The Wolf Of All Streets - Warning: The Most Dangerous Hack In Crypto History! l Friday Five
Episode Date: December 15, 2023Friday Five is THE show about the main news in crypto. Join me and Nathaniel Whittemore as we delve into the main topics that moved the markets. Nathaniel Whittemore: https://twitter.com/nlw 00:0...0 Show intro 01:15 Massive #ledger hack 12:55 New crypto accounting rules 15:55 Fed pivot rally 22:21 #tether #usdt finally bends to OFAC 26:50 #solana phone pumps #bonk memecoin 29:30 #donaldtrump new NFT collection ►►TAP A super-powered money app - an all-in-one investment, money, and trading platform. Coming to the U.S. soon, with tons of bonuses. 👉https://referral.withtap.com/scottmelker ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK. 👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/  ►► OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $10,000! 👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=453131... ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/  ►►NORD VPN GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets  Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io  Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe  Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c  #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
We all know that I'm prone to hyperbole, but yesterday's hack of Ledger and the theoretical
implications on DeFi could have been absolutely horrendous. Yes, it did not end up being that bad,
but that's only because they caught it so early. Almost every wallet in the Ethereum ecosystem
could have been affected. And all of this in a week where the Fed effectively pivoted.
We finally had a change to accounting rules. We have Tether bending the knee to OFAC. There's a lot going on. Good thing I've
got NLW here today for the Friday Five to review all of it with you guys. Let's go. view everything that happened in the week. Sometimes we do it with a big smile on our face.
And sometimes, frankly, I just have to shake my head and say, this is such a shit show and we are
not ready for primetime. Today is one of those shit show not ready for primetime days, in my
humble opinion. Just to set the table, yesterday I woke up, I was happy, started going through the
news. There was a small hack on OKEx. All right. A couple million.
Yearn Finance apparently got hacked. And then the mother of all potential disasters hit,
which was the Ledger exploit, right? We've got this, what we know about the massive Ledger hack.
Maybe you can give us the broad strokes, then we can talk about sort of the implications of
what happened there. Yeah. I mean, a couple important notes on it. The
exploit was not around Ledger hardware. It was the ConnectKit software. And effectively,
it was a phishing attack from a former employee where they were able to get access to the Ledger
code base so that they could serve a set of screens that looked very similar to the confirmation
messages that Ledger sends.
But instead of signing to do the thing that you thought you were doing,
you were basically signing access to your Ledger away. It was caught. There was about five hours
of it potentially being a problem. There were two hours in which it was actively being exploited.
So caught super fast and patched. But I think to your point, Scott, more than the
$450,000 to $600,000 or whatever it ended up being that was lost, because that's obviously
very small relative to big crypto hacks. I think that it hit people hard because of the
implications, the potential that it could have been so much
worse very, very easily. And that it was an attack on a very critical piece of infrastructure.
It's much easier to write away, you know, some kind of, you know, a bridge that a very specific
set of users, you know, are doing kind of novel exogenous things with versus something that sort of feels like
tons and tons of normal people within the spectrum of crypto are using on an everyday kind of basis.
Yeah, it's the theoretical implications that were so bad. We basically got lucky that the CTO
of Sushi noticed it, put it out there, which is an incredible testament to the way this community
works and how fast things can be patched. But Ledger didn't originally notice it. And think about how many places Ledger
completely blew it here. It's an ex-employee who got phished, which means they didn't remove
his permissions and he could still be phished with some sort of access. And it was a single
point of failure where a bit of malicious code could effectively
infect every dApp in the Ethereum ecosystem. I mean, this was a list at the time,
the list of affected protocols on Ledger. These are just the GitHubs. I mean, it was literally
everything. Metamask tweeted, don't use Metamask for 24 hours. We're aware of this. Then they
deleted the tweet after the patches were made. But at the time,
it felt like any transaction you signed on the Ethereum blockchain could have
effectively been affected in some way, potentially been affected, and that you could have had your
wallet drained. That hits a lot different, even then, to your point, a much bigger exploit of one
specific wormhole or ecosystem.
Yep. So I think that there are a couple things. And we're the crypto industry, so I can't imagine that this is the direction we'll go. But if we were trying to be nuanced and actually learn
lessons from this, I think that we'd start to break it apart into who has blame for what and
what are the implications of each different piece.
Ledger for sure has to take lumps for a former employee still having access. I mean, their
letter or their CEO's note made it seem like that's obviously not something that they try to
do. But ultimately, if your entire brand is security, you can't screw things up like that.
So Ledger's got to eat it on that. It just is the reality, you know, they're going to have to build back that user trust, they're going
to have to have some way of explaining how that's not going to happen again. Unfortunately, they're
also dealing with they've had a number of different sort of controversial points. So there's a lot of
sort of brand challenges there. Then there's also, I think, other issues, I think that right now,
because people were so terrified of this, because the implications
hit so clear and so fast, it's very easy to just make Ledger the exclusive boogeyman of
this situation, rather than, one, understanding that based on market demand, Ledger is not
just like people are thinking about Ledger as though it's just some hardware wallet.
And I think part of the initial scary response is they're imagining their hardware wallet
being compromised.
But in reality, Ledger is two totally different sets of products.
Ledger is a hardware wallet.
And then there's this whole suite of tools which allow people to use their hardware wallet
to interface with the rest of the ecosystem because people want to use their hardware
wallets to interface with the rest of the ecosystem because people want to use their hardware wallets to interface with the rest of the ecosystem. And this is why you have Bitcoiners all over the internet screaming like you guys are
idiots and it's not actually your keys, your coins, and your hardware wallet if you're using it to
connect to random DeFi protocols. Now, that's not necessarily the correct take. The whole point of
crypto is that it's productive and that you can use it for different things. But I do think that
there's some aspect of this where we have to understand that there's a difference if we're talking about
individual good behavior as relates to preserving our wallets. If you put the things that are on
your hardware wallet subject to all these things, you're opening yourself up to more exploits.
Not that people shouldn't do that. There's a reason that we have these tools. It's just important to realize that there is an inherent piece of that there. And there's room for us to think differently about that point at, you know, you mentioned prime time and how ready we are for this. This is a not all that sophisticated exploit, but an extremely like easy one to fall prey to. I mean, phishing attacks work across every industry for a reason. They mimic things that people are used to doing. People are habitual creatures where
if they've done something a thousand times, it's natural for them to just do the thing that seems
like the thing they've done before. And so I think that the problem is more endemic than ledger.
And that's another part of why it's so scary. And again, this is not to say that ledger doesn't need
to eat its shit for the part of it that was absolutely sort of part of its security process.
I just think that if people only take away from this, ledger equals bad, they're going to miss
the lesson and they're going to open themselves up to this sort of thing over and over and over again.
No, and the very clear lesson, and I spoke to Jamison Lopp yesterday, obviously, who is as OG
in the security, crypto security industry as there is, the bottom line here is if you're
an investor, you need to have one wallet or one set of multi-sig wallets for your core position
that almost never touches anything except for simply sending a transaction to your trading
wallets, right? You have to basically have a stack of multiple wallets for different purposes so they don't expose your entire portfolio to something as simple as malicious code.
And so this leads me to a question that I want to ask you.
At this point, I think we have two ships in the wind passing.
We have self-custody, which I think people are becoming more fearful of.
And we have centralized exchanges, I'll particularly say Coinbase because I think
it's viewed as the safest, which is, I think, trending towards people feeling more comfortable,
not less comfortable with, even with all of the disasters we had with centralized
platforms last year. But if you have Coinbase that has a ProtonMail that also has 2FA attached
to it, and you use a YubiKey to be able to send transactions, it's pretty secure, right? Especially
if you're using their prime or their custody. At this point, do you think people should be
more comfortable trusting themselves and these unknown unknowns in self-custody? Or do you think
that we're getting to the point where at least with part of your money, certainly that you're
trading with, you might be more comfortable in the centralized exchange? I am certainly not the
pure Bitcoiner, keep all your money off of exchanges type of
person. I think what's happening, this has been happening for a couple of years. We are getting
a spectrum of products that hit every part of that spectrum, right? From purely cold storage to
YOLO, let a Justin Sun exchange do whatever they want with my assets. Every spot in the middle
there has now more or less some offering.
And I think what people are starting to figure out is, to Jameson Lopp's point, that different
categories of assets probably mandate different types of solutions, right?
He was basically saying, if you're an investor, you got to have the part that's your reserve
separated, duh.
And then the part that's your reserve separated, duh.
And then the part that's sort of more risky can be somewhere else.
I don't think it's actually that dissimilar for individuals who are managing their own crypto, right?
If you have a half a Bitcoin or a Bitcoin that's reserved for your kid, right, that
you know you're never going to trade with, put that crap on your cold wallet of choice,
your hardware wallet of choice, your hardware wallet
of choice, stick it in a drawer somewhere, you know, write, write down your, your, your password,
put it somewhere else and, and leave it, you know, but then you're probably still going to use other
stuff for, you know, you're going to use other assets for active trading and participating and
you want airdrops cause it's fun and all this, you know, like look at bonk, it's going crazy.
You know, like there's, there's a reason that people participate in the ecosystem
that's fun. Like you just have to understand there's a different risk profile there. I think
people are starting to do that naturally. I think that the, you know, the reality is that the gray
area is being filled in. The challenge is that there is a messy middle. And this is, I mean,
Ledger more than any other company has lived inside the messy middle because they've been trying to build products for multiple parts of that spectrum.
If Ledger had never built anything but a hardware wallet that was meant to remain disconnected,
they wouldn't have had the same issues. They've tried to introduce products like the,
the sort of, you know, multi-sig where you give part of it to other people.
You know, so it's sort of a, you're not exclusively alone,
which created all sorts of challenges for them from a messaging standpoint and from an actual
practical product standpoint. They've tried to do Ledger Live and Connect, which again, are like,
allow you to use your Ledger to interface. And it's, those are the areas, the things that aren't
just the pure, you know, cold storage that are challenging for them. And I don't know if the takeaway is you just can't blend
the centralized custody model with the cold storage model and that there's always going
to be problems in that middle space because you're just exposed to too much user error and challenge.
But I think that if we are trying to take away as individuals, certainly just having better hygiene and more
sophistication about which assets are being risked for what things is probably always a good
approach. Yeah. As one of the comments, do not sign messages in your main hardware wallet. For
this particular exploit, it's that simple. But I think if you're looking at the umbrella,
it's more nuanced, kind of like you said. I can even tell you anecdotally, two weeks ago,
I was looking for an old ledger, somehow
hid it too well from myself.
I did eventually find it, but I had then replaced the private keys on another ledger and I could
see the wallet on Etherscan and everything was there, but nothing was coming up on my
new wallet.
And I had to then attach it to the legacy version instead of the newer version.
And nobody is figuring this out if the people who are sophisticated take three or four hours just to find their coins. And so it's still really early.
That's how I'm going to kind of wrap that one up because we obviously have to move on to other
topics. Here's a more favorable topic. FASB confirms fair value approach for corporate
crypto holdings. The new rules by the US Accounting Standards Center would go into
effect in December 2024. That's notable because we were waiting, I think, even until 2025, although that's not that much earlier.
But this is the why didn't anyone follow Michael Saylor and put Bitcoin on their balance sheet story, right?
We had the gap accounting rules that effectively meant you had to market down to the lowest price.
It crushed your earnings.
There was no way that anyone with a fiduciary responsibility could do this to their company.
I can't say the demand is there, but I can say that now the ability is there because
we're getting a better accounting role for companies.
Yeah.
I mean, listen, I would not be surprised if one of the big lessons from the early part
of the cycle, and I don't want to diminish or be pessimistic about how much institutional
demand there will be, but a lot of what's happening right now is the, I'll call it affectionately the well fucking duh period
of crypto institutionalization, where these things that were absurd for not existing or
not being available or for being dumb rules are now slowly coming online. This is a great example
of a rule that the previous version made absolutely no sense.
Almost everyone at every level of engagement thinks that this shift is the correct shift,
including the FASB who are kind of like, how do we even get ourselves into the situation where this wasn't the rule? I think in some ways, the worst case scenario for a Bitcoin spot ETF
at the beginning is something similar
where will the supply of that, the availability of that product instantly create demand?
I'm not sure.
It's certainly doing a lot to generate buzz and get it back on people's minds.
But even if it doesn't, it's supposed to exist.
This is a mature asset where people deserve to have access to it through these traditional
instruments.
And so it's just, duh, it needs to be there.
And that's going to be the way that it is.
So it's a great, it's a very small, but very sort of progressive and important update,
I think.
Yeah, I agree.
Like I said, I don't know if the demand will be there.
I believe that it will.
I do think that there are companies that have been sidelined.
There's been a few challenges because when Saylor originally did this, it was in that
ZERP, zero interest rate environment, obviously.
So the pitch for Bitcoin was much stronger.
When we got to 5% yields, a company was obviously more likely to just buy some US treasuries
and put them on their balance sheet than to buy Bitcoin.
But now those yields are dropping.
So the environment could be coming back around. Also, this is similar to an ETF
getting approved, right? A Bitcoin spot ETF should absolutely exist because it makes sense. It's
better for the investor. Doesn't mean there's going to be $10 billion worth of demand in the
first week. Maybe there will be. I have no idea. But this is just yet another one of the few
examples, I would say, where the government actually got it right when it comes to something crypto related.
I'm hoping that will be the case with the spot ETF as well.
Yeah, I'm hoping that's the beginning of a trend.
We'll see.
Yeah, I'm not going to bet on it, but you never know.
Shares and bonds keep on climbing as Fed pivot rally rolls on.
The story here being the Fed quote unquote pivot.
I'm personally not ready
to call it a pivot yet. I think the pivot is when they actually start to cut rates,
but it was certainly a pivot in tone. This was the first time that Jerome Powell softened up.
There are a number of tinfoil hat reasons I can float as to why, but it seems like this tightening
regime and cycle is coming to an end and that we could start to see the pivot in March, even though a lot can happen between now and then.
What do you make of this in general?
Pivot or not, it was certainly a pivotish shift in tone, right?
It was the first time all of Powell's couching and hedging was so half-hearted comparatively.
Every other press conference, even when they've held rates consistent, has gone to pains to
say, we're not declaring victory yet.
It's still premature.
We still have a bias towards more hikes versus cuts, all these sort of things.
And he still said a couple of those things a few times, but it was much fewer and
farther between. And it was sort of not with the same force. He didn't take the opportunities
handed to him on a silver platter by reporters to sort of push back against exuberance that's
starting to take hold in the market. And that's really notable. My feeling is, we were talking
about this, I think last week or maybe the week before.
But you know how we live through these periods in the Bitcoin and crypto cycle, where we're still so hungover from the bear market that we're not willing to sort of say that something
has shifted.
But then when we look back in retrospect, it actually started way before the quote unquote
bear market or bull market actually started way
before we were willing to call it a bull market. I think we're in something similar with sort of
pivot, you know, four of the last five meetings have held rates consistent. There was some
prediction for some time, it seemed like there was going to be one more rate hike this time,
and then we'd be done. And there wasn't, you know, and so I think it'll be interesting to see if this
continues, if there isn't sort of new data that comes in that sort of shifts their attitude.
It feels like we will actually mark the shift in policy even a little bit before where we
are today.
But again, that'll depend a lot on what happens next.
I think the last thing that was notable about Powell's comments were instead of sort of
saying that people have a sense that we still might need some
more hikes, he kind of shifted to a message where like Ceteris Paribus were on this path
now.
And if there is some big thing that happens, that's what would cause a hike.
It's sort of some unpredictable thing that we don't have any indications of yet.
And that's a fairly significant change. To me, this felt like George Bush standing on an
aircraft carrier with a big sign behind him that said, mission accomplished right before the war
went on for a couple more years. That's what it felt like to me. I think that Yellen, Powell,
I think they're drinking their own Kool-Aid. They're congratulating each other. And I just don't think this is over yet. I'm not saying that we're going to go into a depression
or any of those things, but it seemed very preemptive to not actually cut, but be this
aggressive about the tone that they could. First of all, the Fed dot plot has never been correct
in history. So the fact that we're taking it so seriously that there's going to be cuts all of a
sudden in March, well, predictive markets have been wrong the entire way. But it leads you to wonder why he would take this tone at this time, because rationally, pausing and doing nothing and saying we're going to continue pausing and doing nothing, labor, unemployment is low, stock market's high, there's no reason to cut, Nothing's crashed. Nothing's broken. So it either means that, A,
this is a political move, right? They're getting ahead of this in advance of the election. Can't
start talking about a pivot two months before the election. I'm not saying that's necessarily the
case. B, they know that a few trillion dollars worth of US debt, more than a few, is coming due
and is going to have to be refinanced at a much higher rate next year. And that's a literal disaster for the United States. So they're going to need to pivot to
save the treasury. That's what it feels like would be more rational to me. I just don't see
with stocks at an all-time high, why would they flood liquidity into the system? What's the
rationale? Yeah. I mean, I don't think that that's a, I don't think that's full tinfoil hat. I think
a lot of people have sort of some, they at least have their eye on that explanation.
I think the other thing that's at least worth keeping an eye on is there are emergent signals
of individual corporations, particularly in financial services, clearly having a more
bleak outlook for next year than are sort of is being widely reported, right?
You've got a lot of big consulting firms
that are reducing the number of partners,
kind of anticipating lower business,
just all these sort of things
that are starting to flash signals of concern.
You also have a situation where
I think that the dot plot
showed three rate cuts next year
and the markets are pricing in something like six.
You're not getting six rate cuts without a recession,
which means that the market is thinking either they're just like high or they think that things are finally going to
take a turn for the worse. If there is a broad emerging sense that things are starting to get
more challenging and that there's sort of troubled waters ahead, you can see Powell,
listen, he made the mistake
of waiting too long to actually fight inflation. I think they don't want to make the same mistake
on the backside and wait too long to cut. So maybe he sees something that we don't,
which gives him more credit than I'm willing to, because it means he's looking forward instead of
looking back. But that was actually Mike McGlone's explanation yesterday. He was like, he sees what's coming
and is actually getting ahead of it for once.
Yeah, who knows?
Yeah, it's it also could be
as it so often is a combination
of all these things, you know,
it whatever it's it's
let's put it this way.
That debt issue that you're mentioning
can't ever be far from the their
his brain, right?
Like it's there.
And so even if that's not on any given day, the primary driver, you would think that to
the extent that there are some warning signs flashing and that's looming, it's not a bad
time to maybe start that pivot.
Yeah, I totally agree with that assessment.
Moving on. 16 months later, Tether finally bends
to OFAC. Tether has changed its mind about complying with US sanctions law and says it's
doing so voluntarily. If my memory serves me correctly, when they pushed back against OFAC
was Tornado Cash. Is that correct? And now they are actually sanctioning the Tornado Cash wallet.
So pretty big pivot from Tether here.
Yeah, this one is interesting. I think that there's a lot of this story that we don't have.
One of the reads from the crypto community has been that now that Tether is so deep in the
business of treasuries, they actually do just have to be more aligned with the US government.
They can't just be this sort of fully euro-dollar offshore thing that has no interaction.
Other sort of indications of this are, for the first time, we know at least some of the people who are or Tether's Treasuries on their behalf, which are
US firms. There's all of these sort of indicators that the relationship with the US government is,
if not less frosty, is certainly more engaged than it was before. And not just in a sort of
New York Department of Financial Services settlement kind of way in a more like, you know,
big powers that be behind the scenes kind of way. So, you know, it could just be a determination
that that, like, this is not the hill to die on for them, you know, and that it's sort of
of a size and scale now where they're not going to make a principled stand around,
you know, OFAC sanctions being where they leave.
Yeah. It's my feeling that they've effectively been helping the DOJ and government agencies
around the world now for long enough that this was a technicality. Why die on this hill with OFAC
when obviously it's going to come around? And I think you're correct. I think they're just getting
in line with the United States government to avoid getting financed.
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the other thing too, is like, at the end of the day,
for those in the crypto community who are frustrated about this,
it can't reasonably be Tether's job to solve the issues of OFAC sanctioning a mixer. Like,
that's a political problem that we have to deal with here
that has to do with decentralized protocols and how they fit into the regulatory apparatus.
It's a bigger problem than the non-compliance isn't going to fix that. It's not going to fix
the fact that there's real big questions around whether that type of institution or protocol
should even be able to be sanctioned. Those are political battles that we need to have onshore here in the light of day. So ultimately, does it suck that if
you sort of are taking a principled stance against tornado cash being sanctioned that now Tether has
had to bend the knee? Yes, it does suck. But it was probably never reasonable to have them as the
loan holdout, given the size, scale, and importance of that institution. It sucks, but from day one,
Palo Arduido, perhaps they pushed back against OFAC, but he's always said, listen, we are a
centralized player and we are going to cooperate with governments, right? So it was almost an
anomaly that they were making such a stand against OFAC because it was specifically tornado cash than
the norm. So now we have our... Yeah, go ahead, please. Oh, no. The last thing is, one of the more fascinating things to see will be over the
next few years as CBDC conversations drum up and the US wants to chart its own path
that is more traditional to the US, which is, of course, basically integrating private sector
innovation into the system instead of sort of doing things
from scratch. Circle has for a very long time been positioning USDC as the compliant stable
coin of choice. I wonder if Tether smells a little bit of blood in the water, given how much
people have moved from Circle to Tether over the last 12 months and is sort of saying,
shit, we're potentially in the pole position to reap that
bonanza. And a little tiny bit of sugar could attract some serious flies here.
That makes a lot of sense. So listen, we were kind of debating what to do for our fifth story.
And we came up with the idea of a hodgepodge of welcome back to weird,
right? Because it seems that we are back in the ridiculousness phase of crypto at the moment.
One of the stories being sales of Solana phone surge as traders chase bonk arbitrage. This
story is so crazy to me. Arbitrage traders appear to be chasing 30 million bonk token airdrop that's available
to every owner of the Saga phone.
At current prices, that much bonk is worth nearly $700 for a phone that costs $599.
So they're paying $599.
By the way, now these sales of these phones that were effectively dead are selling out,
right?
They're mooning.
They're paying $599 to get what's worth $700 on a meme coin that can
be worth $300 tomorrow or $1,500 the next day. But this is going a hell of a long way out of
your way to try to secure that $100 arbitrage opportunity. There is nothing that the crypto
faithful love more than a ridiculous airdrop-based arbitrage opportunity. It is like water for this
community. And we're seeing it. And listen, it's so absurd and preposterous on the face of it,
but it's also financially rational in the immediate term. And you got to think that
there are probably some meaningful number of those people who are taking that arbitrage opportunity who are sort of were vaguely interested in the Solana phone before and are kind of like,
yeah, why, why not? Let me check it out. Let's see if it's an interesting, you know, like,
I also think too, you know, to not minimize Solana in this equation,
we've, there's another thing we've talked about before this They had a do or die moment at the end of last
year, given their association with SPF and sort of the presumption that they were going to die
and they were going to sort of just drift away. They didn't. And they are definitely a great
example right now, at least, of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. They are radically more
legitimate in people's minds, I think, a better ecosystem to invest in because of the passion of the community in people's minds.
I think than they would have been had Sam continued to exist.
I think there's an argument that they are actually fundamentally and foundationally stronger today than they would have been had Sam not been a fraud and never been arrested.
So, you know, maybe people are also reviewing the Solana phone with new eyes in light of that. I mean, probably not. Probably they just want Bonk that makes it a free
phone. Right. It's a free phone. You can sell it, keep $100 worth of Bonk and you've got your phone
to play with. And I 100% agree with you. I think that in hindsight, we'll look back and say it was
good that they got rid of all that froth from SPF and the VCs and that entire image. And now it's,
you know, was kind of broken down to the core and rebuilding.
I think Solana is doing exceptionally well.
The other weird story that we have,
which is a great way to conclude,
Rolling Stone really came with the headline on this one
is why I'm sharing this article.
Trump's desperation to sell NFTs
has him ripping up his clothes.
The former president has cut his mugshot suit,
the most historically significant artifact
in United States history.
That's literally what it says on their website.
Not the Constitution, guys.
No, not that.
Into 2,024 pieces.
First of all, I'm going to say that this is a grift and they're just sending you a random
piece of fabric and there's no way to authenticate that it's part of that suit.
But he's back at it selling NFTs.
Apparently, even though stoner cats and impact theory got charged by the SEC,
this is not an offering of unregistered securities or on the back of all of his
felony charges. He just doesn't care. Should we watch the video, man?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, guys, it's about two minutes long. I know we're a little over,
but we got to watch this. Just have to.
This is your favorite president, Donald J. Trump, with some very exciting news.
My last two Trump digital trading card collections sold out in just hours. And now I'm back with my
latest series called the Mugshot Edition. I wonder where that came from, the Mugshot Edition. 47 all
new stunning cards, and here is the best part. I'm doing two important things for my Trump collectors.
For the first time, we're creating
a real physical Trump card.
Purchase 47 digital cards,
and we'll mail you a beautiful trading card.
It is an authentic piece of the suit I wore
when I took that now-famous mugshot,
and it was a great suit.
Believe me, a really good suit.
It's all cut up, and you're gonna get a piece of it.
I'll be autographing some of them.
A true collector's item.
This is something to give to your family,
to your kids and your grandchildren.
With the purchase of 47 of the Trump digital trading cards,
you will also be invited to join me for a gala dinner
at my beautiful Mar-a-Lago, my home in Florida.
You've perhaps heard of it. It's become a pretty famous place.
We just had our first dinner for my collectors, and we had a lot of fun together.
That was a great evening. That was a fantastic evening.
Some people call these cards pop art or modern art.
I wish I looked as good as I do on those cards.
That I can tell you. They give me muscles where, believe me, I don't have them.
I wanted to keep my Trump Digital trading cards at the same price, $99 each.
So go to collecttrumpcards.com.
It's really easy to buy.
They sold out incredibly fast the last time.
And I think the mugshot edition will sell out even faster.
So don't miss out. Go to collect to collect all right you get the idea now he just shows you the next cards to dramatic uh victory
music for the next minute but what is happening first of all i like that he was self-deprecating
and mocked himself over the muscles i thought that was actually kind of humorous, but the man, he completely gets
the NFT game right now. I mean, if that wasn't Donald Trump, everyone would be like, look,
a great example of how a community gets access to a specialized set of events and features offline.
It connects physical to digital. Like it's, it's the whole shtick. He's, he's got it. I mean,
you know, this is a much more sophisticated approach to it than it was. And
I don't know, if you're an NFT fan, it's going to make clear the value proposition of NFTs,
I think, for some number of people. So thumbs up, I guess.
All right. I guess not. The best is everybody thinks it's a deepfake, but it's not. Only in
this world, in this simulation,
is that not a deep fake and that's actually real. But listen, we know that he made, I think it was
like four or $5 million and ETH was sitting in his wallet after the first collection launch.
So there's real money for him. It's probably a licensing deal. I just think it's hilarious.
In my mind, he probably has no idea this is even crypto, right? He's anti-Bitcoin and anti-crypto,
probably just thinks he's selling trading cards
and moving on with his life.
But man, what a better way to end.
I'm going to be gone next week.
So we're going to be skipping this.
I'm going to be off with the kids.
I won't be gone, but I will be not working
in advance of Christmas.
So maybe we'll run it back in two weeks.
Sounds good.
Everyone have a good Christmas.
All right, guys.
Everybody have a great Christmas.
I'm speechless after I watched that.
I've watched it like five times.
I'm still speechless.
All right, everybody.
And of course, follow NLW.
Check this out on his channels.
We will see you guys in two weeks.
Peace.
Let's go.