The Wolf Of All Streets - UPTOBER Reality Check: Is the Moon Really Guaranteed? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Good morning, everyone. Happy October to those of you who celebrate. It is Tuesday, October 1st, 10.17am and Bitcoin actually, but there's a lot happening that could derail that train. And we know that statistically, we don't have that many examples to go on. But I think there's consensus, which is a scary thing, that October is going to be a good month for Bitcoin and for markets. Mike, I know you don't share that consensus,
Starting point is 00:00:40 so I get the opportunity to go straight to you. And we have obviously a port strike happening here that just started that maybe you can break down a bit for us and tell us how impactful that could be uh yes hello um scott it's good to be back on and one thing i have to admit i'm sensitive to a lot of views on this it is a crypto banter in this um podcast and i have to point out and sometimes I just ask people to remember how intelligent and successful you are. And this is a complete unbiased view. I don't have any positions. And that's something I have to be careful about pointing out. Lately, I've been sensing so much bullishness for the wrong reasons. I want to point out what you see happening this
Starting point is 00:01:21 morning is Cold War 2.0 heating up. Now, it's unlikely that they'll hopefully that Iran will not be able to do any major damage with the ballistic missile to Israel. Ahead in that way, as we saw in that attack recently, I think it was what it was in the spring where they was one of the biggest attacks ever. And they were all kind of shot down. But this is part of the macro that started with the unlimited friendship of president z's um with um president putin now we have an axis of bad guys it's just heating up every day now so those of us who remember the peace dividend that started the fall soviet union in the collapses of berlin wall that's all completely reversing in a macro big case and and i look at it as okay that's a
Starting point is 00:02:06 macro you got to go back and study your history i just read um hr mcmaster's book the war with ourselves it was very good pointed out how decisive enablers how he said president trump was for the insurrection in 2000 and also put the violence in january 6 and for um what he pointed out with what's happening with the russia's invasion in china involved in that but macro big picture right now is risk assets are extraordinarily expensive and for a good reason um we have a u.s stock markets and you know it's economies in a great um bent everything but it's when risk assets that get this expensive and volatility gets this low you have to be very cognizant of all risk
Starting point is 00:02:46 assets and that's why i tilt over to the best leading indicator is bitcoin it's three times the volatility of gold and the s&p 500 so i still expect we're going to have some normal reversion in risk assets yes i've been early but i still stick with gold and long bonds as some of the best positions in the near future now today, today's nothing. It's probably just a trial balloon. There hasn't been an attack, but I think it's an indication of where we are, where we stand in markets. What you have to remember, if you're a Bitcoiner,
Starting point is 00:03:13 is bottom line at these levels, if you're long a risk asset like Bitcoin, you have to expect to these point, I think beta to keep going higher. And a good example is, I see it's been happening for a few months now, is if beta goes up, Bitcoin is okay, but it lags. If gold goes up, Bitcoin goes up, but it's lags. But if beta
Starting point is 00:03:29 goes down, Bitcoin drops it three times the rate. So, so far, that's what's happening. We'll see what happens by the end of the week as we get through payrolls. I don't think, hopefully, we won't see an attack out of Iran. But the bottom line for me is, I'll end with this, is I don't see copper going higher. I don't see Bitcoin going higher or even crude oil without some kind of attack without beta going higher, which is so stretched. I'll end with the 200 day or 50 week moving average of the VIX volatility index is just bottoming from a six year low. And now we have a lot of reasons to worry about things coming up. We have an election. We have Cold War kicking in.
Starting point is 00:04:06 And I just point out, risk assets are really expensive, and Bitcoin is one of the riskiest. All right. We've got the other market maverick here. Gareth, what are your thoughts right now on markets in general? October, port strikes, Cold War 2.0, a lot to talk about. Yeah, it really is. And it's nice to have the Mavericks together here. So a couple of things. Number one is we did get the JOLTS data that just came out.
Starting point is 00:04:31 It did show an uptick in job openings, about 400,000 more than last month. So again, if we believe that number anyways, then the economy might be re-accelerating a little bit. Now, interestingly enough, we're seeing the stock market come down pretty sharply. I think partially that's that it means less rate cuts by the Fed, so less cheap money, at least for now. And then also the worries about Iran launching a ballistic missile strike. I've heard that one, and that's kind of kicking in some selling pressure. But I think, just to reiterate, I don't mean to be a bear with Mike here, but I just think, yeah, this is the type of market where it seems like every time there's a negative, there's a spin or a narrative that's pushed forth that makes it bullish. When the Fed cut 50 basis points, I was out there saying, guys, this is a little worrying. Why do they feel the need to cut 50?
Starting point is 00:05:19 But then the narrative flipped that night into, oh my goodness, this is great. This means there's no chance of recession. And I've been around long enough, as has Mike, that when anyone tells you it can't happen, that's usually when it does happen. And so again, I think you just have to be careful. I agree that Bitcoin is a risk asset. It's so correlated right now to the stock market. You can see what it's doing today as the stock market falls. So just be careful on that. I love Bitcoin long-term. I continue to love it it long term, but you just got to be cautious. Simon? Everybody, yeah. Just to give a bit of a counter narrative to that, it's being referred to as a cold war, but America is currently in a hot war
Starting point is 00:05:58 with Lebanon via its proxy Israel. And America is in a war with Russia via its proxy Ukraine and if you've been watching on the ground you know America profits from war so therefore it's hugely beneficial if Iran does escalate so that would be good for the american stock market and the war machine um and so just uh if anyone's been really following on the ground the actions play by play as i have and then that comes into the bitcoin story is bitcoin you know gonna play that role like gold is it going to be um is it going to be a commodity or is it going to be risk on at this stage? BlackRock's really pushing the narrative a bit self-serving that it's a risk off asset. So they're trying to push out the buy the ETF. And then there's a lot of narratives from those that are very close to the Federal
Starting point is 00:06:58 Reserve, the shareholders of the Federal Reserve, like the JP Morgans pushing out the narrative that people need to be hedging for BRICS. So these are all cryptocurrency play. They're all geopolitical plays. And then the question of what will the general crypto market do in an environment where Bitcoin is doing well for the geopolitical fundamental reasons versus do we get this divergence where crypto becomes like a stock and risk off a risk on rather and bitcoin becomes a hedge and a commodity risk on
Starting point is 00:07:35 these are all questions that are going to be answered as as these hot wars progress dave i saw you jumped up you must have uh been getting itchy over there to argue with Mike like we do every Monday well I mean that that's been played out pretty well nothing I'm on the I'm sorry I'm in a cab I'm I'm like right outside Bain that about to get in um the look the fact is is that if markets do sell if risk assets do go through a sharp sell-off which frankly i doubt for a reason i'll get to bitcoin will sell off with it for sure that said uh i would expect that after we get through the first part of october maybe into whatever ever i expect the de-linking because of the simple reason of liquidity. Central banks around the world are going to continue to print money and Bitcoin is gaining in its acceptance as the antidote to that. And don't underestimate that because
Starting point is 00:08:36 the supply and demand of Bitcoin, there's nowhere near enough. There's literally nowhere near enough supply if that acceptance starts to get gained and people start to see it and no one is is following at all the you know we all talk about it's a really interesting dichotomy we we all talk about the fact that we think oh october this that and the other thing but that's what mike would call hopium uh it's not you know people aren't committing money on the margin the the price setter for bitcoin is still speculators uh on the margin until the spot demand overwhelms it and we've seen that in every rally now we've been going sideways for seven eight months i i continue i
Starting point is 00:09:16 continue to think that's true i don't want to talk on geopolitics specifically simon and i simon and i very much uh disagree we'll leave it on pieces of it and pieces of it we agree, but where we do agree is on the liquidity side. And I think that- Hey, Dave, you've got really bad feet. We can't hear that, unfortunately. Sorry, there's a truck backing up. I just got out of there. Anyway, watch liquidity and watch what happens in the back half of this month as traders and asset allocators get back. And I'm not going to keep repeating it every single show, but I think that's the big deal.
Starting point is 00:09:54 You know, a few job openings, it doesn't matter. The central banks of the world are pushing money. And that's really what you got to keep your eye on. So, yeah, markets tend to head fake us and it's never easy. You know, just remember that it never goes in a straight line. So don't expect it to. obviously we have the macro considerations that everybody just discussed i mean my view is that regardless of this month we're not bitcoin should perform well um but i think it you know still a lot of question marks as to the rest of the market yeah um consensus was it's going to go up so obviously it went down of course um it's not really much more i can say about that
Starting point is 00:10:45 i think i think it's mostly the iran stuff that sent it down today because it was barely sideways through the day and then uh when the saran strike thing came out um it went down um i took a leaf out of uh some of your guys book and had a bit of a play around with some meme coins today though there was one called uh actually called october which i into. It was kind of wild. I don't know how you guys do this. I don't. Because I went in the group chat in the group chat for this meme coin, and it was just insane.
Starting point is 00:11:14 You can't follow anything. Everyone's talking over everybody in the group chat. It was just mental. And then the dev just kind of decided, I don't want to do this token anymore. I'm going to do another one. They launched another one called Bulltober, I think it was. I was like, want to do this talk anymore i'm gonna do another one we launched another one called bull bulltober i think was i was like oh just like half the group super mad and the other half like just jumped in before insane anyway um that was my little foray into uh meme coins today um yeah i i think structurally everything's still the same as it was yesterday um i think it is this uh the macro stuff with the the the amount of and to simon's
Starting point is 00:11:49 point about you know um the cold war was a cold war and this is a hot war i mean vietnam was a was an extension of the cold war right and that was a shooty war that was two proxies against each other so i would still say that the idea of being a Cold War still does stand. The US is not putting people on the ground. Yeah, they are. US troops are in Gaza, and they're in Lebanon right now. I mean, yeah, okay, sure. But are they shooting people, or have they been there for a while? Yeah, I mean, US tied a port into Gaza, did a massacre of 250 people.
Starting point is 00:12:22 They're in a war. Great. did a massacre of 250 people there they're in the war okay but yeah i mean as i said vietnam was an extension of the you know the cold war that was a proxy war just because people are shooting doesn't mean it's no longer a cold war um but anyway yeah i think i think everything is still set up the same for bitcoin i just think this macro show which i think will pass it typically stuff like this is a flash in the pan and does pass. I guess the next 12 hours will show us whether Iran's actually going to strike Israel or not. If they do, I think things are going to get a lot more crazy. I don't want to go geopolitics, but there is a tie between Iran's goals and Russia's goals. So this is a very serious event that will impact markets.
Starting point is 00:13:04 It's why all the central banks are pumping as much money and bankrupting all the governments at the moment um it's it's a pretty serious i'll do my best to try not to worry about it i think yeah well most people yeah we'll do the best to try not to worry about it um i don't think i can have much impact on those decisions anyway so i'll just kind of uh it on the TV, I suppose. Yeah, no, I'm just talking about on your analysis. These are pretty serious events. I want to actually ask, Dave, can you still hear us?
Starting point is 00:13:35 Or have you walked into Mainnet? Because if you have, I would like, you know, we talked to Singapore last week heavily. And I saw some videos from Mainnet, which obviously is a conference in new york city it looks like there were 12 people there yeah it's it's can you hear me now by the way as i'm sitting yeah you sound good okay good uh i would say that compared to last year it's fascinating so i'll make three points point number one uh exhibitors you know sponsor type exhibitors down by more than 50 so not and not a lot of uh you know it's basically coinbase and the pith network uh and then you know a bunch of there's some tax firms and some other stuff like that but you don't see i guess tron as a business sponsor so basically
Starting point is 00:14:20 everyone is involved that's involved in financialization, a small number of those are here. They had speakers from out of the closet, from Citi, Franklin Templeton, a lot of other firms. But Citi generally has been very quiet. So the fact that they had speakers here were interesting. So, you know, it is not a crypto native conference. It's pretty much diametrically the opposite of Token49. So that's point one. Point two two foot traffic was actually pretty good by lunch the entire every seat was filled uh and you know so there's a lot of people here that are involved in the new york financial scene
Starting point is 00:14:57 that have gone from crypto curious to crypto involved and so there's an under the cover kind of you know groundswell here that hey you know the financial firms and new york city itself is going to get into crypto in a big way that's what they all think uh that said if you look at the speakers the speakers were i mean there was a great panel yesterday with uh three senate hopefuls all from the Republican side, Sam Brown, who was really interesting. Mike Rogers, who is, to be honest, is amazing and understands it. And then Bernie Moreno, who was very impressive, talking about the need and where crypto fits in with freedom and innovation, all of that stuff. And it's very clear that, and by the way, there are people like Richie
Starting point is 00:15:44 Torres and people on the Democratic side, Kirsten Gillibrand, who agree with that too. So it's very clear that, and by the way, there are people like Richie Torres and people on the Democratic side, Kirsten Gillibrand, who agree with that, too. So it's not just Republicans, just they were the ones speaking yesterday. The simple fact is that you get the feeling that my thesis, which I talked about with you a lot, about Bitcoin and having least escape velocity being proven out here. A lot of people are talking about that. The macro stage, the one that gets the most attendance, is talking about all these topics. The ones that are talking about DeFi, very, very sparsely attended. Is that bad? Is it bad for DeFi?
Starting point is 00:16:17 Well, I don't know. I mean, that's a longer conversation. Personally, I think DeFi will disrupt a lot of what goes on on Wall Street. But I think it's going to take a lot of time because there's huge money and huge lobbying dollars are going to go to keep marginalizing DeFi. And so we'll see. I mean, Trump is launching a DeFi platform and could be president. I'm going to admit that my base case, because I always expect the worst, hope for the best. My base case is four more years. Excuse me, is is a Harris way new, new path forward administration.
Starting point is 00:16:57 Obviously, I treat that with derision because it's a it's a continuation. But I think that what people are saying behind the scenes here, and I've heard it at least a dozen times, is, yeah, she's not going to continue the Elizabeth Warren stuff. She's from Northern California, yet we all know she's put multiple Elizabeth Warren staffers in her team. So my base case is that they're going to allow financialization or try to push financialization of Bitcoin in order to win. And I think everyone on this panel, not everyone on this panel, but most of the people on this panel, certainly Simon and I agree that that's a short term bandaid. And ultimately,
Starting point is 00:17:35 the US will fall behind as a result of that policy. But that seems to be what's going on here. I would note that if you're thinking from like a tradfi perspective that's also the regulatory path of least resistance right with the current etfs it's very easy to financialize bitcoin it's very easy to you know if we get slight changes start financializing other tokens uh having a framework in place where real money and real sort of established institutions can get involved in actual defy you know will take a long time but you know stable coins are a step along the way but if you're you're jp morgan if you're blackrock whatever um of course you're going to say you know you're going to focus on the stuff that you know you have certainty on and you can move next that's
Starting point is 00:18:22 right is that is that you zach because it shows on my spaces you're listening. Yeah, okay, fine. It's a glitch. But that's fine. I recognize your voice. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And it's worth pointing out that at least three different panels were very excited about Maxine Waters' offer to put stablecoins
Starting point is 00:18:40 back on the table. She called it a grand bargain, which of course means that you've got to give something up to get there. We don't know what's really behind it but there's a lot of excitement about that and that is a good thing undeniably uh as i said three different panels said that i mean it's one of the one of the first conference i actually spent most of the time listening to content so you know it it does matter and the franklin templeton people specifically she was brilliant but when she was you know they have was it sandy was it sandy call because she's one of my favorites yeah okay yeah she's brilliant it was sandy exactly i i actually i met a lot of people from here i think i i
Starting point is 00:19:14 shook her hands but i don't know her but she was brilliant what she said which i thought was very interesting was that if we get stable coin legislation that what that will open up is for the use of properly developed crypto assets as collateral. Now, obviously, he's talking about the Benny, which they've developed, and others. But what she's talking about is opening up collateralization. And her point, which is, which the people in the audience who are crypto native understood is, wait a minute, you're talking about opening up the rails for DeFi once you understand how you can create the stable coins. And so to me, it is a big deal to get that. The point that I was trying to make about the conference difference is that it feels like the innovation in the US is going to be confined to how could we steer this
Starting point is 00:20:01 through regulation, either via lobbying or new rules? And the innovation everywhere else is, how do we continue to create the applications that are going to make crypto sing? It really feels like that. Yeah, I think that that's a fair assessment. I've heard that the grand bargain with Maxine Waters is that all crypto executives in the United States have to give up their firstborn and their souls for stablecoin legislation. Well, my firstborn is a crypto executive and running my company. So that would be a hard one. Rude. Wow.
Starting point is 00:20:38 Rude. Okay. Well, I do. Listen, since we have both Peter Brandt here and Vinny, well, you went ahead and raised your hand, Peter. Anyways, I was going to say, we should definitely get back to talking markets a bit. Go ahead, Peter. Peter, go ahead. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:57 Yeah. No, no. First on regulation. Everybody needs to understand regulation is the equivalent of the old west where they took the cattle off the free range and they stuck them in the feedlot. And so that is what's happening is they're building the pen to stick the Bitcoin cattle in the feedlot where that can keep track out of them and bring them to slaughter. Now, just about the markets itself, everybody got excited
Starting point is 00:21:25 when Bitcoin moved above the August high. I did not get excited. We continue in Bitcoin to have a sequence of lower highs and lower lows that goes all the way back to March. Until that happens, I just see Bitcoin drifting lower. I think there's a real good possibility we'll see the Bitcoin gold ratio get down into the high teens, 17 or 18 to one. We're 21 plus right now. So I'm not really excited at Bitcoin. Sorry, really quickly. You know, to me, when I'm looking at the chart, I saw 65,000 as sort of the higher high. I think that's what you were mentioning there. So you don't view that break. I mean, it was above for about four days and the weekly candle closed above 65,000, but it was only slightly. So are you sort of just viewing that as not really a higher high?
Starting point is 00:22:16 No, the July high is the last high in the sequence. So no, we have to move above the July high and close before what I believe to be the sequence of lower highs and lower lows is disrupted. So, you know, moving above the August high. 70,000. Meaningless. So you're talking about 70,000-ish high. Yeah. Then we can start getting excited about the market changing behavior.
Starting point is 00:22:43 How do you view this through the lens of seasonality, Peter? So as I kind of mentioned at the beginning, this was our best September ever. I think it shocked a lot of people because it obviously started so badly. But Bitcoin was up over 7%. Previously, it was about 6% was the best September. We've only ever had two red Octobers. And we've obviously never had a red October after. It just makes me think of Hunt for Red October, but a red October after having a green September. Does any of that play into your analysis? Or do you simply look at the chart and seasonality is nonsense? No, I don't. Seasonality to the extent to how the market behaves relative to halving cycles. I mean, if you look at past halving cycles, you have a high during a bull market, then you kind of drift, then you have the halving cycles. I mean, if you look at past halving cycles, you have a high during a bull
Starting point is 00:23:26 market, then you kind of drift, then you have the halving, then you take out the high that happened just prior to the halving. This is the longest time Bitcoin has taken without making a higher high than the minor high that came before the halving. So from that standpoint, from terms of halving cycles, the market stalled out. So, you know, we'll have to wait and see. I mean, I still am holding to the fact that I think, you know, there's probably a 40% chance that we've seen the high of the entire bull cycle
Starting point is 00:24:02 that started back down in the mid-teens with 60% chance that, you know, we're still in a bull trend. But I need to really see a close above the 70 level to really move to a probability that we're 70% in a bull market that will top out at 135,000 in September of 2025. And what if we continue to make sort of higher lows here, right? We had that low sub 50, we had a low about 52,500. Obviously, those are unconfirmed if you don't view that we've had a higher high. But you know, if we come down here and put in kind of a low at, you know, 60 or something like that, would that give you any sort of conviction that structure could be changing?
Starting point is 00:24:46 No. I mean, hey, the market runs the risk of rolling over. I mean, you get everybody excited, but the market just can't do anything. Then we could roll over and see the market in the high 30s, low 40s, I think. I mean, I don't know. in the high 30s low 40s i think i mean hey peter we we lost you you got disconnected there so um once you get some better service coming back around vinny i see you lift your mic you got to be chomping at the bit here i don't know if you're bull or bear it's been a while so i don't know what to expect i mean the last yeah the i think we had a conversation in april where i said uh you know the market's topped out and uh you know i said same yeah yeah with this guys people were looking at me like you're crazy and where do we
Starting point is 00:25:33 end the year and i said 30k i think with this i still have the recording somewhere all that spaces but um you know everyone thought i was nuts to think that at the time was like 65 or 70 70 000 uh and i said we're gonna end probably at 30k and i'm the only one who had anything less Everyone thought I was nuts to think that at the time it was like $65,000 or $70,000. And I said we're going to end probably at $30,000. And I'm the only one who had anything less than $100,000. And I think that I agree with Peter. I think that's where we're going. There's just too much happening macro-wise.
Starting point is 00:25:59 We've got freaking missiles being thrown at Israel today, possibly. We've got U.S. squadrons going into – they just launched five squadrons, I think, right now. You've got an election coming up. There's just too much downside risk right now. And I think that investors at some point, if the vol gets high enough, they just start saying, you know what, we're going to go sit in gold and other assets. But, you know, you've got to understand, Bitcoin is not a safe haven asset. It's a risk on asset. That's what it is right now. Maybe in time it becomes a safe haven, but for now it's not. And so, you know, it's highly correlated to the NASDAQ, like highly. And I think in times of
Starting point is 00:26:31 distress, I think Bitcoin sells off like everything else. And then crypto is a, you know, effectively a leverage play on Bitcoin. And so that sells off as well. So that's where I'm at right now. Obviously, you know, it's not fair toi, but things are looking very shaky right now. And the inability to hit a new high after halving, as Peter says, it's been – everyone's been waiting for the – But it shouldn't have yet. I mean, we're here. It's in the zone now, right? This is the month that everyone's expecting Bitcoin to hit new highs.
Starting point is 00:27:01 But if it doesn't happen, then what? Big disappointment. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what else to tell you. I just think that when I'm looking around, I think MicroStrategy could possibly cause a massive crash in Bitcoin. I'm trying to figure out, I don't know if anyone here knows. Did you see the story, Vinny, that if they buy again, they'll have more than GBTC? Yeah. And then what happened to GBC? GBC at one point, they were trading at a discount to
Starting point is 00:27:28 NAV. And you go, oh, well, that can't happen here. Well, you don't know what the debt covenants look like. And I would love to get my hands on those. And I've asked some people, no one seems to know what the debt covenants are. But if the debt covenants for MicroStrategy is like, hey, you have to maintain a balance sheet of X and we go below X, they have to maintain a balance sheet of X, and we go below X. They have to start selling to unwind it, and that causes problems. So it's very much a leverage play. And because they're the largest holder of Bitcoin, second to maybe only Satoshi and then BlackRock's next.
Starting point is 00:27:57 And Block.1. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. If they have to unwind their Bitcoin at a rapid pace because the market's crashing down to 40 or 30-something, it's going to be a bit of a wash for the market. So, look, there's some risks here. I just don't think this is a straight-up situation. Now, obviously, if you're a Bitcoin bull, you take these risks and you say, fuck it, I don't care. I'm in this for the long haul. Let's go and hope whether it's this year or next year or the year after we get to over in this for the long haul. Let's go and hopefully, whether it's this year or next year or the year after we get to over 100,
Starting point is 00:28:28 it doesn't matter. That's fine. As a trader, I don't like it so much. Understood. Dave, go ahead. Well, two points. I think that a lot of people agree with Vinny. We started voting that with their money, which is good. And in fact, you see that by crazy low funding rates
Starting point is 00:28:46 and lack of leverage in the system. But when it comes to MicroStrategy, unless they've done something completely insane, which I don't think they have, all of their virtually, you know, everything that they bought below the 40,000 this year would not be is not leveraged particularly, I mean, unless we go down into the 20s
Starting point is 00:29:10 or whatever below that, and everything they bought this year, they have two years, I'm pretty sure it's a two year lockup on the convert. And so it's not like this is not a washout of all leverage, you know, and in fact, over the course, there have been multiple massive drawdowns in Bitcoin that would actually be bigger than the 50% drawdown that you're describing without MicroStrategy being forced to sell. So my strong suspicion is that that's a complete red herring. And the real question then becomes, how much leverage is there in the system on the
Starting point is 00:29:41 long side? And after eight months of this sort of action, where every single rally gets faded, I don't think there's a lot. And that to me feels more like a bottoming process. I mean, every single thing you're saying, Vinny, is exactly how I was feeling in 2021. And funny that it rallied again to back up to a new high again. And I was wrong, but whatever, but it felt like that and then of course we went completely boom and it shit the bed and you know and that's fine but you know when you see speculative excesses grow up this is we've had eight months or seven and a half months of sideways action now no speculative excess and you're describing a a you know a unwinding of speculation that just doesn't exist that's the that's the most important point. The second point is, the bombs flying and missiles flying short of a actual
Starting point is 00:30:29 nuclear war where, okay, who gives a crap about Bitcoin, because we're probably all dead anyway. You know, short of that, the central banks are going to take what's going on, and put money into the system. And every time, you know, when I'm listening to Peter, I keep thinking, let's say, cool. You know, when you look at charts, the chart that I care about is the M2 chart and the actual real monetary aggregate chart correlated to Bitcoin. That correlation is really good and more money is coming. And that's the important thing. So, you know, whenever you look at charts, you got to remember that there's everything you're looking at is denominated in something.
Starting point is 00:31:05 Bitcoin is purely denominated in currency, whereas companies are somewhat, but their profits can sometimes be impacted by what's going on. And so you have to look at that and understand it. But to me, that's a very big deal. I just think liquidity wins in the end. And that's what you've got to keep your eye on. And yeah, you're right. If liquidity dries up, the central banks say, oh, we're worried about inflation. We don't care if we cause recession. And China stops doing what they're doing. US stops doing what they're doing. Japan stops doing what they're doing. European central bank stops doing what they're doing, etc. Then you'll be right. But if they don't, then you won't be. Tom and Jonathan. right but if they don't then you won't be tom and jonathan morning everyone i wasn't going to join because i'm at the masari mainnet conference but i saw dave across the room joining so i had to
Starting point is 00:31:52 i felt like i wasn't uh i wasn't able to take a picture yeah you can make it really cute and talk into the same phone with shared airpods like where are you tom i'm to your left it's tom yeah maybe okay i i uh yeah anyway so um so if you look at a quick chart just google by the war i mean ever ever since 1990 i think the gulf war every incursion or invasion has been massive buying point and you could say that just for gas longer term i could buy any risk asset and it's you know it's gone up and about to help your downturns but wars have actually actually been particularly acute buying points over time. And if there really was, particularly in the Middle East, some level of undue tension, you'd see that expressed in oil price. And if you look at oil price today, it's at 70 bucks a barrel. It's moved like 2% or 3%.
Starting point is 00:32:38 So I wouldn't call that a knee-jerk reaction. What I really do care about is the liquidity that Dave kind of touched on. But particularly in China, as you're saying, stimulus is the biggest since, I think, 2008. And then obviously, we have the dynamics in the US, which we've talked about ad nauseum. So one thing I do want to touch on, though, for the bullish side of the equation is, I've been chatting with kind of market makers and funds here, and around the events, and seeing how bullish this kind of Bitcoin options is going to be. And one of the kind of key unlocks is that you're able to now like net your positions that you're going to be holding in options against further longs and reduce the collateral margins you would have had to express on the CME or others, which hold, I think, at the 10% collateral
Starting point is 00:33:18 requirements. So like there's a further upside leverage play on B2C that things like options are unlocking on top of all the bullish seasonals and underlying fundamental dynamics we've talked about here. I don't know. I'm not buying the bearish argument at all, personally. Jonathan? Yes. I like stats. I like cycles. And just look at September, we closed in the green second year in a row. But before that, from 2017 to 2022, six years in a row, every September was in the red. And some people knew that was like, oh, odds are we're going to close in the green again. Okay. Let's look at October then. If you discount the first couple of years of Bitcoin, we've only had two down months. October has only ever been down twice. Otherwise, it's down, it is down hard. It is the worst month on average, if it's in the red, only the four times, but on average, negative 19.46% down for October. And it's been in the green. October's closed in the green the last five years in a row.
Starting point is 00:34:44 So if you're going to take the same logic that we took with September, six years down in the red, if you're just flipping coins, it closed in the green. Sorry, I'm looking at Bitcoin monthly returns on Coinglass because I had looked into this earlier. The two down months on October are 3.83% and 12.95%. That's far from the worst.
Starting point is 00:35:07 Oh, I'm talking like averaging them up, averaging the down months, averaging your up months, and then averaging. But there's only two down months in October, and they're 12.95% and 3.83%. I mean, you look at September. 2011, negative 35.29%. This is a 2013 and up chart to your point. So, okay. Oh, there you go. I'm not seeing a 12, 11, 10.
Starting point is 00:35:28 2011 and 2012 were down months. And I don't know. Really, the first couple of years are probably not great months to use because you'll see... Yeah, that's why this one's obviously from... Plus 300%. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, if you're just going by
Starting point is 00:35:46 odds of it could be ugly. We don't know. Yeah. Simon, go ahead. Yeah, just wanted to echo what other people were saying. So, like, Vinny was suggesting the geopolitical tensions
Starting point is 00:36:01 might be bowed for the market. I've got a bit of a counter view that the reason these tensions are happening is because it's good for the market. And so, you know, we need to understand how centralized our markets have become. You know, the Federal Reserve is the U.S. economy now. Japan is deciding to keep the carry trade Ponzi alive. Bank of England is underwriting IMF debt for the Ukrainian war. China is stimulating. So the level of centralization that we have reached is peak. And in terms of oil, you can't interpret anything into the oil price. There's only one country in the world that controls the price of oil you can't interpret anything into the oil price there's only one
Starting point is 00:36:45 country in the world that controls the price of oil and that's saudi arabia and so if if saudi decides that it wants to create a geopolitically a geopolitically incentivized hyperinflation recycle then it can make that decision uh depending on whether it wants to put more into the petrodollar or more into the therobricks, whatever we want to call that. So we are literally in the mercy of centralized parties, which suggests that, you know, the markets, particularly the American market, is going to benefit from any of these escalations. And so then you take that out to the Bitcoin case, which I think is a play on both sides. And that's what I think is interesting about Bitcoin at the moment.
Starting point is 00:37:32 It benefits from the liquidity and it benefits from the hedge. It's a bit more of a speculative element to that, but I think that's kind of the situation. But I just wanted to echo the sentiments that the escalations are because it's going to be good for markets, and it is to protect the petrodollar. Really quickly, obviously, we brought up Maxine Waters and stablecoin legislation and happen to have Ron Hammonds here, who's Director of Government Relations at the Blockchain Association. You obviously spend your life digging into these things and tracking it and trying to impact the way this moves forward. So where do we stand right now, would you say, on stablecoin legislation and what's the status there?
Starting point is 00:38:22 Yes. Sorry, going back to politics for a hot second here, but I thought it'd be helpful to weigh in because we've already been having these conversations privately for a little bit. Hey, Ron, your mic's a little muted. Is there any way you could flip it over? Yeah, give me one second. Yeah, just give me two seconds.
Starting point is 00:38:37 I know people here are always looking for high-quality sound and sometimes don't get it. How about now? Is that better? A bit better. Okay, so apologies. I'm a little outside here. But yeah, so the conversations, looking for high quality sound okay i just don't get it how about now is that better it better okay i'm a little outside here um but yeah so the conversations at least on the stable coin front have been going on privately for for quite some time but uh it is shaping up that looks like lame duck which will be the time after the election till january when the new congress is sworn in
Starting point is 00:38:59 it does seem like stable coins is definitely in play now mind you we were here two years ago and sharon brown uh senate banking chair at time, and still has, blocked that deal. But there seems to be momentum right now behind the scenes. Now, we don't know exactly which version they're coalescing around, but I've had meetings with folks in the Capitol, on the leadership team, on the House side, pretty extensively on this. And it seems like it's being moving. So just heads of our folks, we don't exactly know where they're going to lie up on state versus federal pathway. That's been the holdup for, I'd say, a good part of over a year now. So the question is,
Starting point is 00:39:35 can Congress really force the hand of the Fed and Treasury here? We get something done by the end of the year, or is it going to stall out? And likely, given how politics works, we won't be having a stablecoin bill or even a market structure bill till July, maybe even September, October of next year. So it's going to be pretty do or die time, but things are picking up here at DC. Anything else that you're watching right now that we should be aware of? Sorry, can you say it one more time?
Starting point is 00:40:03 Anything you're watching here? Is there anything else that you're watching might not be on our radar, you know, that we might not be aware of that's worth discussing? Yeah, I would say the market structure legislation is largely stalling out, it seems. That was expected. It just got, there's too much politics that got in play in the Senate Agriculture Committee. So that's likely going to be a 2025 play. Not shocking, but we kind of expected it, even though we did get a lot more Democrat support than expected in the House back in May. You know, Sab 121 is still very much
Starting point is 00:40:31 pressing for a lot of members of Congress. So I think we could see some push maybe in the lame duck towards it as well. And finally, NFTs. They've been really percolating a lot in these conversations, also along with tokenization. The OpenSea, Wells knows, was very, very concerning. And you saw Gensler getting reamed two weeks ago over that, or last week, for apologies. And so there's been a lot of conversations with members of Congress about do we try to get something on NFTs included as well. So we'll see how it plays out.
Starting point is 00:40:58 But the chessboard is forming. And regardless of what happens in the election, we do feel a lot more confident that there is going to be some crypto in play here the question is yeah what else is going to be attached to it because there are a bunch of other political landmines that could really sink this whole thing yeah we're in an exponential and exponentially better position than a year ago regardless i would say go ahead peter yeah i i mean, I think Harris is serious about taxing unrealized profits. Now, how far that can go, you know, who knows? But, you know, obviously there's some incentive for Congress to declare Bitcoin a formal asset
Starting point is 00:41:37 because all of you hodlers think about being taxed on open profits uh one thing i'll add peter too and this is maybe just for folks awareness uh and this is kind of more looking towards january february march of next year it's taxes uh the trump tax cuts do expire uh and it has been the hot topic just for every industry as a whole because whenever there's a tax bill, everything's on the table for the most part. So, you know, I know we talk a lot about market structure and stable coins, but we are going to be shifting to tax policy very, very soon. So just for awareness for folks, get ready for that, because that's, we're going to be all tax experts pretty shortly, given how just politics generally is shifting right now peter did you have another comment no no that was just uh kind of the old hands yeah the old
Starting point is 00:42:32 hand gets every time perfect um i think we're gonna wrap up uh momentarily mario you here now yeah but yeah i know you're waiting for the sponsor to come up how are you oh yeah we got double marios it'sios. It's amazing. It's like seeing a double rainbow. How are you, man? You know I'm in Washington now, yeah? Yeah, how many interviews have you done in the last few days? Not that many.
Starting point is 00:42:54 I did one yesterday with the commissioner, Brendan Carr. And then I did Tulsi, Russell Bryan, and Jordan Peterson two days ago. Together or three separate interviews? Three separate, one after the other but when i was doing russell jordan was there listening and like right next to him but i don't think it was on camera and then vice versa because they did a speech together on stage that day as well and tomorrow i do tim pool and that's it and i go back home and these are all going up on your ex uh yeah bro yeah why are you shilling me?
Starting point is 00:43:26 I'm just, because it's my thing. I mean, it just blows my mind that we haven't done this on YouTube yet. Dickheads. Yeah, see, I'm not ping my team. Why? Yeah, just check the chats. I've been bothering Romy and you about it. You just don't pay attention to me anymore.
Starting point is 00:43:43 Actually, there's a message right here that says, should we discuss this today? By the way, Simon, you do the old... Simon, I think, lives on spaces. I think he does nothing else. He's made so much fun. He does nothing else but just talk 24-7 on spaces. More than me.
Starting point is 00:43:56 He speaks more on spaces in a day than I speak in a week. Every single space's face is there. He's talking about Ecuadorian politics, Palestinian politics, Russia-Ukraine war, or why the SEC sucks when Simon is there. He's talking about Ecuadorian politics, Palestinian politics, Russia-Ukraine war, or why the SEC sucks when Simon's there. But Simon, why are we talking about, you know, a while ago when crypto was crashing and there's the yen carry
Starting point is 00:44:14 trade, everyone's talking, yeah, Iran's attack on Israel, Iran's attack on Israel plays a big role. Well, now the attack is pretty much imminent and the markets don't care. So it means that geopolitically no one cares about that attack anymore. It's literally imminent. Thes said it's imminent tell i said a few minutes because a lot of images are showing that the attack is about to happen yeah the markets don't give a shit yeah mario like you know when when bitcoin gives you the opportunity to give you the level of freedom that um it's given me um i feel like uh when events like this are happening
Starting point is 00:44:43 i need to try and uh take advantage of my freedom of speech while at last i don't think freedom of speech is gonna last and uh elon gave us this platform so i intend to give everything i can while at last to try and prevent our governments from um taking us in the direction they're taking us so uh that's my thing a little bit dramatic answer simon well i mean yeah when you when you follow every step of these wars um you realize that i know i'm i'm in a different world like i'm i don't i come on the space and we're talking about uh the such minute things and why the market moved up or down 3%. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:26 You know you can bet on this stuff on Polymark. Polymark is blowing up. Whether Iran will strike Israel before November.
Starting point is 00:45:36 I was just tracking it. It spiked to 90% but it's coming down now so I think like the odds of a strike seem to be coming
Starting point is 00:45:43 down. It's mental though we're watching like a prediction market. It's at 81% currently. now so i think like the odds of a strike seem to be coming down a little bit it's mental though we're watching like that now a prediction market it's at 81 currently is there a poly market on the odds of us getting uh three mario novel accounts on one spaces well this is i'm not on it but um there's loads of ones about hezbollah it caused some issues and then um vitalik said that he supports play market and doing it. And Polymarket are waiving all their fees. They're saying we're doing it as a public good.
Starting point is 00:46:08 So there's like a wisdom of the crowds type stuff. Has anyone done a back testing the actual success of Polymarket betting? We obviously talk about it's the best place and people are putting their money where their mouth is. But is there like a full analysis of every market that's been opened on Polymarket and whether the majority was correct or not, etc.? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:46:33 I would love to see how accurate it is in hindsight. Was there a poll on whether Nasrallah was killed or not, Simon or Dan? Do you remember when Nasrallah was killed or not, Simon or Dan? Do you remember when Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, had a strike? I don't think so. They got rid of the death ones because it created a bounty on their head.
Starting point is 00:46:54 Oh, shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. When you think about it logically, it makes sense, right? Will this person die by this day? Yes or no? And then it basically puts a bounty on their head for someone to go and kill them. Yeah, this was mental. That's like second-order effects that you don't think about at the time but then it's like yeah if you remember this was
Starting point is 00:47:07 all the arguments when vitalik was pitching like smart contracts and stuff they were talking about what about assassination markets and um betting and all that stuff and creating and saying this was a real debate around the time of when we were trying to decide whether we were pushing forward smart contracts or not um but yeah on the on on the iran side this is just an american narrative so far there's been no official confirmation from iran it's just been leaked and i always get suspicious when um america it means they're trying to drive it in a certain direction are you saying there was no official confirmation of iran they're gonna strike is? I don't think that's how
Starting point is 00:47:46 it works. I mean, look, we are going to strike Israel in 12 hours. That's how it worked last time. No, it did. The one in April, they gave America two weeks notice. They invoked Article 21 of the United Nations. They did everything in line. They did put a release. So first, they didn't
Starting point is 00:48:02 say officially, like, hey, we will strike. It was things behind the scenes. But they did release a video. I don they didn't say officially, like, hey, we will strike, it was things behind the scenes, but they did release a video, I don't know if you saw it, about an hour ago, saying something along the lines of, like, something's coming or the attack is coming, something along those lines. Iran's trying to do everything it can to not be at war because it's a disaster for them,
Starting point is 00:48:20 but Israel's definitely trying to push it to war and try and get america's involvement yeah i agree with you i don't disagree i think iran has been more restrained than expected but there's the kind of arguments that hezbollah could have just stopped attacking israel six months ago yeah well hezbollah set the terms of engagement which is and free palestine give self-determination and u.s keeps but i mean veto voting in United Nations and pretending that it's negotiating, which is a big problem. America
Starting point is 00:48:49 can end this tomorrow if it wanted to. Yeah, well, that's completely different to the point I'm making. I agree with you. America and Israel could end this any day. This is definitely the appropriate venue for this, guys. We should continue this conversation maybe for a few hours. I wish if I was host, because you know hosts can remove
Starting point is 00:49:06 co-hosts. But the Hezbollah, you know, and still if Hezbollah did stop the strike, so Iran decided to take the risk of and I'm not saying it's the wrong decision or the right decision trying to end the war on Gaza. And that gamble obviously led to where we are right now. Again, I'm not saying it's a bad
Starting point is 00:49:22 gamble. You know, there's a very fair argument to be made that what Iran was doing was a limited way to end the war, but I'm saying it just led to this. Anyway, you can bet on it on Polymarket if you want. That was the point I was making.
Starting point is 00:49:37 If you want to crypto bet on it. Thank you, Dan, for keeping it relevant. Let me go to Ajit. How are you, man? Ajit, are you there? Yeah, I'm here. I'm absolutely fantastic. How are you doing?
Starting point is 00:49:52 Good, man. The first time we spoke was during another crazy period that was very dramatic for a lot of us during the FTX collapse. Most people don't know that Ajit was one of our
Starting point is 00:49:59 most regular guests along with Simon, funny enough, in the FTX collapse days and spent hours with us on those spaces before Scott contributed anything to our spaces just want to make that clear and the real OGs on stage so it's a pleasure to have you guys and your so how involved are you with data free network data free ai you know i i am actually an advisor and investor in data 3 and siddharth who's also a speaker is actually the founder
Starting point is 00:50:33 so i'm here just as a cheerleader more than anything else well you've got so that you've got a really good cheerleader and she is one of my favorite guys uh for over a year now but so that's not i don't know if he's on stage. Are you on stage, Siddharth? It's glitching for me. Yes, I am. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good.
Starting point is 00:50:52 So I'm just trying to understand. This is going to be an interesting discussion because I really understand. When you say federated AI and RAG, what is that exactly? Please explain because I think this is something that I should probably start focusing a lot more on understanding. Sure.
Starting point is 00:51:10 Federated learning is a new paradigm in AI in terms of how you train your models. The classical way of training models is getting data from different sources, putting them into a data center, and then training your models, right? Federated learning is the opposite mechanism in which you take the model and push it to where the data is.
Starting point is 00:51:32 And the reason why it's done is for data privacy. And the advantage is that you don't need to move or copy the data. You're actually moving the model to the edge. You're computing on the data. And edge, you're computing on the data, and then what you're sending back is essentially the model updates, which is essentially the weights and bias or whatever the model has learned from that local data set. And this you can do across multiple such data sets and then collaborate all of the models together. So the outcome is the same, but the advantage here is that it's more data privacy centric and it does not need you to copy the data at all.
Starting point is 00:52:11 Does that answer your question? It does. So while you're answering, I had my phone cut out for a few about 10 seconds and the hotel phone was ringing. So it's two things happening at the same time. So it's actually the main benefit, but I heard about 50% of it, or 70%. The main part of it is the privacy aspect. But from a technical perspective, if you could oversimplify it again, sorry for kind of sticking on this, I'm happy to add another couple of minutes, but I really want to understand it. So how does it achieve the privacy aspect from a technical perspective? So the privacy is achieved because the data does not need
Starting point is 00:52:47 to leave the premise of the owner. So you're not copying the data. The model does not even know what the data is. The model is just sitting there and gets trained on the data in a safe environment, in a local environment that is completely under the control of the data owner. So the data does not leave the control of the data owner. So the data is on data from ISA. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:53:07 So essentially you've got all that data out there. The way AI works right now, that's actually really fascinating. The way AI works right now is all that data can just get kind of scraped out of all these different sources and trained internally, being able to read the data, all these learning algorithms. That's how it works right now. And what you're saying is that you're going to have those little hubs, those private hubs, where the learning will take place,
Starting point is 00:53:33 like the AI algorithm will not be able to read the data, but will be able to train using that data in those private hubs. Am I oversimplifying it correctly? Yes, you're absolutely right. And that's what the platform is. This is important because one of the main problems right now when it comes to AI is obviously the whole IP debate. You've just got all these different LLMs scraping the data and leveraging data without compensating for the data.
Starting point is 00:54:11 And we're having all these legal cases against OpenAI for that reason. Does that solve for that? So essentially you're allowed, when you say federated, I'm assuming you create those little hubs. So that means those hubs could be, whenever they're being used, they could be owned by, let's say, New York Times, and then New York Times could charge OpenAI, whatever AI algorithm, for using that data, for training using that data?
Starting point is 00:54:36 Absolutely. And the problem goes beyond just that. The problem goes beyond beyond data privacy laws or IP conflicts. The real problem with the current way of accessing public fine web is the fact that we have reached the limit of what can
Starting point is 00:54:56 be scraped off the internet. So in all probability, we are not going to see any quantum leaps when it comes to new LLMs. There's no new knowledge that can be gained out of public domain. But how do you fix that? You don't
Starting point is 00:55:11 create more data. You essentially train the data in different ways. Is it beyond privacy? What are the other advantages of having those little training hubs? The other advantages, as you obviously mentioned, is the monetization, right?
Starting point is 00:55:28 So now you have the ability to monetize data and you can collaborate on domain-specific models. You incentivize those creators to actually train the algorithm now. Now they've got an incentive to participate in the training process, to create more data for the algorithm. Correct?
Starting point is 00:55:46 Exactly. And you could, exactly. And you could. Am I cutting out or is he cutting out? Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. Okay, good. You're cutting out.
Starting point is 00:56:00 Okay. So you are responding and then I'm going to dig into what you do now. I'm a bit more excited. Sorry, could you are responding and then I want to dig into what you do now. I'm a bit more excited. Sorry, could you repeat that? I was saying I was a bit more excited. So I'll let you finish what you're saying so I can ask more questions now and understand how the token fits into all this as well. But let's go one by one.
Starting point is 00:56:18 So essentially what I've said is correct. So essentially aligns the incentive model. So you've got the creators now that has incentivized to train the the llm it was through monetization and through privacy yeah that's it so alliance incentives through monetization and privacy yes and it and it helps to create better ai models you know following all the data privacy laws. You're completely covered from legalities. You know that you're working ethically and you're getting data from the right
Starting point is 00:56:54 sources and that too highly qualified data. That's something that our platform also guarantees through blockchain proofs that the data is what it actually says that it is because there is proof that needs to be generated for private data. So that's something that
Starting point is 00:57:10 the platform guarantees. So you're able to monetize, you're able to build great models, and you're able to build very specific data sets as well to monetize it. So that's what federated RIG means, correct?
Starting point is 00:57:27 No, that's the federated learning. RIG means retrieval augmented generation. And that's something that you can use as an individual or as an entity or a corporate. It's another mechanism of how do you use private data. So an example of that could be that today, if you interact with ChatGPT, right, you go to the prompt and you type in your query, it goes to ChatGPT directly and gives you the answer, right? Now, the answer that it's giving
Starting point is 00:57:56 is from the knowledge that it has. But what about your private data? What if you wanted to ask something about your private data? How do you create a system around it? So that's what RAG does. RAG, the query first goes to your local database. So you intercept the query, you put it into your local database, and you search for all answers and information that you have that relate to the query. And then you take all of that information and then you send it to the LLM and you tell it to give an answer based on that information and not of the information that it has. So it gives you the answer based on only your private data.
Starting point is 00:58:37 So essentially you're personalizing it a bit more, correct? Yes. That's so fascinating. All right. So then you guys are a crypto project. So where is the crypto element in this? How does the token fit into all this? So when you create a RAG model
Starting point is 00:58:57 or when you create a federated learning model or whether you create a data set, which is collection of your private data to participate in federated learning processes, you are using resources of the network. And these resources are hardware, GPU storage, network flow, all of that is deployed on decentralized networks.
Starting point is 00:59:20 So we have the best of the decentralized networks participating in our project, and they provide all the hardware for it. So when you're using the resources, you pay in our tokens. So that's point number one. Point number two is that you can create your own models. And if you think that your model is now something that you can trade for value of service for others then you can deploy them on the platform within with one click so you can monetize from the models that you've created so that is also something that payment happens through our tokens and the third part is that
Starting point is 00:59:58 we provide proofs of whatever execution is happening on the platform in terms of data guarantees, execution guarantees, and all of that is on-chain. So that's where our token is used as well. Okay, so three areas where the token is used. It says she... But the way it's... How seamless is it? So a lot of people just want to be able to press a button
Starting point is 01:00:23 and that's it. So a lot of these training algorithms, so whether it's the RAG aspect of it, or the direct-to-consumer aspect, or the B2B aspect, it's called federated AI. When you say he's talking and he's using those three ways, how would it be from a UI perspective for the user? How would it look like?
Starting point is 01:00:48 So two aspects here. One is how easy is it to build AI models on our platform? And the answer is that it's almost zero code. So our rag models, you don't even need to know programming. You can just go create your own personal AI agents on your private data by just clicking a few buttons. And that's it. As far as payments is concerned, we have made it extremely easy for both crypto and non-crypto users as well. And we believe that's the way to go forward to be able to onboard non-crypto people into the crypto network as well.
Starting point is 01:01:26 So we accept both fiat as well as crypto payments, but all of them get converted to tokens and get paid out to the node network and everybody who's working for the network. your white paper has been reviewed by Cornell University, University of Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, and Indiana Institute of Science, as well as the Advanced Technology for Humanity. You don't see those on any white paper. Can you tell me a bit more on who's backing you? Who are your investors? How do you get... These are all official, I guess,
Starting point is 01:02:01 so we can call someone at Carnegie Mellon or Cornell and confirm this yeah absolutely you can go to our youtube channels sorry but who who like is it someone that used to like is an ex-professor from there and you put the logo or is actually cornell university someone within cornell university and then officially recognize it somebody within their professors there so you can call them up and you can send them an email and check, but you could also go to a YouTube channel and you could look at our discussions and interactions with the professors from all of these universities. That's an easier
Starting point is 01:02:38 verification. Okay, I'm not doubting that,'m just kind of seeing what level they've been involved. And because you have Ajit, so kind of no doubt there. But the other question is, who are your investors, the backers? And then what's the plan for launching the token? What exchanges, what launch plans, what's the date? So we were planning to launch it at the end of this year, but we're waiting to see the better market conditions um so most likely second uh first quarter of uh the next year we are backed by great investors like alpha blue bill a canem capital um sandeep is also our angel investor so he's also there um so so it's it's a big thanks to our investors in our community.
Starting point is 01:03:25 We have like 65,000 strong communities, 65,000 strong community. So, it's a big thanks to the investors in the community that help us contribute and code in, you know, in finances. That's allowed us to do research. So, this work has come out after two years of research on the white paper and on the technology. So a big thanks to them. Okay. And do you have any exchanges or launchpads that you've already confirmed or not yet? Not yet.
Starting point is 01:03:56 So we are talking to a lot of them. I'll not make any official announcements, but some big ones. And I mean the top tier ones. Oh, nice. And then you'll top tier ones. Oh, nice. And then you'll be able to confirm those later on. That's pretty fascinating. And Ajit, when did you get involved?
Starting point is 01:04:12 Why did you get involved? So for many of your listeners who do not know, I'm 54 years old. In an earlier life, I used to be a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. And one of my challenges in web3 has been that a lot of projects out there are frivolous as in they are like really more hype than substance when i came across condola where the founders and their team was full of mathematicians scientists university professors engineers
Starting point is 01:04:42 it was crazy in fact know, the question you asked that, can we verify what you're doing? I actually verified a lot. For instance, because I have an undergrad degree in computer engineering, I'm familiar with a very popular international society called the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers or IEEE. So I have seen Candola papers being published in various international conferences, including the IEEE conference. And I was like, this team is solid, as in we can't doubt that. What they are trying to do is quite paradigm shifting, which means there's always a probability attached to whether they will succeed. I kept engaging with them now for, I think, about a year and a half.
Starting point is 01:05:21 Siddharth, who lives in India, I live in Dubai. Siddharth has come over to my place in Dubai and stayed with me for 20 days where we thrashed this out. Every single day, we would be talking late into the night and stuff. And I was a convert. I started out as an advisor. I also became an investor. This is a disclaimer for everybody who's listening.
Starting point is 01:05:40 Oh, nice. And you helped in getting them to those university professors to review the white paper? Was that your idea? No, actually, it's the other way around. They already had the university professors on their side. It was not my connection. It was something that I did.
Starting point is 01:05:56 But they already were a good team. What stage is the product at now? We are doing the beta we're doing the the beta launch uh in two days so you should be able to go on to data feed and you should be able to create your own personal ai agent data3.network still doesn't work so i'm guessing the website will start working in two days yes okay perfect all right for now the website's candela dot network now it's pretty fascinating and i think you've been first thank you for having us on the cap table and i've learned something new something pretty fascinating um the token i'll ask one more question again just can you explain the three points very briefly for the audience
Starting point is 01:06:40 on the on the utility of the token within candola or within data3 just very briefly kind of wrap it up so the first is that you get to um let's talk about the utility which is you will need 10 tokens to uh create your rag models uh because you're going to pay for the so this this is essentially when you leverage the ai the kind of personalized ai is can i call it that yes personalized customized ai so to be able to use a personalized ai you'll need the tokens for that with a very clean air ui all right number one that's number one number two uh the same goes for when you're deploying uh federated learning models and when you're creating that's for the creators so just to kind of clever that's for the creators so just to kind of clever
Starting point is 01:07:25 that's for the creators so the creators are leveraging the federated learning model so where ai the llm could use their data to to obviously learn um when the llm is learning they'll need the the the creator will need to use the token or the ai the a creator will need to use the token or the AI, the creator will need to use the token. But how? Can you explain how? Because the creator is meant to be compensated for this because they're offering their data to Data3. So if they're using a token as a cost to be able to leverage the federated learning,
Starting point is 01:07:59 where's the ROI for them? Do they receive tokens in return for offering their data? Yes. So to host the data, they need a very small amount of CAN tokens, but they get compensated for the data that they're sharing and the creators get
Starting point is 01:08:18 paid for that. In the form of a token. So that's the selling pressure on the token will come in from these reward token coming in from the creators getting the token and the buy pressure will come in from the RAG model and of course new creators wanting to
Starting point is 01:08:34 set up. But I think the RAG model will need to compensate for the federated learning model getting the tokens as part of the compensation. Is there a burning mechanism involved as well? Yes, there is a burn mechanism involved. And the third utility of the token?
Starting point is 01:08:50 The third utility of the token is the data DAOs. So if you can create a group of people can come together and create, let's say, a very domain-specific highly valued data set, then you can collectively decide on what the price of that
Starting point is 01:09:05 data set could be. And you will need to have CAN tokens to vote on that. For example, if we are working with a few universities in the US who want to create a healthcare model for detecting lung cancer and colon cancer,
Starting point is 01:09:22 and they have a model right now that works, but it does not work well for Southeast Asia. It's like a federated model, but with multiple parties involved through a DAO structure, correct? Correct. I'm doing pretty good. I'm getting them. I see you're interesting. By the way, if I get something wrong just tell me Siddharth
Starting point is 01:09:45 like you said no matter you got it wrong it's actually XYZ so when you say correct I'm taking you seriously that I got it right so I understand everything pretty well yeah
Starting point is 01:09:52 absolutely you're being spot on I enjoy these discussions I like them because I learn new shit but really cool again really glad to be on the cap tab
Starting point is 01:10:01 I know we went over 15 minutes because I obviously wanted to really dig into it so I understand all these different terms in this industry is blowing up. So I love what you guys are doing. Love that you got Ajit and other professors on board.
Starting point is 01:10:13 Keen to know what exchanges you end up launching on. I'm pretty confident with your community and where you guys are at and that the beta is out in two days. Do you have a big waiting list? It's a beta, it doesn't need a waiting list. But do you guys have a lot of people waiting to start using Data 3? Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 01:10:27 So first week in our alpha release, the first week we had planned for a total of 6,300 gigabytes of storage. That's what we thought the network would provide for free. The first week itself, we ran into 1,600 gigabytes of storage for requests. Oh, nice. And till now, we have 43,000 gigabytes of requests in the pipeline. So it's huge in terms of the market opportunity. Just think about it.
Starting point is 01:10:56 If you could create your own personalized AI agent at a very minimal cost, why wouldn't you? Nice. We enjoy, I really appreciate the discussion. And I appreciate you? Nice. We enjoy. I really appreciate the discussion. And I appreciate you both making the time for anyone else to check out data three, you can dollar network the handles and the title.
Starting point is 01:11:14 And you can also click on their profile on stage. And more importantly, now, you know what can do is now, you know how it works. So keep that in mind as you start seeing them pop up on your Twitter feed and you see token launch incoming in a few months time.
Starting point is 01:11:28 But we're on the cap table. I'm pretty happy, especially after this discussion. If there's anything more I could do, Siddharth or Ajit, do let me know. Just hit me up. Ajit, you've got my personal number. Just message me and I'm more than happy to help and be more involved because I'm pretty excited about what you guys are building. But otherwise, it's been a really good discussion
Starting point is 01:11:45 from a selfish perspective because I've learned a lot. So thank you for that. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jess. Thank you. Yeah, so guys, we'll be back tomorrow, same time as always. What we'll be talking about, I'll probably
Starting point is 01:12:01 jump into the space and talk about the Iranian attack on Israel. I'll probably hijack the space and talk about the Iranian attack on Israel. I'll probably hijack the discussion. But it's been a really good discussion. I really appreciate it. We'll see you all tomorrow. Thank you so much, everyone. Bye-bye.

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