Unchained - 2025 Crypto Year in Review, Part 1: Shit Talking Edition - Ep. 990

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Crypto natives entered 2025 with many expectations, but bingo cards likely did not include world leaders launching memecoins. In this first installment of a two part Unchained Special, Ambient Finance founder Doug Colkitt and “Gwart” join to offer a whimsical take on some of the years major happenings as it pertains to crypto. How did an erstwhile dropshipper get in bed with world leaders and convince them to launch memecoins? And did Tom Lee's “good hair” save ETH? Thank you to our sponsor, Walrus! http://walrus.xyz/ Guests: Doug Colkitt, Co-founder of Fogo and Ambient Finance Gwart, Host of The Gwart Show Links: Unchained: Why Lyn Alden Isn’t a Fan of Trump’s Memecoins, but Neutral on a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve The Chopping Block: Trump’s Crypto Shake-Up, Solana’s Big Moment, that Changes Everything Why Would Argentine President Javier Milei Protect Kelsier’s Hayden Davis? How the $1.5 Billion Bybit Hack Could Have Been Prevented Which Crypto Assets Belong in a Reserve? This VC Says Not XRP and ADA White House Crypto Summit: Two Attendees Share Why It Matters Arthur Hayes and Hanson Birringer on Hyperliquid’s Success (And What Could Stop It) Hyperliquid Trader Makes $87M in 70 Days, Loses It In Five The Chopping Block: Tom Lee the New Saylor? DAT Consolidation, Token Wrappers Under Fire Circle, Issuer of the $61.5 Billion USDC, Raises $1.1 Billion in Landmark IPO Why Arbitrum Won Over Robinhood + A $59 Million Polymarket Controversy DAT Stocks Are on Sale. Are They a Buy? Plus, Why Crypto Is Dead Timestamps: 🚀 00:00 Introduction  😵 1:20 How Trump and Melania surprised the crypto community with Solana memecoins 😅 4:46 How Hayden Davis went from dropshipping to launching coins with world leaders 🫠 8:39 Could a test transaction have saved Bybit from the largest heist of all time? 🫡 13:34 How Ripple lobbyists reportedly got Trump to shout out an XRP reserve 🤣 17:55 Was the White House Crypto Summit hijacked by FIFA? 🤺 20:20 Hyperliquid's Run and the CZ v. Jeff Memes 😅 26:48 Who is James Wynn, really? 😆 30:36 What sparked ETH's comeback? Tom Lee's good hair or EF reforms? 📈 35:51 How Circle's IPO run blindsided Arthur Hayes 🎇 38:48 Robinhood's grand on-chain debut 🫠 43:58 Still early or DOA? Base's hit and miss campaigns 🤔 54:23 How does the DAT mania end? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So where I disagree. Is Trump a creator coin? Is Trump a creator coin? Yeah, in my opinion. I mean, so like. He's underpay. You know, he's only getting paid 400K a year to be president. He's got to monetize somehow.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this live stream. Just a heads up. This is a pre-record, but I feel quite certain you will want to listen to this one. Before we get started,

a quick reminder, nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. And my guest and I may hold assets discussed on the show. For more information, visit at Unchained Crypto.com. If you look at most debts today, they depend on quite a complex mesh of different infrastructure, a lot of which is centralized. Walrus is a decentralized data platform. It's particularly good with large, unstructured data files,

and it allows you to store and use those without, on any centralized systems. It works really well as part of a SWE stack. It was created by Mistin Labs, who are also the originators of that SWE stack. And what that means is natively together, they allow developers to build with trust, ownership, privacy, baked in right from the beginning. And what this does is it allows you to build use cases that monetize data in ways that just have not been possible before.

So there are whole new revenue streams that are now available to builders to come and build on Morris. Today's topic is 2025 year in review. Here to discuss our Gwirt, host of the Gort Show and Doug Colquitt, co-founder of Fogo and Ambient Finance. Welcome, Doug and Gwort. Hi, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. happy to be here. Hopefully we can make it funny. I promise you we can make this funny in some capacity. So I do appreciate you having a song. Okay. So everyone, just a heads up. We are not here

for serious discussion. This is here, we are here to basically just shoot the shit over the big events of 2025. This is not meant to be informative. This is meant to be pure entertainment. So we are basically going to just run through a big list of highlights of the news from the year. And to my mind, I think we have to start with the Trump and Melania meme coins. That really was the big introduction to crypto in 2025. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts, Gort, and Doug about what happened then and, you know, what you thought it meant for the coming year, for what was then the coming you're in crypto.

Doug, take it, take it first. Well, I wasn't, I wasn't convinced by the Trump coin, but the Melania coin came out. It was all in, all in on Melania. So, no, I think, I think that the second one really sold it. I didn't know they were in on it until both of the couple. It's really a husband and wife were both in it. It shows dedication to the space. Yeah, I think it was sort of, well, first of all, like, obviously we've now seen the secondary

and tertiary effects of this. And a lot of people think that that was like very clearly the beginning of the end. And it nuked all liquidity out of everything. But I do think in all seriousness, I know we're not supposed to be serious. But that was the first, well, yeah, I would say that was the first, like, in my mind, it was like very elucidating where obviously leading up to Trump's election, it was like quite clear why, you know, crypto needed to align itself. Like I think it was sort of make or break.

And I think crypto realized that to some extent with like getting on board with somebody who wasn't going to destroy this industry. Because I think we were at sort of a tipping point where if somebody in office wasn't willing to kind of like create positive regulation on the space, like it was not looking good. But I think that the subsequent like meme coin and just the degree to which he has gone like full balls deep into crypto has been extremely. I mean, it was like, oh my God. Like no way, right. And so that to me, like, it, not to say that it was just, you know, like, I don't know. I felt convinced that, you know, he was going to be involved in some capacity. But I don't think I expected this.

And I certainly did not. I mean, the Melania one was like truly like, oh, no. Like, this could actually get really, really bad. It was literally the day before inauguration day. It was like the night before inauguration day, wasn't it? It was like, it wasn't just even releasing a coin. It was like, right before I'm president. I'm going to.

Yeah. So Trump did it on Friday night. and then Melania did it Sunday and then inauguration was Monday but Gord I mean what are you saying here like I think Melania like Doug said that's what sold it

I think that probably is what made Doug a true believer yeah you know yeah it's a dedicated dev well first of all like who were they working with right because didn't so correct me if I'm wrong and now we're kind of old like I think they were working with our favorite

Hayden Davis who's the Taden and all of crypto. So, but also, wasn't this the night of that ball thing they had? And it was at like a random hour, right? And Seoul went to an all-time high because it's because there was just so much demand to buy Trump coin. I mean, so the one like serious point is amazingly Seoul did not go down and it all worked perfectly. And so it was a gift to the industry to have this like surprise, big test. and yeah, Solana passed.

So, yeah, okay, okay. So we can move on, I think, to the next event because we are going to talk about our favorite Hayden in crypto, Hayden Davis, who was part of the esteemed Libra coin and launch. So, yeah, I'd like to hear your guys' thoughts on that event. That was, like, honestly, even more ridiculous. And then afterwards, what were, the shows he went on and just was

rambling oh no almost in co-occurian the night the sweater the ladies are just let him your shoulder every day his head his head small but it's really

like it's extremely I mean like this is outrageous that every single lawyer in the world would have told him like do not say a word and he went on and said very many words and it doesn't seem like

thus far there's been any repercussion in Tokyo right at like the Amon at the Amon right now at the Lafay I think he was he and SBF must have the same lawyer giving them advice on yeah SBF is in jail and it doesn't seem like this kid's in

jail right? No no no but you know the samurai Wallet developer is now so I think that's there's a lesson in there for somebody to learn. I don't know what it is, but. The lesson has not really been taught, I'll be honest. Like, if he's just walking around

the Amon in Tokyo, it doesn't, I don't know, wasn't there some, I mean, this is probably just crypto Twitter making stuff up, but there was like something about, you know, Interpol or, you know, some type of, you know, the people who enforced the rules were Yeah, right. Argentina, they said like the Argentine government was going to go. It was like an enemy of the state of Argentina or something and they were putting out.

way. So it is true that an attorney requested an Interpol red notice for Davis. And it's, it's an attorney in Argentina. But I don't know if that means that like that actually happened. I mean, the crazy part is that with like all of us sitting here and, you know, having, I'm not trying to slander or say anything like too derogatory, but like it does seem like he pulled off this massive heist of sorts. And none of us, it doesn't seem like readily. apparent that he necessarily did anything illegal. Like, I don't, I mean, I don't know for a fact that what he did was illegal. Like, that's what, that's the crazy part to me is that like, I'm sitting here and like, yeah,

well, maybe this was just, you know, your, your standard pump dot fun launch and there's like, everybody knew what they were getting themselves into, right? I mean, yeah, I, I like, whether or not it's legal that that is, yeah, that's probably actually not a decided thing. This Malay tweeted from his main account, right? It was like, this is my, and then he came back as like, this is not my coin. Well, I think he said that this was like, I was going to benefit Argentina in some way. I forget.

Like, he thought he was promoting a business or that's what he claimed. Like, he thought he was promoting something that was beneficial for Argentina. But. Yeah, I mean, I just, I still don't know, like, the inside story of how, how we got to the print, like, this. Guy Hayden got to the president of Argentina. I'm convinced him to launch, yeah, launch a coin. Like, there's something weird happen there. He was, like, drop shipping sneakers the year before, and now he's launching, like, you know,

coins with the world leaders, like, this is the rural. Literals or Snyders, yeah. Yeah. Must have been his impressive shoulder pads. Like, that's all I think of. That is built, nobody can match it. Um, okay, okay. So next event that we're going to talk about, it's going to seem a little serious, but there's no way we can avoid it.

The by-bit hack, which was the biggest hack, I think, in the whole entire world in all of history. And, yeah, it involves our favorite developers in crypto, the DPRK developers. I'm such a fan girl. What are your takes on that? Yeah, I think it was, I mean, it was pretty wild how, right, like they had to override. Was it NOSIS safe or maybe it was actually they were getting them to sign different things? Yeah, they had like, they had, they had compromised one of the NOS safe developers and that allowed them to change something in like AWS or whatever and then change it. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, that's right, right, right, right. Yeah, they, yeah, they were able to display like the. wrong thing and the signature. I mean, it just, I mean, like, you know, I've been on a multi-sig of a protocol and it's just like, it's like at some point you're like, am I being too paranoid? Like, I have separate machines. I like, you know, everything's air gap. Like, I double check like three different machines that the signatures are right.

And it's like, no. Like, I mean, it's just the level of paranoia is like crazy. You have to be on like any sort of multi-sig signer. I mean, all I can say is I think those developers, probably like in Korea or in North Korea, which people probably know, if you get punished, then the next three generations of your family can also receive the same punishment. Like if you get sent to the gulag, then the next three generations will be born in the gulag. And yeah, maybe the next three generations of these developers will be sitting pretty in North Korea,

just, you know, getting like palm fronds fanning their faces all day. but I did also want to ask so oh the other thing that was so crazy to me about that hack was that they didn't do a test transaction they moved like what was it like $2 billion or something like just with a single try I was just like what the like they just had and then and then they were like

okay we're going to cover it with our profits like they just have so much money one thing yeah sorry to interrupt but I was thinking one thing this isn't so much funny but after the hack, the CEO was like on a live stream. It's like everybody, you know, now uses the immediate like go on a live stream. We're going on some podcasts. But he was on a live stream like maybe six hours afterwards.

And I remember thinking at the time like, man, this is either going to be one of those things where we look back and we're like, oh, like, this was the end of him and by bit. But I will say, I was like quite impressed. I mean, he seemed, you know, pretty honest and direct. in his kind of, you know, PR, and they've worked everything out. So I will say, like, I was quite impressed with Bybitt being able to cover this. And, like, overall, the comms were quite good around it. And I, the reason I say this was, like, astonishing because I very much thought, I remember watching him and he was, like, getting questions from the chat, right? Like, just, like, randoms, you know, asking questions.

Dred guy? Which was a, right guy? He was just, like, they did, like, an in-house, like, chat. Like, I'm going to do a live stream answer. And then I'm going to do, like, a live Q. And I remember at the time being like, okay, this is, this scene, this feels like very SBF. Like not, you know, not to be too sort of dumer, but I was like, man, like, again you're right. Exactly. Exactly. And we're all going to look back and be like, exactly. That's what I'm saying.

Like that's, I think that was my point though, because like if there was times when SBF did pretty well, right? Like he came across like this, you know, dig a great. And if you were a crypto person and understood anything, then then you wouldn't think so. But maybe to a non-cryptop person. Okay. Like, I'm saying prior. to FTX, SPF had, prior to the collapse, SBF had this like, endearing, like,

oh, he's just smarter than all of us. He gets it. Like, you know, let him be. And even if he's a bit quirky, but he would do these, you know,

interviews and stuff and come across a little bit, you know, weird or, you know, like condescending, but it was like, oh, that's SBF, right? So, but my point was with the, with the,

with the bibit hack thing was like, it was the same, like, the front and center man, like, answering questions from the public engaging. And it's like, okay, this could,

either go really well or really poorly. And like all things considered, like, it's turned out quite well, right? His lawyers definitely told him, don't do that. Right. Well, you would have thought Hayden's lawyers would have told him not to Teda. Yeah. So basically, Ben, if you're listening and the whole by-bit exchange thing doesn't work out, you have a very promising future in crisis communications.

I think that's the takeaway. All right. Okay. Next topic, let's talk about the XRP on Carty. Dono Reserve had Trump floated on Twitter, which I think, yeah, got a collective groan from crypto except for certain more diluted subgroups within crypto. I'd be interested in your thoughts on that one. Well, I know Gwart's a big XRP fan.

I mean, it's like the most patent, right? I don't know. I don't want to use the wrong terminology hereby. something like pay for play. I don't know how else to describe it, right? Like intense lobbying. It's everybody. So this was another thing where we all get behind Trump as this like somebody who's going to, you know, lead crypto to the promised land.

And then like, this is what ends up happening. And it's kind of like, oof, like, I don't know about this. And yeah, I remember them tweeting that, right? And how did that even come out? And it was... Trump literally just tweeted it straight from his truth so shit profile, like, out of the blue.

Like, like, and not only that, but he didn't mention Bitcoin or either. It was XRP, Salana, and Cardano. That, those were the three named in the tweet. I was the beginning of the end for Eith, I think. That was the top.

Cardano got the nudge. They got her nod. Got it. Not Eats. Sorry. Not pure rebutton. enough. Well, it's also coming to you because, go ahead. It's funny because it's like, right? Like, a lot of people who weren't in crypto or like just think, oh, crypto is all like scammie, like vaporware, whatever. And then there are like people in crypto who like probably think some of these coins are like, okay, this is not like real crypto. But, you know, it's kind of like maybe a taste of our, you know, a taste of what other people outside crypto kind of probably view all of Trump and crypto or at least kind of. the skeptics. Well, also, you have to understand that, and I, this isn't, you know, like, this isn't necessarily my thought. I think a lot of people have kind of, you know, said this before,

but crypto outside of crypto Twitter actually is a lot of XRP and a lot of Cardano, right? Like, we make this joke about the Uber drivers, like for some reason, they love XRP and they love Cardano. Like, these groups of coins that none of us really talk about on a daily basis, most of us don't follow. Most of us think are largely vaporware are like somehow resonating with the American people or like some of the American people, right? So it's one of those things I think where like it was especially jarring for us because like we're like, hang on, you didn't even include Bitcoin or Eath. Like, you know, and those are the things we talk about all the time. But if you're trying to reach mass, you know, audience with these things, like, yeah, it probably

is not a bad idea to pump the coins or, you know, show support for the coins that the taxi drivers like or whatever the trope is. Yeah, but actually the reason he did that, I don't know if you guys remember this. Politico came out with a news article explaining how that tweet got tweeted and it was something like the ripple

lobbyist got him to do that and somehow did it like they had they persuaded him to do it the night before and it sort of bypassed the normal checks on his tweets and not only that, but that in the

and tweet the reason that Solana was included was to make it seem more legitimate to crypto people. Like literally Solana, they did not lobby at all for anything even remotely related to that. And they were as shocked as anybody else that they were included. But like Ripple apparently wanted Salana to be in the tweet to make it look more legit. So. Well, I mean, obviously, obviously he took an Uber the night before, got talking to the driver and he was built. So I guess the ex-Rfea Cardano communities have to thank their, you know, their emissary and the Uber driver, which I'm sure the Secret Service loved that President Trump took an Uber. He's getting some pizza late at night, Friday.

Grab an Uber. Okay, okay. Next topic. Lighthouse Crypto Summit, which had this glorious presentation of like something related to the FIFA in addition to talking about crypto. You know, a lot of interesting people there. You know, some real legit people in crypto, obviously. A16Z, Coinbase, Gemini, Chain Lake. There were others as well.

Brad Garlinghouse was there. Yeah, curious for your thoughts. And let's not forget the FIFA bit. I actually don't remember the FIFA bit. What happened? I think like the, if I recall correctly, we were all trying to watch this live stream and the whole first like 30 minutes was him doing this.

Was there going to be like a FIFA coin as well? It was like adjacent to crypto or was it just with regards to the World Cup stuff? I just remember watching this and like it was all about the FIFA thing for the first 30 minutes. So he hitched the idea of a FIFA coin, but he also like unveiled a, what was it? I think he unveiled like a, you know, what was that? It was like a statue-ish thing or I don't know. That's true. Yeah, unfortunately, I didn't like re-watch it for this episode, but don't you remember?

He, like, had this thing on his table and it was like gold, yeah. Oh, is this so he felt like a gold brick or something? I vaguely remember this. Yeah. Yeah, it's unfortunate that I didn't get a chance to. Oh, it was like a World Cup trophy. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Yes. Did they ever come out with FibuCoin? Or is that that still in development? That's in the works. A lot of tech needed to figure out, some research development. So at least, so we pitched the idea, but then I think there was like an unrelated FIFA coin that took off. So, like, yeah, he mentioned this,

but then on the actual coin that took off because it was not actually related to FIFA. It just had the name. Oh, it just had the name FIFA. Is your standard pump dot fund there? Was that Hayden again? Was that another Hayden special? Pump. Dot fun meets Whitehouse Crypto Summit. Okay, okay.

Well, so now we're going to talk about something that was actually like significant crypto news in my opinion, which really started in 2024. And it was the success of hyperliquid. And that, you know, has kind of become like a category definer. we've seen like so many new entrants come to compete in that space because of hyperliquid success. And, you know, despite how so many other crypto projects have done, hyperliquid is in a position where it pretty much still has like nearly all the true believers I think that it had. And yeah, so there are so many phases of their 2025 that we could talk about. There was the scandal around the centralization and the bridge security where Taylor Monaghan was pointing out, hey,

you guys like North Korean you know people are using your protocol and they're clearly trying to figure out how to hack it. Then, you know, there were a few different things with like Arthur Hayes, you know, initially buying a bunch and then selling a bunch because of the unlocks, you know, the whole James Wynn arc and then the fight with CZ in tweets. Yeah, then there's been a whole bunch of competitors. We will talk about 1010 later. But yeah, any thoughts on any aspect of Hyperliquid's arc in 2025. I mean, I feel like it was a very cynical, cynical year, right? Like, especially it got more cynical as the year went on.

And, you know, Hyperliquid is the one coin where people kind of weren't cynical about. Maybe, maybe even just like just the past couple weeks. People have been kind of getting frustrated. But, like, it's kind of amazing in terms of like, I can't think of another coin this year. maybe BTC where people are like as non-critical of it with good reason. Yeah, or maybe Zcash. Zcash, yeah, no, that's true. Gore, what are your thoughts on Hyperliquets arc?

I don't know that I have anything especially profound to add. I think what they've done is remarkable. They should be, you know, showing that you can make, make money, I think was as crazy as it sounds pretty profound in a sense. The buybacks and the way that that hyperliquid generates fees and turns out around and creates value, I think was there was somewhat of a paradigm shift with hyperliquid. And I think this revenue meta, which is obviously hilarious to anybody outside of our industry listening, right?

Like revenue better. You mean just how markets and businesses work? But for crypto is like one of the first, I think, really widespread and sort of like, you know, it was an example of something like, okay, this is like a way that a application can make money and turn around and, you know, create value in its token. I think the secondary effects that have been quite good, at least in terms of how we're not thinking about it. So I'm very impressed with Hyperliquid. Obviously, it's a competitive space. Doug's competing. I'm not competing, but everybody else I know is competing.

So, yeah, I don't, I'm the Joey, I will. Herc, Dex. Yeah. Yeah, it would immediately supplant Fogo or what it was called. I think that the, like, with regards to the jelly, jelly thing, that is not, it's not ideal. Also, the way they handled it maybe makes a lot of sense for users of the protocol. With that said, you know, you look at that from the outside and you see a very low liquidity coin that can be, you know, manipulated.

And then the rules kind of changed to undo the manipulation. It's like it, yeah, that's, it's a slight, you know, staying on on. And again, I'm not saying they necessarily handle it wrong, but, you know, those things like do show we're still room for improvement, perhaps. Yeah, it's at least against the crypto ethos. I think for me, like, what I have thought was hilarious was there was different memes that have gone around about Jeff and CZ. And there's like random things that I've seen where people will tweet like photos of Jeff and they'll like, just make, like, so I don't remember exactly when this was or what this was, but there was a photo of Jeff kind of like just sitting probably like in an audience somewhere and he was sort of

leading back and then he had his legs and shorts and they were sort of stretched out and, you know, he's like a like an athletic guy and like he said something about like his legs being like, you know, whatever, like something about the athleticism of his legs and how that gave him confidence in hyper. I forget the exact tweet. the reason I mentioned this is because then later you had these tweets where CZ would be like doing pushups or what. People would like put an image of Jeff like behind CZ like lurking behind him like watching him do as pushups or whatever. And I just thought those were so funny. And yeah, there is something to this whole like Jeff versus CZ arc that I find hilarious and like the memes about it.

he does look like a trustworthy guy Are you same CWCO doesn't No comment on that but No I don't know it's also I mean Jeff Jeff Jeff's interesting like how like how he handles kind of comps and stuff right like he's very much kind of different than a lot of founders where you know he's you know less less is more he doesn't say a ton

but like what he does say I think kind of you know it is clear and people trust them a lot so you know it works because they have a lot of credibility Yeah. Yeah, Kane on a recent show of hours on Easy Money, he said that he liked to see that Jeff was being more proactive on the timeline and like, yeah, not being as aloof. Okay, you guys, I just have to ask you about the whole James Wynn arc. Do you think that, like, who do you think James Wyn was? And I know we all eventually heard him talk on him as Twitter Sases and that was a farming put. what? Because I don't know if you remember. There was a period where the rumor was like it was a C.C. alt. So what did you think of that whole thing? I was really just the boys. I like, I don't know. It was just that that Twitter space when he came on was, I mean, it was obviously drunk or something, right? Like it was, I don't know. I mean, he is British, so.

I mean, he lost it on. He's not more than he British. He's more than just. Okay, rest of fully British. Yeah. I don't know. He, yeah, I don't know. It feels like, like, it does seem like people were, I think with CT a lot of times, like, people want to look for, like, a hero.

And it's like, like, a traitor hero. Like, this guy, like, knows what he's doing. He generates alpha. And, like, at the end of the day, I don't know how many people CT looks up to actually generate alpha or they just take, maybe zero. They just take, right, they're just gamblers, right? And it's just whoever's had the hottest run at the table in the past, whatever, six months. So I don't know. It just seems like a recurring thing where it's like, okay, CT picks a hero, like thinks he's amazing.

And then, you know, kind of ends up your hero passed out on the front lawn with his pants over his head. Yeah, at that point, though, he was trying to do other things to make money, which, like, he was taking donations. and... Dude, he had a meme coin, right? What was the meme coin called? He had a meme coin? Oh, man. Like a pump one?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was very much so a meme coin. Yeah, the whole thing was quite bizarre. I mean, he's like throwing around a billion dollars in size and then is pumping a meme coin with like $30 million market cap. It didn't really... Well, it should have maybe keyed people into... whether or not this guy was like a gigabrain trader or just like was running super hot, right?

But yeah, I tend to agree. It's like the hottest guy at the table. Crypto, Twitter tends to coales around. And then they realized that it was just, you know, running way above expectation for a certain amount of time. Like, oh, hang on now. Yeah. I mean, see who the next one is. Yeah.

But it's not only that he had the mean coin. He did something else, which I can't remember. It was to make money. but initially he was like soliciting the donations and then it was something like he um did get any how much do you get donated to him oh my guess he did get some donations who is the person donating to james win i want to that's you should have that person on as a guess the guy who donated money to jake what yeah but the interesting thing too about that was correct me if i'm wrong but he was at one point,

I don't know if you remember this dog, but he was up, he was like actually up, was it like over 100 million, right? I was over 100, yeah. Yeah. And so at that point, like that's an amount of money

where you really can just move to an island forever. You know what to me? And so I think the actual, like part of the, part of the allure there was just the actual like nominal size was very, you know,

was like, whoa, this is, this is real. money, right? And just do all go down to zero? It's like, if you keep betting the farm, you're going to lose the farm. It's just like, yeah. Yeah, a good cautionary tale for crypto this year. I'm not sure how many people learned that lesson before 10-10, but anyway, okay, okay.

What about the EF turnaround or Ethereum turnaround? Obviously, 2024 was a period of pain, in my opinion, for Ethereum, the community kind of had a revolt. Some people might be mad at me for saying that, even though the Ethereum community was very loud on the timeline. I'm just reporting the facts. They were demanding, you know, that the leadership change. There was a lot of pointed commentary at Vatelik himself directly. And in 2025, the new, really honestly, it's really only one of the new co-execchio, you know, Tamash, Staunch. The other thing, the other thing, the other one's showy wing. She doesn't like say a lot or do a lot as far as I can tell or at least

at least most people talk about Tomash. But yeah, it sort of feels like Ethereum is in a much better place than it was a year ago. So I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that one. Well, Quart loves Ethereum. He's a he's an eiff maxi. So I don't want to say anything that might make him mad. I will be honest. I should have a throwdown. Rick, I agree. I know. I don't have I really don't like, it would just be very direct. I don't think that like the price action or reemergence of Ethereum has anything to do with the turnaround at the EF. Like this is I, you know, in terms of price action the last year, it's because Tom Lee, first of all, we had a mini bear market. And then we have Tom Lee and ETFs and institutions.

And the tech is like could, it honestly is functional. irrelevant to what is actually pumping the price and and with regards to partnerships and where people are building it's that also doesn't have much to do with the price at a functional level. I mean, it's in people's minds more often, right? Maybe it's in retail's minds more often. Like people who are looking for stuff to buy like, okay, then, you know, eat, uh, dog is notorious in our group chat for talking about, you know, shilling eat to the, his country club's dentist, right? Like the, his dad's orthodontist friends, right? Like, they want a pile of is something that's not big yeah

as Tuesday that's the world vice coming from but this like I mean I'm I just don't believe that the EF turned around or like anything I mean it's just purely like a function of market like oscillations

right and people read into this stuff and oh you know Ethereum's in war mode it's like no dude Tom Lee is on CNE too right now has much good hair is that one it's it's a much more that has more to do with it than the turnaround at the like

nonprofit organization that's primarily funding, you know, frivolous endeavors in third world countries. Like, that's my opinion is. Right. Solidity. Solidity lessons for orphans in Namibia. Exactly. Yeah. I think. Yeah. I don't know how many Eve holders could actually name an executive director. Yeah. Hmm. Good question. I heard of Tamash. Like, I followed this turnaround. But yes, agreed. In terms of, like, maybe 5%. And that was generous.

I don't know. I ironically would say it's much more likely that somebody who holds Ethereum knows somebody like Tamash than a Bitcoin holder knows Peter Willey or, you know, Greg Maxwell. You know what I mean? So I think it's more likely

that somebody in Ethereum. When did Peter from death? Like rage quit? Was that this year? What was that? Yeah. Well, it was really not going to be. Yeah.

I feel like that was Dredship and the near of kind of the politics. I do think things have gotten emergely. No, I think it got worse after he left for a little while. He left earlier in 2024. I could be wrong, but, you know, going back to my good hair point,

I think the only good hair person in Solana is Ansem. And I saw that he tweeted recently that he didn't go to any Salon events this year. So, you know, that's, they need Has he been? Has he been a Solana guy for any of 2025 at all? I don't think he's been. I don't know. He's definitely more of a meme coin person, so.

It is interesting Solana how you have like these two different, two different worlds, right? Like this whole meme coin world. And then like, you know, like we're in a chat with a couple like Solana devs. I'm like, so the devs that like Onzo like have no idea. Like who, like people you should like thread guy. Like who's thread guy? I don't know who's. Or who's the vape cabal?

I've never heard of that. So it's kind of funny there. All right. So in a moment, we're going to talk about some other big news from 2025. But first, a quick word for the sponsors to make this show possible. Before we built Walrus, what we heard a lot from developers was the need for speed. And we headed ourselves. So reads and writes are extremely fast on Walrus.

And this means that apps don't lag even with. really large files. Privacy was another thing that we heard a lot about. And Waris lets develop his encrypt data without primitive called SEAL. And with that, you have full control over who access your data and everything is enforced on chain. And this enables these really incredible use cases that haven't been possible before. Everything from more reliable AI models to data markets where users can monetize their data. So if you put this all together, what this actually means that the developers can finally build apps and they feel web too fast, but you've got Web 3 level guarantees. That's my conversation with second court. All right. All right. So the other

big event that happened in the spring that really took a lot of crypto people by surprise was the circle IPO. And I remember that Arthur Hayes was on the the show literally like at least within two weeks before, maybe even days before the IPO happened. And he was basically talking about how, you know, he didn't think this was a buy and like for all these reasons. And then yeah, the IPO just took off. So I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about that. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like such a dichotomy how much like equity markets are. And maybe it goes bad of a whole year, right? Like equity markets are just bullish in general. And I think like something that's really frustrating with crypto now.

Is it just like price action sucks compared to like NASDAQ? But like even crypto stocks, you know, like it's obvious like boomers who are buying stocks are way more optimistic. Right. How than actual crypto people? Yeah, I guess the other. Oh, go ahead. No, I mean, nothing especially, you know, unique. But I do think there was a because, like, Circle was the first, correct if I'm wrong, like, Circle was the first.

first to really market itself and also have momentum in the equities markets, one with crypto, but specifically with stable coins, which were simultaneously having, you know, as they still are, I suppose, but having their kind of like time moment. And so I think that like anybody wanted access to, you know, stable coins in traditional markets because this is the next big narrative. It's also dumped a lot. Like, I don't think we should. Like, we, like, we. be remiss not to talk about this right like it wouldn't weigh up and then some unlocks which we are very familiar with in crypto um and it's also gone down a lot and maybe this is just you know kind of following in in line with the crypto markets but yeah like i think playing into this stable coin hype

again it's not immediately clear like that circle is one going to be the obvious kind of winner take all and nor will they even necessarily capture like all the value that that they propose but Yeah, I think that was like the obvious kind of narrative there. And yeah, it definitely went straight up for a while, right? What's, how much should you go down actually? I haven't seen the chart. So the day of the IPO, it looks like it was at 82. And eventually it reached a high of about 263.

But as of this moment, it's at 84. So it's basically. So you're right at the IPO level. Yeah. Yep. They're defending that. They got a bywall set out. Yeah.

And I, the funny thing is people, I think a lot of crypto people don't realize there are like unlocks and like locked equity and like IPOs and stuff. They think it's a very like crypto specific phenomenon. But like float management exists. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So the next big event was the introduction of Robin Hood chain.

This was like easily one of the most slick events I've ever seen in all of crypto. I mean, did you see the intro to the intro to the? that event where like Vlad yeah and he like drives in this yeah he drives in this sports car yeah I mean it was really well done I totally wish I could have been there um I think the only thing was like the Wi-Fi didn't work well in the outdoor setting was like the only you know but otherwise it was like so slick um and I'm sure you're all very well where it caused kind of you know controversy is the right word but um you know people were just like surprised that they pick this L2 on Ethereum, not Salana, because I think it had been rumored that they were going to do Salana.

So, yeah, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on, on, yeah, just all, really any of their announcements. Because also, you know, in that chain of events, they had the little, like, brouhaha with open AHA being like, that's not Open AI, you know, equity. Well, like the fake open AI equity. Yeah. Yeah, Vlad fits very well into, like, the ass forgiveness. not permission type dynamic that we have in crypto, right? He's like in the same archetyped as a lot of our founders. And not only that, but he obviously understands the kind of merging of the casino and trading.

And like this has been very much the selling point of Robin Hood. But yeah, but to the point about the chain, I think, I mean, okay, I don't want to speculate or slander, but I think like all of these things, I'm sure they got incentivized in some capacity to come to. You mean like paid by arbitram? I'm sure, right? Like, almost certainly. That's how these things work. Like, all of them are like, with dogs, say something.

I mean, I'm not like, it might be the booze now. So I don't want to slender arbitram, but no, no, but there's nothing, but something, but it's not that Salonah could have paid them, you know, and maybe. Yeah, actually, that's a quick call. Why didn't Solana pay? Like, okay, you got to pay. Why don't Solana? Because Solana surely is paying a lot of people. Yeah, paying a lot of people are Western.

You're all butch than Robin Hood. Right. Well, okay, but sure, but I'm just saying, like, we, with a lot of these things, you know, obviously you probably have seen my kind of cynical perspective on a lot of this stuff. But, like, it's where we kind of overthink the tech they choose and like the back office software. Robin Hood is going to go where they think, okay, first of all, if they get paid a lot or have a lot of good, if they feel like whoever's going to kind of help them out with this is going to be on top of it, right? and somebody like Robin Hood coming, yeah, they're going to have the integrations ready. They're going to figure out how to tokenize Tesla, whatever. So that's the first thing. And then like it's not, I mean, Robin Hood will go wherever.

I'm not, I just, I think we try to like dig into like, oh, they chose this tech over this tech. It's like, well, maybe they were paid. And second of all, like they'll go wherever they think that they can, you know, make the most money, right? And so I don't think. Yeah. So where I don't agree with you is I think they could have been paid by anybody. So I think the money actually doesn't matter where it comes from because they're going to get the money. So that's why I actually feel like they did choose Arbitram for the tech.

Like they talk about that stylus thing, which translates the solidity language to like a bunch of other languages that like developers can like already know who aren't familiar with solidity. And then the other piece is they can make money being the sequencer for the L2 and they can't do that on Solana. So yeah. So the money coming in from an outside source is going to, that's going to happen no matter what. So I don't think that's a factor. Okay, that's fair. The sequencer aspect, right? Like, this is a large part of the whole L2 roadmap is, you know,

control your own sequencing. And so, yeah, that part's true. And also, I don't think it's, there's no company where it's more clear that Robin Hood is the distribution, right? Like, they own the user in that capacity. So, I mean, that one's pretty straightforward. And that's a big poll for crypto as a whole. I will. I don't know how much they can play with, like, this, like, just regulatory-wise, like.

why can't they do what base does though? Yeah, I think that's what they're doing. I mean, because they're a broker and like you're the user and they're trading stocks through you and there's like this fiduciary, like, you can't, if you're like a regular like broker, you can't just be like, oh, we're going to rearrange some of our users' trades like coming in to, uh, you know,

run MEV or whatever. I don't know. It feels like... Yeah, but base doesn't... Base is like what? First come for server or whatever. I mean, has at least a

I don't know It's an auction for like the top of the Well what like the flash blocks Yeah we're You should know this Isn't this your domain Yeah I should know this actually

So well we're go But I guess my point My point is Base is not letting Base is not letting SEP just run Ramp it over its users Obviously right

Like so they have Saga I don't know Rios-en people Yeah Right but they're definitely not Sandwiching Yeah

All right well speaking of base, there was a lot of chatter about base through the year. Some of it not always positive, mainly because there was a lot of commentary around things like Jesse going around saying, you know, making these videos of himself saying, do you want to get on chain? Can I pay you, you know, 50 bucks or whatever to get on chain? And there were even some, you know, like, yeah, it was the same with these creator coins. You know, people were, you know, not always uh, vibing with the creator coin meta, I guess you could say. So, yeah, what's your comments on on that whole thing?

Yeah, I think most of the responses were absolutely not. Please get away from me. I don't know. Might have a restraining order from one or two people after that attempt. I'm trying to remember if they even had one video where somebody accepted.

Yeah, did anybody was literally giving away 100 bucks on the street. Anybody. I don't think it was $100. No. I think it's less. I was 50.

I don't just do $100. I mean, look, most people don't want to be approached and, you know, proposition to download something on their phone. Download the spyware so you can make creator coins with me. It's like not actually that compelling of a pitch to your average, like, sidewalk walker. The other thing, too, which was, okay, so the one thing that I would mention about the base thing is that there was a there was very much a um let me think of how to phrase this from the base side they were quite critical or um yeah i guess i guess critical is fine of salana and the meme

coins and how meme coins went down there and they kind of positioned themselves as creator coins right And I don't think anybody is, I don't even think anybody on the base side is really trying to make this distinction anymore, right? Between like creator coins and, you know, it was. But it was a while they were there, where it was two weeks there. There was a lot of discourse about what's a creator coin versus a meme coin. And there was like a whole year than now mindset for a while. And I think there was a pivot from that. I mean, at least I haven't seen that so explicitly yet because creator coins quickly devolved into meme coins, right?

And has there even been any like, have there been? been any successful creator coins? I could be wrong, but is there a notable creator coin? I mean, I think Jesse has one. He just launched his own coin. And I think when I logged into my base up the other day, I saw it was doing pretty well. But like, so here's my take.

I agree with you that creator coins are meme coins. But I think the reason that they are using different terminology is because to my mind, this phrase creator coin speaks more directly to the problem in Web 2, which is that creators, you know, generate so much money for the platforms they're on, but they do not generate money for themselves. So I feel like, I understand, like, even though we all know that creator coins mean coins are the same thing, I think to the non-cryptoperson, which is who base is targeting here, they, it will like speak to them in a way that the word meme coin won't. So I think that that's why they're like insisting on this language. That's my personal take. Alchemy is one of the

Morris's many great partners. They're an advertising platform. Every click and impression is recorded on chain. They're live. They've got great clients. Coca-Cola is one of them. They're already processing more than 25 million ad impressions a day. And by building on Suey and Walrus, Alchemy's clients get two really big advantages. So the first one is cost saving. And the second one is full transparency over their spend. The real-time visibility they get allows their clients to make really fast decisions, do very effective A-B testing, and truly understand their ROI. And anything that involves money, like D-Fi, this auditability, not only is it super important, but is actually a legal requirement in many places. And being able to prove what happened and that what you're saying has happened

hasn't been edited or massaged in any way. Well, it's really important for DTI today, but to be honest, it's only going to become more and more important as this industry grows and more value is pushed through blockchains. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. I mean, the thing about this is, like, the money has to come from somewhere.

Like at the end of the day, right? Like, somebody's taking money out of the system, somebody's putting money into the system, right? like maybe it's Bitcoin or even Doge and it holds, but like probably not. So I mean, like, but it's not real. Like this is, it's, it's not real. Like I don't know how to articulate this. Like we can all see that the vast majority of this is just so clearly fabricated.

And it's like the, the engagement is farmers and just short term speculators. There's not like anything. Like the actual fans are showing up and buying creator coins. Exactly. Yes. And I just think... Go ahead. I don't want to dignify it too much. But I take your point that creators don't monetize, but at the same way, it's a weird concept to just assume that people who post on Twitter and are in some way successful, like, want to securitize that and have holders of their coin. Like, that's not just an immediate connection in my mind. And there have been. ways that a lot of us like myself and then others not not to say that I have like some you know

sounds self important but like I could have monetized my brand by launching some shit and I didn't and it's just like it's not because I have some like moral superiority she's like I don't want to do that I think there's a lot of people who just don't they don't do it for that they do it for the love of the game or whatever you know it's not like some assumption that like oh I'm being grossly underpaid for the like the post that I put out there is like dude you're shit no but I so so where I disagree Is Trump a creator coin? Is Trump coin and creator coin?

Yeah. In my opinion. I mean, so like. He's underpaid. You know, he's only getting paid 400K a year to be president. He's got to monetize somehow. Yeah. I mean, obviously, I think there's like so many conflicts.

I don't approve of what he did. But, but Gwart. So where I disagree with you is that like, I understand. Yeah, you're right. Like maybe some of these creators, they're not like thinking like, oh, you know, I want to make money or whatever. But they are. aware that somebody is making money off of them. So it's like if somebody's got to make money off of it, why shouldn't be me?

Because I'm the one creating the content. But it's not, okay, but okay, here's the difference. It's like, okay, at least from my understanding, you can tell me if this is not how it works, but like the way that it works functionally with creator coins is that I have some amount of the supply of creator coin and then I dump it into my fans or whatever. Like it's like what Doug was saying like the liquidity comes from somewhere and it's just like a transfer of like from but it there's like this assumption that my fans want to own you know posts that you make and it's like I don't I don't that there's still there's a disconnect in my in my head there and I don't know I mean correctly if I'm wrong but like my understanding is that the way you make money off a creator coin is that you sell the creator coin and so it's like now I've taken somebody that's worth in my mind zero dollars and so. sold it to somebody and it's going to go to zero dollars. Like, I just, I don't want to be involved

in that. And I don't know, I don't know that that really resonates directly with creators. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, but, I mean, is that how it works? Who's the biggest creator that's been made of base creator for him? Right. Why can't you name one? Why can't you name the biggest

creator? Okay, wait, so this is embarrassing because we do have a Zora coin and I like, I, I, I I don't manage it, so I actually didn't know the deal. So you're probably the biggest creator. Of course you liked creator coins.

Okay, okay. You would actually be the biggest base creator. No, no, no. I'm probably. So it's Jesse. Yeah, I have no idea because there's somebody else on the team who does that. So I actually don't know. But this would be an example of somebody who's actually like,

because I thought it was just Jesse and like some only fans like people at one point or like he was getting that. No, no, no. I know they invited kind of like Instagram-ish type people as far as I can tell. But like the thing is so at least, at least from this quick search that I just did online, so hopefully I'm not spouting nonsense here. But creators earn 1% on the trades. They're not like just dumping a whole bunch of coin. That's not, yeah.

As far as I understand, like we literally are earning some. Yeah, I don't even know what we earn if it's like USC or Eath or what it is. but maybe down the line it might be this upcoming base token or whatever. But yeah. Unfortunately, I'm sorry that I don't know more about this. Here's my thing. I do think that a lot of this stuff feels like we're just grasping at straws. Like we are truly like on the last, like, we're in the-

Devils or something for crypto. The depths of where is like what use cases can we concoct. and maybe these things have some marginal demand, like on the fringes, and like maybe that persists, and I'm sure some of it will. But I'm just not going to sit here and, like, pretend that these are massive unlocks because one, like the fundamental premise is just I don't think this, like, I don't think everyone's going to be out there creating and coining it because they're just, there's not enough good content.

There's not enough people that want to do that, one. And then the other thing is that I just, I do have. have like some reservations about like pretending that this stuff is real like we we dignify a lot of this stuff when it's like oh it's just frivolous little games like they're just little trinkets we overthink yeah i think like the value proposition so i'm not trying to be too like you know cynical about it it is it is funny it's it's probably what the largest use case of the largest l2 on ethereum it's like creator coins yeah if you told somebody that 10 years ago what's going to be the largest use case on the largest L2 of Ethereum as a creator?

I mean, you know, what I will say is I actually have no doubt that there will be something like this that becomes a thing. I just don't think that it will become a thing until after like stable coins have kind of become more used by all of society. I think once that happens and there's like a certain threshold that we've crossed where people don't need to think about it as hard. Like I feel like the obstacles for a normie to get to the point. where they're using the base app and they're like doing these creator coins, it's like too many hurdles at this point. But like once we have wider adoption of stables, then I could totally see it taking off. And I could see it really being a thing. But I just think it's a little bit early now. That's just my personal opinion. You guys, we're kind of running out of time. But we haven't even

talked about deaths. So let's, we'll move to the news about 21, which to my mind was maybe, we had some deaths early in the year that were Salonabase, but 21 was the first one where people really sat up and took notice of this trend. And then, of course, there were just like a slew of so many that happened after that. But yeah, let's talk about DAP mania, which now is clearly, you know, the bubble's already burst. That one was a very short-lived mania, you know, with all these MNAVs below one. But, yeah, what's your take on, you know, this bubble that we saw spring up in first?

I'm going to paraphrase GARCWard here that I'm not sure if any of these Dats are real or that Or at least most of them should be dignified I mean I don't I don't get a ton Like what they're really doing here Maybe like before there were ETSs and stuff And you can access coins

But I mean I also maybe don't exactly get like what micro strategy Is for You're spoken like a like one of those Ethereum devs that like doesn't understand finances. Could be. Yeah. I mean, maybe. I mean,

they're all like the premises. I'm going to buy a dollar for $1.20 because it goes into a wrapper and somebody's going to buy it for a dollar 50. Yeah, but now you can spend 50 cents to get a dollar's worth of Bitcoin. So. Yeah. I don't know. Gordon, like, are you bullish on that?

I actually don't know your opinion on like, micro strategy. I actually probably one of the, like, it seems like controversial, this one, but I think micro strategy is, I think it, well, it's a, it's, I think it's quite likely to be polarizing in the sense of like it either works or it doesn't and there's not really much in between. I think what Sailor did was actually brilliant. I think what Sailor did is somewhat unique to what Sailor can do. And it is not necessarily extendable to the 18th, you know, alt-coin debt.

Like, he found unique ways to tap into markets that can't buy a Bitcoin directly want to have these weird structured products that, you know, they can take on as a trade and he pays out yield, right? Like, there is a Ponzi dynamic here. And certainly with his most recent, like, preferreds, I mean, they are shared, I'll go stable coins functionally, right? Like they are, you know, pegged at $100, but they float. And the idea is that like ultimately the yield brings them up to this sort of persistent interest rate. I think that Saylor's strategy, and I think this is absolutely necessary in the long ground, is that they become like a Bitcoin neobank. And they can provide a lot of services around in the long run. I think this is the idea in mind.

Now, like obviously people saw how this was working. Taylor had been doing this for five years, right? like he's he's tapped into these massive pools of capital for the past five years. People saw how like, well, he's run this Ponzi and they're like, oh, well, we should do this with, you know, heard on it. I think we didn't understand like exactly how that would work. Like, um, so if I look at something like an etherfi where you put your ether in and then it's like literally using defy in the background to generate these yields, like that makes sense

to me, but I don't understand you own stock and micro strategy and like how does that become your neobank? I don't get it. No, no, no. I mean, like, he hopes to become like Goldman Sachs, but it's denominated in Bitcoin. So they're giving out loans and providing liquidity and lending and borrowing. The thing is it's just because he has a financial institution because he has a massive amount of big law. Oh, so people buy micro strategy, but micro strategy in addition to its software business, adds on a new business where they have a neo bank for. I mean, I'm talking like this is in my mind in 10 years, in 20 years, if this was in fact a good idea, it's because they have been able to essentially become a bekemaith because they have a tremendous amount of Bitcoin.

And there's a lot of leverage there and economies of scales there. If you are thinking in the same terms as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs and what they're able to do with a ton of liquidity, if Bitcoin becomes the, you know, global reserve asset, non-stableness store value, media of exchange, whatever it may be, they have a massive lead and like they're just, you know, a lot of different things you can get into. Now, this is obviously somewhat... I really like this reverse dynamic here because normally I'm the guy who's like really optimistic and talking about... Like for me, you can see, from a security perspective, I'm just like, why would they risk putting their Bitcoin in a place where they could lose a bunch of,

I don't know, to my mind, that's, I don't know if they would do that. I can see it. I mean, it's plausible, right? Like, do you have the world's biggest treasure of Bitcoin? The thing is, okay, so maybe you're right, but here's this. thing. If what I'm saying right now does not come into fruition, then like, IMNAV eventually in the long run converges on one at probably the highest, right? And how do they make money? Well, like, they have all these like outstanding debt in their software business, at least at the scale they're moving is not going to cover that. So like that is the idea. But I don't think, I mean, I'm not as pessimistic on on micro strategy

I think as of late because the market's gone down, people like, oh, this is, this is done so. I don't hold that opinion. I think it's, like, perhaps like the most brilliant financial maneuver ever, but it also could, if it goes to zero, it goes to zero. I'm like, we're all going to be like, oh, yeah, what did you expect? It was a ponty. Obviously. But you think that can't be replicated for, like, the suey debt?

No, because the thing is, and this is like what really kind of like elucidated this for me is, like, all these pools of capital, if they can be tapped. Michael Saylor is tapping them. And, like, Bitcoin is the largest market cap, like, is the most liquid, right? And there's, like, some defensibility there is, like, do you, are you really going to be able to issue, you know, some, like, exotic preferred against suey, which, you know, like, probably 1% of the world's population is sort of, maybe, right? Like, it's much less realistic. So, I don't know. The rest of the stats, I'm a little bit, like, skeptical of, but we'll see.

I mean, I mean, I will say that Michael Saylor's AI Slop game is just like, is hilarious. Yeah, I mean, the fact that he turns out so much AI slop featuring himself and gets thousands of likes on every single one of them, there's something hairy. Like, that is, that is an achievement. All right, you guys, this was so fun, but we're running out of time. So we are going to do a part two where we finish up the rest of the year. events of the year. And until then, it's been so fun chatting with you. And I look forward to hearing your funny takes for the rest of the events in 2025.