The Wolf Of All Streets - State Of The VC Market & Memecoins | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

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testing ah you're here I need to show up for this one yeah because this one needs me unlike the others this one's important this is an important did you watch the video by that guy for the meme coins the one I sent you last night

I have not I have it literally on my docket to watch today from Murad we're working on actually getting another interview with him but you've never sent me something and said, you absolutely have to watch this. You'll love it.

So I really will. Yeah, I think it's the thesis is exactly what you've been talking about. And he makes a lot of the same points that you and Ryan to an extent talk about. But Ryan is, I don't know if he stands by his position of the meme coin cycle being over where they changed that as well. But Murad said the meme coin cycle is over. I haven't watched it. No, no.

That was Rand's perspective, if you remember, a few spaces ago. And Murad says that, you know, essentially, there's many points being made. We've made all of them on the space. But one interesting one he said, his position is that the meme coins today are similar to the meme coins in ICOs in 2017. With ICOs, we had like multiple cycles. 2017 was smaller than the one afterwards. And so we're like super cycles afterwards in the next bull markets. And he says that meme coin is what we saw earlier this year. It's just the first cycle. There's going to be two more massive super cycles. So he expects meme coins to continue dominating. He also talks about the value of ICOs not being, he talks about various metrics, which I don't entirely agree with. So a lot of the value of these projects are based on kind of a lot of the promises,

whether they'll be able to fulfill those promises and meet the targets. It doesn't have to be metrics as such, just because users are not there. But anyway, so he talks about a lot of these ICOs not being valued based on their metrics, based on their users, based on their turnover, but based on just speculation, which I know you kind of make that point as well, Scott. And the valuations don't make sense. He gives some examples. I started looking at some of the projects in our portfolio, and he's right.

We invested in most of the Binance projects, invested and or worked with in the last year, and all of them are down significantly. I'm talking above 90%, above 80%. So he talks about how just ICOs are just based on speculation, and meme coins do a better job. Distribution is better. The narrative is more interesting. And it's also more efficient because they're not wasting time on trying to build a product. They're just building community

and building a narrative. Whereas an ICO is also spending time to build a spending money to build a product, which is taken away from the value of the token. It's the token that has value, not the product that's being built.

That's his stance. I agree with a lot of it, but also disagree with some parts of it as well as a as someone who invests in vc projects i'm not sure carl i saw you on me did you watch that video carl yeah yeah i've seen a lot a lot of people sent it to me because they said it was like exactly what i've been saying for a year now um which is exactly how uh like you know the truth is is like uh it's that retail is sick of getting burnt and they'd rather they'd rather have an opportunity to come in something reasonable. You know, I think that unless there's a major shift in the way that opportunity is granted to retail, there's no incentive for them to pay attention to altcoins and real projects anymore unless they have the opportunity. The dream is being presented to them of an opportunity that's going to change your life, right? That's what meme coins present is a lottery opportunity for something to change

your life in a meaningful way, because they see it on crypto Twitter all day long, they see this thing going into crazy market caps and doing 100x. So that opportunity has to be realistic for people again, to get interested in public sales. So what, you know, what I've been presenting to founders recently, actually, we have some that are being launched on paid soon, is even projects that are amazing cap tables, last round was $150 million FTV or whatever from private sale. What I'm suggesting to the founders is, guys, listen, if you want to have any community whatsoever, what you need to do is you need to give an opportunity to the retail. You need to do a public sale at a $10 million FDV. You need to limit the cap to $100 per person or something. So you can get if you sell 10% of your supply, you get 10,000 people in. And if that thing goes and does 1000x, everyone made 100 grand grand off of their hundred dollar investment and they're going to have this

meme coin psychology involved in this and that's going to build community right and and especially today when people don't have a lot of money to invest but everyone has a hundred dollars to invest and so if i if i can have the dream of my hundred dollars turning into a hundred thousand dollars or even more in some cases, because the project I'm specifically talking about is Coin Network, which is going to be, you know, very riskily could be like a half of Solana, which if that $100 turns into $420,000, if it does that. So this is what I think needs to happen in order for altcoins to be interesting again. And the beautiful part about it is that these are real projects with docs founders with real tech built like and solid

But the only thing missing is the opportunity for retail. That's the difference So I think it's really interesting because in the meme coin casino unless you're on the inside a lot of people just getting wrapped and Burnt right but at least in this situation you're getting the same kind of upside with More transparent founders and you're actually getting in better than the VCs. I mean, one of the things that stuck out for me in the talk from Murad at Token 2049, not Token 2049, but he did another interview with someone. He said something that I've been saying for a long time. The only way that a token succeeds is if the token creates a cult-like community and the only way to create a cult-like community is if lots of poor and middle-class people land up making money on on a on a project i've said that for a long time it's the reason why we all love bitcoin and why we're all cult-like

on bitcoin it's the reason why we're all cult-like on solana it's the reason why we're all cult-like on eth and it's the reason why there's not a single person who can say that there's all cult-like on Solana. It's the reason why we're all cult-like on ETH. And it's the reason why there's not a single person who can say that there's a cult-like on StockNet or, no, sorry, not single people. Or any Binance project in the last years. Or any project that's launched in the last year, because no one's landed up making money except a bunch of VCs, a bunch of VCs who bought early. And so if you want a token to succeed, what you need is you need to go back to basics and you need to let retail in and let retail make a lot of money because the more money they make, the more of a cult gets formed around

a token. The more of a cult gets formed around a token, the more liquidity there is pretty naturally because you will defend a token that you're we will put our last savings into bitcoin to defend the cult that's what we would do to defend the cult and the the one common denominator that all the successful tokens have on the market is they all started low they made a lot of people rich and the more people they made rich the stronger the token is today simple i think what's important there is the launch price of those tokens more so than the availability of a public round. I mean, when you talked about the coins that you invested in that are on Binance for the last year that are

down 90%, let's not forget that 99% of meme coins are at zero that have been launched in the last year. So it's the select few that have taken off and done really well that then drive the narrative. What happened in 2017, 2018, and then again in 20 and 21 that caused people to get so involved were more specifically in 17, 18 projects were launching at a reasonable, a quote unquote, reasonable public valuation, and then had room for forward up moves. But what happened and Sam really popularized this was the low float, high FTV and the seven year vests that would just, you know, forever unlock into dumps. So.

Did you say Sam was responsible for it? Sam popularized the low float, high FTV in 2021. Yes. And then every project. Sam Bankman fleet. Yeah. Yep. I think we should give him five extra years in jail for that, bro.

Every project sort of just took that. I don't, I don't know that that's, that's true. So like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Five,

five extra years in jail anyway, bro. I mean, I know. Provide the counterpoint. Hey, don't just say that it's not true., bro. I know. Provide the counterpoint. Don't just say that it's not true. Explain why. I think launchpads popularize low-flow, high FDV.

It is consistently, like every single project I talk to, they talk to a launchpad and the launchpad says, we need you to have half a percent circulating. You need to have an initial market cap of $300,000. So this thing can pump a hundred X. And when that happens, what do you think happens to FDV? Like I've been there. I did that right. Paid launch. And we did a $3.6 billion FDV.

You think it was worth it? No, but, but that's what we were told to do by Pokestarter. And that's what we did. And I, you know, we ran the entire 2021 bull market with this low float narrative,

which did crazy pumps, but it's all superficial bullshit, smoke and mirrors and metrics that aren't realistic. People are advertising all-time high ROIs, which the only people that get these all-time high ROI are market makers and exchanges. Like the actual retail don't do this. And they're also based on a paper portfolio of coins that are yet to vest and are not in their wallet. So I think a lot of people learned that lesson in the last cycle,

which is until it's vested and it's in your wallet, it doesn't even exist at the current price. Right. And so I think that that was a lot of, and that, whether it was malicious or not, I think a lot of people just saw the full value of whatever token they had four years from now based on current price and you know behaved in a manner as such right that that was accurate yeah but the question i have for you kyle is why hasn't that changed yet like we're seeing the the ico market not doing well at all but we're

seeing projects launched using that same model i know i I'm literally, I'm literally, I'm not talking, I'm not talking about the launches doing as well as they did in previous cycles, but they haven't fixed the model, the flaws that we've seen in previous cycles. They've been very strong at fixing it. I'm having, I'm having conversations with every single project that we have lined, you know, set to line up, including all the ones from crypto nights. And like, like I just felt like I've had calls all day today with founders and they all generally like this idea. You know, now they have to kind of get comfortable with this new

mindset of what they're going to do but like that is my objective is to make icos great again right like to bring it back and give the retailer opportunity to get in because this is the only way that you're going to compete with the meme coin space headspace and narrative like but it's cool like like you can have a really great project with a really good entry point and get a really big organic community i bet you i bet anyone on this on this space right now that in my next bull run some of the best communities will be born from paid's launchpad and from the products that i work with because i'm putting this narrative in right now i mean wasn't that sort of quick airdrop cycle? I mean, airdrop or hot, what was that nine months ago, six months ago,

was that quick cycle sort of an attempt to do this to some degree, right? Build your community and send people a bunch of free tokens that we argued about that at, at, at nauseam as to whether that model was good or not. I think it's been proven not great. Conceptually the idea is to reward your community so they actually have an opportunity to get money. Yeah, I think so. So that guy, as we know from that hilarious Spanish dub video from Eigen layer of how that whole airdrop thing ended up like airdrops have been sybil to the moon. Right.

And founders don't care. Founders love Sybils. Why? Because they can say that they have a million wallets and active users on their platform, and then VCs and exchanges give them super high valuations. Like, this whole game is over and done with, and everyone's gotten burnt enough to not want to do it anymore.

What I'm proposing is a completely different thing where we KYC every single user. And we also run like, like paid also has like fingerprint, digital fingerprint detection on two. So people like we have double symbol protection. And everyone actually invests in the products. They just invest in a really, really good valuation. And it's open to everybody. And we want to build a large community and get you 10, 20, 30,000 real wallet holders from day one. A lot of these meme coin metrics are all bullshit too. It's really easy if I create a meme coin to send 30,000 tokens to 30,000 wallets and say, oh, we have 30,000 holders already.

This is a way I'm proposing to actually build a real community, right? That has a real interest. And if you give them the narrative, the hope, the idea that this project might actually give them 1000x on their return, they're gonna work for it, right? Not everyone's gonna work for it. But a lot of people are gonna try to come to that. the new uh paradigm is memes where you have to do nothing well i don't do nothing you don't have to you don't do nothing because you work exactly hard on memes you become really hard you you work you you become a uh what's the extreme of an ambassador uh um uh like a cult member i think he means leader no no you become you become a uh there's a word for it which is like a disciple you become a disciple a really annoying passionate community member so no no no like you become like ran yes ran what what what what is success in in this scenario? Is it if it hits a thousand X that's the success even if it goes down 99%?

Or what do you value as success in this scenario? Can I just ask you can I just ask you just like fundamentally

what is the difference between Bitcoin and a meme coin? Let's say they're the same thing. I agree. We all believe they've got one similarity but they've got they've

got one similarity it doesn't make them the same thing i think you're putting bitcoin and just some meme coin that's doing well a lot of people do say mario that bitcoin is the original coin yeah it started off as a meme but i think that was a meme but i think it has okay let's not push it too far like i think we're going to be carried away. Talking about Bitcoin, it was intended with a specific purpose. Let me ask you a question. What is the difference between Bitcoin and Dogecoin? Bitcoin was launched with the intention,

with a certain mission. So you were rallying behind the mission. What's the mission of Dogecoin? What was the mission of Dogecoin at launch? A certain mission. What was the fucking mission? What was it? I'm asking you. what was the fucking mission what was it what was it tell me what it that was not the mission that that's not the mission that had what it launched bitcoin

bitcoin had a mission it's white paper bitcoin was no no no no no no no read the white paper the mission in the white paper was a peer-to-peer electronic cash system where people could send value from one person to another using the internet that was the mission it was not designed to be a store of value that is protecting it shifted it shifted no i'm not saying it was no but i'm saying yeah i know what yeah all right so if you look at what let me let me turn it on to you so the mission of bitcoin when it launched was to disrupt the financial system was after the 2008 financial crisis. No, it wasn't.

No, it wasn't. It wasn't on the white paper, but on the various blogs, that was the whole purpose of it. Yeah, that was the whole purpose of it. So if you go to Pepe, what was the mission of Pepe when it first launched? I'm not hating on Pepe. I'm a big fan of meme coins. I talk about them. So you're always positioning as hating on them.

So mission defines the culture of the community, right? So people that want to be – let me break it up for you into two different things, right? People who want to be serious and against government control and whatever else, go for Bitcoin. People who want to do the same thing but aren't that serious can go to Dogecoin, right? Like similar technologies. No, but you know,

I asked you the question. What was it? I told you the mission of Bitcoin and then Genesis talked about the, talking about the bailout, the banking bailout. Yeah. Yeah, the banking bailout.

So let me ask you. There's a meme coin called manifest, right? There's a meme coin called manifest right there's a meme coin called manifest manifest is all about manifestation okay it's an amazingly strong mission it's a community of people that believe very very very strongly in manifestation okay what is the difference between that and bitcoin okay the way i would just i would ask you a question right now you haven't asked the question what is the mission of pepe but to ask you a question right now, you haven't asked the question, what is the mission of Pepe? But to ask you a question right now, I agree with the argument that Bitcoin, yeah,

let me just get to the point. I understand, fair point. But let me, what I would answer this, because I make that argument that you can, you can make the argument Bitcoin started as a meme and then obviously evolved now into a massive store of value.

So I think a meme could evolve into something else, but start off as a meme. But I wouldn't put it in the same bucket as Bitcoin today. Bitcoin only works because a lot of people bought into the meme and therefore created network effects. Into the same thing. Same thing with a meme coin. A meme coin, the minute that it starts to get network effects

because more people believe in it, more people believe in it, more people believe in it, it's exactly the same thing. But there was no – yeah, so I'd say – But Bitcoin was an innovation. I mean, Bitcoin was the first of its kind i agree with you conceptually but like you know what innovation so what innovation what is it what innovation is that was reduced by memecoin that did not exist in crypto i don't know i mean yeah i'll give you a bitcoin bitcoin when bitcoin launched when bitcoin it's a very fair point, Scott.

When Bitcoin launched, the concept of blockchains didn't exist. Bitcoin introduced blockchains to us all. Cool. So it's a massive technological evolution. I'm saying there's a meme. Let me add one more sentence. The only similarity, which is a very fair point, is they start off as a story and enough people have to believe in that story. Now, whether that story is based on a massive technological i disagree with you they don't i think you guys

are missing out you guys are missing out on community this is all about community and it doesn't matter what the mission is when it starts what matters is what does the community guys if you want to guys if you want to make the argument if you're the law of yeah but if you're the law of metric effect says technology doesn't matter okay so if you want to talk about the argument if you're the law of yeah but if you're the law of network effect says technology doesn't matter okay so if you want to talk about the argument of smtp for email the fact that we all use smtp for email today well smtp is an archaic but rare yes it matters to the people it matters to right every meme coin's got a different set of things that matters to the people it's fair point it point. It also matters what happens once a community rallies around

something. If you talk about community, that applies to anything, from a startup, an e-commerce startup, every startup talks about a community, to a meme coin and a crypto project. But when a meme coin, hold on two seconds, when a community rallies around a certain project, what is the result of it? Is it just a

community rallying around a project and it sticks about being a cool story about a cat no sorry so you don't understand you don't understand the fundamentals of crypto bro i'm sorry but you don't understand the respond with just a vague comment and your argument is every meme coins are the same as Bitcoin. It's not a general argument at all. No. I think crypto is about one thing and one thing only. Because crypto fundamentally has a scarcity to it, right? It is only a function of network effect.

That's it. All we are doing is investing in networks. The entirety of this bullshit is not around technology. It is around networks, nothing else. And a network is defined by two rules. The first rule is that every additional user to the network adds value to the network exponentially, number one. The second rule is called Barabasi's law. And what Barabasi's law states is that in the absence of regulation, users will always flock to the busiest networks, which accelerates rule number one. So when you combine the two, you get the ultimate in network effects. And crypto is all about network effects. It doesn't matter about the technology.

The technology is garbage. It's all about network effects. You're telling me… Look, I think network… I'm going to go to the hands. But network effect is a feature of crypto. Not everything is about the network effect and the value going up. No, it's not.

If you have a DeFi product, if you have a stable coin that's being used, it does matter. At the end of the day, the value add that comes in once a community rallies around a certain product, that product helps people in certain countries. You can't say to someone in Brazil that's using a stable coin to store their wallet. It doesn't matter. Guys, guys. Go ahead. You guys are both right. Ram is right.

Guys, guys. Yes, yes, yes. You're missing the point. You are both right. Seriously. Ram is right. Seriously. Ran is right. I believe what he calls network effect, I call community. But what Ran is missing is that communities rally around something.

And sometimes it's the tech. And that's what they rally around. Community is bullshit without network effect. You can have the biggest community in the world. If there's no network effect in your product, the community is bullshit. Your community probably would not be the biggest in the world if you didn't have network effect. One comes before the other.

Exactly. Exactly. You can have the ultimate community, but if your product is not suitable for network effects because it doesn't have scale... 100%. You're making a very true comment that's irrelevant to the discussion,

but go ahead, Hank and Alan. I think it's an example. I was going to piggyback off of that's an example sorry on you can go next uh i was gonna say you know i think what is fundamental that hasn't been brought up yet is with memes the way that they were brought in because of the network effect that they had they allowed for the progress of technology towards building off more than just Bitcoin, right? If memes, you know, were never a thing and everyone just stayed, you know, boomer tech, oh, this is great, peer to peer, woohoo, you know, Bitcoin would have never blown up, right? Bitcoin started to do well, and then people expanded further, took it to the next level,

okay, what can we do? And then when people discovered, hey, let's make some memes. Let's do some funny shit on the internet. That's when innovation really started. That's when DeFi took off. That's when all of these different things that are a norm now became what they are simply because of that network effect that was able to build off of it. So they do go hand in hand. Yes, but you can get a huge community, but if you can't get, if you don't have the makings for network.

But then it's not a community. I define a community as an ecosystem. I define a community. No, I define a community as an ecosystem where when it works, everyone gets more out of it than they put in. And that is exactly what a network is. That's the definition. Correct.

And that's what a community is if it's functional. I do think that this is getting a the reason why this meme coin narrative is exploding is because the other things that have been implemented as a standard in our industry don't work anymore. I do think that eventually people will be interested in the underlying technology. I think they just don't care about it because they need to earn money. I don't think people give a shit about technology. I don't think people give a shit about technology. Yeah, but isn't that an easy way, Kyle, of saying that people… I don't care whether I'm on the layer two of the layer two of the layer three.

No, no. I swear. I swear. Give it three months. Kyle, give it three months. Let ICO start pumping again, and man, we'll be here talking all about technology. Yeah, but really quickly, Kyle. Kyle, just really quickly.

I mean, basically what you just said was code, degenerate code for people are just looking for the next way to get really rich really fast. Right. That's what you're saying. Right. And so like all of it, I understand community network effect, all of these things, but your average person who's buying any of this shit just wants to get rich really, really fast. And they're disappointed when they don't 100x and they're looking for the next thing that people on spaces tell them could make them so we're basically talking about lottery tickets and then trying to pretend it's network but but but if you had a chance to invest in something really promising uh like like at a

let's say a five or ten million dollars and you as a docs team with with a good narrative like maybe it's the next thor chain or the next solana right would you take that bet or would you rather bet on the next fucking shitty meme coin that someone shills saying that it's going to be the next way but the reality is that the thing people are currently betting on is those meme coins i would rather form a community around technology than i would form a community around hot air that i agree with you 100 i would rather form a community around technology than I would form a community around hot air. That I agree with you 100%. I would rather form a community.

How do these networks build out the community, right? They get people to launch memes. That is the whole reason Solana has exploded is because they are the meme chain now. They became the 2021 BSC of this cycle. And they've blown up because that is where people have brought their communities from these memes, allowing their network to prosper. That's how these chains have been successful. That's true now, but that's not always been the case. There was a time that Solana last cycle became the next best thing without memes. That was speculation.

No, it really was DeFi. No, it wasn't. It was DeFi. It was DeFi gaming. It was gaming. It was the first wave of gaming when all the games were built on Solana. It was ETH becoming so expensive per transaction that people were looking for something else.

That's what it was last cycle. Now, you're completely right that this cycle, memes have dominated Solana, and there's a bunch of really good reasons for that. But there's also really strong backbone protocols on Solana that do really good DeFi. They aren't getting as much attention this cycle as they have in previous cycles, but they're there. And I think they're really good examples of how a good product can build community. I think like a quick history lesson, if you're willing to listen, is Jupiter. Jupiter started from something called Mercurial that probably

most people here have never heard of before. Mercurial raised and on nights and weekends, Jupiter got built. Jupiter ended up being incredibly good tech and incredibly innovative and caused a lot of the growth that Solana has seen during last cycle, not this cycle. And this cycle was maybe the most successful airdrop. The reason it was the most successful airdrop, in my personal opinion, is because it had years and years of really good product being used by thousands and thousands of people. And so those people had really no financial incentive to use Jupiter. It was just a really good product. They weren't being given any coins.

There wasn't really even the speculation of an airdrop yet. Didn't Jupiter have the huge airdrop? You're saying early. Yes, I'm saying early on. So like the initial users in 2020, 2021, airdrops weren't even really thought about in terms of Jupiter at that time. They were just using it because it was super helpful and a great product. And so they had years, two years in this case, to build a really good product, to build a community around just the idea that this is a great product and helps me do what I want to do in crypto. And then they were able to sort of,

in my opinion, supercharge that community by doing an airdrop. In my opinion, that airdrop has been successful. It hasn't been down only because it was initially built on a core group of users that just love the product. They weren't cyber users for the most part. Of course, there are always some, but they weren't people just transacting because they thought they would earn something someday. It was a useful product. So that, in my opinion, is the best way to do this. It's really hard to do. You need to capture lightning in a bottle, but that is the roadmap on how to do a really good product first that builds a community. Then you reward that community and can do so much more because there's people that already believe in the product. Kyle, a question for you. Do you think if you solve for float and valuations,

would that be enough to get VC backed tokens alive again? Yes, that's exactly what I'm proposing. The biggest communities that have real product are Solana, Cardano, XRP, Ethereum, and Chainlink. Those are the biggest communities and the most fanatical, cult-like communities of real projects. Sorry, you called Cardano a real project. Oh, come on, man. Let's stop backing on Charles. No, no, no, be honest. No, I don't think I don't

think I don't think I don't know. Be honest. Let's let's hold on a second. There are there are 5000 people 4000 people in this basis could someone, any one of the 5000 people can you just give us the thumbs up? I agree with you that Cardano is useless. Okay, like, that's like the point. The point is that it is a loyal community that was born in a fanatical community that was born through an ICO. Yes, exactly.

You got it. Exactly. The token went low, then went high. When it went high, it made a lot of people rich, and therefore it has a cult following behind it. It has zero technology because no one's ever used the technology. No one's ever used it. Hold on. You can't say it has zero technology because no one's used it. It has zero technology because no one's ever used the technology. No one's ever you can't say it has your technology because no one's used it has your technology and no one's used it technology is

still there. Just no one's used it because it's better. Exactly. No one cares. It's like a startup. It's like a startup. Yet. I think yet I don't I'm not I'm not gonna sit there. I'm not gonna sit there supporting Cardano. To answer your questions. Yes, because this will make VC-backed tokens interesting again, because it'll have real organic communities that will make... The whole point of what Rand's been saying, what everyone else has been saying, is that the people, the community needs to make a lot of money.

And so they need to have a good opportunity to make a lot of money. And VCs should be happy with this model, because it's the only way that they're going to build a community. So the only way that VCs will actually make money is if there's a community that's built around the token that they bought into it was the one name there was the one vcs don't care about any fundamental usage out there they don't care about actually you know 200 million users like chat gbt has right now and that's why open ai got 150 billion dollar valuation we don't care about that we just care about you know pumping thumbs. That's the most stupid thing I've ever heard in my life.

Can I piggyback on that? Yeah, I'll piggyback. I just want David to elaborate a bit more on the discussion, get his thoughts on it before Alex jumps in. David, I want to get your thoughts on the back and forth that we're seeing right now because I was also getting a bit annoyed. It is about making money because VC is all about about getting returns fair enough but it's not only about hey something goes up something goes down other metrics do matter and i think if you make the argument there's this technology being built but no one's using it so it's useless

which is two seconds man if you don't like technology two seconds we've had this discussion before there was a meme coin before you carry on before you can there was this meme coin right it was i don't remember what it's called it was a great meme point i'll let David know. Before you carry on, before you carry on, there was this meme coin, right? I don't remember what it's called. It was a great meme coin. I promoted it once on one of my shows. And the meme coin was all about dog lovers, okay? And this meme coin promised to give a percentage of every, I don't know, transfer or whatever to dog charities. Fucking people love their dogs.

Dogs is one of the best passion points in the whole wide world. Meme coin went to shit. Why? No one made money on one made money on it okay so yes there was an underlying cause the underlying cause was in my mind the best cause in the world helping dogs bro that's like for me one of the i love dogs dogs are very close to my heart and if i can do anything to help dogs i'll do it so i bought some of the meme coin but no one else bought the minkon because the me because no one made money and therefore there was no cost. I agree. But what you're doing is that you're going from one extreme to another.

Communities are crucial. I think no one's going to argue with that. The network effect is paramount for success of a project. But at the same time, you can't tell all these founders trying to build some tech that will change the world. Hey, your tech doesn't matter. All that matters is that it goes up on the chart. That is not right for all the founders out there. Obviously. But it won't work if it doesn't go up on the chart.

It won't work. That's a fair point. That one I agree with. It has to go up on the chart. It has to look good, unfortunately, because every company becomes a publicly listed company. Stock net will never work. Stock net will never work unless the token goes back down to zero.

And when it goes back down to zero, retail get to buy it at close to zero and start making money. And a stock net will never, ever work. Let me go to David just briefly on that particular point because it feels like why do we have that mentality in crypto? In traditional VC markets, VCs invest in those projects. They build something with that money, and then the retail uses them. The retail doesn't have to make money for the project to succeed. Because the retail is not invested in the network. Retail, in this case, by using the network is invested in the network. In Uber, you can enjoy the product. You're not invested in the network. You just enjoy the product.

Here, the reason why we're here is not because we want to catch a ride in somebody else's car. We are because we want to make money. That's the difference. The difference is in the old VC world, the VCs cared about building a product because if people, if they built a great product that people use, they would make money. In this, the product is holding the token and using the network.

David? I think that's largely true. I think that's incredibly hard to argue with. At the end of the day, venture capital is supposed to be not about the next six months, supposed to be about the next 60 years. We're trying to support founders who are building dynamic changes within society and within finance for a sustainable period of time. And so what annoys me about so much of the conjecture here is that so many people here are short-termism. I've always liked to say that there's a lot of pretend VCs that wear vests on vlogs and on these types of spaces, but they're actually not really in a space for the right

reasons. We're trying to support founders who are building changes here. Many of us came here from traditional finance and other places because we saw that traditional finance in society was broken. We saw, someone just alluded to Uber and Airbnb, the drivers that wake up at 7 in the morning and drive at 3 o' seven in the morning and drive at three o'clock in the morning are the ones that are actually creating the value of the network. But when Uber went public, those drivers saw no incentive, no benefit to that whatsoever, except the money that they get paid for, for the rides that they provide. Not by Uber's choice, by the way. Uber tried to reward their drivers with equity,

and they were shut down by the SEC. So just to make that point. But again, this is a reason why there is a fundamental break in a lot of the networks that we've been creating recently, because they're de-incentivizing those that are actually providing the value to those networks. And so that's why many of us came here is because, yes, this is actually a way to do that. Obviously, the big 800-pound gorilla in the entire market right now is the regulatory kind of burden that we have to deal with right now because we don't know what we can and cannot do. We continue to use the Howey test, obviously, which is 80-odd years old.

And so, yeah, there's a lot of things here that we need to enhance upon to show that there are new networks. Look what just happened with Google, you know, over the last 24 hours is that the DOJ is now trying to break them up because they're trying to use rules and regulations, you know, based off of the Hatch Act, which is, you know, decades upon decades upon decades old. They're not thinking in the same ways about verticalization that we now have with new technology. And so, yeah, you know, for the constant talk about, you know, kind of meme coins and community and everything like that, I continue to look at what AI is doing. You know, as I said, again, chat GBT over the summer celebrated over 200 million users. What in crypto right now has 200 million users? Obviously, if you start to

aggregate some of the MetaMask wallets and some of the Phantom wallets and some of the other things, yeah, you start to get to over 100 million. But they're doing it because they've spent the time to create user experiences that are meaningful and that create value. I think, Alan, you were talking about that. This is why I think a lot of us are talking about, instead of necessarily focusing on the infrastructure, which we all have been for the last five some odd years, it's really time to kind of reverse it now and actually say, okay, we have the infrastructure to at least build some meaningful front-end products. Let's actually start building meaningful front-end products to get real users on board,

not bots, real users that you can obviously do through KYC and AML and all the other different things that we have available to us, real users to see what's actually creating value to them. I can't stand Jason Kalanicka sometimes, but years ago he said that to really be meaningful, you have to build delightful products. And I think that's what we really have to shift to is building delightful products in this space. We have the infrastructure to start doing that, at least for a first phase. And I think instead of talking about memes and about community and everything like that, we have the infrastructure, we have billions of dollars that have gone into the infrastructure build out. It's time for us to all focus on building products that everyone can love.

And when you have a product that someone loves, guess what they do? They tell their friends. They tell their family. They say, this is the best thing in the world. It changed my life. It did X for me. It did Y for me. It made my family better.

It made me healthier. It made me happier. And instead of a token doing that, actually driving value to those users in a meaningful way is going to create sustainability. Tokens and memes, especially memes right now, in my opinion, are ideologies versus religion. Ideology is come and go. Religion stayed for hundreds and thousands of years.

And so we have to think about sustainability in this space instead of just the next six months. So, David, the question I have to use is how do you think the model is broken? Because I agree with you. I think building a community is more of a means to get a product out there for people to start using it, to bring value to the world, rather than community being the product itself. Can I just challenge you? Can I challenge you? Hold on, Alex.

Go ahead, Ryan. Let me challenge you quickly. What do you think is a better product, honestly? Do you think Tron is a better product, or do you think ChatGPT is a better product? Honestly, do you think Tron is a better product or do you think ChatGPT is a better product? I think that I have to abide by the fact that we are a registered investment advisor and so I don't give investment advice.

It's ChatGPT. I didn't ask what's a better investment. I asked you what is a better product. Which product has made more impact on the world, Solana or ChatGPT? Well, I'm sure you'll say it'll be a Solana. And I'll say that I don't know, Rand. Come on, hands down. Okay, hands down, it's fucking ChatGPT.

Yeah, nobody would say Solana on that. Come on. Okay, which one has the more passionate community? Who has 200 million users? I would still say. Which one has the more passionate community? Who has the more passionate community? What company is it?

I didn't say bigger. I didn't say bigger. Which one has a more passionate community? The answer is Cardano Ren. Cardano, Ren. Cardano. Okay. The reason why crypto has it is because crypto has made more people more money.

That's it. Face it. But that's true, but that just seems that you're focusing on the wrong thing. I agree with everything you're saying is true, but it's not the thing that we should be focusing on. I agree with David's initial point that VCs are there. I'm just saying that if you want to...

Minecraft has been around for over 20 years. Why do people still play Minecraft? Community. Community. Community. Games are fun because they love the games and then actually people can create their own games within them. They're fun. They're entertaining.

They give people... By the way, just quickly, Ran, you made the point, obviously, which I agree with generally, that the most successful things are the ones who have made people money. But I would challenge that very few... I think that that's a view that comes from the top to people who have access and knowledge and have actually made money. I would bet that even in these tokens that have passionate communities, those people are passionate community members because they bought high and continued to ride it down and became more passionate to justify the fact that they're still holding these things in 2024. I would argue that almost nobody in crypto has actually made money. Okay.

Hold on, let me ask you a question. On average, average retail. Answer me honestly, but really answer me honestly. Are you passionate about any token that you've purchased that has not gone up since you bought it? No, but I mean,

I'm also jaded and not passionate. No, no, just an honest answer. And I'm asking all of you. I remain passionate about Bitcoin that I bought last cycle. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Answer the question. Are you passionate about any token that has never gone up since you bought it? No, nobody is. I agree with that is there anybody here is there anybody here that is passionate about any token that that there's only now ran to clarify there's plenty of tokens there's plenty of tokens to clarify that went up while people were holding them and they didn't sell and they

kept riding down chemical when they went yes i agree chemical reaction took place but you can be you can be passionate based on these no but ran i did ran you can be passionate about the promise of a project. So I'll give you two. I was looking at Pixels yesterday. I'm invested. It's gone down since launch like every other token. I'm very passionate about their building. We bought it privately.

It's locked up. I've made $0. I've made none of it. Even if I made no money, I, I, okay. So if you're making the argument, I'm passionate because I will make money. If it goes up, I can't argue with that.

Every investor would say that. That applies to every investor. No, no, no. Mario, Mario, Mario,

you are passionate because you're writing at the private cell and it went up a thousand X done paper. And therefore you thought in, in your brain, three things happen. One, there was a feedback loop that said, Mario, you're a fucking genius.

You are the best investor in the world. You are building the best business in the world. You're a fucking genius. And that affirmation loop that happened in your brain did two things. The first thing is it released dopamine. The second thing is it released oxytocin. When it released oxytocin, you became attached to that token and you started defending it like a cult, bro. It's a fair point, but you're making the argument that applies to every single investor.

Why are investors passionate about ChaiGPT? Because they're investors. Mario, how many tokens have you invested in in your life? A lot, over 300. Okay, good. Name one token for me that you're passionate about that has never gone up from the price that you bought it at. Does it apply to a project that hasn't launched yet?

No, no, no. No, no. We said no, no. Token. Token. Token price. Yeah, but one that hasn't launched. Name one project for me that you are passionate about,

that you are cult-like about. That's not a question. You'll get your aha moment because I don't remember many tokens at all. I barely look at any charts. I looked at yesterday's chart because of that. You guys are so full of excuses. Token 2049. You guys are so full of excuses.

No, man. I don't have a name, but I had it. I just agreed. Bro, what do you mean? I just agreed with you. Your argument. Bro, you're just making the argument that investors are passionate about something that will go up because they make money. That's the most obvious thing to say.

Every investor will say yes to something that's going to make them money. Nothing else matters. That means nothing else. But that has nothing to do with the discussion that Peter was talking about earlier. I think it was Peter, sorry, David. David was talking about earlier, community and the value going up in the short term is a means for a product to reach the masses. Like Humanity Protocol that I saw on your video, by the way, Scott, me and you, I don't know if you're an investor, Scott, but we're invested. Humanity Protocol, the token might go up. It might get a lot of traction.

It might get a great community because people made money. Great. But that's not the point of it. The point of it is Humanity Protocol allowing everyone to have an identity on the blockchain. That's the value of these projects. They're not just the value of the token going up. But I got a bit upset because I think we're just getting too deep into the, hey, we made money this cycle. What's making money?

All right, this is the right thing. Like meme coins were shit just a year ago, and now suddenly it's the sexiest thing. I see the value in meme coins, but I just don't want to shit on all the projects that are building tech. I got to clock out, but this is the point I started with, and I'll leave you with again, just because I know there's been a lot of back and forth and too much meme coin discussion. I just think that there needs to be a better opportunity for retail and communities to be built around real projects with real technology that can change the world. That's why I'm in this space. I do love it.

But I do agree that people need to be able to make money. And so we need to reimagine the way that we are allowing the public to come into these serious projects and things will change. I agree. And that's the only solution to this. That's the only solution

to the infrastructure problem. Just to jump in here, I think I wrote an article today on Cointelegraph where I said, I think the good strategy is like what happened with Bonk, right? They started as a meme, grew really big

and they came out with a product. I think we need to bring these solid tech companies together with these guys who can launch these memes and make these big communities. I'm more on Mario's side. I like to believe in investing in technology companies that are actually building great

stuff. But this year, because of all the memes around us, I've started focusing on memes. But really, I mean, these memes are not creating real world value end of the day. It's all a hype train, right? So how do we fix this market? I think the best case scenario is you connect these memes, you grow these communities with these memes, and then you add to attach a solid technical product on top of it

that gives it long-term sustainability. I agree. So you have this community, all of these people made money, and then you bring in a product so that these people have something to shill. And then when they're shilling it, it's actually creating real value. Because yeah, I mean, a lot of people will make money in crypto, but then you get out of crypto. Nobody cares because there's no real value being generated. How you do this is like, you really, you know, you grow this in a way where you build this, you bring in these memes

and you grow these communities, but then you don't leave it there. You bring in a product for the community. You bring in a, there's a lot of innovation that's happening in Web3. And like Mario, there are products I'm passionate about that have not made money because I believe that these are great solutions for the world. I want them to exist. But obviously, those guys did not know how to market or grow their communities. So that's why they're not able to get any adoption. It'd be wonderful if one of those projects could connect with one of these meme teams and then get these communities behind their projects and then long-term they do well. So I think that's really the solution. I've been trying to think about this a lot.

And like, at the same time, when I like to invest in fundamentals, I've been forced to invest in memes because you make more money this year doing that. But end of the day, like, it's still not a long-term sustainable solution. So I really believe like the solution that we really should go for is to bring these memes and these solid fundamental teams that are really building together. And it takes time to build quality products. It doesn't happen overnight. But you can launch a meme in five days. We've seen that happen. I've seen that happen in the recent months, where you can launch a meme in five days and then really have such a massive community and reach this hundreds of millions of dollars in market cap, which projects building for three

years have not been able to do. Because I think it's different skill sets that come into play here. Really, I mean, it's on guys like us to bring in this and make this change happen so we can make this a long-term benefit for the whole world. So crypto becomes beneficial. Because I don't know how sustainable this meme economy is, because people outside of crypto are not really going to pay attention, not going to care if they know that some of the cabals are going to keep taking money and kevin's your point and i think i think we can wrap uh this this conversation about because i think we've kind of been circular and everybody has their opinion on it but at the end of the day like we all know that whatever's happening in meme coins is the same old d gems that have been around

here forever moving from casino to casino to make money. So like pretending that this is a bunch of like new retail money flowing in from the sidelines, uh, is disingenuous. And we all know that none of this stuff can be successful long-term unless there's actually something built that captures the zeitgeist of the mainstream and moves forward. And speaking of capturing the zeitgeist of the mainstream, there's another topic we have to talk about that we were meant to talk about

at the beginning. And that's obviously, I guess, superficially the HBO documentary last night that Dave, Peter, Todd, Satoshi on exceptionally loose info. But like we all agree here clearly that Bitcoin is the one thing that's not going anywhere. It has captured the zeitgeist and has reached a full level of mainstream adoption. Just a, I guess a poll to everyone. How many people here with a thumbs up actually watched the documentary last

night? I did. I know Emmy did. That's a, she's here. We watched it together. I can't believe you got to go for that marketing bullshit. No, we didn't fall for it. So listen, so that's what I was going to say. First of all, the fact that HBO like positioned this as shocking the world and could affect the u.s election is the dumbest like most midbrain clickbait probably in the history of all clickbait the fact that throughout the entire documentary they kept saying that satoshi uh if he had access to his coins they'd be worth a trillion dollars, implies a Bitcoin price of $1 million for Bitcoin.

Literally, that wallet is currently worth $61 billion. I'm not saying that can't happen, but it was riddled with clickbait, obviously, and so was the marketing for it. But at the end of the day, what I kind of wanted to discuss is a lot of people are going to watch that who are not Bitcoiners. And whether it was a net positive or net negative, I actually thought outside of the big reveal at the end, as I was watching the documentary, I thought it was actually a pretty good story, compelling and explained the ethos of Bitcoin quite well. I mean, anyone else who watched it, I would love you to jump in.

I don't really care who they... We all, I think, agree that that's probably not Satoshi. Can I go? Yeah, please. Yeah. Can I go first? Okay. Well, as like, I would say the most normie on this panel right now, when I watched it, like, I mean, I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but they did convince me towards the end. I was like, oh yeah. Okay. But if you saw his, the interactions, the way Peter Todd spoke, I was like, that guy's definitely coping. Like he's trying really hard to like make everyone think he's not Satoshi. Like you could just tell by his body language and the way he spoke. I mean, he's just socially awkward in general, but I definitely was convinced it was him. But in general, my, and I like lost sleep thinking about this. I thought that it was him but in general my and i like lost sleep thinking about this i thought that it was a net

negative watching it like those people even the people who are supposedly you know out there champion for making bitcoin uh yeah a digital um you know standard for the digital currency i i feel like it like the way everyone looks at this community still from the outside is what a fucking joke. Like, can we get like, first of all, I am one of those girls who dresses like the girl in the like who is speaking to a presidential candidate. So no offense to her. She looked beautiful and she was very intelligent. But like, can we get some like respectable looking fucking people out there to champion for us? Because right now, if I watch that and I had no idea what Bitcoin was, I'd be like, I don't want to be a part of this community. I mean, we need like some people more like, you know, respectable people to go out there and champion for this community that are not a fucking meme.

I agree with that, but I would say that. Yeah. Go ahead, Mark. I was going to say, what's the TLD of the show? I have no idea. not a fucking meme i mean i would say that i agree with that but i would say that yeah go ahead mark now i was gonna say what's the tldr the show i have no idea so they said someone someone is satoshi who's satoshi is it someone peter todd he's an i'll just say he's a very early uh bitcoin developer he actually would have had to be in his young 20s late teens when he was basically creating bitcoin he first got into it when he was 15, when it was Adam back developing hash cash. But basically, the evidence, quote unquote, that it was him was so loose and ridiculous. It was basically Satoshi had posted on the Bitcoin forum, a Bitcoin talk, this long

winded post, and it was actually his last post at the time before he disappeared. And Peter Todd, then two hours later, responded, basically, finish, as they put it, finishing sort of Satoshi's thought, like completing his sentence. Most people thought he was just responding, but the way they read it was he was finishing the sentence. Therefore, Satoshi himself had accidentally signed in as his anon account, Peter Todd, or vice versa, and had finished his thought, not realizing he was signed in as Peter Todd instead of Satoshi Nakamoto. And then both of them went on to disappear. And that was like the only thing that set him apart from any of the early cyber punks or any of the early people who worked on Bitcoin development and

all this stuff. But to Emmy's point before, and this could be just good Hollywood, they took Peter Todd and like he had all these kind of compelling quotes early that they wrapped up. Like he said, if Satoshi was smart enough to build Bitcoin, they would be smart enough to cover their tracks. Like he kind of talking theory about himself. And then they taught, he talked a lot about the game theory. If you were Satoshi, wouldn't you go out there and say, yes, I am Satoshi to mess with people on cognitive dissonance. That's literally like the Sicilian and the princess bride, right?

I can't choose the cup in front of you. And so they made a good case for it, I think, but I think for people who've been around, you've heard kind of similar cases made for a bunch of people, but at the end of the day, like to Emmy's point, and what I was trying to get at and she sort of summarized it being a net negative or a net positive. think in this documentary she's correct but like in the real world we have at least evolved from it being the dgens talking to a couple people to being larry fink and michael saylor hopefully we're getting the mainstream

attention but i do think i do think in general the witch hunt is unnecessary right i agree with peter todd that this is an irresponsible way to try to like dox him like that's not going to help this community it's actually going to put him at risk like everyone's going to watch this and think of bitcoin more as like you know it creates this like uh when when you dox him it just it creates everyone looking inward as like what a fucking joke that community is even more so we need to keep satoshi as this like mythical creature right i think that it's all just irresponsible and like unnecessary we 100 need to believe that those coins are not unlocked i think i think the irresponsible thing is is is not like everyone should be able to make whatever content

that they want right like like the freedom of speech is like everyone should be able to make whatever content that they want, right? Like the freedom of speech is like today the whole internet is very upset with Zach XBT for doxing Murad's wallets potentially. And the whole internet is really upset about the fact that HBO, inverted comma, tried to dox Peter Todd. I think that's free speech. Everyone should be able to do what they want. I think the crazy thing is that, you know, I tweeted about this last night before the thing came out, where I said, like, the fact that people are dumb enough

to even watch the HBO documentary when for 11 years, 12 years, or 13 years, the world's smartest people, the smartest hackers in the world, the smartest investigators in the world, the smartest investigators in the world, the smartest cryptographers in the world all have tried to find out who Satoshi is and all never succeeded. And the fact that the average person doesn't know that the average person doesn't know that. And so it's like, yeah,

of course they're going to see it on HBO. I don't think that. And I watched him because I wanted to see how they, I watched it because I, well, no, I mean, I understand what Rand's saying. Like, I didn't believe I was going to find out who Satoshi is, to be clear, when I was watching. Right? I wanted to see it for, like, I guess the Hollywood aspect. But I watched it because I wanted to see how the story of Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto would be presented by HBO to a mainstream audience. And that's why I keep coming back to the point of,

did it make us look good, bad or otherwise? Yeah. That's important. My opinion. Can I ask you a question either to Emmy or Scott, you talked about kind of being a marketing bait and switch because they somehow said that this could change the election.

Was there any tie to politics at all, or is that completely just a marketing line go ahead no i mean i was going to very quickly just say no not at all yeah besides like on the road show talking to bukele and such but the fact that they literally said the united states election i mean short of saying Kamala Harris was proven to be Satoshi with cryptographic evidence. I forgot that guy even existed, though. So, like,

they talked to a presidential candidate, you know, from 2022. Yeah, like, there was an Andrew Yang. There was a scene where Samson and the woman, I don't remember her name, that Emmy referenced earlier, where they, like, basically pitched Andrew Yang on doing UBI with Bitcoin, right? Yeah, at the Bitcoin conference.

No, it was about it. I mean, I guess like politically, they did talk about like all of the countries accepting Bitcoin as legal tender, like El Salvador. They talked about, you know, how they kind of went on a roadshow pitching all of the presidents. But that was really it. Nothing else. So the reason I watched it was similar to Scott is, you know, I wanted to see kind of what they were portraying, you know, whether Satoshi is Lynn Sassman or Harold Finney or Nick Sassbo or Paul LaRose or Meredith Patterson or whoever. It sure as hell not going to be whoever HBO says it is. So I really didn't care about that aspect. It's more so, you know, you have to, if you're in the

space, you have to understand all of the narratives that are happening, whether or not it's true, whether it's stupid, whether it's accurate, whatever, if you're going to be educated and stay in touch with the space, you need to know what's going on, right? That's kind of why I watched it. But speaking as a technical person, a founder, a creator of products in the space, somebody who is actively developing on blockchains, I mean, I think it does definitely hurt the space putting out, you know, these Hollywood esque stories of, you know, this could be,

you know, this is the creator and blah, blah, blah. Cause it, it takes down the level of sophistication that would have happened throughout the creation of bitcoin and it just like kind of shits on the actual technical achievement that is bitcoin and

guys it's a fucking documentary on hbo they don't care about the different protocols of crypto the technical technological evolution of what blockchain means and how it's going to change the world like who's satoshi nakamoto is trump involved and the story was so important but but that but what you're saying is mario that's correct and that's why i found it so compelling to watch it because i wanted to see outside of our echo chamber and outside of those of us nerds who care about you know the ethos of it and the technical side how would it be presented if it happens to go viral on hbo and millions of people end up watching this thing yeah it matters

how many people how many people listen to it but do we know no i don't know but it matters scott's point is important. It matters because it impacts the reputation that anyone that works in Web3 ends up having. Exactly. I don't know if others have this experience, but my least favorite question to answer in life is, what do you do for a living? Because in some case, in most cases, what they end up knowing about, oh, yeah, that's that FTX thing, right? And so, like, it's been two years, and still that's the reputation that gets attached by the everyday person that maybe doesn't follow the space incredibly closely. So I think that's Scott's point and why I think it's important. It forms the reputation that we all carry.

Talking about politics, by the way, Scott, just looking at the polling the betting platforms so on polymarket uh sorry just digressing but polymarket is now seven percentage points up for trump you know kamala's been above trump for four weeks and in the last week he went above us so seven percentage points on polymarket and then on real politics which includes other betting platforms including polymarket so includes a whole bunch of them. It's a 4% point difference. Probably should look at that one instead. You know what's interesting about that? That 60-minute interview did a lot of damage to Karma.

Yeah, I haven't listened to it yet. How was it? I haven't listened to it yet. It was so... I mean, look... You watched that, but not a Satoshi documentary, Ran? Come on, man. I watched that because I just enjoy watching Kamala get fucked up. And I wasn't going to watch it, but then when everyone said to me she took a lot of body shots there,

I was like, okay, nothing she's not used to. But, I mean, it was very much worth watching. It was the very first adversarial interview she's had. So it's worth watching for that reason, if nothing else. Yeah, it is. It's the first real interview that she's had so it's worth watching for that reason if nothing else yeah it is it's the first real interview that she's had to be honest this is her first real it's the first time that i've seen an interview by someone who's not a fanboy um and you know it's more interesting yeah go ahead i think look it's amazing to me that one interview could do that

much damage but it's also amazing to me how she could be so bad in an interview at this stage of the game she's the fucking vice president you cannot be that bad in an interview at this stage of the game. She's the fucking vice president. You cannot be that bad in an interview. Like, she was terrible. She was terrible. Yeah, but that didn't impact. That was yesterday, wasn't it? Yeah, the year two was after.

Yeah, it didn't have much impact, right? Because Trump has been above her for a week now. What I was going to say, really quickly, Alex. Go ahead, Alex. I have the data because I've been looking into this for quite a while and I've been following polymarkets every single day, multiple times a day. And I can say, and this is not on a subjective standpoint, this is purely from an objective standpoint because it's research. The first thing that really, really created something very interesting, and i think this is a great subject to debate today is that no not today not tomorrow but whatever you guys decide but you know this is only the second time in american presidential history

that you have a vp debate and it's the first time in american presidential history that people actually give a fuck about the VPs, right? Not like a Biden. And we don't even know the other name of the guy. I'm sure most of you guys don't even know who debated Biden four years back. But this, all of a sudden, there's a change in dynamics, guys, where people are seeing them as a team. I truly believe, and when I read all the Reddit talks, people are seeing them as a team i truly believe and when i read all the reddit talks people are seeing them as a team and vance is an absolute genius when it comes to debates absolutely demolished wall so that was

the first trigger the second trigger was he is fucking impressive vance is fucking impressive fucking impressive and then elon musk fucking gave a really good talk and then he gave a really good interview um uh with what's it what's his name the american guy who went independent um you like him like a car okay yeah tucker carlson that was a really impressive uh like interview if you guys want to watch that he literally is throwing something under the bus including gates that was that was that's an epic moment you should definitely listen i haven't listened the whole thing yet. I want to. And he just has balls. He says things that will just get people – remember, he's like, no one – I'm scared to even repeat what he said because no one wants to assassinate Kamala because she's just the face of the puppet.

Like the system is always there. She's just the face of it, the puppet that they use. So no one bothers to assassinate her because – and that's like a very like something i would be too scared i'm even scared repeating he just fucking says it because that's why he believes he speaks his mind he throws bill gates in uh and what was the other guy's name under the bus uh relating to uh the epstein files and another one another one he goes, and Tucker Carlson's like, hey, you've gone all in on Trump. What do you think happened to you?

If he doesn't win, he's like, I'm fucked. I'll be in jail. I don't know if I'll see my kids. He's laughing about it. One last point where I found the data. Like just one last thing, guys. So we talked about the importance of VPs. We talked about the intervention of Elon Musk

and his interviews and his influence on the polls. But the third part, and this is once again asking everyone here, I think that the natural disaster behind the Hurricane Wilton is actually kind of a very lucky pro-Republican surprise. And the reason why I'm saying that is simply because it really puts the current administration, sorry, it currently puts like a really big problem to the current administration and shows how they're dealing with that problem. And I think those are the three criteria. That's three points that really, really are changing the direction of the polls. I mean, we're in the path of the hurricane right now and give a shit about politics. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. Do you think the hurricane will have much of a political impact? Because I think it will be politicized.

For an hour. It will, but it'll matter for an hour, just like everything else in the news cycle. You know, I think actually the more interesting story, Mario, about what you were saying about Polymarket is that when Polymarket first really captured the attention of the mainstream to some degree, we would actually see Bitcoin move with those odds of Trump. And now, like you said, Trump is back in favor and stuff and Bitcoin hasn't done anything.

So I guess it's dispelled at least that narrative that we used to discuss here. No, but it's like all else is equal. There's multiple narratives. This is one of many narratives. So there's good news on the trump side but other people are selling for other for other reasons then that would counter it so i'm not saying the narrative is dead but it's just it's not the only narrative that's my counter argument as for the hurricane along with anything else people will find a way to politicize it and it'll

be very hard to parse what's true and what's not right so um i think i would just say from a from a human perspective it's going to be a epic shit show down here and maybe don't politicize uh things when people are in the path of something i just can't can we can we argue that the impact that the hurricane may or may not have is less about the response to the hurricane but more so about the actual the actual like uh tactical ability to vote like if it does take three weeks or four weeks to recover and to get people back into their homes how do you vote i mean one of my literally one of like my best friend from childhood running in an election in tampa bay so it's a valid question.

Something's probably for the political show, but I haven't been personally on them for a while. But just a quick question, and then we'll move on to Cody, to the partner for today. On the California law, California signed a law where it's illegal to show your ID when voting. I want someone to come up, you tend to be pretty objective. Is there another perspective to this that allows it to make a bit of sense? Maybe you or Dave can kind of give me the other perspective. I'll say I haven't tracked it enough, but that narrative has flipped back and forth depending on kind of who's been screaming it louder for many, many years, right? I don't really have a track to the argument for or against.

But I mean, I know that there are a lot of people who are American citizens probably who do not have ID to some degree. But no, I can't make the argument, Dave. The argument, Mario, is absolutely. Look, I'll play the devil's advocate. I'll tell you what the argument is, but it's utterly absurd. But we'll see. What's the devil's advocate? There is data that suggests that of that percentage of the population that doesn't fly, that doesn't drive, that doesn't go to hotels, that doesn't apply for jobs, that just sits at their home collecting welfare and SNAP, et cetera, et cetera, that it skewed two or three to one, depending on which minority group you're talking about, higher in that group without IDs in favor of minority groups. That is literally the data that gets trotted out and then massage to say, Well, look, it's

discriminatory to require ID. But Dave, I'm gonna ask a naive or stupid question that can the foreigner fly into the US and vote? Yes. But here's what happened. So I'll tell you, New Jersey is a great example. So one of my brothers just went for my brother, daughter, whatever, someone just went to the DMV and got their new, you know, their new real ID. In that they did not have to show anything that regards

proof of US citizenship. They don't ask them if it's US citizenship, it's just who you are. Right? You know, if you're paying, you know, if you're a foreigner, you can be on an H-1B, it doesn't ask. But if you're there, and you can show a residency, etc. And then it asks you on the form, do you want to register to vote? And you can tick yes. That it it doesn't ask now theoretically you're committing a crime if you vote but it doesn't ask and that's all you have to do that's the same in many many so you're saying so you're saying that and by the way i've looked at how many americans don't have an id is 11 of u.s citizens don't have an id but then they could still use a utility bill or birth certificate or some sort of affidavit or some student

ID, anything to kind of – to be able to replace the government-issued ID. But the point is that essentially a foreigner could fly into the US right now to California or any other similar state and vote without showing their ID. You can't just fly in. You have to be here for a little bit of time. So you have to be living here. But – No, but not legally.

I'm talking not legally because they're not checked. How do I verify? If they're not showing the ID, how do they check if vote is legitimate? That's what I'm trying to – and there's something I'm missing. You have to register in advance. You have to register in advance. You have to be registered. Yeah.

Right. But if you're – You have to be registered to vote. And like Dave said, the argument, if you're looking for it, and has been used in the past, relatively favorite. There was a time when – by the way, i said these narratives shift mario it and if you go to past elections before trump it was democrats accusing republicans of cheating because of gerrymandering like changing districts and because they were stifling poor people from voting closing down and guys this is not a political opinion i'm i'm unailiated. I'm just telling you what happened

in the past. Every person that gives a Republican perspective. No, but there were all of these stories that said that poor people who would close the voting office in these areas and they would have to travel three miles and stand in

line for six hours to vote and they didn't have id and that they would change the voting district to do that so i'm just telling you this is like this narrative that's happening right now it's being flipped but this is an old narrative that goes back and forth this is like a legal legal as timpool says legal political interference let's put a finishing touch on this so So data is what we care about. Georgia passed a law, you might remember a couple of years ago, before the law got passed, they did all sorts of stuff. There were protests, President Biden called a criminal,

they were going to suppress minority votes. It wasn't the Super Bowl they moved, it was the baseball all-star game they moved out of Atlanta. I think it was that. I mean, like really serious crap. Yet, when the midterm elections happened, guess what? Minority turnout in Georgia was literally the highest ever, both in absolute and percentage terms. And so now you don't hear a damn thing about that law. But so look, the simple fact is the data shows that the narrative is crap, but the narrative does benefit and does make the elections less you know more likely to be contested let's be clear this election whoever loses i i was at a conference in new york with a lot of senior uh trad fight people and we had both rasmussen and wolf both political commentators and analysts and you know etc and both said the same thing they

both said that the high likelihood is unless this election moves two or 3% in either commonwealth favor or Trump's favor, but now the election if the polls come out to find out where it is today, whoever loses is going to contest it. And actually the the likelihood of a contested election is high and markets hate that. And that's what what Wall Street is most focused on right now. And that's what crypto should be most focused on right now. And that's what crypto should be most focused on right now, because that really is a sincere possibility.

And it's kind of frightening. Let's pivot the discussion to – and by the way, I wanted to kind of wrap it up. So Tim Pool said – I'm not sure if you heard me, but he says there's like legal ways for election interference to be conducted. And we see that in every election on both sides, as you said, Scott. says there's like legal ways for election interference to be to be conducted um and that we see that in every election on both sides as you said scott but uh kind of moving the discussion to cody cody it's been a pretty heated discussion a lot longer in the account i am i am yeah you're surrounded by friends love it how are you what do you think of the discussion so far where are you located right now

i'm located in israel if you want to politicize this even further where where is that up north south tel aviv ah tel aviv yeah okay um all right cool uh we'll hopefully everything's okay on your end you and scott scott is in a hurricane you're in israel um but um yeah man good to have you. I'd love to get your thoughts on the discussion. We dig into Cody. We've been on the show a few times. Always good to have a discussion with you guys.

I'm invested, I think Scott is invested, Ran's invested. So we're all big supporters of you guys. You guys have, as Ran says, you guys are the token that goes up. So he must love you a lot based on his theory because he loves projects that go up. But yeah, man, I'd love to get your thoughts on discussion and kick off an introduction to the audience for anyone that doesn't know you already on what Cody is. Sure. So look, people ask me, we're dealing with privacy, right?

We're building a privacy-centric Ethereum layer 2. And we're going to expand to other chains. We recently disclosed that. Now, people ask me recently, is privacy a narrative? Ethereum layer two. And we're going to expand to other chains. We recently disclosed that. Now, people asked me recently, is privacy a narrative? And I want to say that privacy is a meta narrative, because everything that you build in crypto will be better if you can decide what part is private and what part is public. I mean, that's how real businesses are built. That's how they protect both their customers' information, but also their competitive edge. So this is what we're doing. And what do I mean by privacy? I mean, the ability to selectively disclose information, like what you share with whom, and not the way it is today that

everything is on public blockchain by default. And to be clear, I'm not talking about anonymity or privacy coins. I'm talking about your right for freedom, your right to selectively disclose what you want. How does it work? I know we've discussed this in previous spaces, but it's always fascinating for me and for the audience. So how does it exactly work with Kodi for someone that's conducting a transaction? How does privacy become optional from a UI perspective? Yeah, it's actually, it's all about how the DAP is built, how the smart contract is built. But the idea is that you can decide for this transaction, I don't want to disclose what token I'm sharing. For that transaction, I actually don't want to show my balance.

I don't want to show people how much I send. If you're building a DEX, for instance, then you can decide that the transactions will be confidential because you don't want people to front-run you. Or if you just keep sensitive data on-chain. I mean, these days, if you keep sensitive data on chain, it will be disclosed. But if you want to actually keep it confidential, then you can decide to do that. So the way we do that is with a new standard, a new type of cryptography.

This is actually pretty complicated to encrypt things on a public blockchain. We're using something developed by researchers at SodaLabs. This thing is called Gobbling Circuits. We are the first to implement it and it's the fastest and lightest way to keep privacy on a public blockchain by a big, big margin.

And it means that it's the first time that a privacy chain can exist that can compute fast enough for broad consumer applications. So you're saying the main advantage of Goblin from a technological perspective, which, again, Ran, I wish you were here. Technology does matter. But from a technological perspective,

the main thing that it brings in terms of value add is the speed of the transaction correct it's the speed it's a scalability how many transactions you can actually do uh all at once the cost the the amount of storage that you need it just makes it practical right like there's a there's a lot of good ideas that are not practical because you know there's not enough broadband so so you couldn't build the sort of websites that we have today if if the broadband wasn't there so this makes it very feasible the other types of cryptography that we have today for privacy are you know very slow or you know very expensive and then this is why we don't see broad consumer apps with it.

That was my next question. It's like, why haven't we seen mainstream adoption? You're saying speed and, and the scalability are the two main hurdles that you solve through Goblin. There, there's, you know,

one, there's education, right? People, people think these days that the fact that everything is kept on a public blockchain, it means that it's transparent, therefore it's fair, etc. But that's ridiculous, right? I like to share that we have shower curtains because privacy is not always a good idea.

Oh, sorry. Transparency is not always a good idea, right? So there are some elements of how you build the dApp, the same thing like we have in the everyday apps that people use, like their banking app, etc., that should keep a secret, that should keep things private. People don't get it when they're thinking about blockchain, but we would not have a massively useful Web3 ecosystems if

privacy is not a feature. So I think that's one thing. That's education. The second thing is that it's not really possible. Right now, you need to either have scalability or privacy. With gobbling circuits, we can actually have both. And it's the first time that you can do that. And by the way, we've actually proven that because we've

benchmarked everything when we launched our testnet and it's about 3,000 times faster than other things. Give us some of the metrics. When did you launch the testnet again? So testnet was launched quite recently at token 2049.

We launched the testnet, we announced the first cohort of partners. These include MyEtherWallet, Enchain, Carbon Browser, Privex, and a few others. And then we've released an article with the benchmarks that we made. And it's indeed much faster

than anything out there, much less expensive, and also lighter. So you can actually run it through mobile. I've got another couple of questions. So the first one is, how do you prevent misuse of Kodi for nefarious purposes or illegal use cases?

That's the first one. And the second one, what are some of the most common use cases that you're seeing right now and you've seen since launch? Well, first of all, I mean, trying to, you know, doing anything criminal using a public blockchain is such a bad idea because everything is immutable and kept there forever now with kodi we the the people that transact are not anonymous right and not not more than they are on on ethereum to that extent so you could see that wallet a sent something to wallet b right

so that means that you can actually do kyC and you can actually, you know, do keep the law of the land while transacting privately. Remember that privacy is also a right. It's also protected by law. So when you are actually forcing your users to disclose their sensitive information, their financial information on a public blockchain,

you actually kind of like prevent them from exercising their right for privacy. But there's certain mechanisms for regulators in various countries to be able to get access to such information through the banking system. I don't know what the act is called, but it's not difficult for them to do so. Now, if you've got an alternative through COTI that makes it private and that keeps the information private, is there any way for these regulators to be able to get access to certain information, sensitive information, as part of an investigation? Well, first of all, there is no backdoor, there is no secret key, there is no way, I mean, it's not built in a way that, you know, either Cody or someone else can have this magical

key and actually see all the private data or your end user agreement, right, of how privacy is kept. And you can decide, I'm building this deck. Everything is private. Nobody can see your transactions. However, if it's proven that you are a criminal, then we have the right to actually give this information to the authorities. So there's a flexibility of how you build your depth. And depending on the

sort of regulation and laws that you have in your country, you should you should build it that way. But there's no, no, you know, no backdoor that can actually no no back doors. Michael, you can ask Pavel how that went for him and then tell me how concerned you are but then the next question i have is what are some of the most common use cases right so um first of all ai is is amazing because you know the ai needs to feed on data data should be private in many cases so how do do you make that? How do you share data from others? So that's one big thing that we're working on. DeFi, obviously, and RWA, obviously.

So many use cases around that, around lending, of course, and building these private AMMs and building DeFi experiences with no MEV. So that's easy. Real-world assets, these institutions require confidentiality and privacy. They obviously advertise this, and we are one of the only few solutions that can actually give them that. We are working on a CBDC with the Bank of Israel that has been published. Games, of course, any on-chain game needs privacy by default.

But I can argue that you suggest adapt and I'll show you how it's better when you have selective disclosure of information. Even wallets, you know, my wallet, for instance, I can send you something and I can decide, no, I don't want everybody to see this specific transaction. Or I'm paying for something. I don't want everybody to see this. So these are the sort of things. Yeah, so that's one of the questions I had is developments that we've seen on anything that kind of limits the level of control authorities have or regulators have? Actually, it's not different than anything else.

I can ask you more directly. How did you feel the day Pavel got arrested in France? Be honest. I mean, I felt bad, but just, you know, for the ecosystem. You weren't worried at all? No, no, no felt bad, but just, you know, for the ecosystem, but... You weren't worried at all? No, no, no, no, no, no. Obviously, we have legal opinions over legal opinions of everything that we do and actually have some supportive opinions about how we are much better

in terms of GDPR and HIPAA than other solutions out there. So I'm not worried at all about this. Can you... So let's get something a bit more technical for the next few minutes. You've decentralized the sequencer in your V2. Maybe you can explain that to your audience, what that means, the advantages that come with it.

Sure, but that's pretty straightforward. You know, the fact that it's not just Scotty that can validate transactions, but that actually, I think that leads me to something more exciting that we're doing around nodes, which is something that we will be sharing publicly soon. But these days, the way you stake on Kodi is not plain vanilla. It's not your usual put something on a node, get some low

APR. We can actually be more flexible and allow you to decide for you know, how long do you want to lock these tokens? Maybe you can decide that you want to add some multiplier right to it and take a bit more risk, but get better APRs

etc. So this is how it's built today and it's super popular. But the way we think about the risk but get better APRs etc. So this is how it's built today and it's super popular. But the way we think about the future is that anybody can run a Kodi node and anybody can offer this sort of experience to users.

So the way nodes will be structured in Kodi is you get this license to run a node. It's an NFT. You can run the node yourself or you can just say, I trust this guy more to run a node. I'm going to delegate my NFT to this guy.

And he's going to run a node and these big nodes are built. But any of these nodes can run its own mini economy when it comes to staking. They can offer some leverage. They can offer different locking periods, et cetera, et cetera. And this comes out of the box and they can immediately run with it. And you'll have some very popular staking pools. And other than just the staking fees, they can actually now collect other fees,

the sort of fees that you can expect from a lending platform, right, or a DEX to collect. So this makes everything the economical game around it far more interesting. And this will be fully decentralized. And, and I hope we can offer that, you know, towards the end of the year or beginning of next year. Okay, I wasn't aware of that. When was that announced? It wasn't announced. This is

okay. Okay, I appreciate appreciate it you should have hyped it up a bit more so we should expect that end of this year or start of next year correct yes and we'll probably announce it then you know uh in the coming weeks like officially announced it cool man any other big developments they have coming up I think it's a pretty major one already yeah other other than uh you know the CBDCDC without the Bank of Israel, which is quite exciting. Yeah, how is that going to look like? And why with you guys? Why did they come to you guys for CBDC with the Bank of Israel?

What was your pitch? The easiest take is that, hey, you're also Israeli. But no, it's actually – we are there with a cohort of companies like PayPal, Fireblocks, etc. But we are the only blockchain network there. And the aim of the project is to explore the potential use case of a new CBDC and its integration into a national economy. Discrete payments is obviously critical when you think about a national economy and everyday use of crypto by citizens and organization. It's fundamental and this is something that we can offer and we're uniquely equipped to but then how how would it work sorry to kind of touch on this a bit interesting like as a

blockchain company when you talk to them about launching a cbdc where does the decentralized aspect come in like what how are they interested in having parts of it decentralized how decentralized will it be do they understand that decentralization is inevitable well first of all it's a sandbox so a lot of these things are under considerations that they're going to play with with a lot of it and this is like the very early days uh of it right now um the things that are being discussed on more around you know wallets payments etc etc uh but you know the the folks that are being discussed on more around, you know, wallets, payments, etc, etc. But, you know, the folks that work in the bank are not what you expect, you know, from a national banker. These are people that, you know, come from a technological background.

They really know the ropes and they understand everything that you need to understand around crypto so i guess we'll see uh this is obviously new horizons for everybody involved uh but we know we're super excited to be there especially as we are the only you know blockchain network uh there but i'm also super excited about you know three other things that are coming to court in terms of projects so we have privex which is an intent-based privacy deck. It's the first one. It's now launching on Base, but it will then grow to Coddy because we can offer

the privacy features that they were looking for. Why Base? Why did they start on Base? I think it's super easy to begin on Base, to be honest. We have Edify, which I think you're familiar with. So for those who are not familiar, it's like Tinder, but for crypto opportunities. So it matches you with crypto opportunities instead of women and men.

So that will begin as a Telegram mini app. And I'm very excited about this and then expand to Kodi. And of course, Uncaged Games that just did their partnership with Puma and Meta. So that's super exciting. So I love how the ecosystem now grows. Congratulations on your success, man.

It's a pleasure to have you as always. And I think Scott and Ryan would say the same thing. I'm here. I can say it myself. Pleasure to have you. Thank you. If anyone wants to check out K can say it myself pleasure to have you thank you thank you man um if anyone else to check out uh cody their profiles on stage cody foundation or the handles and the title as well should definitely check them out and again me scott and ran um are invested in francesha half as well so really big fans of what they're building there i think we're invested in uncaged as well your other project and i saw the guys that are doing the Tinder for crypto projects as well in Token 2049.

So I'm all over your ecosystem. But, you know, a pleasure to have you, man. Congrats on your success. Congrats on what you guys are building. And it's going to be exciting to have the new node structure later, that flexibility launch later this year, early next year. Appreciate it, man.

Thank you so much, everyone. We'll see you again tomorrow. Same time as always. Good luck with the hurricane, Scott. Thank you. And, everyone. We'll see you again tomorrow. Awesome. Same time as always. Good luck with the, good luck with the hurricane, Scott. Thank you. And, uh, yeah. And good luck. Good luck to shut off too. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know who's, who's in a better shape, but yeah. Thanks. All right, guys. Thank you so much. Bye-bye guys. Bye.