that only trades during periods of time, it trades by appointment, etc. The ability to tokenize that and allow an open to a transparent trading marketplace

is a massive opportunity, and would unlock an enormous amount of capital into that as a viable alternative before actually listing on a public stock exchange. That is going to get fought. But clearly, when people talk about tokenization, they're talking about three things, really. They're talking about the transparency in the market, like I just talked about, which will cut spreads. They're talking about multi currency trading, because you know, people around the world want to buy American companies, Americans want to buy foreign companies. And right now, the in, we think we have a global

world, but the frictional costs are enormous. And we're talking about on demand settlement, the ability to, you know, not have to trust, you know, your counterparties. And, you know, all of these things are what's going to happen. It's a very big deal. I still think it is the future of all stock markets. But I think that it very much depends on the regulatory environment, because what people don't understand, people on this call do, is that regulators are weaponized to preserve competitive moats.

And a lot of traditional financial firms are doing exactly that. In a world where that changes, well, change could be rather rapid. And so I think you just need to understand that that's really what you're talking about. But it is a very big deal. It's not small at all. Scott. Yes, sir. Why'd you go quiet? Just because I'm here. How are you? Scott. Yes, sir. Why'd you go quiet?

Just because I'm here. How are you? Are you? What are your thoughts? Guys, I do want to mention something pretty big. I don't know how I haven't been able to speak to you recently, Scott. And I want to pivot the conversation. Is it supposed to say major trauma announcement or that's supposed to be trauma?

I have no idea these days. You could just edit it, man, instead of pointing out the mistakes. I'm just asking. But what are your thoughts? So just so you know, the Tron we're doing, we're having Justin Sun on a space on Monday to talk about it and got a pretty big announcement to make as well.

But what are your thoughts on the... By the way, Carlo, don't laugh. Just so you know, Carlo, you're the one that sent me the message. He didn't laugh. He gave you the shocked face. No, no, I was excited. That's huge. Okay, because I're the one that sent me a message. He didn't laugh. He gave you the shocked face. No, no. I was excited.

That's huge. Okay, because I was going to tell – it is pretty huge. But I was going to tell Carlo that he's the one that kind of got me. So I go to my team. I'm like, guys, I forward Carlo's messages. Carlo's like, Mario, NFTs are back to life. Sends me screenshots of like punks. And they're like 60-something sold in the last 24 hours. I had no idea.

There's just so much happening in crypto. And then I send it to my team. I'm like, guys, we need to do more spaces on this. And I send it to my investment team to start looking into it and then my team's like mario we've been doing spaces on this for two weeks it's been gaining traction for two weeks i had no idea um so nfts are back thanks a lot carlo for not back potentially yeah it went from like a nine floor to about 13 and i know that because on the dip i had promised when apes had a three hundred thousand dollar floor that if they got below 25, I'd buy one.

Oh, there you go. Well, you know more about NFTs than I do, Scott. So well done. That's all I know. The Apes went up. Yeah. But Tron is insane what's happening. So we've known about SunPump and we've been talking to the team to see the success they've had. So SunPump is a similar platform to and by the way i'm

i know there's two yeah we dug into this very deeply yeah yeah exactly exactly but just just just tldr for anyone that just joined as well it's blown up obviously some people that would be very critical others very excited but what it does for tron as an ecosystem just brings a lot of attention to it however you look at that attention um but yeah it's just been fascinating to watch i think we should do another space on it. I find you're doing this. I would have joined earlier, but we do have Justin Sun coming in with us on Monday. I've just tweeted about it as well before joining.

And we do have, thanks Scott, because I tagged you, that's why you saw it. And I- I've interviewed him quite a few times. So he's a very smart guy. Yeah, he's been on our stage before, but I think now the timing of it is key, obviously, because of the successful launch of SunPump. But it's just been fascinating.

He's took a lot of liquidity out of Solana as well. And everyone probably knows about Sundog, which we have on the show as well, coming on in a couple of shows. And we're working closely with them. They've got $250 million market cap within days. So he kind of chose the amount of attention then and brings life whether you love or hate meme coins um brings life back to crypto again you can be critical of what type of life that is um but for for traders and speculators and you know rants and he thinks that the uh you you missed it but he was here earlier and he said that he

thinks that this is sort of the uh not not tron specifically but we're in the sort of like last death throes of this meme it's like i don't know i never i try not to speculate those things like no one really fucking knows like we've been people have been saying this for months now um people have been ran said this about ai and ai still doing pretty damn well um even though it's gonna correct it a bit um even outside of crypto but i just think it's it's i'd rather not speculate on what's going to happen next and what's happening now. I'd rather just ride the wave and focus on where the liquidity is. But there's also long-term play.

So we're still doing token investments heavily. We haven't slowed down while you and Ryan slowed down heavily. So it's still very heavy on that front. And now we're looking at NFTs. Thanks to Carlo for bringing that to our attention. so it's still very heavy on that front and now we're looking at nfts thanks to carlo um for bringing that to our attention never thought a lawyer would point out nfts to me um instead of my team my own team didn't tell me but um yeah i think for anyone else check out that space on monday please do so but it's been what's the tldr the earlier chat scott

uh i mean effectively we talked about the fact that um a lot of attention was going to tron as you sort of mentioned. And it's probably the washing machine of DGNs going from one casino to the next, you know, coming over from Solana to Tron because Sol stopped growing that the bulk of USDT transactions and actual volume and liquidity is on Tron, which most people don't realize because it's fast, cheap. And that's what people who are sending, I think, small transactions to a friend or holding, you know, trying to get access to dollars or using. So it shouldn't be that big of a surprise that a fast, cheap chain that's been around for a long time, whatever you think of it, with a genius marketer at the helm, is going to capture this trend, at least for a while.

Do you think it's similar to how Solana sucked liquidity out of Ethereum, which ended up becoming Solana? I think so, yeah. Yeah, I think so. The question, I guess, remains, will this be a very quick trend or will it remain? If you believe that the cycle is going to ramp up again coming into the fall, the normal four-year cycle, then you would expect, I think, a lot of bigger tokens to capture the attention after Bitcoin moves and maybe not memes at that part of the cycle you know if you get a similar cycle you know you get bitcoin into ether youth and solana now maybe and then down to lower caps as it goes so maybe some of these dinosaurs will finally get their get their day in the sun yeah and by the way

fascinating panel for discussing tron meme coins i think we should get a tron a bunch of tron guys on tomorrow i feel bad for some of the panelists talking about Sun Pump. But the question for you is, my next question I have for you, man, is the liquidity on Tron when it comes to stablecoins. If I asked you to make a similar prediction as Rand, do you think that it will be short-lived?

Or do you think that we'll see a similar cycle? No, that's been sustained and steady for ages. And I mean, more than 50% of USDT is on Tron. No, I'm talking, I'm talking. Yeah, so I think, no, no. So obviously stable coins on Tron is beyond whether it's short term or long term. Yeah, exactly.

It's been long enough. So that's not the question. The question is more about the current meme coin cycle that we're seeing. Could that revive meme coins in a sustainable way? Does it depend on a few factors on, you know, what happens in the general markets? For example, people are talking about Iran attacking Israel tonight or tomorrow. And immediately a few factors on on you know what happens in the general markets for example people are talking about iran attacking israel tonight or tomorrow and immediately a few

meme coin guys are like shit the market will dump which i was surprised i just didn't think it will immediately always dump it just depends on the size of that attack but do you think factors like this will play a big role or do you think with what we're seeing in liquidity being sucked in that tron could um you know potentially become a long-term competitor to Solana and Ethereum? Well, I think it begs A. So I think Tron is a long-term competitor to Solana and Ethereum that nobody talks about. With meme coins. Right.

So I'm just saying. So just throwing that out there in a vacuum, whether you like Tron or not, you can't argue with the data. But B, if you think the meme coin trend is dying, and it doesn't matter where it is, but if you think it's going to sustain, this could capture some of that. I'm just very skeptical and having nothing to do with Tron itself or Sun Pump. I said in March that I thought we were going to see a major decline in the market and that the top was in for memes, and it was. I mean, we've still seen meme action, but nothing is like that peak that we saw in March.

And I think it's just a slow drain out. So I think that Tron is a little late to this. They're grabbing liquidity. It begs the real question, is there any new money that's pumping these tokens on Tron? And I would say I'd be very surprised if this isn't just the same exact people who are already doing it on Solana.

So I think they're just going to get spread thinner. I don't think you get new retail market participants who are launching like meme tokens themselves. You know, I think there's less memes on Tron right now. So there's more money to be made. It seems every cycle there's a new narrative. Earlier this year, it was the VC-backed tokens, token launches. Then it became meme coins.

Well, we had ANI and RWA as well, you remember. Very briefly. Very briefly. RWA, everything. Yeah. And then what we have – so do you think the next narrative is – I'm talking more about asset classes rather than narratives. So I'll say asset classes. We had token VC-backed tokens and we had um um we had uh meme coins

where's your money at now do you think with nfts coming back to life do you think nfts could be the next asset class you think we'll continue beam coins will continue dominating you know i was talking to one of our very close partners who are you know they incubate a lot of vc back projects and they've kind of gone 80 90 into meme coins and just dropped everything else we haven't we've gone we're still we scaled heavily on the meme coin side heavily like we've hired like 10 people in the last week and a half um and but on the vc back talkers we have not slowed down we're scaling that too while others have slowed it down so where if you had to put your money where would you put it now for the next let's say bet for the next six months it's interesting i asked ran that

yesterday um and we had this little game where he said, name tokens and I'll tell you if I think they're going to succeed. And I was very surprised because his contention was that the things that are going to pump are some of like, like Matic and old tokens that have huge communities of holders that some of those people have, people have actually made money. And I was thinking about it and it's a pretty, I don't know specifically which tokens,

but it was a very interesting idea. So his contention, you know, he's very bearish on the VC-backed tokens, kind of pre-sales and such, because they launch, they go down, nobody's ever made money on them. Therefore they lose interest immediately. Right. But what, for better, for worse, his contention, I think I agree. I've always said nothing's better marketing for an asset than the number going up, right? Price is the best marketing tool. If it's never gone up and nobody's ever been in profit, people lose interest very fast.

So his contention was that things with larger communities where some of those people are actually still in profit could eventually capture the sort of zeitgeist but listen i think that uh most things will have their time if we get a proper cycle and nobody was expecting that proper cycle to be happening in august yeah um i was looking at the markets the other question is you ask like where's people where are people putting their money where they should be nobody has money i would stop saying that what do you mean no one has money there's a lot of money sitting there waiting and sitting it parked at the moment yes it's vcs and they have no idea what to do with it because everything they're investing in is going down and they can't deploy all of that money so they're moving to liquid markets and doing otc deals on bigger tokens

right now but vc backed tokens are still doing well. High-quality projects are still raising money. They're not struggling. You're talking about because it's just a bear market days. No, they are raising money. I'm just saying that no launch has been good. Well, it depends how you define good. If you're going to define good compared to previous token launches in the previous cycle, yes, it's pretty damn shit now.

Because everything is like 1x, 2x max barely anything above and things about getting a 2x on something that you're vesting in for two years but the goal but that's what i shot no man that's a ridiculous stance of someone that's been hurt in the bear market the whole concept is 99 out of 100 the one percent is but vcs make money on that one percent you know the game yeah i i am well aware of how the game has always been in the past i've always been a proponent that we still see huge alt seasons i just think that there's the way that they look will be different and do you think do you think i'm just also fascinated by the whole um nfts kind of gaining traction probably get carlos thoughts on this as well i've thought that for a long time that they would yeah exactly i think that they're just waiting remember we had

conversations where i was like i'm not an nft guy but what everyone's saying here they were so depressed and bearish i was like these things are gonna get a mega pump again agree agree um and and the reason is like it's just waiting for that spark because everyone knows what the last cycle was like and the x's that we saw so as soon as people think like oh shit is it starting they'll immediately flood the the that might be happening now right i mean like i said apes going from nine e floor to 13 something e floor in two or three days is it's not that's nothing to scoff at you know it's like a 40 50 percent move i mean i think they went down into the eights but 40 something percent move against eath right in eath not in dollars so big move your thoughts on that um carlo

yeah look you you listen to smart guys in the space like ral pal who have been saying for a long time that he is buying valuable art from people like Xcopy and Beeple. And he, of course, holds NFTs, MFers and so forth that he's openly talked about. And it seems almost inevitable that if we do see a huge bull run and we do see increased liquidity, that it's going to get moved over because it's only the natural progression of wealth. Anytime you have a large accumulation of wealth, people usually spend it on collectibles, watches, paintings. Why wouldn't they spend it on digital art? I mean, it's out there, there's provenance to it. Some of the original

collections that came out early in the NFT cycle will most definitely be revisited. The gamble, of course, is which ones and when. But I think we're starting to see that beginning with punks because punks, bear market, bull market. My position is punks are punks, man. They are an OG collection. They have provenance and they are loved by everyone in crypto Twitter who is into NFTs because they are kind of the original NFT PFP collection. And you're starting to see more and more of the influencers and people in the space changing their profile pictures back to

punks and buying punks. So I think I have to agree with Scott. We're back into that cycle. Look at the people in this space. There's punk. There's punk avatars all over the place. NFTs everywhere. Avatars. Good point.

Yeah, we should do it tomorrow. Tomorrow's play should be our NFTs back. Let me just tell the team now. I think this is the discussion for tomorrow. And we'll probably talk Tron again. Our NFTs back. Sorry, you had your hand before we go to Artfire. You had your hand, Jonathan, up?

Oh, yeah yeah it was just uh uh like people like on the retail side who don't get to participate in in all the anyway um one of the indexes that i'm making for stock twits that is is i'm calling it the rocky index and it is tracking a lot of these old cryptos that you were talking about with Scott, like Matic, Cardano, Algorand. Algorand is a good example where the team has existed for a long time. They're still developing. But everything about them on-chain and fundamental-wise, or not fundamentals, but on-chain-wise looks horrible. Like 93% of the hodlers are out of the money, but 85% of the wallets have been holding for a year or longer.

Those kind of things, those kind of cryptos that have active developers, they're growing, they have active communities, but everything's severely depressed from an on-chain metrics perspective. They have a lot of camp coming because they're already known by people and they just haven't been able to, bulls have been unable or unwilling to really get them going again and pump them up on the next run. Total 100% speculative look,

but that's us. I think Tron is just a perfect example of what people are just waiting. There's a lot of money sitting there. They're waiting for the next thing. And as soon as something feels like it's the next thing, immediately money floods into it. We saw that with Tron, and then we'll see that. I think we'll see that as well with NFTs.

So that's where I stand. Mario, I saw, by the way, just in – sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I thought you were done there. But I saw like a project or two, I don't want to name names, but that recently this week, um, released decided to vest all of their investors, a hundred percent at the launch, you know, dumped 70% and then stabilize kind of back at the launch price. You're talking about token token projects, normal token projects.

Yeah. So like, it's just interesting that we, I mentioned this yesterday, but there are some that are now saying, listen, we don't want the long vesting. Get all the tourists who made their little private money. That seems – yeah, I just think – yeah, but that's dangerous because there's – Like you could kill it completely. Exactly, exactly. Like the vesting is there as necessary because there isn't enough demand to be able to sustain enough volume for all markets to be listed. So having a small float is important in some ways, not too small,

but it's important so that as demand builds up, the float increases gradually as well. So it's in line with the demand increase. But I would say if there is enough hype behind it, if there's enough users, then it would make sense. I think it's just pushback against the fear everybody has of this sort of high FDV. But that's not the solution. If you're market cap and FDV are the same, it's a good fight. Yeah, but the solution is longer lock-up periods

and smaller unlocks. So the lock-up periods are too short right now, where it's not enough for two years for a project to build out their user base to have organic demand um so that's the concern there is right now it's the two extremes of approaches to the same problem yeah so just kind of for anyone that just joined in so we obviously we have justin sun coming in on monday or i have um obviously scott who i come around probably jump in uh justin sun coming in on monday um to interview about tron um sundog is obviously going to be there which hit whatever 250 275 mil today after a few days launching a few days ago we've got some pretty major

announcement coming in in that space if not beforehand um and we are um yeah we're very active in the tron ecosystem so we'll be doing a lot of spaces on that we're active on the marketing incubation side too and on the tomorrow space we'll do we're doing a space on nfts we'll talk more about tron we'll probably get some people deep in the tron ecosystem because it is um it is what people paying attention to now and i think tron should not be faded as scott said earlier i think tron is not getting the um recognition it deserves i'm not i'm not sure i hope i've been saying that for years and not even as a fan. Why though? I'm just saying you can't argue with the fact that it's where, listen, there's a narrative

like Bitcoiners have been telling forever, right? That people around the world should be utilizing Bitcoin instead of their hyperinflating currency to transact and to save money. And we all know that the reality is that most places in the world, they may get to Bitcoin. But what most people want is access to US dollars, which they have been unable to get. They have to go down to the black market and do it in cash and pay a premium. You just can't get dollars. And that's what most people in these countries actually want access to. Stablecoins gives them that. and you have the bulk of usdt or 60

55 of usdt is on tron right and the reason is not because like people love or hate tron they don't even know i think what tron has been able to do is because it's exceptionally cheap and fast the average person obviously doesn't want to pay an ETH gas fee to do it. They're going to pay nothing on Tron. And so if I'm in Venezuela and I say to my friend, listen, I'm going to send you five bucks, download this app. They download an app. They don't know it's Tron and they send you dollars, right?

And that has captured real mainstream adoption around the world. And that is on Tron, whether people like it or not. I mean, I talk about this all the time. I know people just there's like a dislike for them in certain communities, but like the data is the data, right? And this is the chain that most people are using to send small transactions and stable coins. Yeah. And just going to give, again, the numbers, you can't argue numbers. So Tron is that over 50% of all USDT in circulation is on Tron.

Just check the numbers. And the token's like 10% off its all-time high in dollars, terms. That's impressive. It's outperformed this entire bear market. I'm just trying to see what percentage of Tether is on ETH. Just waiting for that number now to come in. But yeah, so while waiting for that number. There's 60 billion

on tron so i don't know i think he is probably in the 45 to 50 ish or something is it don't know if it's that close um but why don't you think why do you see last question i have and then we'll go to art fight but why do you why do you think we're not seeing as many vc back tokens launched on tron as well i think that's that same sort of skepticism i don't know you know it's it's like uh maybe a blessing and a curse that now people just have been seeing tron as the stable coin chain right so uh you know but justin sun seems to always find a way to capture some of whatever is going on even if he's a bit late or it's kind of copying it, right? I mean, everyone would, I think, agree that Sun Pump is like a copy of Pump.Fun,

right? Which is fine. But every chain is doing it, just to be clear. Every chain is trying to use meme costs to get liquidity onto there. We did one for Phantom not long ago. We know Linear did it. So that card... He's just doing it well on a chain that has a ton of money there.

Exactly. And I think that they a ton of money there. Exactly. And I think that they should get flowers when they deserve them. And I think Tron now is leading the way, along with ETH and Solana. So much credit to them. But let's dig into, you still didn't get the percentage of USDT on ETH, how much of the circulation is on there. So I'm just going to try to get that number. But yeah, let's go to, where are you Asif? How are you hi everyone good book hey bro how you doing so it's a quick

question man like we're talking about all these different narratives that are just not getting their their their um their time in the limelight and tokenization of art is something that was hyped in the previous cycle and then suddenly everyone just moved on to the next sexy thing yet people like yourself are still building in the background let's kick it off with a basic question what is artfi yeah thank you very much first of all for having me here uh my name is asif kamal i'm a founder and ceo of company called artfi i have been into the space for arts fine art primarily into uh south asian modern contemporary segment of art for around 14 years. And if I define ArtFi, it's a true amalgamation of fine art legacy and the blockchain technology.

So we wanted to make this asset class more liquid, more shareable, more tradable. And the tool we wanted to use is the blockchain technology to redefine the ownership around the art investment and art collection. So that's what ArtFi is. Why give us some metrics like i'm just curious how's vc up like what's the sentiment like behind fractionalized art because it was a sex one of the sexiest things at one point in the previous cycle how are investors

responding to another like hey you know it's just not getting enough attention we're not interested or they understand the long-term value and it wasn't too difficult to raise capital uh i would say it was difficult because we were in a bear cycle we were building the art five but eventually in the long run it's it's something that people understand uh around the world and if you see uh art as an asset class so the problem that we have in a society is that is less less aware of, you know, asset class. We all share the news. We all share the art information, but we don't actually participate financially in the business of art or in some sort of participation. We say socially, we go to museums, we go to galleries, we interact with the artists, but we really don't participate in that.

If you see the numbers, it's around 70 billion annual sales coming out from six major institutions which include sword piece christie's bonhams what they do so they they consign the pieces of art from the collectors and they sell it to another collector that's the market and it's a massive asset class if you see the size of this asset class but unfortunately it was limited to a very few percent of the people around four to five percent of the people have been able to participate in this business financially the reason is profitable the reason is very simple because it has been kept out of the reach of the normal retail people for various reasons so the barriers includes long holding periods the barrier includes the less liquid market the barrier also includes the barrier includes the less liquid market, the barrier also includes

the dependency on the export, institutions, auctions, galleries, a lot of things. But the fundamental remains very strong as an asset class because it's a demand and supply game in art, right? So you can't produce more Picassos now, you can't produce more Dhanis now, you can't produce any artist who is no more alive. And even those who are alive, like Banksy, you can't produce more than the capacity that he has. So when you see the fundamental of an asset, it remains very, very strong. But it was always out of the reach because it's a tangible asset, and art is a non-fungible asset, right, like us. So when you want to, you know, populate this concept around the world that let's invest in art, due to a lot of barriers, in my career in the last 40 years, I have seen people having money to at least invest $25,000, $30,000 in an artist who are emerging or semi-established or mid-career artists. But they'll do a lot of issues.

They never participate and they say, well, this is not for me. What ArtFi is trying to do, ArtFi is leveraging on the top 100 blue chip artists for now. And we are making it accessible accessible not in a binary form so there is a use case of this whole concept that has been done in us earlier in 2018 the company name is masterworks and what they did they basically uh rather than you know fractionalizing it in a on a blockchain they securitize the whole concept under sec so they bring one painting attached with this painting with the uh with the company and the sell the share of the company at the share of the you know painting and created a secondary market where you can trade your share what we are doing is we're using the technology

to redefine the whole ownership game in a different way we wanted to tell people that when you come to artfa you see the whole digital grid in front of you and you choose your fraction number and coordinate number you want to buy and that each individual fraction number becomes your uh non-fungible asset or digital objects that is the you know representing the underlying ownership in the underlying asset that we hand over to the third party cust custodian on your behalf. I see family. Yeah. I just want to ask you, go back a step. What are the hurdles?

Like, I think the value add of tokenizing any asset class is pretty clear. So I'm just curious, like, why aren't we seeing more adoption? I think we are doing very well, to be honest. But if you specifically talk about... I don't mean... I'm talking in general. Can I get your general thoughts? And then you can dig into... You can hone it down.

I'm just putting my investor hat on. I'm just like, this is one of the obvious use cases for crypto, for blockchain, for blockchain technology. It just makes a lot of sense. It adds liquidity to the asset class. It democratizes the asset class. And adds that level of transparency as well and that level of provenance. So then why aren't we seeing more tokenization

or more leveraging of blockchain for various physical assets? Again, RWS are gaining traction and specifically are. If you ask me my honest opinion, I think there are a lot of projects that are coming and tokenizing the real world asset. Obviously, when the industry is going in such a phase, you will see a lot of projects coming

and failing at the same time. But eventually, the overall game leads to a point where we will see that real players, institutions and the real world asset will be coming on chain and the tokenization will take forward from here i would say the challenges are the understanding of the of the people right now i personally faced a problem of a long-term and short-term mindset when i was building this company i come from a background which is obviously such a secular asset class so i had a reason to face the problem but in large i say uh i would say that uh there are companies that i personally know who are doing well in tokenization of real estates and uh there

are companies who are very strongly fundamentally very strong backed by good vcs they're doing tokenization of commodities so it's growing to be honest but it's not like a meme coin that everyone is aware of and it's happening no no not growing i'm not looking at price ignore ignore price ignore price what i'm the hype the hype the hype yeah fair fair and by the way thanks for just as thank you just having us on your cap table for being part of your journey i appreciate that the the next question i have though is um what about adoption itself so so what how many assets how many in the art world how many assets have been tokenized already maybe talking about artfire on your platform and in

general i'm just going to get an idea because i know how big the market is and again i talked about the use case making sense but what's the adoption so far are you talking about the overall general market no art tokenization of Yeah, just the adoption cycle. I'll tell you something very interesting about art. Yep. In US, it has been a successful, you know, trial. Okay. So I'll give you the example of a company that established in 2018 and it's a $1.5 billion

valued company right now, backed by, you know, everyone who is in the scene of a u.s main market you know mainstream uh investment market they all are uh backing have around a billion dollar asset under management they have uh already uh you know fractionalized you can say fractionalized i call it uh they have securitized the asset class class around 15 to 17 artworks so far including david hawkney banksy uh you know basquiat picasso uh all these kind of artists and they have around 360 000 registered uh investors uh on their platform so i think it's a successful business model the proof of concept is there now when we see how successfully we can grow i think we are very we are in a very right position at the right time to be honest and we have we have been able to

do it nicely we have been able to onboard a good amount of you know artworks uh good artists a lot of strong backers art collectors who have who have an understanding of this business. So we have been able to grow well. And also we need to not forget that we are not only democratizing the access in the piece of art, Mario. We are also here talking about taking the overall advantage and leverage on the technology to not only democratizing the access in the piece of art, but also democratizing the access in the business of art. And that's how we conceptualize the whole business model around tokenization of real world

asset at the same time including a fungible token into it because when you see the art market it's a massive asset class it's a big market but there is no company that is investable at this point in time while we speak. Sotheby's used to be on Nasdaq but it's off nasdaq now so there is no company where you as an investor can get exposure in the business of art we try to you know conceptualize in a way that gives direct accessibility in the business of art by the art fight token and it's a revenue share model buy back and burn mechanism we use our revenue to in every quarter to buy back and burn in equal proportion from all the exchanges so that gives you directly exposure in the business of art. And at the same time, by using the technology to democratize

the access of the piece of art is how we are doing it through the fractional ownership concept. And the more we go forward, the more the idea and the adoption becomes. And that's how we are constantly working towards building more a smooth technology like ZK Login is one of them. We onboarded with ourself with Sui for that particular reason, because the mechanism about the digital object and dynamic digital objects is very vast.

And we are working towards a parallel building is going on. So that when a normal people comes and say, okay, I want to invest in XYZ artists. So the whole AI mechanism and the vast technology inclusion into the platform is very important. So we are growing at the right speed. And I think it's very positive for us for now. Yeah. I like that.

You're a good example of – I don't know if I've said this a few times now. It's getting annoying, but it's true. You're a good example of these projects that – looking at your market cap um you know i think three million market cap 22 million fdv um you listen on gateq coin mexi and um you're backed by by vcs that all we all know dwf labs being one of them um it just shows that there's just so many projects where the use case makes sense. You know, pretty solid team. I remember I personally spoke to you before we invested.

So I remember our call. And, you know, you were recommended by people I know. There's quality projects that are sitting there. They're sitting ducks. And I know the time will come. And I've got a question that's related to this. The time will come where a lot of that attention, that short-term attention will move from asset classes that are very short-lived to things that bring real-world solutions. But I want to get your thoughts.

We talked earlier, me and Scott, about the whole token model, the VC-backed tokens. Your thoughts on that model in general because you've been part of it. You kind of came at the late stages of that hype we had earlier in the year when you did your listing. And you've raised money in the bear market as well. So you're kind of no stranger to liquidity drying out. But your thoughts on that model in general. Could the model itself start to jeopardize a lot of these healthy business models? The model of locked tokens.

Or the model is healthy, we just got to get used to different cycles. Yeah, if I understood you correctly, you're talking about the token that is the token model the vc yeah the whole vc model where you have a token launch through a launchpad then a sex and they have vcs that invest at a discount and they have lock-up periods and they unlock and a lot of them are selling right now that model itself because me rand and scott have a lot of debates on it do you think the model itself is flawed and that's the end of it and if so which, which I don't think it is, but if it is, what does that mean for projects that have already gone down that path? the economy of the company and the participation from the vcs on any individual in that particular token is the participation in the business and its growth so i think uh the way we moved forward uh it was helpful for us uh and uh i don't want to be biased here but i think every project has its own uh you know destiny right its own path and and they they they find uh their path very differently and

with time uh i to be to be precise here i think uh the the uh the comment from me would be uh have always two side of it one if i'm investor i would have a different kind of sentiment and different kind of a stand but if i'm founder, I would say that tokenomics should do justice to the company, the project, and the investors at the same time. It doesn't matter how the path is. It can be through the launchpad, through the VC backup, and through the CEXs or the DEXs. But in the end, if the VC is for long term and if they are looking forward to have substantial growth in the project, eventually the growth comes back to the token holders. If it is designed in a way that gives back to the token holders. I appreciate it, man.

Look, I love what you guys are building. Really glad to be on your cap table. Really love to see projects like yourself. They care about the right things, even though the market seems to favor the wrong things at the moment or some perceive as the wrong things. But I love what you guys are building. Glad to be part of it. Thanks for coming on the show, man. What you guys are doing is something that the world needs that will bring value to the world and very clear, very easy to explain value. Again, the democratization of a very gated industry, bringing more liquidity to that industry, 24- 7 trading and of course transparency as well so

really appreciate man appreciate you and the team thank you so much for everybody else it's good a good discussion to see if you're welcome to join our future spaces as well by the way man whenever we discuss rwas and for the audience we're going to be discussing tomorrow uh nfts and the tron ecosystem which we've been having've been heavy in since day one, haven't been too vocal on it. And we're going to be – so we're heavily involved in Sundog and the whole Tron pump – Sun Pump, sorry, platform. And, of course, doing a space with Justin Sun. And the NFT world, which I've got my own punk, and I can give the to to run tomorrow if the market continues going the way it is thank you so much everybody really appreciate it we'll see you tomorrow bye everyone bye asif thank you bye bye thank you