What Hunter Biden Learned Launching A Meme Coin
00:00So, Hunter Biden launched a meme coin called Laptop token.Yes, there's a lot to unpack here.Today, I'm sitting down with Hunter to talk about why he got into crypto,how this token actually came together, what went wrong during the launch,and why he says the entire idea was about taking the phrase Hunter Biden's laptop and finallymaking it his own.We also get into the tokenomics, the market makers, crypto Twitter, politics, the Trumpfamily's involvement in crypto, and the obvious question, can a political,
00:30meme coin actually exist without becoming a grift.This is definitely not a conversation I expected to be having.Let's go.So, yeah, we'll get going.I'm the worst at scripts.Yeah, me too, man.They don't work.I'm a, uh, let's wing it and see what happens kind of person.
01:05Yeah, I know.And, you know, it, uh, it's got me in trouble before, but, you know, it's a better way to livelife.No idea. Yeah, well, me too. In case, maybe not to the same scale. But yeah, I've gotten in some trouble, too.Okay. You've been out on the on the road show right now, obviously doing a ton of cryptopodcasts after launching the laptop token. I'm not sure I've heard a conversation about how a memecoin actually launches. And I'm so not deep in the weeds of that conversation that I'm actuallycurious. So let's start with if I wanted to launch Wolf token, you know, like how, where do I
01:48even start? Like, did somebody come to you and say, hey, man, you should do a laptop token?Or did you look at crypto and say, I have an opportunity to launch something, let's do it?So the way it started is number one, like an interesting crypto. And then it, and then I started towatch what the Trump, the entire Trump family was doing. And, um, it. And, um, it. And, and then I started to watch what, uh, what the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the entire Trump familywas doing. And as a believer in crypto, what I saw them doing was, I thought, really harmfulto everybody in the industry and the whole messaging around it, only because just like theinherent conflict of interest of being the sitting president in the United States of the familyand getting involved in promoting something that is, you know, they're inherently like
02:32tied to incredible decisions that need to be made going forward as it relates to the regulatoryenvironment and certainty within that regulatory environment.And so for me, as a, you know, I was kind of orange-pilled in a number of different wayswell before I ever got to the idea of a meme token.But that interest led me to say, can you launch a meme coin that is basically the exactopposite of what they did, which was pure max extraction?And the answer was yes, you can.And that's not only the intent, but I hope that's ultimately at the end of the day,
03:16which will only be, the story will only be told when, you know, two years from now,if you just watch my actions and what happens.Now, what the actual mechanics of are doing that are, number one, you've got to go talk to a lawyer.And we, I was going to ask that.I was like, you know, we call the lawyer and say, is this okay?Yeah, yeah, yeah.And so we went to the best firm in the country that's launched, you know, hundreds of tokens.And by the way, it's not like this is like, you know, total rocket science and so oblique that nobody can figure it out.
03:51I mean, there's 10 million, there's 10 million meme coins out there.It's not like this is like some kind of like tiny backwards market.You know what I mean?Right.And you wouldn't have gone on pump on a whim on a Tuesday.No, yeah, yeah, exactly.No.For me, I wanted to.
04:05And the reason being is because what are the,idea was, which I think that we've achieved, and people can go look and they can go look at a website,and go to go to laptoptoken.com. You can go to all of the reports that we've done. We've done anindependent report post-launch, but our micro-report has all of the, is I think one of the mosttransparent reports ever, and for real, in terms of where the money goes, who holds wallets,the transparency of the wallets, and all that kind of thing. But what you do, basically, is you have to goof the process, which is super technical of the minting of the tokens.So, you know, the billion tokens, right now our token is, one token is seven cents.
04:48We launched at five cents.And we're now trading at just about eight cents.And so, but you mint the tokens, and, you know, that's a Web3 developer that is in thatdoes all of like what they call the tokenomics and to be able to figure out the trajectoryof the token, the lifespan of it,when the team members vest as compared to a treasury, a foundation,airdrops, and in our case,the first ever prediction market baked into a token.
05:26And so, like, for instance, with us,I have 30 predictions.If the prediction comes through, like, you know,fun ones, like, you know, fun for me because I'm an Eagles fan,is that the Eagles will win their season opener.And a percentage of the token gets burned based upon if they had lost, then that money would go to charity.In which we have a dedicated minimum pot of 5% of the total value of the token over the two-year period of time.And so what happened with us is this.
06:01There's one piece of it that is very much a black box.Okay. And I get pushed back from people like, oh, you don't understand market making. I don't think market makers understand market making, okay? And you and you launch in two spaces. You launch either, not either, it's not an either or. You do both. In decentralized exchanges, which is a little bit more like the Wild West, but it is more transparent in the way because individual wallets are.are not hidden or anonymous.Or you launch on a centralized exchange like Coinbase or the retail ones,like Robin Hood or Revolut or Binance or OKX or a number of others.And the big ones being Coinbase and Binance, obviously,which have the most retail customers that are a part of their platform.And so for us, what I wanted to do is I wanted to launch on a centralized exchange.
07:08And so in conjunction with Coinbase, we came up with the tokenomics and what we thoughtwould be very different.That would be a troll on the Trump token.Instead of 80% going to insiders, only 30% goes to the team members.And the rest is allocated to the 30% for the prediction market, 20% for AirDrop, which is, by the way, the AirDrop is literally,like you're just, you know, sending an email to people and they click on the link and there's no strings attached.You can either hold the token or cash it out, whatever you want to do.And so we were, our not just goal, but what we knew to be a certainty up until about 12 hours before launch is that we were launching on Coinbase.
07:57And hopefully being followed very closely by finance and okay.KX right after that.And that's the only reason that we announced 48 hours in advance because it's a requirementon the centralized exchange launch to announce ahead of time that you're launching a token.And I got, I'll tell you what, like, for all my love of the crypto community, I got thatbeat out of me.I mean, just like, you know, like what, and by the way, for legitimate skeptical reasons,Number one, legitimate skeptical reasons around meme tokens at all.
08:33But the other thing is legitimate, in particular, legitimate skepticism around a quote-unquote celebrity meme token.And in that space before launch date on September 9th, and between announcing it and launch date,the crypto Twitter just tore me apart without knowing anything about the token or the intent.or the tokenomics or anything.And Coinbase pulled back and said,we're going to wait and see what happens on day one.And then we'll follow on a bit depending upon volumeand how it goes.
09:13And so we launch, it's 5 o'clock in the morning here in L.A., okay?And I'm with the team, a team of like, you know, eight peoplesitting around the table watching it launch.And the token starts at where we start,50 million FDV.We've given three market makers,tokens, to be able to,tokens in cash to be able to provide liquidity to the market.
09:42And the main market maker,which I cannot name by virtue of-I can't, but everybody can go figure it out.It's not hard.I mean, I put out the report that does not name names.It's market maker one, market maker two.And the reason that I can't,not is not because I'm like bullshitting is because we have a contract which includes a confidentiality
10:05clause. Now, if they want to break it, they've come close to it. They can certainly break it.But until that confidentiality clause is moot, I can't name the name. But you can go look.I promise you. You can tell me what it rhymes with.Exactly. Right. Right with winter boot.No, yes, exactly. So, but no, but there's, so market maker want to mark a mark.So Market Maker 1 has, for the decentralized trading, they have 15 million tokens, okay,and $500,000 to be able to make the market, okay?But that's not just to be clear for people.
10:46You're not paying them that as a fee.Those are, that's the money they're using to actually make the market.This is what I want, I want people to be clear in what the mechanics are here, right?So this is basically liquidity for them to provide.It's not funny for them to put in their pocket and say thank you for hiring us.No, exactly.Is that they have to go out and make market.And they have to have the coins available to them, the tokens available to them, which is the 15 million tokens.
11:11But they also have to have the other side of it to be able to execute on the buy side.Right.And so, and that's the catch that's available to them.And so knowing that no matter what, if a.meme token is simply this, is who can attain, sustain, and maintain attention for an extendedperiod of time on a kind of global skip. So no matter what you thought as a market makeror anybody in this industry is that obviously I was going to get a lot of attention for launching.And it was, and that was obvious by the response that I got. So you know there's going to be a lot of action.
11:56So on a typical token of this magnitude or side, you put at least about, this is what I've been told,about anywhere from, you know, 35 to 50% of the cash available on hand to on second one, okay?To make the market.To make the market.And at minimum 10%, so say $50,000, okay?What they did was they put in $5,000 and I think it was roughly $29,000 tokens,which meant that in the first seconds, if you made a $6 purchase, you know, a $6 buy,it increased the market cap of the token by 5%.
12:45And now do the exponential math of that.Within, I think, less than two minutes, the token went where we launched it,where we wanted to launch it, at 50 million FD.to $317 billion market cap, which is total fiction, by the way.So for everybody that I know everybody that probably listens to this understands this,but everybody in Web 2, you know, Normie World does not.There's no $317 billion.There's a complete and utter fiction.
13:15There's no billion dollars.There's no $250 million.There's nothing.It is literally a fiction, a construct that exists on a chart.And it goes up within two minutes from $317 billion, and it basically, over the course of the next, I mean, it came down to like, I don't know, $4 a token, and then $1, $700, and then $0.70, and then down to where it is right now, which is still above where we initially launched.But that all happened in like, you know, the vast majority of that happened like in a five-minute period of time in which you had at the same time, which is normal, which is,not something that, I mean, you can protect yourself from it, and the way that you protectyourself from it is adequately funding the liquidity pool to be able to do these trades.
14:05And that just didn't happen. And I've not been given any explanation from anyone.I don't even ask me questions. You know what I'm going to ask. Because, you know, that seems like a crime.By the way. And so I can't.$500,000 and millions of tokens to do a very specific job. You are a professional.And what you did could have only ended one way, and that's what they did.So why?Yeah, exactly.So here's the thing, okay, is that we put out an independent report, Groom Lake, really, really
14:37credible group of investigators in this space.Okay?So we put out a full report that gave complete transparency of exactly what happened.All, because it's all in the chain, man.It's all there.I mean, there's no, there's no like.you know, subjective kind of, it's all there. And so we put out this report and somebody said,you know, Hunter Biden, blaming the market makers just shows me that he doesn't understand market
15:08making. So here's my question. Okay. So explain it to me then. It's like, okay, you tell me,how is that market making? How is that, how is that in any way? And by the way, here's the other thing,Is it the only people that walked away, a whole, you know, that made money in that period,were not the insiders, not anybody on our team.You can see all 300 million tokens that are owned, are held by the team were never touched and will not be touched.There's a six-year, six months, excuse me, over two-year linear vesting schedule for that.And it's all in the microreport, all available at Laptopetocon.com.And yeah, go ahead.
15:55Finish.Sorry.Yeah.And you can see exactly.So you tell me, is it, how is that market making?And why would, why would you ever, ever do that, knowing that this is going to be one of the most scrutinized tokens, at least of 2026, from, from everybody's perspective?Yeah.Yeah.
16:16So, I mean, basically, allegedly, Coinbase kind of rugged you on their promises, right?Because this would have probably looked very different.this had launched on Coinbase. So that's a separate conversation. I don't obviously know thatthe nuance or detail of that. But B is that effectively the market makers failed at their job,which seems intentional. You're not saying that, but you can't be a market maker andbe sent $500,000 and use $5,000 and not know exactly what was going to happen. So it feels intentional.So let me ask you this. If you were sitting at set, what was you, you have,80-ish million FDV today.
16:56And the launch chart had looked likefive cents to eight centsinstead of five cents to a gazillionback to eight cents,would you be happy?Yes, exactly.100%.And so the fiction of the chart
17:11is,but for that,I would feel likewe're doing exactly what I would want to do.Because here's the thing.The other side,let me address A and B,first of what you said at Coinbase.
17:25Like for instance, Coinbase, all right?I don't fault Coinbase because Coinbase, I have to admit, okay,the reaction based upon the, basically the blank check announcementwithout me being able, by the way, the other side of it is,is that I make the announcement, I'm launching laptop,and then there's like a quiet period.I can't go on and talk about it.I can't go on and defend it.
17:54I can't go on and promote the tokenomics of it.I can't promote the charity component of it.I can't promote that air drop.I got to keep my mouth shut during that period of time.And it got ravaged.So I have to admit, if I'm, you know,I don't even know what Brian Armstrong is even on his radar.But if I'm Brian Armstrong and I'm sitting there and I'm going,
18:14oh my God, like, Jesus Christ, they hate this.Like, let's see what happens.I have to admit,I don't fault them, and they always had the right to do that.So they didn't, you know, I don't believe that they intentionally f***er at Coinbase.And I like the people over there a lot.And I think they do really good work.I really do.
18:35Okay.And I know that, you know, don't get me started on, like, the Coinbase and the, the, kind of the Bitcoin.Anyway, regardless, is that that's number one in that.But number two is exactly what you said.take away that first three minutes and our chart looks exactly how I would want it to look,exactly how a coin should behave.And particularly for someone like me, who's in it.Like, man, the one thing that differentiates me from all these other idiots who fucking launch
19:10coins and whether they were rug pulls or anything like that, is that have you ever heardfrom them again?Ever.And meanwhile, here I am.Yeah, this circles back to the original question.that I asked because crypto is so rife with like scammers and people with bad intentions.Like when you want to launch a token, how do you know who to trust? How do you know who to hire?How do you know what market maker is not going to do exactly what they did to you?
19:35And let me even ask you this, right? So obviously I think the tokenomics say 30% of founding team, right?You said that's 300 million tokens that are sitting in a wallet. You've said you're 10%.Who's the other 20, you know, who's the rest of that founding team? And what did they do to earn that 20% of the tokens? And you know, why aresitting on that alongside you when it's your name that's on the line.Yeah.And so look, here's the thing is I don't want to put a target on their head.There's two individuals that are both very close friends of mine and that are, that bothof them are having deep experience, both Americans, both have real credibility.
20:10And once we're over this part, I'm sure that there is not, by the way, there's reallyno anonymity of it.You can figure it out.The town of the team are people that you actually know, not.not necessarily people that you hired or who pitched you because we saw, you know, the Libra tokenand all these crazy things.No.These guys basically went to, you know, the president or went to whoever and said, we're
20:31going to launch a token and then scammed in their name.Yes, exactly.No, neither one of them and neither one of them is touching tokens.We're all completely tied at the hip and two and both of them are very close friends of mine.And people that I inherently and explicitly trust.And so anyway, and with, by the way, with a vast amount of experience in, you know, kind of Web 2 business world and in Web 3 business world in cryptocurrency.And so they are 100% totally legitimate, credible people.And like I said, is it I, but here's the thing, is that it's my token.
21:13It's got my face on it, man, smoking a cigarette.And it's got, like the whole point of the joke of it was, is that I'm going to take this thing that they tried to, you know, to sew on me like a scarlet letter, Hunter Biden's laptop.And I was going to, and I hope I still am as to do this.I was going to reclaim that narrative.They made over, we did a calculation.They made over $9 billion saying Hunter Biden's laptop as clickbait over the course of a four or five year period of time.The media did.Yeah. I mean, I don't know, I think 14 hours of a quote-unquote documentary on the laptop on, you know, Fox Digital and the hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of hours across, you know, Fox and other media outlets that, you know, literally used 100 by his laptop.
22:08I mean, like, I'll be surprised if it's not on my gravestone, you know, when I die.But if it is, you know what?I want to own it.I want it to be mine.I want it to be the thing that I get to tell the narrativeand I get to tell the truth.Because I think the truth matters about it.And that is the purely selfish side of doing this also for me.
22:32And one other final thing.And everybody tells me,you know, to watch what you're saying about this.You know what?it's from all you know i i i i understand the community i understand the skepticism but the one thing i don'tunderstand is this is that yeah of course i i have an intent to make money too like yeah like whatwhat are you talking about and it doesn't have to be a grift it doesn't have to be max extractionyou can do it the right way you can do it with 10% and not with 80% and you can give away you know
23:08well over a quarter of the total value of the coin over the piece of time.To, by the way, causes and people that I really care about.And so you can bring everybody along for the ride in a world in which the market is abouttrolling people.Is it about the joke?It is about attention.It is about the monetization of that.All things that I do believe in in terms of what we're doing.
23:34And it's all on the blockchain.Yeah.There's nothing that the crypto community hates more than somebody making money in crypto.That's what I found out too.I've seen it for attention.I'll tell you what.I've been in some tough crowds, man.I've been in some really, really tough crowds.
23:56I mean, I think historically, globally tough crowds and gotten this out of me.But there is nothing.And I have to give it to them.The reigning champions of trolling and bullshunders.Or the fucking crypto Twitter, man.I swear to God, it's like, I might as well, like, you know,just take a bath and shit when I go on and try to defend myself.Oh, but at least you do it.
24:22You do it.I got to give you credit.So listen, so if we have to, to be intellectually honest about it,before we just wrap a bow on the laptop conversation.Yeah.Somebody bought that at however many multiples of billions of valuation.So there are real people.Was there anything in the post-mortem in the, you know,
24:37in the studies you did that shows how many people actually, you know, meaningfully boughttokens when it was at those highs, even though liquidity was thin and lost money and how do youaddress those people? Because in any situation like this, even if it's only a few people,somebody lost money buying something with your name on it. Yeah. And so it,relatively so, de minimis as compared to anything else. So under, under three millionin terms of actual retail buyers, I think, around 2.5.And don't get, like, I was saying this right now.I'm not going to get, I don't want to get myself in trouble
25:16in stating specific numbers for the purposes of blah, blah, blah.And they're all good.But I will also say this.It's not complete apples full of apples.But a market maker one and market maker two walked away with almost a,exactly equal amount of what was lost by retail uh retail um buyers you ever seen the movieThe Beauty and the Beast tale as old as time yeah yeah it's so fucked up man and by the way andthe thing that drives me crazy is like this response on crypto Twitter from certain um uh corners of
25:57that that said like oh he's just you know like oh you're you're directing the blame and you don'tyou don't understand market making.And I really mean it.I would like somebody to go look at the groom lake report that was producedand then tell me how that is market making and that I just don't understand.Like, then what's, you know, like if you could do it all again.Yeah.Is there a way you could have vetted the market maker differently to make sure that they
26:21somebody hired them?Yeah.I mean,accountable for that.When you, when, when, when it all becomes public who they, who the market makers are,they, they are the market makers.I mean, they're like the, you know, as it was told to me, is that they're like the Goldman Sachs of the industry.And what I've found is that there's no such thing.
26:44And now, by the way.Yeah, exactly.They said they were going to buy Goldman Sachs in case they're wondering.Yeah, but here's what I would do, Browdy, is this, is that the differences is that I would not have launched unless I got the, unless the centralized listing came through.And that, because, because regardless of anything, is this.And one of the reasons why I think the rationale for what they were going to do is they werelike, this is just going to get the sniped out of it.Let's not, let's just be in and out of here.
27:17And that's just conjecture on my part.It's speculation.And so it's much more difficult and risky thing for them to do.for them it's kind of de minimis in terms of the dollars that are at risk.I mean, the tokens, the tokens are loan to them.And then there's a loan off the cash of that that creates the liquidity for the market.And so I think that they, you know, kind of were like, you know, I think they had the same kind of speculative.I, this is only what I think.
27:52I have no idea.I have no idea because no one can give me an explanation.It's either, you know, that they had a monkey.the machine, literally, or they, or that it was intentional or somewhere in between.And I think it's probably somewhere in between that.Put that thought of that whole conversation.If I was going to launch a wolf token, I wouldn't.Yeah, man.
28:15Yeah.I can't say that I would recommend it.Yeah.I can't say that I recommend it.But here I am.Here's the thing about it.And is this is that I did it and I'm not going anywhere, period.I'm not going anywhere.
28:29I'm going to keep bugging the shit at everybody.I'm not a big fan of it.Like, I'm more of a Bitcoin and top, whatever.But I give obviously the benefit of the doubt.And it's a wild story at the very least.I got an absolute wild story.So I want to pivot to my most, my most, you know,my favorite conversation, which is politics.
28:49That's sarcasm if you knew me.I, you know, there's like left and right.I'm an unaffiliated voter, but I view myself with like a satellitejust watching from the outside because I can't,I don't even think I can fit.in the middle, right?So I've also been very skeptical of the Trump family involvementin the crypto industry.
29:06I think that, you know, there's, if we're calling balls and strikes,I think it's fair to say an executive orderon a strategic Bitcoin reserve is good.The Genius Act is probably good.So, you know, SEC and CFDC have pretty broke Bitcoinand crypto people.That's probably good.But launching a meme coin three days before you take office
29:28and max extraction and World Liberty Financialand all those things are definitively bad.Banking license on top of that, yeah.So frame, you know, obviously laptop to some degreewas a reaction to all of that.So maybe frame, you know, where we're at with Trump.And we have the midterms coming.So a lot of that's probably going to reverse.
29:48Yeah, man, you know, I have to admit,I'm like, I feel like you about quote unquote politics.I say to people like,that, you know, ignore politics at your own risk, because you may not be interested in it,but it's very interested in you.And so here's the thing, man, is it, from my estimation of being an outsider, but being a studentof looking inside the community, the crypto community, okay, writ large, whatever that,whatever that is, all right?
30:27is this, is that I never got the feeling that there was anything but in the best sense of the word,a kind of a strong libertarian bent to it. It is the entire idea behind like Andre's, you know,the internet of money was about the freedom of the individual to be able to interact through financialinstruments in a way that did not require them to, you know, to play in the world of these,you know, incumbent monopolies, basically that are out there in the banking industry.And how that freedom of money is kind of the future.That is the most elemental piece of that freedom is this technology called the blockchain.Okay.
31:22So that's where, like, I, I start with this.What they did, okay, and everybody will say, oh, my God, like, you're such a hypocrite.Like, didn't you do the same thing?No, I didn't do the same thing, man.When my dad was president of the United States, I didn't do any business.I literally, I sat in this garage that I'm in right now that I call my studio, but it's just a fancy word for my garage.And I paint it for four years.And I literally, I mean, and I sold my painting.
31:52through a gallery of which each of the buyers then had to testify before Congress,and I made an average of $225,000 a year.And then people say, oh, well, when you were vice-being, your dad was vice president,I went on the board of a multi-billion dollar company that happened to be in Ukraine,but when my dad was vice president for a year and a half,and I was totally upfront about it.And I was totally qualified to do it.I'd served on over a dozen boards, major boards,
32:22like Amtrak and the World Food Program, the U.S. UN World Food Program,the largest humanitarian organization in the world, and a dozen others, literally,doing corporate governance if I wasn't the chairman and as an expert in corporate governance at Boyce Hill or Flexner,one of the biggest and most important law firms in the country.Okay?And so those were my qualifications.For one board seat, all right?They made an entire campaign out of that equaled the Biden crime family, all of which has been proven to be total.
32:56So here's the thing, is that when I criticize them for what they're doing, I just want this community in particular to understand is that they're fucking it up for all of us, man.They are making it like, for instance, the clarity eye.The reason that the Clarity Act did not pass was because of the way in which the Trump administration has blurred the lines in the conflict of interest of the entire family in their involvement in this business.Because of politics, man, and I think everybody says, oh, well, that's such bullshit.The Democrats need to step out of the way and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.You know what?The only thing that held it up with ethics cause, the ethics component of the negotiation in terms of the Clarity Act passing or not.And so a knee-jerk reaction to 85% of people in Congress, both the Senate and the House, on the Democrat and Republican side, is this.
33:51They don't know, they don't have a fucking idea what they're talking about when they're talking about cryptocurrency.They have no idea.I mean, they really don't.And you can't blame them because it's, yeah, I mean, it's like they don't.Honestly, they have better things to do.Like, in our, in our eco-chamber, we think, to be fair, like, I think we think we're the most important thing on the planet.but there's wars.Yeah.
34:12Well, by the way, there's wars.There's the banking industry because they sit on the banking committee.There is the appropriations committee because their constituents are concerned about the price of dieseland how it's affecting the family farmer.Or there is the Health and Human Services Committee because people are getting their Medicaidtaken away.Or whatever it is, it is literally, and by the way, it's a difficult concept to,wrap your mind around sometimes, particularly if you're over the age of 50 like me and the vast
34:45majority of people that serve in Congress. So here they come. And so what happens is by virtue of thefact that Donald Trump and his kids, Prince number one and Prince number two, you know, go out andbasically insert themselves into the industry to do a max extraction play right at the beginning ofand then continue with all of this billions of dollars of foreign entities coming alongside of themto playing this game, is that, holy shit, if you're a Democrat, you don't know much aboutcryptocurrency, well, it's really easy to do one thing.Is that, no, this, is that I'm going to listen to Elizabeth Warren.She knows what the guy's talking about.
35:26Let's get into the greatest hits because she's one of them.Okay, so I happen to think that there's plenty because I float around like a satellite.I happen to believe there's plenty of blame to go around.I think what you described is very accurate.But once again, you know, I think Bitcoin and crypto became much more politicized.To be fair, under your father's administration, I'm not saying that your father cared aboutcrypto deeply, right?Like I said, there's other things in the world.
35:51But Elizabeth Warren and Gary Gensler and all of them certainly did, right?And whether that's a result of the banking lobby, I don't know.But I think it was first politicized by the Democrats.and then Trump came massively over the top with the personal grift.And that left us in a position where something that shouldn't have been political at allbecame a massively bipartisan issue.I mean, first I should say like.Yeah.
36:15But I couldn't agree with you more.That's the thing.I was born to be the head of the Senate banking committee again in three months.Yeah.By the way, I couldn't agree with you more.And that's why I think that I get the beat out of me by both sides is becauseI couldn't agree with you more, man.Is this, is that I, I have no vitriol towards Elizabeth Warren.
36:38In fact, I have a, I have a, I have a, I'm, I have warm feelings towards her as a human beingand the way in which I think that she cares about people.I don't get it, man.I don't get this one.Because what we're talking about.Right.This should be something that's championed by people who describe themselves as progressivebecause it's banking the unbanked and health.
37:01helping people who are victims of a depressive monetary fiscal policy.So, yeah.A hundred percent.It's literally all of our issues, I'm saying are me, issues as someone of a more progressivepolitical persuasion, it's all of our issues, man.It's literally.I mean, I look at cryptocurrency, the blockchain, and the ability for people on a global scaleto engage in micro-transactions from the subsistence farmer in sub-Saharan Africa
37:36to the itinerate worker here in the United States sending money back to Mexicoand without having to do with a 15% user recharge by Western Union,the vast majority of unbanked in the world,the democratization of financial instruments,the ability to engage in a global financial market,of which everyone should be able to participate,of which so many are completely and forever excluded by the incumbent monopolies.And the other side of it is, is that you come back and you go, well, basically, it's just this
38:10giant cesspool of anonymity in black market and potential for terrorism and blah, blah, blah.And I'm like, what the, what do you all even fucking talking about?Like, let's just, I mean, how about Citibank?How about Deutsche Bank?How about, I mean, Jake Morgan.How about the Epstein files?How about Hamas?How about the UAE and as a
38:35Dubai as a banking center?Who do you think running their money through banks?I mean, like, are you out of your mindand you say that all of a sudden,because it's a new technology,is that it provides anonymityand provides for peoplethat it is inherently wrong or bad?
38:52Because I can tell you from that,by that definition,I can, instead of conjecture,I can point to,I don't know. You and I probably could sit here and come up with 30 examples of our lifetimein which the banking industry screwed the entire globe on a royal scale, on a royal scale.Let's talk about 2008 in an entire generation of people that still haven't gotten back what theystole from us. Literally. And no one's been held accountable.
39:20So what is, listen, I'll be 50 in a month, right? I've lived through all of it, probablyalongside you. I've seen it. Yeah. What then is behind?that corner of the Democratic Party's vitriol and hatred towards the crypto industry.Thank you.I don't get it.I really don't.And I have to start to listen more and figure it out.But here's the thing for all of the people out there that are listening in the crypto Twitter world.
39:47You hear anybody else with the Democratic voice doing this?What I'm doing?Sticking in the fight?Talking about it.Talking about it in a way that people listen to?Anybody?do you hear anybody that's on your side right now.And I'm saying is that I'm not in the side of the bunch of grifters in any industry.
40:06But I am on the side of the idea that we have to be able to create a regulatory environmentin which this can flourish rather than be completely co-opted by all of the industryand the monopolies that this was created to overcome.I mean, so they sit there and they shit on it from the industry and spend billions and hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying in influence in Washington, D.C. in the banking industry, while they quietly go and they build their own war chest in cryptocurrency and try to corner the market in so many different ways. And so I don't know, man. Is that look, man, I got I got no choice now.I mean, yeah.I mean, I default.Some money somewhere that I'm not aware of.Let me ask you this question.
41:02If your dad was 40, do you think that he'd be pro-crypto?Yeah, I do.I really do.And, you know, that's been my experience, is that I go and talk to people about this.And, you know, I don't know about you,but I think that the ability to engage in a,you know, an educated conversation about it is almost always determined by your age.I mean, like, if you're between 18 and 35 and you talk about a meme token, they're like,
41:35yeah, right on, man, that's fun.Like, great.Go for it.You know what I mean?And if you're, you know, if you're over the age of 45, it's like, what the fuck you'retalking about?Like, I don't, like, isn't that all a grift?Isn't it all a scam?
41:47Isn't it all a big, you know?And the truth of the matter is, is that there's truth in both sides of it.But the real question is, are we going to start to understand it?Because in an age of AI, in an age in which the blockchain, I believe,will become a kind of central pillar and component of a technology that be able to provide transparencyand to understand the difference between real information and complete and utter misinformation,is that I think that we all have to start to understand it better.And I just wish that there were more people of my political persuasion that would take a breath
42:32and realize what Donald Trump is doing is not representative of the industry as a whole.But by the way, everyone in this industry is a hostage to Donald Trump right now.Just so everybody's aware.And I promise you, he does not give a about you.He doesn't give it.He doesn't understand crypto any better than.he understands, you know, a scientific equation.I mean, he literally, he has no clue whatsoever.
43:03And he said it.He says it.When he's not sleeping behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, he literally is waking up longenough to say, I don't do that.Other people handle that for me.And, you know, I mean, so it's all a max extraction play on his part.And so where are you going to find allies?Where are you going to find allies after the midterms, depending what happens in Congress?
43:25Where are you going to have to start to have actually educated conversations with peoplethat aren't just like throwing bombs in crypto Twitter and saying they're all this, that,or the other thing?Because there's a lot of really smart people in both parties.But the one we're focused on right now is the Democratic Party that need to actually have to start to have reasonable, educated conversations about why cryptocurrencyis, is one of the, part of it is about the core principles of what most people got intopolitics for, is about liberty, is about freedom, is about inclusion.So I know we're at time. I could do this for hours, by the way.
44:11By the way, I would do it for hours, too, but I got to literally go get a root canal.My last final question was going to be, where do you want to be in a year with all this, right?Now, once the dust settles, which it always does, you know, what's your hope with laptop andcrypto in general?Right back here.And I hope that it goes from, you know, 50.It's at 80 right now.I hope it goes to, you know, I hope it goes to, you know, 10 cents.
44:34I hope that it actually builds value for people.I hope that I am sitting with you talking about the first checks that we're sending out to the, to the,to the charities that really, that I, you know, that I care about in the, in particular,in the recovery and addiction space.That's where I hope.And I hope then to be two years from then.And that's part of the prediction market piece of it is,is that the coin has at least that long of a lifespan
45:01as the last prediction that occurs in 2029.Well, I hope this conversation was more pleasantthan the root canal you're about to get, at least.Yeah, no.The other thing, too, is, man,I really appreciate you having me on,because I know the skepticism, and I know that you probably get you from a lot of people,and you're probably used to it on crypto Twitter.
45:27But I really do appreciate you taking the time to listen and have a conversation about it.It really means a world to me.Thank you.My pleasure.I hope we can do it again in the future, man.Thanks.All right, man.Okay.
45:39Take it easy.Thanks, guys.See you.
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