This Week in Startups - Apple allows in-app NFT purchases + Bitcoin's role during global macro headwinds | E1572

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Sunny Madra and Vinny Lingham are BACK for another crypto roundtable! First up, a full breakdown of the current NFT space: Apple allowing in-app NFT purchases (1:35), best uses cases & platforms f...or distribution (15:07). Then, they discuss Bitcoin's role during global macroeconomic headwinds. (37:46) (0:00) J+M tee up today's crypto roundtable! (1:35) Apple allows in-app purchases of NFTs (13:33) TripActions - Go to https://tripactions.com/twist and get a $500 Amazon gift card after making your first travel booking OR paying off your first $1000 of liquid spend (15:07) NFT use cases, best platforms for minting and distributing NFTs seamlessly (26:19) WorkOS - Go to https://workos.com to learn how to make your app enterprise-ready. (27:49) NFT platforms adopting open standards to reach critical mass (31:38) Celsius reportedly plans to issue "IOU" tokens representing its debt (36:28) Spokn - Get 3 months free at https://getspokn.com/twist  (37:46) Global macro headwinds, Bitcoin's role in the monetary system going forward (53:18) Will we ever find out who Satoshi is? FOLLOW Sunny: https://twitter.com/sundeep FOLLOW Vinny: https://twitter.com/vinnylingham FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, everybody, it's Wednesday, Wednesday. Every other Wednesday, we let all the crypto news, the macro news. We let it grow. We let it fester. We let it stew. And then Molly and I have our two favorite crypto people who are builders in crypto, the OGs of crypto, Molly. People love crypto Wednesdays.
Starting point is 00:00:22 It's an absolute delight. This week in startups is brought to you by, Trip Actions was built to help businesses scale without travel and expenses being a pain point. It's the only all-in-one travel, corporate card, and expense management solution. Go to tripactions.com slash twist to sign up for free and get a $500 Amazon gift card after making your first travel booking or paying off your first $1,000 of liquid spend. WorkOS is a developer platform to make your app enterprise ready. With a few simple APIs, you can immediately add common enterprise features like single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and more. Go to workOS.com to learn how to make your app enterprise ready.
Starting point is 00:01:10 And spoken. Finally, there is a way to build culture and connection that is designed for remote, Spoken Stories. It's fast, it's async, yet it's human. Check out getspoken.com slash twist, to get three months free. That's G-E-S-P-O-K-N without the E.com slash twist. Crypto Roundtable with Sunny Madra and Vinnie Lingam, Sunny is co-founder of definitive intelligence, which lets people view on and off-chain data to understand their web through user base.
Starting point is 00:01:44 Vinny is co-founder of Civic, a startup that encrypts identity information on the blockchain and also started Wait Room for one-on-one video conferencing. Back with us again for barely contained chaos Wednesday. Hey. Hey guys. Welcome boys.
Starting point is 00:01:59 Good to be back. Getting a lot of positive feedback on the Crypto Roundtable I see on the, on the interwebs, on the social networks. How's it been? Are you getting recognized at the, are you now getting recognized at the Whole Foods or just the most crypto-dorks? Are you guys micro-famous like us? What's going on? Not yet, Jay. We're working on that.
Starting point is 00:02:21 Small, what is it? Somebody said the other day, small tam. Small Tam. That's what I feel like I have. Small Tam. I'm very famous within a small tam. I like it. I like it.
Starting point is 00:02:33 All right. There's a lot of news going on here. I don't even know where you want to start. But I know that there was Doe Kwan on the Lamb. I'm really fascinated by this Apple NFT story because I got some strong feelings on that. I mean, then there's just so much other stuff going on, you know, like with NFTs and Dows. We actually had Ben Ha from the. orange Dow.
Starting point is 00:02:56 Orange Dow on the pod to clarify. After we talked about it, he reached down and was like, hey guys, let's, yeah. Where do you want to start, Molly or? I think we got it. Well, producer Sonny put together some notes for us. Go, Producer Sunny. Producer Sunny is a beast.
Starting point is 00:03:09 But I agree that I think it was your opinion, and I agree with this opinion, that this Apple story is kind of the big deal, that Apple is now allowing in-app purchases of NFTs. So you have this fascinating situation brewing where Apple is simultaneously, just normalized NFTs and, you know, increase this market for it dramatically and is also centralizing the sale of NFTs and taking a 30% cut of all of those sales. So I will, I had a
Starting point is 00:03:38 photographer at my house yesterday for, you know, for lunch. And I won't say his name, but he's a very famous photographer. And he's, he sells a ton of NFT art. And he's prints on, you know, on the different sites. And he is, he's super excited about Instagram. and what they're doing with NFTs. Now, if you haven't tried it yet, some of you're probably into the beta that they're running, where you can actually connect your wallet to your Instagram account and display your NFTs on your profile.
Starting point is 00:04:08 So they can go to your grid and see which NFTs and collectibles you have. And as I was thinking about it, I was like, well, this is interesting. So could it be, and I'm just putting it out there, that Instagram, Facebook, whatever, and other companies who are looking at this space are actually putting effective pressure on Apple to say, look, you guys, you know, we want to display, we want to sell, we want to retail NFTs as a visual artwork. Why can we not do this? And Apple's basically saying, look, you know what, this is a reasonable request. And given the other
Starting point is 00:04:39 antitrust issues they've had with, you know, Epic and whatnot, like, they need to support it. And is Google going to do it as well? And therefore, Apple may have just beaten Google to the to the punch here. And if Apple and Google both start allowing NFT and TECB sold. You know, it becomes, I mean, I agree with Sunny, it's a big deal. Now, will the 30% hold long term? Probably not. Margins are probably turned down.
Starting point is 00:05:02 I mean, you know, Android may go and sit there at 20%. And then Apple's going to force to drop to 20% or whatever it is. But I see a world where people are wanting to pay for digital art in a big way, and they already are doing it. They're just not doing it through apps. And so the real question is, what's the toll going to be for going through the app stores? Right. Sunny, what do you think? Why is this such a big deal and how do you break down this tension between decentralized are available to everybody and the 30% cut that cuts both ways?
Starting point is 00:05:33 Well, you know what's fascinating? I kind of think like this could be a real huge opening for NFTs outside the 30%. And, you know, there's a lot of backlash here. But if you think about what they've sort of enabled, let's use some classic examples like Netflix is a good one, right? You know, you can't sign up for Netflix within the. the Apple, you know, within an Apple app, right? You have to do it outside and they do that because Netflix doesn't want to, you know, give 30% of that first time sign off or whatever their rule may be with respect to, you know, subscription businesses. With this NFT, by allowing NFTs in and blessing NFTs, you can really think about an interesting world where maybe not just from a monetization perspective, the way, you know, Vinny was talking about it, but what if the NFTs are allowed there to be a transactional system outside of the Apple ecosystem?
Starting point is 00:06:22 So this could be a really big opening in wedge for a lot of games, a lot of businesses that don't want to pay the tax and them allowing it in. And if it grows fast enough, they won't be able to cut it off. So I think everyone that's been thinking about this should really think about using this opening from them, not making it a monetization moment, but making it a moment such that we can connect outside the Apple ecosystem and get away from the Apple tax that they're kind of putting on everything that's within their world. Wait, can you unpack that a little bit? So you're saying that an NFT sold in the Apple store could be a Trojan horse in some ways,
Starting point is 00:06:57 not the bad way, but like you buy an NFT, maybe you pay that 30% cut, but it has functionality built in that enables stuff that once you own it, you can do off of that ecosystem. Correct. Or maybe you get it for free within the Apple ecosystem because they've allowed it. And then you can go take it since as an NFT, it's available on the blockchain outside the Apple ecosystem. And where it's a crude value, you can go trade it there.
Starting point is 00:07:19 And so I think this is a really big opening for, you know, not just artists, but people that are thinking of NFTs as utility items. Yeah, I mean, I had this conversation with Sachs about a year ago when NFTs were kind of raging. And I said to him, I said, do you think, I mean, the reason Sachs is because obviously he's a SaaS guy, software's a service guy. And I was like, you know, do you see a world? Could we have a world where, and I think this is possible, where people buy a license, like a perpetual permanent license to a product. So for Sunny, for example, instead of paying him or whatever, tens of thousands of dollars a year for a license to definitive, I go and say, hey, I'll pay you, you know, 500,000 bucks or a million bucks. It's an enterprise license. It's perpetual forever. We don't have an expense. He gets the cash flow up front. When I'm done with that, or we sell the company or we do whatever, I can just sell that license to someone else. And it grants you access and maybe there's a limited supply of those type of licenses that have full access to all features, et cetera. So I do see a world where NFTs become, you know, it's a to be an access token, if you think about it. It's tokenized access to some, some product, service, utility, a party, an event, software license, whatever the case is. And so these NFTs become very
Starting point is 00:08:31 valuable. And at some point, Apple's can't really deny someone importing an NFT into a wallet. They can do it on the web and then go to the app and unlock functionality within the app. I mean, the game is a good example, right? So if Apple says, we're not going to allow it, and I go online, And by way, Amazon does this with Prime. If you go and play Hotstone, for example, you can go to Amazon Prime and unlock certain cards and packs and gold directly on the website without going through the App Store. When you go log into your game on the app store that you downloaded, it's all there already.
Starting point is 00:09:04 And this is kind of one of my criticisms at Epic Games, I think, when they went after Apple. And I know what they were trying to do. And I kind of commend them in the sense that they were trying to, like, do the greater good. But all they had to do is offer gamers the 30% discount if you buy direct and say, hey, if you buy, you know, gold on our website directly or Fortnite V bucks on the website, you're saving 30%. The kids would do it. The kids are, and the people will play these games. They'll go, and why am I going to use the in-app purchases when I can go and save 30%. So they didn't have to confront Apple directly.
Starting point is 00:09:34 And I think free markets resolve these things. It's the same principle with NFTs, right? So if I have an NFT and I want access to a $1,000 software license, why buy it, three? through Apple when I can go to the website, buy the NFT, loaded, you know, deposit the token in my account and then log into the app that was downloaded through the app store and it works. And so this is the problem Apple's got. So I agree with it, Sonny. Like if they don't enable this, they're going to lose out in the end.
Starting point is 00:10:00 Yeah. Yeah, this is just Apple, continuing Apple overreach. You may remember they destroyed the experience when you were using Audible for the past decade or two on your phone. You had to open up a web browser. You could look at the library. You could browse books in your audible app, but very anti-competitively,
Starting point is 00:10:21 they won't let you buy inside there. And then lo and behold, 10 years later, you could buy books inside the audible app. And they very quietly did it, I think, because they were getting a ton of antitrust pressure. But this flies in the face of everything that NFTs are about. They're supposed to be not controllable. They're supposed to not have these high fees, theoretically.
Starting point is 00:10:41 Maybe if you're using Solana or the new Ethereum, you don't have as many gas fees on it. So Apple, I think, just doesn't get NFTs right now and the fact that they're, you know, not centrally controlled. I don't know about that. I don't know with that assertion, Jason. I don't think, I think like NFTs are an application of blockchain technology. Blockchain is supposed to be decentralized and permissionless and trustless.
Starting point is 00:11:05 NFTs is just a service built on top of it. It's like a can, you know, as far as artists are concerned, it's a canvas. Like you could put a digital. Yeah, but do you think they should be only. Like there should be an Apple NFT. And then when you go to the App Store, you can buy, you know, MP3. You go to iTunes theoretically. You can buy a pocket.
Starting point is 00:11:20 You can buy iTunes. You could buy iTunes. You could buy audiobooks or you could buy NFTs and there are Apple NFTs. I mean, they could do that as well. And they could have like a closed ecosystem of NFTs that are only tradable there. It's the antithesis of why people wanted to create NFTs so they can take their sword from one game and go to another. I know that. But I'm just saying with the overreach and charging this ridiculous fee, to me it's like,
Starting point is 00:11:43 antithetical to what NFTs are supposed to be. But also shout out to Twitter, because by the way, Twitter, long before anybody else, with the Twitter Blue product, was it a year or two ago? They started, maybe it was a year ago, last summer. They started allowing people to use NFTs for their Twitter avatar. So I kind of feel like as overblown as NFTs were, there is still kind of something cool that could happen here if it does, in fact, get embraced, you know, big way by Apple. I sort of like, though, I feel like Sunny is describing a good middle ground here, which is like, sure, there's the interpretation that it sucks and Apple's overreaching.
Starting point is 00:12:21 And if they sell this stuff and take a 30% cut, that that is not ideal or not optimal in terms of the, you know, if you really are a philosophical purist about this. But on the other hand, you popularize and massively distribute a technology that, as you pointed out, has so much other potential functionality built in that it might not even matter. Like most people won't be paying the 30% cut, and they will be exposed to an ecosystem that offers them a lot more. Like, maybe it's actually just a win-win. And Apple will make a little extra cheddar on the side like they always do, but like, who cares? It's not going to break anything.
Starting point is 00:12:57 It's just dumb. I just found like Apple is dumb for doing this. Is it dumb or is it like a huge win for this technology? It's a huge win for the NFT ecosystem. So for what we want, this is awesome. I think the worst thing they could have said is, hey, we don't support NFTs, not allowed in any of, of our apps.
Starting point is 00:13:13 We can't, you know, and so by them opening it up, I think we're going to see a lot of innovation here. And we're going to see people break this monopoly they have, which I think I'm, I'm very excited about. Right. Like, maybe they're actually just sneakily. They open the gate. Yes.
Starting point is 00:13:27 To the Trojan horse. And that's fine. That was their mistake. I'm fine with that. All right. Take it from me. Booking business travel is a huge headache, especially if you own a business, right? Because you're worried about every nickel, every dime, every dollar counts.
Starting point is 00:13:42 And if you're going to do business travel. business travel. You got to make it work for both you and your team members. Jake, how's going on the road? I'm raising a fund. Launch fund for that I need to be on the road. Okay. And I'm going to be sending some of my people on the road. Well, I want to make it easy for them. I want to make it easy for me and for operations. And that's why we use trip actions. It's the only all in one travel corporate card and expense management solution. It's basically built to save you a ton of time and to save you money and to make it delightful for your team members, whether you're a startup or a fully established large business. You need to use trip actions. This one platform seamlessly manages the bookings,
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Starting point is 00:15:01 Remember, it's trippactions.com slash twist. They are the best in the business at this. We love them. We use them. And you will too. I mean, eventually, just thinking out loud here, imagine if buying a piece of software. Now, I know this technically doesn't make sense. But imagine an an NFT-like device where you could buy an app and the app was contained in like an NFT-like product. And the app could move from operating system to operating system. You bought it once or like your audio book was kind of similar to an NFT and it could move from place to place and be resold. That would be like the next level of this. Has anybody even thought about extending NFTs into being like If I bought a movie or I bought a special episode of a podcast, I could then put it up for sale.
Starting point is 00:15:47 Like people can put a DVD up for sale. Well, we talked about this, I think, in one of the first episodes, right? But if you think about something like Royal does this and there's like a couple different platforms, right, which are allowing musicians to take their rights and make them available via blockchain, right? So that's sort of the first step in the direction of what you're talking about. And so, yeah, like, you know, why should you, if you buy a movie, why should it be limited to the iTunes ecosystem.
Starting point is 00:16:12 Maybe in the future you want to move all to Google or you want to move all to Amazon. So if you've bought that right, that right should exist across platforms. And so I think this opening is really, really exciting. The things that you're talking about, I think can be enabled now and say, look, like, especially with things like, you know, file coin behind the scene where the actual asset will live in a decentralized storage and then there'll be an NFT that says, okay, that's my right to that thing living in a decentralized storage. It's really, really huge opportunities coming our way here.
Starting point is 00:16:38 I could just think of like a director, if a director, like, if a director, like, like really Scott said, I'm going to make the Blade Runner final, final cut. You know, the final cut is the best one. But really Scott said, I'm going to do a specific voiceover for the 50th anniversary. I'm going to sell a thousand or 10,000 copies that have like, you know, the special commentary. It's going to be one of a thousand. You'll have your number. But the actual media is embraced in there. And it doesn't exist on Apple or Netflix. You just buy it directly from, you know, the movie studio. And then you own that asset forever. And it's tradable. Because right now, like, what's the difference between a beepal being in there and, you know, some
Starting point is 00:17:15 Blu-ray copy of this? Could be like an interesting thing for indie filmmakers and other folks. I think it'll go everywhere. Okay, so speaking of expanding capability, another note from sunny, NFT ticketing is now coming to airlines. We're starting to see more and more. It's so interesting as like, you know, every week we pound our fists, like, show us the utility. And interestingly, it feels like NFTs are showing us the most accessible utility, at least.
Starting point is 00:17:41 right, the type of utility that we can totally understand up to and including expanding to airlines so that at least an Argentinian, one Argentinian budget airline, Flybondi, is now giving passengers the option to purchase their flight tickets in the form of NFTs. This felt like it was always coming. Yeah, and think of like the utility, like, you know, if I buy a ticket today and I want to, you know, give it to you, Molly, I can't. It's just impossible, right? Even though it may be refundable. It's crazy. It's crazy. And now what these, what these folks have done, I think it's incredible where you can basically, I could just transfer it to you and you could buy it off me and you could buy it off me at a premium or discount
Starting point is 00:18:17 or whatever it happens to be. I think this for, you know, kind of open marketplaces, this type of example is just really, really powerful of what's coming our way and sort of the centralized locks that, you know, the airlines, that's just a rule they made out. Hey, Sonny, you bought this ticket. You can't give it to Molly. And so I was really excited when I saw that. That's why I put in a note. And if you want to change it, you have to pay $250. For no reason, really, that we can think of. You just have to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, part of the airline stuff is always security because I do scanning and clearance of identities before. So there may be a period which you can trade it in and say, hey, look, you can trade this before 24 hours before TSA runs their checks or whatever it is.
Starting point is 00:18:55 But you can buy a ticket five minutes, but you can buy a ticket five minutes before the plane takes. Or you can go to the airport. About an hour. About an hour. An hour. Yeah, sure. About an hour before. But we've all done it.
Starting point is 00:19:05 I have to say, like, I look at my Apple wallet now and I go through. doing it right now, that's why I was looking down, I was looking at my expired, what do they call the tickets in your Apple wallet? Whatever those are called passes. And I'm looking through them right now,
Starting point is 00:19:23 I'm getting nostalgic. I found like a Jason Isbell concert I went to with Bill Gurley. That was a great concert, Jay Cal, you have to admit. No, and then I, you know, I just found a 49ers game. And I'm kind of bummed out
Starting point is 00:19:36 because the Warriors game we went to was those ticket master ones that don't exist. my Apple wallet. But I like to keep, like my courtside seats, I put them in a little thing. But I was also finding all my Fendango tickets with my daughters to see different films. And I'm like, oh, I would love if my dad gave me the ticket stubs from Raiders of the Lost Ark or like, I mean, we did like, I don't know, maybe 14 things when I was a kid with my dad. And I would love to have all 14. I'm joking. I'm like 14.00. But like we did like six things. I did like six things. I did like
Starting point is 00:20:10 six things with my dad. I would love to have the ticket stubs. Can you imagine if I had the ticket stubs to the Yankee games I went to my dad with? And they're probably lost. And could you imagine if your ticket subs then can be connected to video and photos of the whole experience. Like actually now I want the whole NFT ticket stuff. Oh my God, you guys are coming around. You guys are coming around.
Starting point is 00:20:30 I've always loved NFTs. I've always loved NFTs. What is happening? What is happening? I just think NFTs. Stupid round table. Talk about Trojan horse. No,
Starting point is 00:20:39 NFTs as keepsakes and then you could sell them. And that would be kind of cool too. You know, there's a ticket that just went on sale. I think I brought this up the last time for Michael Jordan's first game. And somebody had two tickets. They didn't go to the game, but they kept them. And then they found them. It was like, oh, these are the thing.
Starting point is 00:20:57 So we've been officially orange-pelt. We sold for like $10,000 plus dollars or something. No, $500,000. I don't know what Bill Lee. I think Bill Lee played $500,000. I don't know that they bought them. But it sounds like a Billy thing to do. I just, I love the first.
Starting point is 00:21:09 fact that NFTs have crashed. OpenC went from like, what were they doing hundreds of millions of dollars a day to like $6 or something? And then they have this huge scandal, people front running. This is the kind of collapse I'm here for in tech, because that means somebody's going to build something of true value here. What is the most valuable NFT platform, you know, creation tool? Is there a Canva? Because we invested in a company called Blush that was kind of building tools to make NFTs, what's the pick and shovel here or the bet you can make on NFTs? Is there a bet to make here? Or is it just on individual NFTs? So the issue really is, if you've looked at like the trends from where it started, where it's going, I personally think that NFTs took off on
Starting point is 00:21:57 Ethereum because of the wealth creation effect in the Ethereum ecosystem. So Ethereum soared to $100 billion plus, all these early Ethereum adopters at millions and millions of dollars. They can go drop 50K on a JPEG, no big deal. And that started. A lot of artists were buying other artists stuff and people who had Ethereum made a lot of money, right? You went from a low of 50 bucks in the last cycle to, you know, 5,000, right? So there's a lot of wealth creation there.
Starting point is 00:22:22 But then Ethereum had scaling issues and you look at the cost of minting, the footprint, the carbon footprint, the negativity around the carbon footprint, the ESG sort of variables and taking the equation. And so entity is soared. and then there was this huge backlash, and then, you know, the market crashed for lots of reasons, Ethereum crashed, et cetera, et cetera. And now, if you look at fast forward a year from where all the sort of peak madness was to where we are today, yeah, Ethereum ecosystem is still doing well.
Starting point is 00:22:51 It's got a whole bunch of people doing stuff in it. You know, the fees have dropped somewhat. It's migrated off to ETH 2.0. It's okay. But what you're seeing is in the Solana ecosystem, an ecosystem where the wealth creation, yeah, it did peak at some $50 billion mark at some point, but now it's, down to like 10 market cap. But the volume of NFTs and Solana are, it's like eye popping, but it's all low, low cost NFTs. The ETH world is very like used to $500,000, $1,000 mince,
Starting point is 00:23:22 no problem. Ethereum, Salana, the mints are like, you know, 50 bucks, 20 bucks, artists are selling. So now it's gone from like very, this is how technology evolves, right? The early adopters are always like the wealthy people who can afford the expense of technology, blah, blah, blah. time, it goes to like everyone can now afford a phone in the world. Like, it's just super cheap. And so I think if you look at the volume that you spoke about, Jason, that collapsed out of, out of, you know, open sea, that volume was Ethereum volume. Let's just be frank. And the sheer number and value was Ethereum-based. If you look at Magic Eden, which is eclipsed OpenC right now, now- Why didn't you eclipse it? Because, well, I'm, I'm, this is the point, right? It's gone from being something which only a
Starting point is 00:24:07 few people could afford a $500, $5,000, $5,000, etc., to something most people can afford to go and spend $20 or $50 on an NFT or Magic Eden. And because it's minted on Salana where the fees are ultra low, you're seeing this huge, like, move from being a niche market to a more of a mass market product. So Eden is a competitor to OpenCinct. Magic Eden is the competitor. It's bigger and Salonabase, yeah. Got it.
Starting point is 00:24:32 Can I ask a stupid question? Do the NFTs go back and forth between the two? So if I buy one on Eden, I can sell it on OpenC? Yes, you can. So OpenC supports some Salana contracts. I'm not for all of them, but like some of them. And I think Magic Eden is adding ETH support or added ETH support. So there is, I mean, they're NFTs. You can move them across chains. But Magic Eden launched and focused on mass market adoption, lots of users, cheap transaction fees, low price NFTs. And the artists that do stuff and the creators do stuff on Magic Eden are really trying to focus on, you know, high volume, low cost. And OpenC initially was like, you know, thousand mints. 10,000 months, whatever, and higher prices. J-Cal, going back to your question, like, you know, who are the kind of pictures shovels here? I'll kind of break it down into a couple categories.
Starting point is 00:25:17 So for like enterprise companies, you have, you know, Salesforce with NFT cloud. And so they've done a couple launch. In fact, there was a ticket master NFT thing going on last year, which they really supported. And then you also have, they did a big one with Scotch and Soda, which is a big European brand. They announced that at like Dreamforce last week. Then you have Shopify who's enabling it. And so they've done a lot of, you know, pretty interesting collaborations around token gated retail. A big one they did at South by Southwest with doodles, which was, you know, pretty exciting.
Starting point is 00:25:50 And then sort of, you know, non-enterprise, non-corporate, you have like manifold, manifold. Manifold.x, Y, Z, check out those guys. They're like a real kind of leader. In a place you go to kind of, you know, create your project and, you know, they do all the work kind of behind the scenes. So you basically bring your art there. make sure that you get your NFTs onto the blockchain. So there's a couple of really, I mean, like, it's really awesome because you see it at the enterprise level.
Starting point is 00:26:13 You see it at the e-commerce level. And you definitely see it, you know, for the creators as well. Listen, if you're an enterprise app, you need to offer SSO. What's SSO? Single sign-on. Single sign-on. Unlocks the ability for all those enterprise users. You know the ones that spend the money to log into your app with their company's identity
Starting point is 00:26:36 provider, which is probably required, it will get them in quicker, and you can show the value of your product. Now, you're probably thinking, hey, I could build this myself. I'm smart. Yeah, you could also build a server. You could also build a data center. Why on earth would you waste your cycles on building SSO when you can have it all done for you? I want you to check out WorkOS. I want you to show it to the team. It's basically, here's how you explain it to everybody. Are we going to rebuild Stripe? No. This is Stripe for Enterprise Features. Okay. Now everybody understands why you would use this.
Starting point is 00:27:12 A simple API plugin that lets you move faster, spend way less money on developers, and you don't have to worry about maintaining these integrations. You could use WorkOS for just $49 per month per organization. And they don't just have SSO at WorkOS. No, they have other APIs for things like multifactor authentication and much more. You're going to go to WorkOS right now. WorkOS.com.
Starting point is 00:27:35 W-O-R-K. OS.com, I want you to write it down, put it in your notepad, put it in your Slack. And if you want to learn more about their different integrations, check out the WorkOS podcast, huh? Just go to WorkOS.com slash podcast. You know what would be really smart, Molly, is if these NFT kids, they just co-opted a lot of these open schematic standards like I calendar. Like, they should just build NFT plus I calendar into each other. And then when I send a calendar invite or a Zoom invite to people, it could be like an NFT, and then you could extend it and you could do things with that calendar invite that maybe you can't do with just an, what is it, an ICS file or whatever that is when you. I mean, like, I now officially want to see the company
Starting point is 00:28:19 that is doing that, attaching my ticket to it as an NFT, pulling in all the digital assets that are related to the event that I went to, maybe even within my social graph, like, oh, we're a bunch of my friends at the same concert, like give me their videos, like put this whole thing together into this sort of beautiful event package and take my money. That's such a good idea.
Starting point is 00:28:40 So if you had the NFT ticket. No, imagine you had an app, right? Or the Warriors app or the ticket master app, right? And you got that ticket. And then we take a couple of pictures at the game and there's some clips on Twitter. And then when you open it up, it says add media or when you're doing share. So you take a tweet and you say share to. And when you say share to it says share to my NFTs and you pick the NFTs.
Starting point is 00:29:02 And you pick the NFT from the list. Oh, here's the NFT of us. sitting in the second row at the Warriors game. And then it adds to it and says, now you can publish that as an NFT. Then you add the picture of us at it. Oh, somebody tweeted a clip of us and they made a little video thing. I add that object to it. Now, just on my phone, I've created, I've used the base ticket like you're saying,
Starting point is 00:29:23 adding this stuff to make like a rich NFT. And you know, you got this RNFT that you could then publish, save, or share with me, make a copy of it. It's such a good idea. Wow. That's a good startup idea. Does that exist in the world? like create an NFT from shared media objects.
Starting point is 00:29:38 I literally just order. I'm in the drive-thru right now, and that is my order. And I will also take a large-a-coke. Does it exist, Sonny? Does it exist? Everybody knows how to use the sharebubon. Or is this not even the right use for NFT? Like, is this the wrong way to imagine that that could be used?
Starting point is 00:29:53 It goes back a little bit to where Vinny was. Like, I think what we saw over the last 18 months was like, you know, kind of speculation. And now the utility's coming. So it's great. It's great that you guys are putting these ideas out there. And it's all possible. Why not? why isn't there a creation tool?
Starting point is 00:30:06 So we're talking about Apple supporting this. You know, there's a share button, right? You get that little up arrow, and we've all trained ourselves that you can take an object, a tweet, a news story, and then you can share it to something, right? You could save it to files.
Starting point is 00:30:19 You could save it to your ibook reader or I use Speechify. I can share a news story to Speechify and create an audio file that I can listen to. If I could take any object and then share it to NFT. Yes. Why can't I share it to NFT?
Starting point is 00:30:33 Well, because this goes back to the point we started the conversation with. Up until just this announcement from Apple, their take on NFTs wasn't there, right? That's why. And so now, that's why I think it's a huge opening. All of this stuff can start happening, right? And it's, you know, Trojan Horse. But I mean, somebody could make sure to NFT right back to the top. Like, it sounds like such a bummer, but it turns out this is the start. This is the start of like true mass utility. No, because you need official support from Apple to support NFTs to say the wallet, everything else can make this happen.
Starting point is 00:31:04 helps, but you know when you hit the share button, if you have an existing app, like, is there an app and a share? Share to a mint. Share to a minting tool, basically. That then publishes my NFT instantly. So I take any photo. I hit share, share to NFT. I don't think that exists, but I haven't seen it.
Starting point is 00:31:22 But, you know, that exists within Photoshop. Can build it in two weeks. No, but exists within Photoshop. So you can file export NFT? Yeah, exactly. They've built that functionality, right from within Photoshop. This is amazing. Okay.
Starting point is 00:31:33 we have officially been orange-pilled for this half of the show. So I'm going to bring us back to what some of the other news that's been happening in crypto, because back in the land of financialization, there have been a few more happenings. Obviously, we would love to hear your thoughts about Doquan and whether he is or is not on the run. But I want to ask you about the Celsius development. Celsius, of course, the crypto firm that froze withdrawals in June and still has not resumed them for some customers. And now evidently is trying to, or at least planning to tokenize its debt.
Starting point is 00:32:10 This might be the ballsyest move I've ever heard. They're going to turn the funds that they owe people into an IOU token. I'm sorry, token? That's going to be great. That's going to go up in value. What am I missing here? Before you laugh at that, okay, this is exactly. I'm not laughing.
Starting point is 00:32:32 It's clever as hell. This is exactly what happened to BitFenex back in 20, I think it was 15 or 16 when they got hacked. They got hacked and someone stole 100,000 plus Bitcoins and they issued and they still have it out there. I think it's called the Leo token. BitFinex Leo token. Yeah, it's a Leo token. And like basically what happens was they, And the US recovered this money, the government recovers this money a while ago, but it's, you know, the government's not exactly handle back to to BetterFenex anytime soon.
Starting point is 00:33:10 But they issued this token, a whole bunch of people put money in, into it, and basically help them survive and help Tether survive. That's how they did it. They issued this note, and then they were able to refund their, their, still ranked number 21, I think, on coin marketing cap. And the idea is that this pays out once these coins come back, the Leo token holders. get a share of the, a large share of the money back, and then Bitcoin price has gone up and et cetera. So it's like, and they use a percentage of profits to rebuy, Leo, as Engels pointed out, yeah, I remember that.
Starting point is 00:33:44 There's a, there's a, they use their profits on the exchange to buy it back. So it's effectively the money they're made out of, um, out of the exchange business not going under. They're using it to make whole the people who bought the token. So this is not unprecedented. This is not unprecedented at all. I did not know this at all. And I looked it up and you were right,
Starting point is 00:34:01 100% of that outstanding debt from BitFinex was paid back to those users in the form of that token a year later. Sunny, go ahead. Sorry, I had. I was going to say, no, just on that, let's look at the corners, right? It's like either you can get nothing, right? Then you just shut down. You can get pennies on the dollar as what it may be worth today. Or you take this thing, and if they can revamp their business, you support them through it, and you may be able to get whole or beyond whole. So I think... We call this to Hell Mary, right? It's a Hell Mary. It's a Hell Mary. It's Aaron Rogers throwing to the end zone against the Detroit Lions. Actually, to be not super cynical about it, you will see this with founders.
Starting point is 00:34:38 I've had founders come to me and said, Jake Al, really appreciate you putting money to the company. We burned your 500,000. We did the best we could. I'm like, that's fine. We'll take the loss. And they're like, well, I'm starting a new company. I'm going to give you 1% of it.
Starting point is 00:34:49 The new company's worth 10 million. Here's 100,000 in common shares in the new company. And I've been like, okay. You know, like in the past, I've been like fine. And I don't think it's ever worked out or it hasn't worked out yet. It's actually, it's actually worked out for me. It's actually worked out for me. I had a company which I invested in.
Starting point is 00:35:07 The founder, you know, it didn't go anywhere. But he gave me like two and a half points of the new company because I helped him out in a tough time and I gave him bridge loans and it all fell apart. And so I wrote it off. But I got another company, I think they're raising it like a 50 or 100 valuation. Perfect. Maybe you can sell into it. Yeah. This exists in poker.
Starting point is 00:35:25 People will do a make good, right? So you back Phil Helmuth. In the unlikely case, he doesn't return money, but pretty much is a money printing machine on poker. If he doesn't, you could say, oh, I get to roll that into your next tournament. So I know maybe Phil doesn't do this because he's so overbooked for staking. But I know people, I remember in L.A., they would say, you can stake me at this. And then if I make a big win in the next two tournaments, I'll give you a make good just to give you your money back. So that does exist.
Starting point is 00:35:54 It's called the make good. You just take sunny against me and see how it goes. You two idiots in poker? I would stake you guys in tokens, but not poker. That's what's really happening here. Not, not. I would never stake either of you idiots in poker. I've played poker with you both.
Starting point is 00:36:08 You're as bad as I am. He bluffed me off a straight. I had a straight last week and Friday, and he bluffed me off. Oh, really? Well, did you guys play in the Warriors? Sonny's all. Hell of, yeah, dude. No, we played, we played in Austin.
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Starting point is 00:37:46 What else was on the docket here? Tell us. Okay, so I'm going to use this news story as a jumping off point to talk a little bit about Doquan. But interestingly, in the way. of the Terra Luna collapse. This is sort of the now we're starting to see the regulatory wave along with everything else creep in. So we haven't seen anything yet this way. Okay. Can we go? Can we like, can we like just divert the wind? Can we divert a little bit onto macro because macro and crypto? Yeah, let's go macro. Sure. Let's talk about nobody has any idea or credibility. Let's do it.
Starting point is 00:38:17 Yeah, let's let's talk about something where macro economists don't even know what they're talking about. Yes, let's do it. All the black swans that have like there's a flock of black swans flying in here. The UK hasn't seen this in 60 years. The America hasn't seen this in 50 years. Blah, blah, blah. Like, the entire world is going through this. Blah, blah, blah. I mean, no, no.
Starting point is 00:38:36 It's funny. Like, a year ago, you know, the Fed would have said, oh, there's just no way you're getting at 8% inflation if we print $6 trillion. I mean, like, what are you guys thinking? And every rational person was going, what are you guys doing? And now the world's falling apart and they're holding their position. Look, so here's the thing. I think the citizens of the world,
Starting point is 00:38:56 and let's start with Europe, are losing absolute faith in their governments. And start with the UK and the rest of Europe as well. I really believe in the next three months, we are going to see a G-15 nation, you know, default on its debt or going to a massive debt spiral, debt spiral from basically, you know,
Starting point is 00:39:16 rising interest rates, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we are on the cusp of a total collapse in the global financial system as it stands today, assuming the Fed keeps on its hawkish tone, keeps raising rates and applying pressure, and nothing breaks in the U.S., the rest of the world is going to go into a panic. And that is, like, if you can give me a kind of point on that, I'm happy to take it, but I cannot see how the Fed can keep raising these
Starting point is 00:39:44 rates and not destroy a country somewhere. Yeah. Or that country will take this opportunity to destroy itself like we're seeing in the UK, right? Like, I'm going to take this big burning fire and I'm going to throw a nuclear bomb into it in the form of a bunch of like 100 billion pounds did we decide it of unfunded tax cuts. 400. The tax cuts, yeah. Yeah, 100 billion tax cuts and 400 billion expenditure or something.
Starting point is 00:40:11 Right. So let's understand what happened yesterday. They'll help themselves over the cliff is what I'm saying. Like, J Powell will get it started. This doesn't happen too often, you know, for in the develop world, bankruptcy. usually there are bailouts because you can print money, but it is possible if nobody wants to buy your debt that this could result in a spiral. Probably in the frontier markets, it happens frequently.
Starting point is 00:40:37 And in emerging markets, the next level up, it happens sometimes. And then even in America, we've had municipalities famously in 2013. Detroit went bankrupt, right? And I remember this because Vinnie, I was buying during the last financial crisis, 2005 to 2007. And I started buying muny bonds that were revenue-backed. Because I thought the market was overheated. And I just said, sell all my equities. I want to buy 100% muni bonds because they're backed by revenue.
Starting point is 00:41:03 So there's revenue-backed muni bonds. This is municipal bonds, then there's revenue back. Revenue back, long and short means they're backed by some revenue street, typically a bridge with a toll. Or it comes out of the tax coffers first. And so I tried to find out if municipalities had ever gone bankrupt. And it was like such a short list. It's usually like some small podunk town where, like,
Starting point is 00:41:24 Like there's one light and somebody got hit by a car and they sued for $100 million and got $25 million and that's double the budget for something. Let's talk about the mini bonds and the whole bond world. I'll get that in the second. Let's look at this tweet from James Butterful from coin shares. Okay. The trading volumes on pound to BTC was 10x plus, I think 12x where it is on an average day on Monday when everything collapsed. So what does that tell you? people in Britain were buying Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:41:54 A billion dollars in a day. A billion dollars in a day, net buying. And that's why Bitcoin spiked to 20,000 something yesterday. And then it pulled back. And the reason it pulled back is actually not what people think it is. So my theory on this is you're going to find people in these foreign countries and hundreds of billions of dollars, capital fleeing the fiat markets because of the collapse.
Starting point is 00:42:14 It doesn't have to all leave. It just a small percentage of it needs to say, I'm going to go diversify and put something to crypto, 5%, 10%, and that's enough to move the market significantly. What happens when you have these spikes in the middle of a bare market is people who need liquidity and cash are selling into the spikes and there's a lot of bare market sort of selling absorption that needs to happen. When that finishes, when all the people who are going to sell in these levels sell out and
Starting point is 00:42:44 maybe some of 20,000 and 25,000, et cetera, you're going to have a shortage of Bitcoin. And Bitcoin, quite frankly, is the gateway drug to crypto. It's what everyone, you know, majority of people are going to buy if they get into crypto. These, this chart is very telling. Let me tell you the second reason this thing goes, you know, wouldn't say parabolic, but it starts going on a run, is a lot of the pension funds and the reason the UK is doing what it's doing right now to save them is they weren't happy with 2%, 1% percent,
Starting point is 00:43:11 0.5% yields on bonds. Nobody was happy with that. So what do they do? They went to leverage their portfolio. go, oh, you know, we'll never see a 25% turban bond prices. I mean, come on. He's a government bonds. Let's take on 75% debt at low prices, half a point, 25 basis points, whatever. Let's buy up more bonds, which obviously pushed the yields down. And they were debt laden, but they were juicing their returns for their holders, right? And we're seeing this unravel,
Starting point is 00:43:40 not just in the UK just like, you know, canary in the coal mine. This is a global phenomenon. If you wonder why bond yields went down so low last year, because debt was free. It was like, well, if I can get 2% on bonds and money is free, I'll just take as much of it as I can. And we'd levered up the system. And now we're seeing an unraveling and we're going to see a collapse. So my prediction in the next 90 days, probably, I'd give it up to six months. A G50 country will go into a debt spiral. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:44:11 A big. And that money is going to flow out through crypto. a large portion of it flows out through crypto, and then there's a domino effect, okay? If you see this happening in the UK, and you're in Italy or Greece, and you see the signs of it happening there, and the banks,
Starting point is 00:44:27 so how do you prevent run of the banks? You limit withdrawals. You start telling people you can't take money out of the account. We have a liquidity issue. You scare the heck out of people. We've seen this happen in Cyprus. We've seen this happen many times. You're being ridiculous.
Starting point is 00:44:40 I grew up in Africa. You're being ridiculous, Vinny. But to bring us on the way back to the beginning. And you're talking Sunny's book. I'll explain why in a minute. But go ahead, Molly. To bring us back all the way to the beginning, though, it sounds like what you're saying is this whole time.
Starting point is 00:44:52 So earlier when we were talking about NFTs and innovation, I was thinking, okay, but is NFTs isn't going to be the place where all of this innovation and excitement happens. And now it sounds like what you're describing is that all along Bitcoin has been the Trojan horse. It's just sitting because I was thinking like, yeah, but are we ever going to get to the point where the currencies become the currency instead of the asset class? And it sounds like what you're trying to say,
Starting point is 00:45:14 set up here is like, yep, any minute now. Like any minute now, this will be the safe haven. What I really want to see just as a perverse exercise is I want to see that chart overlaid with gold over the same period. So gold's got other problems. Is Bitcoin the new gold? So the other problem with gold is this. You've got very large holders of gold, Italy, France, a whole bunch of countries that if
Starting point is 00:45:36 their currency starts taking it, you know, tanking and they've got to pay U.S. denominated debt, they have to probably sell some gold. So you can find gold vinyl vinyl. open market. Maybe they start settling energy with gold, but gold is going to be taken out of the vaults. And gold is down at the moment anyway. It's not exactly gold's running. A Bitcoin is not for everyone. Don't get me wrong. You're not going to see a collapse where trillions of dollars flow into Bitcoin because the world's collapsing. It's very unlikely. It's not that tipping point. It's not the like now we start using Bitcoin as Viat point. You're going to find that people are
Starting point is 00:46:07 going to diversify. And when you say, okay, I'm taking my cash out of the market. I'm selling this. I'm taking, I have, I have $100,000. This is going to. buy maybe 5% gold, maybe 5% Bitcoin. But the point is the flow, the funds flow is going to be out of bonds, out of equities, into assets, commodities, things that, you know, energy, stocks, whatever, where you think that your money is safer than in the current market. And as the government start devaluing the currency, what do you do? And I'm not a big Bitcoin bull, just by the way. I was like anti-Bitcoin for, I was pro-Bitcoin for years, then I'm anti-Bitcoin. I'd say neutral Bitcoin, it is the inflow mechanism for crypto. I mean, it dominates the market cap for
Starting point is 00:46:49 crypto. So when people who don't understand crypto want to buy stuff, everyone says just buy Bitcoin, maybe buy some Ethereum, you know, Salon is probably creeping up there as well now. But that's it. The point is, the other thing about Bitcoin, which is actually important, is self-custody. So you can actually hold those coins yourself on a ledger drive, on your computer, and not have to worry about counterparty risk. If you have funds in a bank and you have a liquidity crisis, and the banks get locked, you can't move that money. What do you do? So even if people start calling small amounts of it.
Starting point is 00:47:19 I want to get Sunday in here, but I'm also thinking of when we had Molly White on the show and she was saying that if it all collapses, she would much rather buy beans than Bitcoin. Magic beans to go to the moon. Listen, let me just pull up a chart for you here. Vinny's hysterical. He's a crypto, hysteric, talking his book.
Starting point is 00:47:36 All right, here is a chart. It's not my biggest holding either. Bitcoin is not my biggest holding. I'm breaking your chops. Okay, Bitcoin. Okay. Just in terms of stability, the yellow line, gold, the blue line, is that blue? Is the, the aqua line?
Starting point is 00:47:51 It's the pound to the dollar. And then you have Bitcoin insane vol. And if you click on one year, you can see, you know, this shows the run up, obviously five year, delightful. But then here's what you see the other side. So if you actually want more stability, buying Bitcoin is not where you're going to find it. You could buy some gold or you could buy the US dollar a pound. you're going to have much less vol. The volatility of Bitcoin has been like 70% in the last year.
Starting point is 00:48:17 Volatility of like the pound minus 23% gold is like no volatility. Now show me the now show me the can of beans line. Do you have that? Magic beans. Anyway, I'm fine if you're talking about food, man. In the apocalypse I want food and a bat with nails in it. What's going to happen with Bitcoin's, uh, sunny? What's going to happen with Bitcoin long term?
Starting point is 00:48:36 Because there's now this theory that we're like hitting some sort of stasis is going to hit like, you know, all the Bitcoin that are going to be made are going to be made and then maybe no innovation and you're going to have Salon and you have Ethereum, you're going to have other places with a lot of innovation going on. And Bitcoin is going to like wane in terms of the public's interest or is that like the feature? To be to be honest, like I'm not really too deep into like the economics side of it. Like as we were going down there, that's why it's kind of quiet. But like the way I sort of think about it, it's really, really different things. And when people start equating Bitcoin, Solana, Ethereum, you know, would pick your
Starting point is 00:49:12 crypto of choice, I think it's really, that's a real mistake. I think, I just go back to our first conversation. Some of the technologies that we talk about, whether it's Salana, whether it's Ethereum or, you know, any kind of L2s that are coming out, those are supporting innovation. I think Bitcoin is like, it is a cryptocurrency. It's been around for a long time. But it, there is, there's no building on top of it. There's no innovation that happens with it. There's no kind of growth associated with other than the pure demand for the coin. But that's, you know, even scared people off based on the chart that you showed today. So I sort of think that it looks more like a traditional commodity at this point than anything else and it probably behaves more like that.
Starting point is 00:49:52 And then the technologies, the other technologies are kind of more similar to fundamental internet technologies that, you know, like protocols that were, you know, TCPIP, SMTP, these type of protocols that lots of innovation was built on top of. So I really separate it out and I don't look at them in the same lens at all. I don't know if it's a safe haven, Molly. I would be careful thinking about Bitcoin as a safe haven. Beans, baby. It's not supposed to be a safe haven. It's a release film. It's a flight from Fiat. It's a flight from Fiat. Like if you're, if you don't have like, Bitcoin in my opinion is not for large amounts of money, okay? It's really not. It's not for storing millions and millions and millions of personal dollars.
Starting point is 00:50:36 Like, you can do that. In that use case, it's highly speculative. But if you're leaving a country and you need $10,000 to get out of the country or $20,000, 50,000, some small amount of money, relatively speaking, and you want to be able to make sure the banks can't shut you down, you access to your funds, you need to have that money put aside somewhere. It's emergency, it's rainy day funds. Yeah, let's tie it to this, you know, this war thing in the Russian, uh,
Starting point is 00:51:02 consignment thing that's going, our inscription thing that's going on, right? Where imagine you're, the draft, exactly. So imagine you wanted to leave. And Russia's doing, you know, all these things, stopping people from going, but let's just say you can make it across the border. Well, they can close your account down. You may not have access to your fund. So in that case, like Vinnie saying, Bitcoin's great.
Starting point is 00:51:20 Push your money into Bitcoin. Cross the border. Get it out of Bitcoin. Turn it into whatever asset you want. Those are the type of people that it kind of really, I think, appeals to in these moments as well. Exactly. Exactly. I wrote an article like six years ago.
Starting point is 00:51:31 And in it, what I said was Bitcoin will be successful when large amounts of people are holding small amounts of Bitcoin. Because then you've got a very global payment network where it's not highly concentrated in one person's hands. And obviously, when you're training five grand, 10 grams with a Bitcoin, it doesn't move the market. It's not, you know, on an intraday basis, it's not super volatile. Bitcoin is actually very, you know, it's when you try and dump a billion dollars in the market, you're going to crash it. So then it's volatile. But if lots of people are holding small amounts and you're just using it to temporarily make a payment, buy a sandwich, do whatever it is. Yes.
Starting point is 00:52:06 And the fees are actually reasonably low right now on Bitcoin right now. It obviously spikes in those superiors. And if you're a Russian trying to get out of Russia, like what are your other options? You can't stuff your pockets with cash. You may get robbed, right? You put it into other currencies. You don't have access to it. But you can get it into Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:52:20 So I think from that perspective, that's like a real utility you can see of it. The most important point. The most important point about Bitcoin. is it's fully decentralized. It cannot be frozen. And if you have USDC or anything else, even Ethereum right now, if we look at Coinbase and it's actually a lot more centralized.
Starting point is 00:52:40 Like, Bitcoin is the most decentralized cryptocurrency. I think no one will disagree on that point. And then every time you move away from Bitcoin, you become more more centralized, right? And so I think that's the issue, right? You don't, you want self-custody.
Starting point is 00:52:53 If I put Bitcoin on a drive or a brain wallet or whatever, no one can take it from me except with physical. You know what a brain wallet is? Right, right. A brain wallet is you just memorize 12. I don't recommend this, everyone. You take a 12 word seed phrase and you memorize those 12 words. And you can walk around the world.
Starting point is 00:53:09 As long as you know those 12 words, you can move your money around wherever you go and you can just pull it out somewhere else. I love that the, if you forget a word, you screwed. Right. Exactly. I'm just going to ask one stupid question. We ever going to find out who Satoshi is or who that group is? What are the chances on a percentage basis that we ever figure that out? If you were to gamble, you put odds on it's 10 to 1.
Starting point is 00:53:29 five to one. Ever is a long time. I went down the rabbit hole on this, and Satoshi was a group of people. And one of the people in the group, I think, had the most compelling argument. And that argument would basically, without giving it away to you, no one will ever sign a transaction with the Genesis block proving to be Satoshi. That would be the short answer. People can claim to you by Satoshi, but no one's going to be able to prove it. Sonny, will we ever know?
Starting point is 00:54:01 Will we ever know? We'll never know. Are those Bitcoins, the original Satoshi Bitcoins, which make up some... Why do you think there's Satoshi Bitcoins, by the way? Like, why do we make... Satoshi never said he mined them. He never said he owned them. I'm saying it's like the community believes that Satoshi owns those coins.
Starting point is 00:54:19 We don't know. Okay, there is a large block of coins that are kind of dead coins that have never been transacted, right, Sonny? Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, I think something, like, you know, Vinnie, just rough and tough, right? 21 million total, 14 million have been mined. Of the 14 million, 7 million have been lost.
Starting point is 00:54:35 In that 7 million, there's a chunk that, in that Satoshi, you know, block. No, no, 19 million have been mined out of 21. Okay. 19. How many are in the dead Satoshi block? Four million are presumably lost. Lost, okay. Lost or whatever, including Satoshi's coins, whatever.
Starting point is 00:54:52 So there's only like a real float of 15 million. coins roughly, 14.5 million coins roughly. Okay, that's Satoshi block. Chances that ever trades. I would say non-zero, 5%, 10%, but the person who trades, it may not be Satoshi. Okay, whoever's got those. What's the theory on why they would sit with them for 10 years plus? Because everyone is watching those coins.
Starting point is 00:55:16 You move one coin, the market's going to dump 50%, 70%. It's not liquid enough. Yeah, you can't. You can't move that many. Like, there are so many bots out there watching those wallets that are ready to short every single... What if somebody just sold programmatically one Bitcoin per day? How? How? You, the moment you move one coin, everything unraveled.
Starting point is 00:55:41 Because they'll know. Yeah. I got to leave it there at least. This is amazing. I love how our story arc of these conversations is just moving gradually toward, like... Acceptance of NFTs and dies. Well, yeah, maybe a little bit of that. Somebody in the chat was like, oh, my God, this panel just turned into use cases.
Starting point is 00:55:59 What's happening? But it feels like we're just going to ride this story as it unplays, and it's delightful. You guys are the best. Vinny and Sunny, thanks so much. See you next time. Thanks, guys. All right. Great job, everybody.

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