The Wolf Of All Streets - SEC KILLS NFTS | FriendTech Hype w/ Ryan Selkis | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

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Hello, hello. It's late for you guys. Aren't you in Singapore? I'm not. I'm not. You didn't go to Singapore either? No, we have our big conference next week. Mainnet 2023, New York City, 2,000 attendees. They're all in person. None of the Zoom shit that I've seen at some of these other conferences. We've got Brian Armstrong. We've got a senator. We've got a congressman. We've got Fred Wilson. We've got a senator. We've got a congressman. We've got Fred Wilson. We've got Ali from Andreessen.

We've got Vivek Ramaswamy, the highest-ranking presidential candidate that's ever spoken at a crypto conference. And Jeremy Allaire and, you know, a bunch of good folks. Greg Garleyhouse and Stu will be doing a victory lap and talking about their ongoing legal strategy. We got Paul Graywall doing the same thing at Coinbase in addition to Brian. So it is the best program that we've ever put together, and I didn't want to get sick or run down being in Singapore,

but I do feel like I missed out quite a bit. It's not like a great event. Yeah, I'm both sick and run down, I feel like. You made the right decision. The jet lag is atrocious obviously well you gotta you guys gotta get those vitamin c boosters and uh and and ship up to new york because uh it's gonna be uh gonna be a killer showing you know it does bother me though because you know uh as you guys know maybe some people uh that are kind of newer to crypto don't know, but, you know, I basically rebuilt Coindesk around the consensus conference in late 2015 through 2017. And, you know, that conference consensus obviously got up to, you know, the 10,000 plus range in New York. And New York has just completely fumbled

the bag, first with its COVID policies and now just the unrelenting hostility of the US to the crypto market. So I'm hoping that New York, we can support a 10,000 person crypto conference again in the next couple of years. But

you know what? 2000 is not too shabby given where we are in the market. What were the numbers in the next couple of years, but you know what? 2000 is not too shabby given where we are in the market. It's incredible. I got to tell you. What were the numbers in the bull market, Ryan? Well, I think the biggest one in New York was 2018. So that was the year after I left, but you guys know conferences are momentum businesses. So we kind of built the brand in New York,

the flagship in New York in 2016, 2017 went um, went, you know, like 1500, then almost 3000. And then I think 2018 was, um, was, I want to say close to 10,000. I want to say like it was, it was about eight or 9,000, um, that made it to, uh, to the Hilton, uh, for consensus. Um, and actually the, uh, the entire event team at Masari, um, is the team that built consensus from kind of day one. So the former ConsenSys 1.0 team is now the main net team.

And that's one of the reasons that we've got such a killer program this year. So it should be exciting. Yeah, we've got... So Scott, do you want to say anything before we kick off the show? How's Singapore? Yeah, yeah. You just keep complaining in the group non-stop i have not complained at all besides uh besides like you're dying every day well i'm tired man i've slept like maybe

six hours in the last three nights total i don't do too well with the jet lag but i gotta say it it's incredible you mentioned consensus obviously ryan. Consensus two years ago, 10,000 people. Consensus this year maybe was 3,000 people. And we kind of joked that all the booths seemed to be either lawyers or accountants. And then you come over here. And last year, actually, I went straight from Mainnet to Singapore. And this year, I guess it'll be the opposite. But Singapore, you come over here. Last year, it was a one- conference absolutely incredible absolutely insane energy and this year

it's on three floors there's no space anywhere there's no bear market in asia nobody here is on stage talking about regulation nobody here is talking about the United States at all. It's like living in the upside down. I mean, honestly, getting into Token 2049 here is like trying to get into a Taylor Swift concert. They literally sold out so far in advance. There's people outside in lines by the hundreds trying to

get tickets to get in. I mean, it's absurd. It's absolutely insane over here. You know, what could be when we have a changing of the guard and a new administration in the u.s um that isn't just overwhelmingly hostile and and following senator warren's bidding at every step so that time will turn you know that time 15 more months 15 and and by the way i think that's probably true regardless of of you know party so um we'll see if gavin newsom enters the race um but you know i don't know if you guys saw the clip this morning one of uh biden's aides was

whispering into his ear how to get out of the capitol building where he worked for 30 years so um you know i'd imagine that we're gonna have a new administration no matter what and that's gonna be a good thing for crypto in the u.s and i think in general can't lose the u.s i'm gonna guys i'm digging into the news so we had the the financial earlier we've got the ppi data came out hotter than expected uh came out at um i think let me have a look at the numbers so 0.7 in august which is higher than the 0.4 estimate and the biggest monthly gain we've had since June 2022. But if you exclude food and energy, PPI rose 0.2%, which is in line with estimates. So we've got some numbers that are not too good for risk assets. The dollar obviously did really well after this

data came out. But the real news today, and Ryan, we're going to ask you about Fintech as well, because the numbers are pretty impressive. But the real news is, and Ryan, we're going to ask you about Fintech as well because the numbers are pretty impressive. But the real news is the SEC targeting NFTs. And we've got the action against, let me get my notes out. What was it called? Like Drunk Cats or something along those lines. Stoner Cats. So Stoner Cats were launched, were promoted by Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher.

I think Vitalik was either part of it somehow or invested or promoted it. And Ryan, have you looked into the news? He's one of the characters. He's one of the characters. He's like the voice of one of the stoner cats. Are you being serious? Yes, I'm being dead serious. He's basically, it's like a,

it was basically a crowdsourced funding of a cartoon show. And he is kind of one of the characters. Yeah, first, I didn't even know you'd understand what Stoner Cats are, Scott. Yet again, you know what they are, and you know the characters better than I. But Ryan, we'd love to get your thoughts on this. We saw the news on the SEC versus Impact Theory. They settled as well. And the settlement included, just for anyone that doesn't know,

the settlement included not only a fine. So the fine against Impact theory was relatively small can't remember the numbers but let's say a two or let's use tonic cats tonic cats were fined a million dollars they've raised eight million um impact theory raised more i think it was an eight they made 30 and i think they were actually fined eight if my memory serves me correct i I could be wrong. And obviously, same situation here. They had to raise a fund to refund people, burn the rest of them, return the money. That's the part. When someone looks at the final loan, it doesn't look that bad.

It doesn't sound that bad. You raise money through a security. NFT is considered a security. Raise $8 million, pay a million, you're doing fine. But no, you have to – I don't know how it works, but you have to establish a fund to reimburse investors and you have to burn any remaining NFT. So pretty much the project is dead. But Ryan, I would love to get your thoughts on this and what that means for the NFT industry. I'm not sure if folks are familiar with Preston Byrne. Uh, I thought he had, uh, so he's,

he's a lawyer in the space, been around for basically 10 years. I've known him pretty much since day one. And, uh, he's got a really good blog, Preston Byrne.com, um, where, uh, he kind of gives some of his not legal advice, legal thoughts on some of the things that have come out. I think he had the best take on this. Um, and you know, the impact theory settlement was like that definitely had a lot of attributes of like a securities offering, right? The facts in that particular case were pretty bad. This one is, I think, very different. There was clearly interest in this as a collectible, given the star power behind the project and Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher being involved. People were clearly buying these things as collectibles and in expectation

that the series would get built out. And yeah, of course, there could be some capital appreciation or just like any other collectible or a concert? You know, the value of these could have gone up in value that doesn't make them securities. The SEC's logic in this particular case is absolutely no different than someone that buys a ticket to Taylor Swift's world tour and then scalps it for 5x face because everybody wants to get into the concert. It is exactly the same logic. It's absurd. And this is why, you know, I think, as an institution, the SEC has just lost all credibility because fish rot from the head. And Gensler is, I mean, he's just one of the most corrupt leaders that we've had in any, you know, US government institution, particularly the financial regulators, in a really long time. I mean, it's malfeasance at this point. And ultimately, I think, you know, we're going to

end up looking back and we're going to see a lot of the decisions, the strategies that he's employed at the helm of the SEC just get completely reversed in the next administration. And whether that's a Democrat or Republican, I don't think it matters. Usually, the standard is, even though his term is technically through, I think, mid-2026, it's a five-year term, usually it's standard to step down and kind of allow for a changing of the guard once there's a new administration. I think there's actually only been one SEC chair who served consecutive terms in the last 30 years. And that person was well respected on both sides of the aisle, you know, not reviled

by, you know, a high percentage, even of his own, you know, party. So this is this is a guy who is dictating a policy that is expressly designed to really shut off the crypto industry in the US. And the reason I think they're going after things like stoner cats, is to send a mafia like message to builders in the space that the higher profile you are, the harder we're going to come in and come after you for any involvement or affiliation in the space. But Ryan, what does that mean for all the projects? I'm just going through the audience.

You've got all these projects, NFT projects, listening to you speak now. So how worried should they be? And if they went after Stoner Cats, considering that they've treated it just like you treat tickets to a Taylor Swift concert. So other projects are all in the firing range. I think that they'll basically go top to bottom based on the size of total NFT sales and total collections.

So on the one hand, I think they're looking for like precedent setting cases and low hanging fruit and easy wins and everything that they're doing right now. And all these settlements are basically designed to scare people and act as a deterrent and kind of set back patterns that are going to dissuade folks from launching NFT projects or, you know, crypto asset projects. You know, anything that's kind of touching the industry without registering with the SEC, which is just a ridiculous standard. I mean, think about, I mean, this is an $8 million, you know, collectible sale, Stoner Cats. Could you imagine doing a light registration statement for this shit? Like, you know, first of all, the SEC doesn't approve anything on time, as we've seen with the with the Bitcoin ETF. And, you know, the shenanigans we've seen the last couple of years. So does anyone really think that even if the industry met this ridiculous

standard of registering everything as a security that a anything would work and be anything would get approved on time. There's just no way right. And that's why you've seen so much more activity out of the crypto fund space. And things like the SAFT and things like kind of private placements, you know, during the build phase of a project versus you know, what we saw with with ICOs and kind of community drops in, in the kind of early days of token launches. We can argue whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. And I think it kind of really depends on the project and the use of the token and everything.

But I think extending that logic into NFTs is just crazy, right? Maybe not for every project, depending on how it was sold, right? If people say, hey, buy my NFT, and it's going to represent, you know, a long term profit share in an XYZ project. And here's how we're going to build this project and this community. And so these will be worth, you know, 100x what they're worth today. Yeah, those are bad facts. And I would stay away from that type of behavior. But if you're genuinely trying to build an NFT collectibles project and think about crypto and NFTs almost in the same way that you would Kickstarter goods, then that should not only be legal, but it should be encouraged because it's ultimately

going to be a net positive and a huge opportunity for a new swath of creators. And there's market demand on the consumer side. Yeah. Yeah. And it should be it should be really clear that it's not the entire SEC that agrees with Gary Gensler. And actually, quite a few of them continue to write dissent letters. Obviously, everybody knows crypto mom Hester purse, but also Mark Vieta. And I mean, this is what they had to say about this. These are commissioners of the SEC for everybody's reference. Fan crowding, a common phenomenon in the world of artists, creators and entertainers. And similar to Star Wars collectibles sold in the 1970s rather than a security sale. My favorite quote from their dissent was using the analysis of today's enforcement action.

The SEC should have parachuted in to save those kids from Star Wars mania. Yep. Right. So it's not it's not like it's not like everybody at the SEC or everyone in the government agrees with the assessment. But I think you're right about it going top down. I mean, isn't this effectively just the Kim Kardashian moment of NFTs? Right. I mean, listen, Tom at at impact theory he's a relatively large celebrity himself but you don't get bigger than mila kunis and ashton kutcher and now gary genzel gets to probably go make a cute video yep and as you said send the message that uh if we can get them nobody can do anything i mean that's the entire design and and so I do agree with you that there are a couple of good commissioners at the SEC right now that strongly disagree. But, you know, the to really get outcomes from the entire agency

that are in keeping with its mission until you have a changing of the card, right? So like I said at the top, fish rot from the head. This guy is just rotten, right? And that's not complaining or bitching or like, oh, no, they're so mean to us. I think I said this on a prior discussion with you guys. The SEC's mission is to promote capital formation, ensure the markets are fair and efficient, and protect investors. They're doing none of that with respect to the crypto markets, or I would argue like even more generally, most often. You know, instead,

they're pursuing like these climate change, like ESG reporting standards. And they're, you know, cracking down on disclosures for private funds where, you know, the participants in those markets are pretty sophisticated investors. They're making impossible standards for crypto custody where, you know, funds are going to need to custody assets at a qualified custodian, but oh, by the way, we won't actually approve anyone to custody digital assets out of the out of the major banks or regulated custodians. So it's just, you know, like Gensler is just a liar, right? I've been on this for two years. He's he's just there's no other way to say it. He's he's, he's corrupt, and he's a liar. It's not that he's he's just there's no other way to say it he's he's he's corrupt and he's a liar it's not that he's making bad decisions the sec should go after scammers they should go after bad actors and you know what that's again that's you know and you don't need to do laws to punish fraud

it's it's already against the law but you know what genser if you want to do your job and be a hero why don't you catch voyager c Celsius, Genesis, FTX, instead of hosting them in your office, because they're political donors, and do your fucking job, instead of just going after celebrities, right? That's why people can't stand him. It's not that he's mean, or that, oh, we're trying to leverage regulatory arbitrage. It's that he is corrupt. He is dishonest. And he is completely captured by an anti crypto senator who has outsized influence in this administration and Elizabeth Warren. That's, that's just reality. So, you know, I think people get uncomfortable talking about politics in general. And, and I've

certainly opened up myself to some criticism and, you know and been a little bit of a lightning rod. But some of these statements that I've made the last two years are aging well, unfortunately. And I think most people generally are of the same opinion that if there's not a changing of the guard in this administration, move offshore like it's over in the US. Yeah, I think that that's a shared sense. But you kind of hinted at the fact that some of these NFT projects obviously could be viewed as securities based on the way that they're marketed and hyped. It's kind of a nice segue into Frentech. I know we've got Brian Krasinski up here as well, who was involved in BitClout. So obviously knows quite a bit about this space. But there's a very fine line then with FremTech. I know you're bullish on it, Ryan, but... Well, I'm bullish on it only because I already

filed my 175-page registration statement to open up a room. So, you know. That's my point, right? It's like, are they all unregistered security offerings of individuals simply because you signed up? i literally didn't even know when i signed up the first time that uh people were going to be able to buy and sell and trade me the moment that i did it i was literally just doing it so i could check out the platform and you know there went the bots yeah i i signed up and then like a half hour later you know i i checked back in and i had i I think, like 1.7 ETH in my account. And I was like, what the hell is this?

Nuts. Just from the trading fees. But I clicked a couple of buttons and signed up. So now I'm a security, I guess. That's the logic of the SEC. And by the way, that's why they're going to continue to lose in court. Because it's such a ridiculous farce, some of the logical leaps that they're making. And you have, you know, folks that are trying to make themselves useful to the current leader of the organization, but are ultimately not doing anything that would be helpful from a consumer production standpoint, you know,

a fair and efficient market standpoint or capital formation. So, you know, I think anyone that would look at Frentech with a straight face would look at this like, you know, private chat rooms and kind of VIP access behind a velvet rope for different folks that are actually interested in participating in these conversations. What I think will be interesting is, is, you know, what happens with all the bots, right? Like those are clearly kind of speculative market making entities that don't really have an interest in using these keys for their, you know, design utility.

But I don't think that makes the entire project or any individual kind of responsible for, you know, for what goes on in their room. I would say common sense probably applies. Like don't tweet on Twitter that your room key is going to go to like 10 ETH and you won't be in the crosshairs for shilling. But if you're just in there engaging with the product and people want to hear what you have to say in this private setting and feel like they have access to people they otherwise wouldn't have access to, I think that's going to be a pretty high threshold for anyone. But the question is, with StonerCats, and I want to go to Brian to make those comparisons to BitClout, but with StonerCats, for example, there was no talk of the price going up. There was none of that narrative.

It was all about the utility of the story itself, yet it was still considered a security. So then if you look at, so my question is, wouldn't Frentech be considered the same if you look at it through those same lenses? Well, the second question I wanted to ask earlier is what happens to people that launch a project from overseas as well? Well, I think Stoner Cats is, you know, I don't know all the details here. And, you know, obviously, I don't know what the motivation was to settle, you know, from a 30,000 foot view, you know, my, my best guess is you have two celebrities that just don't want to deal with this hassle. So they'd rather shut it down and move on instead of just,

you know, get ground down and distracted by, by something that's not really worth their time and energy. And in the process, the, you know, the sec notches a quote-unquote win because they've now settled and they've showed that you know even if you're a celebrity you're not above the law or whatever i i think the reality is probably more likely that you know ashton kutcher mila kunis that the folks that were affiliated with this project were like we want to move on from this this This is ridiculous, but you know, we just don't want to have to deal with the bullshit. And so we'll,

we'll move on. I'm going through years of years of litigation with the sec and paying millions of dollars to lawyers and they can just settle, admit no guilt and move on with their lives. I mean, this seems like, and the sec knows this. Yeah. I mean, I wish, I wish that they did though. Right. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Well that, I wish that they did, though, right? This is the perfect low-hanging fruit. Yeah, of course I wish that they did.

Well, that's – Orfron Armstrong says – Yeah. That's why I love Gwyneth Paltrow, like, you know, her court battle. I don't know if you guys heard about that, the court battle that she had with some guy that she had a collision with on the ski slope in Aspen. And she took it all the way, and she won. And she was like, just for the principle, right?

I'm going to fight this in court because it's frivolous. I wish you had more people do that when it came to things like this. But I also understand that, you know, these folks probably just don't want to deal with the hassle. And one more question before digging deeper into social tokens and Fintech or SoFi, whatever Fidgetle calls it. Ryan, what about projects? I know a lot of projects we're still listening now, looking at the SEC versus NFTs versus the Stoner Cats. If someone launched a project that's not based in the US, as far as I understand, as long as US investors were involved, then the SEC could come after you. But do you think they have the capacity,

the resources to be able to go after projects that are not based in the US? I don't think that they have the resources to go after everyone. I think, you know, they're trying to pick high profile cases, maybe in part to set precedent, but also in part to just send a deterrent signal, because they know that they couldn't possibly prosecute every single one of these cases. And if there's a precedent, so when you say set a precedent, what does that mean? So does that mean if anyone invested in an NFT project, they could use that precedent

to take a class action lawsuit against that project? No, I just mean, you know, now they're kind of gradually notching these settlements that they can point to when they go to other projects and say, hey, we settled and we had an enforcement action against impact theory and against donor cats. And what you're doing basically fits the same pattern. And so we're going to come after you next unless pick every battle, especially when of investors have said this. If you're a crypto entrepreneur right now, at the, you know, kind of founding seed, even series A stage, move offshore. Right? The US is not your friend until we have a changing of the guard. So that could be 15 months, that could be 15 months that could be five years um and you know obviously there's a lot of us that are fighting for it to be close to 15 months if not sooner but um until that changing of the guard happens it doesn't make any sense at all as an entrepreneur to start a company in the u.s focused

on crypto if you're going to have an asset yeah i used to disagree with that statement a few months ago but now it's almost impossible to do so you can't disagree i want to yeah i can't disagree now after what we saw and with impact theory with stoner cats with all the other projects because i thought the courts are doing the right thing but it seems like some projects don't want to fight the sec um right these don't go to court this is the this is the amazing low-hanging fruit for the sec to ryan's point right they they get the fine paid they get to claim that they won even though somebody doesn't admit guilt. And it basically shuts down everything that's similar indefinitely. It's such a mafia tactic, as he said.

It's incredible, but it really is effective. You don't see the Floyd Mayweathers and DJ Khaleds of the world and Paul Pierce's like doing Ethereum maps because Kim Kardashian and all them got in trouble. You just don't see any more celebrities now engaging in this space. They do that one thing. She never admits guilt. She pays her fine. Gary gets to make his video. No more celebrities shilling crypto.

For better or for worse. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but it's not the right way to go about it. Yep. Yeah, let me go into Frentech a bit. Brian, so if anyone doesn't know, me and Brian were on a platform before Frentech called BitCloud. And I'm guessing, Brian, you lost a lot of money as well.

But at least I did. Invested very heavily, believed in the concept, but it was too early. Some things just didn't go too well. And along with crypto, just dropped by 99 whatever percent. Project's still going. It's called DeSo now. But I've been in this space. I've been bullish on social tokens for a long time.

So, Brian, I'd love to get your thoughts on how Front Tech compares to Big Cloud. I've seen some of the same flaws, like the bonding curve being one example, the bots being another. But they do something. Big Cloud was trying to be a Web3 twitter a web3 twitter with tokens frantec's like hey we're not a social media platform we're just a way to be able to to get access to people get keys and people be able to get access to their membership only content would love to get your thoughts on the concept and and i think you're active on there already as well yeah like i like the idea i see similarities uh between bitcloud i see some of the flaws that uh bitcloud had but i also see it's a whole separate entity uh and i i do think there's some concerns especially with

the sec stuff and i'll get into that here in a minute but i overall i think social tokens, there's definitely a future. I think that Frentech is following the footsteps of Deeso or BitClout in the way that they're obviously, instead of a coin, you're basically buying keys. There definitely needs to be more to it. Hopefully, if they want to succeed, there needs to be integrations with other projects. I think that would be huge for Frentech. If you start seeing NFT marketplaces integrating Frentech keys into them so that you can buy access to the NFT artists. And it doesn't have to be NFTs. I see Fidgetle giving me a thumbs down right there. I'm sorry for your balding, Fidgetle.

That's a shame. It's a really basic take. It's a basic take on on the psychology and the solution solving that the the product is attaching to yes so so like i think there's some issues so with all the sec stuff going on uh the issue the biggest issue i see them having is that if you purchase a key you get access if you purchase two keys you get the same access if you purchase 10 keys you have the same access so what are you actually buying uh if you purchase more than one key they need to figure that out that's easy but that's easier to fix

isn't it like you just offer different levels of accesses here and i like i like how how uh what you said earlier like a big cloud did tokens. These guys do keys. Just two weeks ago, they were called shares. I think just more semantics. I don't know if the SEC will see that any different token, a key, a share. We'll see it as the same thing. But if you think there are different levels of accesses, there's still that expectation of profit. There's still people like in my group when I go in my chat, everyone's talking about, hey, can you pump our bags?

Like I wish I could just remove those people. When are you going to pump our bags? I think that mentality won't change. And I think some of the aspects of the platform, again, the bonding curve being one of them, just makes it very money-oriented. And I remember Scott called it just a – I think it was you, Scott, called it just a massive pump and dump scheme when you first saw it. And in some ways, it's accurate because you may get get fees on the dump as well uh brian that was it was ran that was saying that but i but i was exceptionally skeptical of it i still am but now it's this interesting thing where you're on there and there is some expectation there are

very nice people i'm actually in in Singapore and was approached by one of my key holders today. We took a picture. I hung out, talked to this guy for 15 minutes, and that only happened because of FredTech. So I think it is really interesting conceptually. But yeah, if we're being intellectually honest here, 99% of the people on there, just like in the rest of crypto, just trying to make money. Yeah, so I agree with that. And I think you have to be very careful. I think that the issue that I see is that if you buy your own key

and then you sell your own key, it's going to lead people to sell off your own key. And then you can buy your own key and then people get back into you. So it's like, since you're making money on the sales and the buys, you have incentive. And you don't have incentive if you're a moral person that doesn't want to screw people over. But if you aren't, you have incentive to basically pump up your own key before you buy it, then sell it. And then as people see you sell it, they're going to sell it. You're making money all the way down, all the way up. And you can just keep doing the same thing.

Of course, people will catch on eventually, but it, I think it's a little bit flawed in that respect. Fiji, I think Fiji dropped off and Ryan on that particular floor, just I'll get Fiji back up. He just dropped on that particular floor. I want to get your thoughts on it because you know that was probably my biggest concern when i saw frantic is like the incentives are just so misaligned to the buying and selling but it seems to be doing well i thought i didn't think it will uh it will get traction again yeah i mean it it has kind of so it died out for like a week or two uh and I thought, oh, this is going to be a one-month wonder. But it has picked back up. I know I've been using it just to communicate with people.

It's rudimentary. I think it's kind of like subscriptions on X. If you subscribe to someone, you get access to them, I feel. But instead of paying a monthly fee of $5 or whatever, you pay a one-time fee. You can sell your access and maybe make money, maybe lose money. But it's kind of a similar concept. It's different in that those who are more well-known are going to have a higher price and it's going to be harder to get access to those who are more well-known. Yeah. And Ryan Selkis asked that question as well. I want to ask you the same thing. are going to have a higher price and it's going to be harder to get access to those who are more well-known.

Yeah. And Ryan Selkis, I was that question as well. I want to ask you the same thing. The, the misalignment of incentives like concerning like if you really just care about people getting access, then what, when someone cancels a subscription to me on X, I don't get make any money off that. Yeah. If someone sells my key in, in frantic, I make money and I'm happy with that. Um, I don't know that I necessarily agree that it's a misalignment of incentives i think the the thing that's interesting about uh frantic and the economics is the bonding curve essentially reflects dumb bars number right so dumb bars

number you know you can only hold like 150 you know relationships at any given time you know give or take um and that's kind of like what has led to tribes and you know uh many communities right that that tends to be a number that like we're we've evolved to be able to handle like that many relationships at any given time and And so, you know, it gets very expensive to be part of a community above that threshold, right? You know, you're starting to talk about, you know, I forget where Racer and Levi are right now, but it's like $10,000 to be part of their room. And they only have a couple hundred folks in there. So, you know, at some point, you know, the, it just, I don't know what the number is, but there is a number above which most people won't go. But let's take the other

example of, you know, you get a, like a true A-list celebrity in there, right? So Ashton kutcher joins like there will be folks that are early to his room that hold and you know much like you would potentially give up a ticket to your favorite band if if the uh if the ticket ended up going for you know 10 times face and you needed the money you know selling that key is not necessarily an indication that the, you know, that the quote unquote unsubscription to use, you know, your logic is, is because the other room was garbage or anything like that. It could just be someone was willing to pay for that same slot of access, you know, at a higher rate than you were willing to hold that access. And so I think if you think about it, just it's kind of apples to oranges if you compare subscriptions to room access, because there's a natural limit to how many folks can get into a

given room based on the bonding curve. So that's point number one. Point number two, I think we'll start to see a lot of forks of Frentech and a lot of experiments around the bonding curves and the way that tokens are distributed, right? Like I'd love to see a Frentech fork or, you know, kind of version that somehow avoids bots, right? Like so maybe if you're an existing, um, friend tech, you know, a contributor or, or, you know, you have one of the largest rooms, um, on friend tech, could you create like,

you know, derivative, um, rooms where you have a little bit more control over the keys, um, that get distributed. So it's not just getting bit up by bots from, from, you know, day one. And, and ultimately you can have, you know, a hundred of your true fans or, you know, whatever you want to call it, you can kind of airdrop to them. I think we'll start to see a bunch of kind of forks and kind of derivatives for this project because, you know, remember it's, it's a month old.

And what I think that they've done well is create this scarcity or this kind of kind of natural limit to the room size um in much the same way that i'm sure you know many you are in telegram rooms where people try to keep it to like 200 in the chat um and that's kind of manually curated versus financially curated but this is the same logic and i think it's really the same project the first time we've seen a project do this successfully which is what i think has captured a lot of people's imagination yeah and talking about telegram just want to has captured a lot of people's imagination. Yeah, and talking about Telegram, I just want to touch on a piece of news we'll talk about later,

but there's a pretty major announcement about Telegram working with Tonnetwork and expanding it to all 800 million users, adding it in the settings of Telegram. So we'll talk about that a bit later. But Fiji, I know you've been waiting for a while, man. And I know you're, me and Fiji, by the way, we got to start. So I'm pretty critical of Fantech. And I've talked about some of my criticism earlier. But I'm pretty bullish as well. Like I'm starting to be active again when I saw Scott post his foot pics. I'm like, all right, Scott is starting to be active. You guys made me post the foot pics, by the way.

That was a prompted – It was – I'm not voluntarily showing foot pics. Your key is like tripled in value. So I think a lot of people are interested in seeing your feet. prompted it was you know it was it was showing foot picks and i have your your your keys like tripled in value so i think literally just in the scene of your feet did not make me more bullish on frentech definitely yeah but then but then so me and fidget will be doing a space on frentech once or twice a week and that's how active we're gonna be and fidget's gonna be helping me now we're gonna have a team that's helping me build out the whole concept of social tokens now

i'm i'm not sure about frentech, whether it will succeed or not. If it will succeed, we'll be extremely active. If not, it is what it is. But on the concept of social tokens, probably the thing that excites me the most. Yeah, exactly. Whether it's BitCloud, Frentech, we're invested in another one called...

Fuck, we have a big investment in another one. I'll come up with a name built on the... What's that other one, Brian? Do you remember the other one? you're invested in favor but it's built on lens protocol yeah yeah so what a good investor you are mark no no well i hold up i i recommended this to the right i recommended they speak to brian and i recommend brian to them so so i get credit for that one but yeah favor p-h-a-E-R, I think, built on Lens Protocol. That's another protocol just doing the same thing as Deesol. But Fiji, I want to get your... And again, it's a bit different to Frontec.

Frontec is not a social media, a decentralized social media platform. They have just a feature of what BitClout and Lens have or Favor have, and that's the ability to buy tokens in someone. If you believe in someone... So the general concept on BitClout, the way it works is that

if you believe someone's going to be successful, you bought their token. So for example, when Jake Paul had a fight, people thought he's going to win, they bought his token. They started betting on the platform if Jake Paul was going to win his first celebrity fight or not.

And then after the fight, it just dumped. Why? Because the story is done. It's already over. And that's, you know, when someone has some bad press come out about them, the token would drop.

When they recovered, token would go up. When they announced something major. So it's pretty fascinating. Plus there was the level of access. So people did groups, you know, I'm doing that kind of a telegram, oh, sorry, a WhatsApp group for the top key holders, doing a smaller one for all key holders,

jumping on calls with top key holders, bringing them on stage. So coming up with all different utilities. What you just described is just a microcosm holders, doing a smaller one for all key holders, jumping on calls with top key holders, bringing them on stage, so coming up with all different utilities. What you just described is just a microcosm of crypto and of, I guess, trading and assets in general, right? And that's just, I think, the way that this cycle, particularly right now, is reflected very heavily. Every single little narrative we have outside of maybe Frentech lasts a week. A bunch of things go up. They all go right back down to where they started. So that's not unique to BitClout.

That's just the way that people trade around these narratives. It's human nature. And it's something we see across all of crypto. Okay. Okay. Okay. Enough of the terrible takes. You guys are literally, I'm sorry, guys.

Normian crypto takes on this is not going to be a solid analysis of what's occurring at the moment so i understand that you guys were deep into and you guys are not i was not okay mario false but you fake news people were um but you're not taking into account um which is probably why you've just been, whoever is going to build is going to build gambling on top of what they see as gambling. There's a completely different narrative occurring at the moment. And I take slight offense to treating this

in the linear manner of crypto that you guys are treating it. Never before was there an NFT bull. Never before was there a large investment bull never before was there a a large investment of time and energy into ip which would be nfts as well as a massive bear connected to nfts with people stuck with ip or identity that they've been investing into social media simultaneously so anytime before that you were spending a lot of time on social media you weren't inherently putting the time and energy into a picture that had its own floor price value proposition, community narratives and entire industry around it. With that premise being built, there is a huge gap in the NFT market of understanding and you're seeing it mirrored right now in social media.

And it's not coincidental so for the first time a a billionaire owner of a platform is spending an exorbitant amount of time figuring out how to quantify gamify and reward social actions on on his platform that would be elon and that would be subscriptions tipping uh and everything else that's going on eventually actually monetization just trying to monetize the platform whether through social actions actions or other means oh my god no tokenization by definition is the use of tokens to achieve a specific outcome with incentives just because it's money doesn't mean it's not a token it's the same thing we just call it money and you're so used to calling it money.

There's two outcomes you're looking at. So there's one outcome is creating different forms of utility and the other outcome is the end outcome of purely making money. No, Mario, he's paying you money so you do specific things. I'm moving to Fintech again. They're not separate is the point. When BitClout came came out it was separate it was a gambling platform now with elon paying you he's not just paying you for no reason he's paying you to elicit the specific conduct and outcomes on the platform he is not trying to pay

your food he's trying to get you to do specific things and act in certain ways to curate certain content on the platform. Similarly goes with what Frentech is. Frentech is another layer of tokenization, actions, incentives, access. One could say that buying tokens or keys on frentech is equivalent to tipping so so i know a lot of people who buy tokens and do you tip more than once on on uh on twitter how do you call it and i see ryan on mute so i'll get his thoughts on what you said but how do you compare it to tipping when i give you 50 that 50 is gone i don't later get more than 50 if you do really well how's that how i don't know how you can even get the audacity to compare to tipping.

It just makes zero sense, bro. What if I want to buy 10 keys to give you money because I like you? Yeah, just tell everybody, send me money if you like me. Then why tip in the first place? Why not just ask for your email and send you money? What I'm trying to get at is this is a layer that will integrate into not just social media or Twitter. It also attaches to NFTs and it attaches to the social identity that we've been investing into NFTs that founders and floor price can't give us. And what you'll see in terms of forts is most likely more gamification, some more experiential connections between the actions you take on social media.

So you briefly said, oh said oh well i can say if you have five keys you can tell on stage what this is is is a added layer of incentivization on top of twitter that elon can't and won't give but that tools like this can create extensive gamification conceptually conceptually it makes sense i just think that the way and ryan would like to get your thoughts conceptually it makes sense but just the way it's been applied doesn't really show that it's aimed at that it's been a month yeah but you get the intentions you get the intentions when someone creates something if you create if their intentions was purely this why would they include fees when someone sells your your your key for example why for example? Why would you need the bonding yield curve?

It makes sense because you get adoption that way. Bot prevention, obviously, everyone wants bot prevention. But the selling the keys and making a fee on someone selling your keys makes no sense. I'm no longer incentivized to just get tips or get people to buy. I'm incentivized to get people to buy it and then, for some reason, sell it and then buy it again. You're taking out the social media aspect. it's added gamification to the experience on this platform and if you'd speak to the founders more and if you'd speak to the people who are building on it more because i'm going to guess that none of you guys are building on it yet is that correct

is anybody here building on it that's that's what i thought so so you're not understanding you're not understanding the deeper incentivization structures, gamification opportunities, and connection between the human. You are leaving the human out of the process, and that's why the conversation is completely skewed. So I just unmuted myself because I don't actually know what position I'm getting attacked for. I don't even know. I don't even know. Can you be specific so that I can bat it back? I have no idea what he's talking about.

No, no. I struggle to understand what he's saying. I don't know if there's anything that you've disagreed with. Maybe I missed something. It wouldn't be disagreeing. Yeah. It's okay. What I'm trying to get at is much like, so crypto, I'm trying to separate between crypto

and NFTs. Crypto didn't have identity or the human behind it, which means that it didn't capture in terms of a value proposition, the actions that people are taking on Twitter. Doge would be close. There's Doge fanatics, Bitcoin fanatics, but they don't really have an identity. Doge, somewhat. identity dozed somewhat, but NFTs created a connection between your money and your identity and then brought in, by definition, the value proposition of the time and energy you're putting in on social media. That's where I think what social finance and social tokens really means now post the NFT run, meaning founders failed for the most part, but they left their holders with these pictures. More importantly,

a value proposition to those pictures and a bunch of time. Maybe I'm struggling. Scott, maybe you can explain to me what Fiji is saying, because I'm struggling to understand. I'm not struggling to understand it. I'm a dumbass. I have no idea what he just said. I'm not struggling. I'm not struggling to understand it. I understand and agree with everything. By definition, a fungible token is not going to have identity associated with it because it's fungible and infinitely divisible. But my question was, I don't understand. I don't think he disagrees with everything. I don't understand why you're angry because you haven't said anything I've disagreed with. He came in saying that he couldn't take the bad takes anymore. Yeah, that's what I mean.

This is how Fiji introduces himself in every space, Ryan. It's part of the strategy to get attention and engagement. I have a drunk uncle who used to punch everyone when he walked into a room. Yeah, so he says, guys, you're all wrong, and let me explain to you in a way you don't understand why you're wrong. And generally works well because everyone's like, wow, this guy knows what he's talking about, but then no one understands what he just said yeah but but on the point r.i.p nfts by the way oh shit all right yeah so so i do want to go to board and

nft freaks as well um board good to have you man i remember you seeing your icon pop up during the ftx day it's been a long time yeah Yeah, I also appreciate Pidgetal playing the heel in this wrestling match. Well done, sir. I think for me, I'll just speak on the creator's behalf. I think the model for Frentech and things like it fails just because the incentive for creators is broken. And for any kind of social network,

you need to incentivize that small percentage of people who are going to pump out content and be essentially the product. So Ryan's point about the Dunbar number is really well put. If you're a creator, you can manage 100, 200, 300 relationships. The problem with that is it does not scale for you as a business. So if you're a creator, you want to maximize your opportunities to make money. You can do that through commerce, selling things. You can do that through ads, right? Like get a lot of impressions. You get a lot of advertising money.

You can get it through subscriptions, like Twitter subscriptions. Those numbers can all go up and up and up indefinitely. But with FriendTech, you can't, right? You have to set a limit to how many relationships that you can have. And when you're monetizing that way, not only are you limited in

terms of the number you can handle, but you're limited in terms of the percentage of the money that is actually being transacted, right? You're getting a royalty, you're getting a percentage of trades. So why would I spend my time trying to pump that number and encourage people to buy and sell and trade that when I can put all of my effort into growing the other forms of monetization that have essentially infinite upside. And so like, if I don't have any incentive, then to put my time into something like friend tech, I'm going to leave. And once I leave, and other people like me leave, then it's just, you know, a bunch of users and buyers who are just it's just lazy, lazy lines. It's literally an allfc and i have to say that nfts do already solve the

problem because nfts are for whether we like it or not nfts are linked to people the founders and what they do um is incredibly important in terms of the price of nfts so i i i love people experimenting i like people trying new things. We have seen friend tech before. It has failed because anything like this, anything in the world of identity and social that does not scale and has artificial caps in terms of its network effect will die. And I want to be proven wrong,

but literally for 10 years, I've watched people try to do this and fail at it. Hey, Mario, we have a bit of breaking-ish news, actually quite big. 1.34,.34 trillion euro. Asset manager Deutsche Bank to offer Bitcoin and crypto custody services. This just came out in the last hour, which is yet another massive move, I think, for institutions and institutional adoption. Who are the biggest custodial services right now?

Ryan might be able to answer that. I mean, BNY Mellon, I know, in theory, I think is able. Ryan, is that correct? And I know State Street had been talking about it sort of towards the end of the last cycle as well, but I think theoretically they can't. I think there's been some expressed interest here. I think I'm not actually up to speed on who is doing what domestically versus internationally because of all the limitations the SEC and the financial regulators have had on custody rules.

Banks, for instance, the accounting has been so unfavorable that the reserves required to actually get into the digital asset custody business is just prohibitively expensive. But internationally, it's a different story and I have not gotten a recent update there. Yeah, I'm screening about it now. So would they become the biggest custodial service in crypto or not, Scott?

I can't, like Ryan sort of said, I can't speak to that exactly what others are doing i mean i think that uh bny melon is probably a larger custodian i know state streets certainly is but still i mean just massive yeah i'll go to nft freaks i know we spoke the question i have to use linking back to the original story of the SEC and the Stoner Cats. I'm guessing we don't know each other, but I'm guessing you've got an NFT collection. Actually, I do, but I actually represent a much broader reach. And so when I see SEC kills NFTs or I hear FriendTech, first of all, I want to just get everybody to notice there are a lot of NFT users and artists in this chat right now listening to us speak. And I appreciate Mario having me on, but I do kind of want to touch

base and I kind of want to make sure that the clarity of the message for what's being sent by this SEC and other groups and other mainstream media outlets has little to do with what's actually happening underneath the surface, right? First of all, NFTs, in my understanding, are first have been brought to my attention by artists, people who hold artistry, crafts, passions. They're able to create things. They're able to emit them on the blockchain, and they're able to create things they're able to emit them on the blockchain and they're able to sell them to collectors not investors not guarantors not triers not doers

specifically set collectors this yeah i don't think but i don't think uh freaks i don't think that uh we're talking about the actually we've never we haven't spoken about nft art whether that's considered a security we've only spoken spoken about NFT collections, the PFPs. Right. So I'm actually curious. On the art side, is there issues on that end as well, like them being considered a security? No, I guess what I was leading my story into saying is that these PFP projects and even like Stoner Cats or Bored Apes or other projects are taking a model that's starting off at the very bottom. And then they're cutting through with these teams and

these dollars and raising huge massive amounts of rounds and then mainstream the mainstream believes that stoner cats and all of these people are the representation of of what's actually happening so my point of touching into this was saying that when when you when you raise this capital or when you sell these tokens or when you sell your creation and you're not structuring it correctly, you're not inviting the one-of-one artist to create a collectible that would matter by fractionalizing their value from the top down so that when people are buying into the project, they're actually buying into the art first, plus the reputation of the artist. I mean, these teams have blown that whole

part of this whole creation model that artists are showing us and introducing to us. And that's what I do. I'm at the ground level breaking floor of layer one of people finding ways to independently fund their value. Web3 and NFT should be an understanding it's an understanding of saying this is how this works it's it's it's what what what is understood doesn't have to be discussed but i guess i guess what what is it yeah so so yeah yeah you lost me yeah yeah yeah you and fidget should connect no no no sorry, because what you understand, you don't. Oh, good. Oh, good, Fidget.

Oh, good, bro. Oh, good. At least I came in like an asshole, so I deserve it. Fidget, what you don't understand, you don't discuss, Fidget. It's very, very important. I do want to go to just, if you don't mind, Fidget, I want to go to Lawyered briefly. Lawyered, get your thoughts.

And I think this is, in my opinion, this is more major than people are making it out to be the Stoner Cats ruling. And Ryan kind of touched on it, saying that the utility behind Stoner Cats and narrative was very different to impact theory. Impact theory, they said some things they shouldn't have said and explaining from memory.

I don't know if you remember, Scott, but they were talking about how the value will go up and what will lead to growing the value. They were comparing themselves to Disney, getting to Disney in the early days. Stoner Cats is very different. It's got, you know, having Vitalik as a backer, investor, whatever you want to call him,

openly, I think it was promoting StonerCast or talking positively about StonerCast. It's a significantly more credible project. And, you know, I was surprised to see a project like StonerCast be considered. The SEC missed bad. The SEC missed bad. Yeah, for me, that's a lot bigger than impact theory i i oh i i 100 agree with that because yet

again this is that big celebrity moment and yeah i know that people don't want to see sec kills nfts but nobody in their right mind is launching a pfe project 10,000 collection right now in the United States, period. Which is not going to happen. Yeah, but then my question... And the people who did are now scared. You're right, Nakamigo's just launched a 20,000 one. Wow, cool. Where is Nakamigo based? Nobody knows.

Okay, well, I wonder why. I want to go to you. And the is if you're a same question i'll ask ryan i'll ask it again as well um first get your general thoughts on this um and probably you know get final quick thoughts from the the panel and then what it means for projects that did launch that are not based in the us so should they worry if you want to talk directly not to me but to the projects listening to you right now lawyered what would be your advice to them if you're based in the U.S., if you're not based in the U.S., and you've launched a PFP project? Lawyered? Cool.

Great advice, Lawyered. Like, they're freaking out right now, man. He's only going to speak if he can bill the hours. So we'll go to Fiji on that one. We've got another here fidgy go ahead what's your advice to them i i think that library would be a good example and stoner cat would be another good example um uh i actually really loved ryan's but fidgy i'm trying to answer you i'm trying to answer your question the reason why i cited library is because they were fined much more than they end up paying and stoner cat was

fined 1 million when they raised 8 million what i'm saying is that even if you get fined it's less than dramatically less than what you've already sucked out of the ecosystem and it's actually correlated to how much money you still have in the bank library only had to pay so just i'm sorry to interrupt you so many times not two reasons i'm interrupting you i'm gonna continue speaking first they were fined that amount but they had to actually refund everything they've So I just want to interrupt you so many times. Not two reasons. I'm interrupting you. I want to continue speaking. First, they were fined that amount, but they had to actually refund everything they've raised. Both Impact Theory and StonerCast had to refund everything.

So the fine is on top of the having no money. So it's important to note that. And I'd like to continue. They had to refund what they had left. They didn't make them refund the entire money from my understanding. They had to refund what they had left into a fund to distribute to the holders so what i'm saying is it doesn't seem to be it seems to be if the if the actions were altruistic by the sec yes you would be correct they would be saying you have to pay everything and we'll figure out what you have to pay above and beyond what you still have in your treasury. The SEC is not actually protecting

consumers. The SEC is not actually truly punishing projects. They're creating a trail of jurisprudence. So the first project that you impact was we're going to judge you and punish you based on your overt actions, right? So if everybody believes, and I do, that at the end of the day, and the courts have indicated, and other jurisdictions have come to the same conclusion, that the tokens and the Ripple ruling also kind of leaned on this. The token itself is not a security at the end of the day, most likely. It's how you marketed it and how you distributed it and actions taken to create the understanding of the setting in which you did it to determine if you launched any legal security. So what the SEC is doing here with NFTs is pushing even is basically pushing back on that theory.

So the first impact was, look how you sold it. Look how you sold it. By the way, we're not going to fine you how much money you actually stole. Just whatever you have left, give it away. And look look we're creating a fund we're protecting the consumers stoner cats was they're not even talking about how you necessarily sold it why because they don't have to because they know that they will settle which is why you had two dissents which are very strong talking about the fact that they didn't market it heavily and sell it accordingly but but because they can force NFT projects to settle, because they don't, they not only is a questionable in terms of industry,

but they don't have the money to fight it like ripple does. So they will create a trail of settlements that create the jurisprudence of the case law that they want, quote unquote, to then go after or scare whoever they want. The good thing turns out to be, they don't really care about the consumers. Why would they force StonerCat to burn all their NFTs?

How does that help the consumers that they're trying to protect? Fair point. Does that make sense? It does, it does. That's a good answer. And last, very briefly, because I want to wrap it up

with the big question that we have for Ryan. So Ryan, we wanted to discuss your thesis, your six to 12 month thesis, the thread, but we'll do that in another space. My last question first, our last quick question to Fiji on the NFT story, and then we'll go to Ryan for the final question of the day. Fiji, question to you is project space outside the US. That was the original question. So Ryan, this is not a dig. I apologize. The notion that the legal recommendation to leave the country is a new thing or something that is for the next 15 months, conversations I've been having for the last seven years and the actions of projects, crypto or NFT, have always been, maybe you should either not incorporate at all or you should incorporate outside of the country or best but does that leave the country but does that mean if you're outside the u.s and you still have u.s investors is that enough though uh what you're actually talking about is a phenomenon that nobody

really talks about which is inside the legal field they've been laughing about getting default judgments against walled addresses for years now. So there's a difference between actual enforcement or what the SEC will do. Will they sue you if you're outside of the state? Yes, they've tried to sue projects based on the 42.4% nodes in the US. They will use anything to claim jurisdiction and to sue you because it's not about the projects. That's what I'm trying to say. It's about optics.

So they'll sue Binance, even though they can't get CZ. Maybe they catch him. They're not going to catch him. The point is it's not about protecting consumers. It's not about actually punishing bad actors. It's about optics to the industry. Ryan, I'd love you to respond to Fiji, and I'll add one question to it as well.

And that's a question I wanted to ask you since we wanted to do that thesis space a while ago. You talked about this being the worst bear market since 2015. Are we close to the end or do you expect a lot more pain? And when the bear market ends, is we're going to see another massive bull market with all the ETFs bringing all that liquidity back? Well, there's like four different things in there. So the first one is, you know, I don't know that I disagree with anything that, again, I was just yelled at for. Once again, I'm having fun. Um, my point on, uh, not starting crypto projects in the U S the next year and a half is, is mostly just, um, a reflection that the, the enforcement and the hostility is indiscriminate.

Right. Um, I think it's very easy to say, oh, well, we've been saying that people shouldn't be in the U S for, for eight years because Bitcoin is not for people are used to the dollar that I've accessed financial services. We've heard some version of that criticism for a long time. But I do think that the switch flipped in the last year post-FTX from unfriendliness to unrelenting hostility towards entrepreneurs. So, yeah, I don't think now or the next 15 months is a good time

to launch a project if you plan to have a token element. So that's number one. Number two is I do think that sentiment is probably the worst that I've seen and felt in some respects since 2015 in the US. I think you guys are over in Singapore right now. You see the delta between Asia and the US, I think, you know, you guys were over in Singapore right now, you see the delta between Asia and the US. And that kind of hints at, I think, the ultimate answer for how we get out of this. And that is getting some clear public policy around how crypto should be regulated, you know, what rules of the road they're going to be for, you know, major projects, you know, major infrastructure companies,

how these things can safely come to market and legally come to market so that we're not just stifling all the creativity and innovation and essentially forcing it offshore, which has been the status quo for last year, especially. I don't think that any degree of infrastructure build, I don't think any degree of like the markets coming back is going to change that core reality, the macro markets going back that core reality that we need to have clear guardrails, and some changing in tone and tenor. Before we have any comeback for for crypto as an asset class. Now, I think the whole four-year cycle of crypto is somewhat overdone. I think it's a small sample size, and it happens to have been the case historically.

But that's not a foregone conclusion. We just, I think, happen to be, again, hopefully the nadir for sentiments. And we will start seeing some wins internationally. Maybe it's not in the US, but at least internationally. And ultimately, I think that international adoption and some of the innovation that's happening offshore is going to have a far greater impact than anything like an ETF approval. I could be wrong, but I still think that we're looking at, you know, sometime in 2024 before there's any approvals for crypto ETFs, Bitcoin ETFs, simply because I don't see a changing in sentiments or approach

to what has been, you know, an uncooperative and ultimately politically guided SEC that doesn't really have a good reason to reject some of these institutional products. So it's a tale of two cryptos right now. There's the US and then there's kind of everywhere else. And before you go, Scott, before you go, I want to go also to Frame. I've had a glitch. I only saw Frame on stage now. Frame, just adding to Ryan's final thoughts, also the PPI data today and kind of linking crypto to the macro story as well. We'll have to get your thoughts, what you expect over the next six or 12 months, and then we'll wrap it.

Cool. I agree. He's probably with Lloyd. I think he's got really good points. Him and Lloyd had the best points of the day, I think. Scott? I effectively agree with everything that we heard here. I think it's an unfortunate situation in the United States.

Especially with Fiji. I think you agree mostly with Fijian freaks. I'm afraid that if I don't, then I'm just not going to be considered a serious or intelligent person. But I do have to say that being in Singapore once again, and this is not the first time, but being here once again after being inundated with conversation about regulation and all the negatives in the United States, and then simply leaving the country and being in a different environment where this conference is two to three times bigger than it was last year. And it seems like there is absolutely no bear market. I think that the unfortunately, the real story may be that the United States just gets left

behind and that there could be another bull market without the United States, without us getting to participate in the same way that we could in the past. Maybe that's an optimistic view, but I can tell you that once again, here, nobody's worried about any of it. You know, listen, I did 23 interviews in the last two days. And we weren't talking about regulation and Gary Gensler and the SEC and legislation in any of them. Right.

And that would have been the topic of every single conversation that I had the same, almost even the same guest stateside. The vibe is just very, very different. And so I'm bullish that it can happen at least to some degree, maybe not on the same scale, but it's just unfortunate to be a United States citizen and maybe be watching it from the sidelines. Have you been to events in the US or in Europe in the last few months? I was at, I mean, I said, as I mentioned before,

I was at Consensus this summer in Austin. I've heard a similar sort of vibe from Permissionless. I heard the content was great. It was really well thought out, but that the vibe was dampened, which I think naturally, and most people were worried about crackdowns in the united states and the booths were kind of empty and it was exponentially smaller than the last one and that's happening literally and i love those guys by the way from from blockworks their old friends but that's happening concurrently to here and half the people here chose to fly across the world to go to Token 2049 instead of going a few hours to Austin, Texas. in Washington. I was wondering if off the air she told you who that person was that was kind of

rejecting the applications for the Fed window and other places, if there's anywhere we can kind of look to know who that person is. Not specifically, because I think actually she can't. There's litigation, and I think some of it are now emails that are giving part of the litigation, but she made it very, very clear that the directives come straight from the White House, but from an Elizabeth Warren staffer in the White House. Well, I, you know, there's a little bit of good news here, because I'm going to butcher his last name, potentially, but it's Bharat Ramamurthy, who is a NEC staffer on the Economic Council within the White House, is a former Warren staffer, and he has been one of the most damaging behind the scenes people in DC. He actually resigned last week. It was in the news. I tweeted about this. So

fingers crossed that there's another, a's another, you know, a little bit of an internal changing of the guard and maybe a softening going into a midterm cycle where, or sorry, a major election where maybe this won't swing presidential politics, but crypto absolutely will have an impact on a couple of key Senate races potentially as we get closer. And that could swing the Senate between John Tester, Sherrod Brown, and others who have been obstinate and obstructionist in terms of getting any clear legislation passed and are generally aligned with Warren. So I think you might see some softening there, but that one staff room,

I don't know if it's the same staffer that impacted Caitlin, but Bharat is out. And that is a good thing for the industry provided, you know, he isn't just instantly replaced by a junior. And Ryan, I was speaking to Hasib Qureshi yesterday, actually in person out here. And he also kind of laughed at the four-year cycle

and said, it's astrology. But if you do buy into the four-year cycle or believe in it at all, Caitlin, in that very same interview that I had with her recently, pointed out the fact that if we see the same sort of post-habiting price action, it would be effectively two to three months leading into the presidential election. You could potentially have Bitcoin starting to ramp up and become a much more important issue in that election and in those Senate races. If we do see, you know, sort of that same 2024 as 2020, you know, ramp up. Yeah, if Brian was here,

it just came out now and nine minutes ago, it's a breaking story, news-based story, is thatiden will be giving a speech today let me see exactly when and unrelated to crypto bus at least worth mentioning he's planning to give a speech today uh um yeah i think he's planning to do a speech on september 27th my bad yeah i think it's every morning. No, no, I misunderstood. I thought the speech was today about a threat in the coming weeks. Turns out to be a speech in the next coming weeks about a threat.

So I misunderstood the title. Cool. Anyway, on that point, I think it's a good space. Scott, when are you leaving Singapore? Tomorrow or weekend? I'm leaving on Sunday because the other quiet reason that so many people flew to Singapore for a crypto conference, obviously, is that the Singapore Grand Prix is this weekend in F1. And you can see it out the window from where the conference is. Cool.

Well, great job for Ryan co-hosting. And it was great takes from, what was the speaker? The NFT lawyer. Lawyer, great takes. Ryan, thanks for co-hosting. Yeah, Martin, I didn't want to tellhosting. For your co-hosts, I was at a party at Marquee here in Singapore

for OKEx right before Twitter Spaces. Vitalik was there. I should have asked him about the scared cats. I was on my way out and Ran was on his way in. Yeah, I saw that in the group. I was not surprised. I'm not going to comment beyond that. I was on my way in. Yeah, I saw that in the group. I was not surprised.

I'm not going to comment beyond that. But, you know, I went back to the hotel to finish up a newsletter and get on Spaces. And, you know, he was on his way into the club. All right, cool. I'll let you guys have a chat. Thanks, everyone. See you tomorrow. Thanks, Ryan.

Thank you.