Unchained - Bits + Bips: Hyperliquid’s USDH Bidding War & Why the DAT Model Is Broken - Ep. 900

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

The fight for Hyperliquid’s USDH stablecoin is more than a ticker battle—it’s a referendum on how crypto distribution, governance, and incentives will shape the next trillion-dollar market.  In this episode of Bits + Bips, Steve Ehrlich sits down with Delta Blockchain Fund’s Kavita Gupta, Galaxy Digital’s Alex Thorn, and Frax founder Sam Kazemian to dig into the big questions: Who will win the USDH war, and why does distribution matter more than design? Are DATs fulfilling their promises—or raising money without accountability? Why are L2s the wrong place for tokenized stocks? And where exactly is the trillion-dollar opportunity in stablecoins? Sponsors: Xapo Walrus Host: Steve Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained Guests: Kavita Gupta, Founder & Managing Partner of Delta Blockchain Fund Alex Thorn, Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy Digital Sam Kazemian, Founder of Frax Finance Links: Unchained:  The Competition Is On. Who’ll Win the USDH Ticker on Hyperliquid? Stablecoin Issuers Enter Bidding War to Launch Hyperliquid’s USDH Sky Joins Bidding War to Launch Hyperliquid’s USDH  Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Intro 🔥 4:17 The bidding war for Hyperliquid’s USDH 🗳️ 25:12 Whether the Hyperliquid DAO is truly decentralized ⚠️ 29:22 Are DATs already broken as a product? 🌶️ 35:00 How some DATs avoid fulfilling their promises after raising money 📈 40:27 Why yield-maximization is critical for DATs—and what risks it creates 💵 53:22 Where the trillion-dollar opportunity in stablecoins might actually be 🏛️ 55:35 Why tokenized stocks belong on L1s, not L2s Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I think it's also the story about the power that hyperliquid controls now, I mean, commands. This is all the biggest, you know, stable coins coming to it. And it's also a new sort of Dow governance bakeoff as well, which is quite interesting. I feel like the digital asset treasuries bubble is somewhere getting pulled. It's not completely broken. I think like any listed stop you want to be on the biggest market, right? It's just that like we think and we're sort of in this elbowing around and debate. design phase with, you know, as an industry and with the SEC about what the nature of

on-chain stock markets looks like. And I just don't think it looks like unregulated single synch-winced optimistic roll-ups today. That's not enough for us. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Bits and Bips, exploring how crypto and macro collide one basis point at a time. I'm your host, Steve Ehrlich, high scribes of the Enchine Kingdom. And I'm here with three very special guests. Built by the team behind Sway, Walrus is a is the global data layer for Web3. And with the launch of SEAL, developers now get permission to access controls

built right into that data layer. Together, Walrus and SEAL make Web3 data private, programmable, and verifiable by default. Learn more at walrus.xyZ. One early bitcoiner sold 30,000 BTC too soon, missing out on over a billion dollars. Don't want to make the same mistake? With Zopo Bank, eligible members can get instant cash

without selling their Bitcoin. Check out Zappobank.com slash Unchained for more. First we have Sam, KZMEAN, the Stablecoin King of Frax Finance. Sam, why don't want to you go ahead. Please introduce yourself quickly. Hey, hey, Steve. Thanks so much. I'm the founder of CEO of Frax.

We actually issue currently a FraxUSD Genius Compliant Stablecoin, and we're Genius compliant issuance infra. And we have a wide range of Defi ecosystem products. I think the most exciting thing in the past few days has been the hyperliquid USDA competition to see who can power parts or all of that issuance chain. So excited to chat about that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Sam, we were talking before. I got to know you a couple of years ago when I was covering flat coins back when I was at Forbes.

And it was such a hot issue back then because inflation was at historically high level. So I'm really excited to hear about everything. that you're doing right now when it comes to USDA and what's going to happen there. And Kavita, we've known each other for a little while too. I always love talking about whatever's happening in space. So why don't you just briefly introduce yourself as well and we can get started. Sure. Hey, everyone.

My name is Kavita Gupta. I'm the founder of Delta Blockchain Fund and also incubated a cross-chain project, inclusive layer. I'm actually very excited to talk about when you guys are going to talk about Stablecoin because one of the things which we are building at Inclusive is also a stable coin abstraction among so many different chains, all the L-Werns of stablecoin, like the new hyperliquid one, how we don't want liquidity fragmentation issues again there. So let's take it from there, Steve, and thank you for having me.

Thanks, absolutely. And I forgot to mention all guests on our show have Game of Thrones nickname. So, Kavita, you are the high seer of the Delta blockchain fund. Thank you. And we do have one... Are you going to give me a dragon now, Steve? I'm sorry? Are you going to give me a dragon?

God, I wish. There's only what three of them in the world. I forget how many were left when the show actually ended. But I do have a cat here, though, who may show up from time to time. And we have one more guest. He's having a little bit of an issue with his audio right now, but we have Alex Thorne, the Bitcoin Viking of House Galaxy. And hopefully he can get those issues resolved soon

because I know we're all excited to hear about what he has to say. And last week on the show, even though I know the two of you weren't on it, one of the big topics was Galaxy tokenizing its shares directly onto the slant of blockchain through a partnership with SuperState. And so it's really good to kind of get his thoughts directly from the horse's mouth, so to speak. But let's dive in. I mean, Sam, you kind of alluded to it in your opening remarks. But there seems to be a bidding war going on with relation to probably the most high-referral. profile or highest project in crypto right now, hyperliquid, and who's going to help create their stable points?

So let me kind of just set the stage for us, what's happening there, and we'd also love to hear, again, how you guys at FRAX are trying to position yourselves. For sure, yeah. So just to set the stage for people just like tuning in, basically just out of kind of nowhere, for most people, the Hyper Liquid Foundation team kind of came out. a few days ago and said, we are going to have a competition for who gets the USDA ticker. And like this is kind of colloquially been known as what's going to be the hyperliquid stable coin.

Obviously, it's just a ticker, right? Like so they've said, you know, obviously other stable coins will exist on, on hyperliquid and everything. But it is, you know, de facto, the opening kind of salvo of a competition of who gets to participate in issuing, running, and distributing the yield, how much, all of these things. And to kind of, you know, say how important this is, I think from a high level perspective, there's this like two ways people think kind of the world will go, you know, post genius and like the stable coinization of everything, right? One is this view that like maybe tether, circle, you know,

these big issuers, they'll be like everywhere versus the other view as well, there will be a lot of branded stable coins, right? Like USDA or like Starbucks, USD or whatever, Walmart, all of these things. And so the thing that's really important here is like hyperliquids one of the biggest, you know, ecosystems in the entire crypto industry worldwide, right? And so the fact that they are essentially interested in creating their own stable coin and capturing all of the yield, this is actually where we'll see whether, you know, circle comes in out of, you know, the 11th hour and says like, hey, like we're going to publicly say, you know,

we're going to give you all the yield. Is that going to be enough? Or is the fact that they want this branding and this alignment? Like, it's just, it's such a nail biter, right? Because everyone's wondering how this will actually go, because it kind of will set the stage on even like smaller ecosystems compared to hyperliquid, right? Other chains, other things.

And FRAX obviously has a bid in, to issuing or helping to issue and managing the entire kind of infrastructure with our partners like Layer Zero and we work with SuperState, which is also tokenized Galaxy, which is super exciting. One of our genius compliant collateral infrastructure pipeline is SuperState, USDB, which is managed by BNI. We have very, very professional partners, but I think the main thing that is really important from this like USDA competition is what does it?

kind of mean and entail, right? Like originally when I actually talked to some of the hyperliquid team like months ago, like in late 2024, about their stable coin strategy, I actually originally thought like these guys must have like some kind of deal with circle. Like and there's like an NDA or something where they can't say they're getting the yield, right? And stuff because there's no way they would like leave hundreds of millions of dollars of like interest like that every day it's like what, tens of thousands of dollars. of like literal profit. And so we, I was like, what is the, what's going to be the end result of this, right?

And so like a few days ago, now we have the answer, right? They're looking to see how they can capture that yield. So it's going to be an interesting few days. Yeah, absolutely. I really wonder, I mean, Polymark, it's another one too where there's real questions about what they're going to do in the stable coin world. So, Kavita, why don't we come to you next? So stable coins, all the USDA, I don't think controversy is the right word, but just interest, intrigue.

What do you make of it? I feel like it has become such an exciting new, if I could say, a narrative, right? We went through a crypto AI bubble and directly fell into institutional stable coin. And of course, we will talk about that's later. But everybody trying to do their own layer ones or layer two's for stable coin and have, their own individual stable coin. I feel like that itself is going to have a, going to come up with a lot of its own trouble, right?

The trouble with liquidity fragmentation, the trouble with how are you going to really, what are people going to do now? We're going to, like the way we have so many cryptos, we're going to have so many different stable coins. And so with every different infrastructure or app, now do we have to think about which stable coin to buy and convert and blah, blah, blah. With hyperliquid one specifically, I just find it funny and funny and interesting at the same time that they are actually literally auctioning the right of somebody to own a particular ticker. And even though the foundation is going by and saying, hey, we're going to be like neutral.

Other people can do it. I think at the end of the day, for me, it's like a meme coin fund. Like, you know, let's put in a lot of money to have that ticker, but also we have to be. We still have to get adoption. We still have to get a lot of liquidity on it. But here's my question. Apart from being funny and maybe raising some eyebrows around it, what all apart from perps are we seeing on hyperliquid, yields and perps for a stable coin adoption on a consumer

side? Like where are we going to see that stable coin to be really active for hyperliquid? It's just a technical question. I'm going to leave it for everyone here. Yeah. I mean, I think they're auctioning namespace. right, the ticker. I mean, this is one of the interesting things about the auction to me is that there is no, as far as I can tell, there's no additional promise of promotion or anything else for that matter. There's no, it's kind of what I guess Jeremy Aller is sort of hinting at by saying they're all in on hype still. USDC is the largest stable corn on hyperliquid. If they don't get the USDA ticker, I don't think that necessarily, at least as described today, makes them disadvantaged. It may. I mean, I'd be surprised if they, you know, with the incentives that some of the proposals, are giving back to the hyperliquid community, you can absolutely anticipate that I think the winner,

if they give back like that, will do well. But, you know, I think to Sam's points earlier, one of the interesting, most interesting things to me is that this is really a distribution question. The stable coins take like with tempo and bridge and stripe and they've got a giant network and they're making a stable coin power blockchain. And if you've got other Genius Act, sort of post-Genius Act stablecoins emerging, they may make use of other distributions that they have. Hyperliquid is a giant crypto-native distribution network at this point, right? And there are others.

But I think so much of the adoption of a stable coin, I mean, you know, if you go from 0% of the revenue worn by the coin being given back to the holders on one side of the spectrum to 100% of it, given back on the other side of the spectrum. That's still not that much design space in my view. So like the game comes down a lot more in my minded distribution. And while it's not like obvious that the USDA is going to, you know, be the biggest stable coin on hyper. It's not like part of the option at the moment.

It's very possible that it will become that. So the big prize on the table for, you know, whatever issue or captures that, I think distribution is so important for stables. So yeah. Yeah, I think like just to add really quick on what Alex was saying, he touched on a really good point about the space between the 100% yield and everything. So they're right now at this time. There's basically three short list proposals.

There's Paxos one and an Agora kind of consortium one and a frax one with our partners. And I'm sure there's going to be in the next 48 hours before things close. A few others. I know I think the Athena guys are going to put their. had into the ring and everything. So the important thing here is like, Fraxxas is the first one to say we'll give 100% of yield. There's no admin fee. We'll just, we'll pass it through through from our infrastructure to whatever hyperliquid token holders, a foundation fund, whatever, it doesn't matter. And as soon after I think everyone followed or

even the lowest one by Paxos is 95%. That's not going to be five bips aren't going to be make or break. So the main point here is like the yield is basically table stakes, right? And so what exactly is everyone scrambling for if it's not to capture the yield, right? And so the important thing about it is like if you think it, think about what's actually at stake is being close to the flows and the distribution of one of the most important, if not the most important right now, L1 ecosystem in like defy essentially, right? It's the biggest decks. It's the biggest perp trading venue. And like what Kavita said, it's basically being at the forefront of being a good steward of the flows that come in and out of hyperliquid essentially, right? And that is actually what one of the things for like,

for example, Frax's proposal we highlighted, which is yes, we have a lot of partners. We work with Superstay, which is tokenized galaxy. We work with Stripe and Bridge. Actually, they do orchestration for FraxUSD. So does. another proposal, right? Like, the interesting thing is like, I think no matter who wins, a lot of the, these logos or partners, they're willing to work with anyone, right? Like, so, for example, the Agora proposal, I think the rain cards CEO and founder was like, you know, we're, you know, really excited to do this with Agora and stuff. Let's say Agora doesn't win. Let's say Paxos wins. I highly doubt the rain card CEO is going to be like, well, we're not going to touch

hyperliquid because we didn't win. Right. It's like like that that's not going to happen. And so the real question here is not what is like who's going to integrate. Everyone wants to. That's why they're clamoring for it, right? The real question is who is going to be like the best stewards of these flows and be able to actually create the most value for the hyperliquid community for themselves in their business and actually be able to increase that ecosystem because of the privilege position they're in at the beginning of the in and outflow. of USDA into the chain. One thing that I find particularly interesting is sort of the comparison.

I'm interested in how the USDA competes in this type of world and then in the world with like the Wall Street staple coins that everyone expects to come at Post-Genius Act because I've spoken with a lot of people that are sort of, despite the size and distribution advantages of a JP Morgan or someone along those lines, they're skeptical that some people may want to use those coins because they're just worried about like how loyal are individuals to these banks, to those tokens, and do they want to kind of keep like 10 different like tier one bank stable points in their wallet,

whereas they could just use the USC that's sort of neutral in a way and accepted everywhere. But crypto was so tribal that like in a world, and hyperliquidate has gone up like a rocket ship. And they have, because it's its own L1, it has a lot more. much higher aspirations than just being a perplex. Like I could see, like you were saying, like being able to sort of associate with the continued growth of this ecosystem. Like this being like a very big prize because of just how loyal people on crypto are to the particular brands. So I'm like being in Jeremy a layer seat right now,

this is something that I think can be very critical to them. Same thing with Polly Market. They have such a loyal set of users when they launched. their own their own blockchain. And you, I mean, everyone remembers, like, circle and when they filed their S-1s and how much they already pay in distribution costs. Like, I'm sure that they're not thrilled about having to pay hyperliquid. Yeah, hypoliquid.

I always confuse that with hypolidia. I always say that I've been around too long. I always mix up those two. But I'm sure they're not, they don't want to have to pay to keep the business that they already had, but at the same point, like, they got this distribution and the projects that they supported have become so profitable. I mean, probably markets at $2 billion company themselves that, like, at some point, like, the power distribution between them and those markets are, it's inverted. And they may have to pay in order to keep that business.

But I, Steve, just jumping on it, I also feel that just to be, I completely agree with Alex. Distribution is going to be the key defining game. But instead of Wall Street, if I would be at Circle sitting of survival and expansion, I would be worried when Instagram has its own stable coin. We do underestimate PayPal's stablecoin or basically PayPal's stablecoin or maybe if Square is going to have their stable coin. And the reason for that is we only think of stable coin as a crypto native is the billion dollar or trillion dollar volume when it's floating within the L1L2s. We underestimate that what PayPal is doing is basically every money which is going in dollar amount, they are converting it back without really having a circulation of stable coin just for you to buy and circulate.

So if you're going to have all your online shopping giants having their like Instagram, having their own stable coin and have distribution even just on their platforms. And if you keep the money there, like in your wallet, giving you rewards or yields, basically, that is going to be a way stronger competition, like what Robin Hood is going to try to do with their own stable coin, L1 now, then anything else. Also at the bank, I think from the bank perspective

and the loyalty perspective, if they're going with the traditional users, the current account or the saving account yields, going back to Sam's point, like how much yield are you doing? So instead of 25, 10 bibs today from your current account, having a 4% or 5% on your current account will attract a lot of people because you don't have to do change anything. You just probably have to click a button of yes and they will just keep your money and stable coin within the same path.

Yeah, it makes sense. Alex, anything else you want to add to this discussion? No, I think it's, I think everyone, Kavita and Sam have it spot on. I just, I think it's a story about like the power that hyper liquid controls now. I mean, commands. This is all the biggest, you know, stable coins coming to it. And it's also a new sort of Dow governance bakeoff as well, which is quite interesting. I'd like to see, right, ultimately the hyperliquid validators vote on this.

The foundation controls a super majority of the hyperliquid. Have they said, does you guys know what they've said they'll do on the vote? I assume they'll follow the others. I think they said they'd abstain. They actually delegated a large amount of it to the R&D kind of, the known node operators, yeah. Yeah, so I think it's just thought, you know, that's an interesting question.

I didn't know that, but it doesn't surprise me. I assume they wouldn't vote that why bother doing the bake-off if they're just going to pick. But they, it's just the power of the hyper liquid. It's basically all of the best stable coins there are. Tether and Circle, I don't think they can give up any more, any revenue here, right? So they're sort of like, they've got their distribution. They don't really have much of an offering to make, as far as I could tell. As you pointed out, Stephen, like their revenue we've seen is height, right?

They're paying a lot and, you know, cost of doing business already. But, you know, it's basically every other great stable coin issuer that's bidding here. So I just find that fascinating hyperliquid, something that, you know, what, didn't exist a year ago or existed just about a year ago? And to be in such a prominent position, just what a story. Same thing with Athena. I think this is going to be a very interesting combination if that happens. Well, I think like what Alex was saying is interesting about Circle, either not being able to give up yield or maybe they would be because you have like this juxtaposition of like Circle gives up 100% of yield on Coinbase, like USDC originated and held on Coinbase.

They clearly get some benefit from that. Like Coinbase is the dollar on off ramp of USDC to like essentially the US market, right? Right. If, like, that was destroying circles like finances or something, I'm pretty sure they would do something about it, right? And I think that the point is there are places in which there's a symbiotic relationship where, sure, if you look at half of the deal, like you get 100% to this entity or whatever, it looks like you're just getting totally gashed, right, on this entirely. But both sides are getting something very valuable to them. right? And that basically explains why, for example, Frax came out and said hyperliquid can have 100% of the yield. We want to be the distributor and kind of the stewards of this. Paxos, 95%. I think then Agora also said 100% or something close to that as well. I expect everyone to say something similar to that. And I actually was thinking about it more of like a philosophical perspective of, imagine this thought experiment. Imagine if I told you you are the only issuer of genius compatible stable coins.

I don't know, the law kind of annoys you it. But the cost is you're never allowed to take any of the yield or charge any mint redeem fees or something, right? Like you just have, it's almost like a public good of sorts, right? That that, that functionality. Would you take it? Would you accept that, that like privilege? I would. I would definitely accept that.

If no one else can issue a genius complied stable coin, but the flows go through me, but I just can't monetize the mint redeem or the, or the, or the, T-bill income, I would take that deal, right? And so I think that that kind of puts it in perspective of like, there's a lot of other intangible, like, non-measurable things that are valuable rather than just the line item revenue. Right. And if it wasn't true, right, Circle and Coinbase wouldn't have this relationship, right? If it wasn't true, like this thought experiment that I'm giving as an example, everyone would be like, no, I would not take this at all and I'm not interested in it. Right. But I think a lot of people would take it, right?

I have two quick follow-ups, but before that, I need to take a quick break so we could hear from sponsors who make this show possible. Meet Walrus, Web3's Data Layer, solving on-chain privacy with seal. Think of Walrus as the vault and seal as the key. Together, they give developers fast, composable access to data with encryption and permissions baked in. That means new possibilities like token-gated datasets, AI marketplaces with enforceable access rules, game logic that only reveals when it should. Even Dow governance flows where data stays private until the right moment. From AI to Defy, Walrus and Seal make the data layer more powerful, practical, and secure.

And yes, we use them too. Go to walrus.x.Z to learn why Web3's leading teams are building on Seal plus Walrus. Selling your Bitcoin just to get cash? One early Bitcoiner did and missed out on over a billion dollars. With Zappopo Bank, you can actually actually. is up to $1 million instantly without selling a single set. Eligible Zappo bank members can borrow up to 40% of their Bitcoin's value. No stress, no selling, no buying back in. Use it for what matters most. Your dream home, your child's education, a getaway or that can't miss investment. With

Bitcoin-backed loans, you're in control. Set your installments and repay in Bitcoin or US dollars, your choice. Enjoy competitive rates, zero fees, flexible terms, and no penalties for early repayment. And your Bitcoin stays safe, never re-hypothicated, relent, or pulled. It's securely held until your loan is repaid. Check them out at sapobank.com slash unchained. Welcome back. So Sam, one thing that I wanted to bring up, you mentioned, I think it may have been in response to a question from Alex, but how decentralized is this governance? even if the foundation is delegating voting authority to some of the nerds. I mean, I've done plenty of stories in the past about like Dow governance theater and in many cases,

I mean, going back years that votes are pre-socialized or that, I mean, they're really not true exercises in voting. I wrote a story earlier this year about how the basically the team behind the Crypto.com team, the Kronos Labs team over, what's the word I'm looking for, overrode the will of its constituents when it remitted 70 billion CRO tokens. And I'm not saying that's what's happening here, but there is a lot of money at stake. There is a very big prize. And I mean, I know you're kind of involved, so maybe you have to choose your words a little carefully.

But I'm curious, like, what you can say to people watching this Dow governance process, especially in a world where we're seeing a lot of Dow's actually, where we're back to centralized. entities because of the more favorable outlet from the SEC. Like what should they say so that they, what can you tell them so that they have faith that this truly is a free and open voting system? Yeah, that's a good question. Honestly, I, I at first, I had my doubts too because like, again, like I said, I was

talking to some of the hyperliquid like team members months ago about whatever their stable coin strategy is. And it became like pretty clear to me that like they, they, whatever it is, they, They have a thought, whether it's not to do anything or do something. And I think when the thing went up, I think one of the proposals, like whoever posted it first, like out of nowhere, I think they already had a website, which is kind of interesting to think about, like, about the proposal, they're their own proposal. So I don't know if like some people have thought of like they knew or whatever. Regardless of that, what I've actually been really impressed about is they've delegated most of the foundation's hype to like, the community run validators.

And I know for a fact that those are real groups, real genuine community members, and they have real values that they will vote on for the good of the token holders and ecosystem. Regardless of whether some people knew about it or not, I think actually the structure of what's going on is really, really interesting. That will set the stage for future, you know, chain stable coins or branded stable coin competitions. because however, you know, whether this is super decentralized, not that decentralized or whatever, I think people are seeing that this is probably the right way to actually be public and say, we're going to launch like some kind of branded stablepoint.

I know Alex said is kind of just a ticker, but I think the fact that it's such a big deal, we're all talking about it. It's like in the, you know, crypto media and stuff. I think this is like de facto, the shelling point is like this is the hyperliquid staple point. Got it. And one last follow up. And then, David, I'll come to you and I want to move on. up to another topic or two.

Just to sort of tie things up, what are the next steps? What are the deadlines? When should people expect things to happen and are trying to pay attention? So this was a super fast process. Currently, I think in 48 hours, the submissions will be closed. So I expect there will be a few more, obviously. Right now, kind of the top ones are Paxos, Agora and Ray and and FRAx and our partners and the alliance members.

And then I assume I've heard Athena will put something down. There might be a few more. And then the validators get a chance to vote over a few days after the entries are closed. And so by next week, there could be a formalized winner. So, Kavita, anything else you want to add to this, please go ahead. If not, I wanted to turn to DATs as well. No, no, let's talk about that. I was just connecting it to how Voluboity Finance can just compute.

completely block, but we can move to that. So I know I know Delta is an investor in a lot of the big ones. And in particular, I'm interested in your thoughts in about like what are you talking about laser team right now? Like what types of deals are you seeing in a world where we're, we're watching some of the premiums drop. Some companies are falling below a premium of one, which basically means they're trading below book value and makes it really hard to raise money accretively.

make us impossible until that number it reverses itself. Like, what are you saying? Yeah, I feel like the digital asset treasuries bubble is somewhere getting pulled, if not completely broken, right? We have companies like Idzala, which is right now trading at the cost value. We have a lot of them, to be very honest, the light coin bond. We are investing the top eight that's in the market. And what we are seeing is, first of all,

anyone and everyone is doing that. It's getting range from $100 million to $2 billion now. Like $30, $50, $100 million is not big enough. But at the same time, we are seeing that the type of excitements or people raising a lot of money to do just that funds. Suddenly that excitement is going away because most of the people, the holders have started playing that in a similar fashion as three to four months in and out game based on. on the market. The third thing which has not the precedence, which everybody was expecting, which hasn't been set in, is when the dots came, the idea was these dots for Ether, Solana, Bitcoin, Avalanche, like all those new currencies, they're going to go into the market and

they're going to buy from market, like very similar to micro strategy. And that is going to push up the price of the crypto and going to create more buy power in the market. But what we are seeing is a lot of those dots, there is no clear timelines after raising half a billion dollar. When are they really going to buy? A lot of them are doing different side deals with treasuries or their own investments to do locked tokens, etc. A lot of different things, but to create a buy pressure in the market, which was the whole idea for a lot of people to also participate.

And by the time and now when the government has started, Then SEC has started poking and saying, hey, if you're doing it, you need to have a shareholders agreement. You need to have vote on this so that you just don't go by a publicly traded company without the people who actually already own a lot of those common shares and have any say into it and suddenly it's different. And I think we're going to see a lot of those rules coming in, making it more difficult for the clearance for a lot of new tokens, like a lot of currency tokens, which nobody really have a market for. And so, yeah, so that that market is going to change a lot now.

And the interest, I'm already seeing a lot of waning interest from the investors. A bunch of things to react to there, but Alex, I know Galaxy's involved in this industry as well. I'll defer to you first to build on top of what Kavita said. Yeah, I think, I mean, we're definitely in phase two of the recent. I mean, I guess you could say it's even possibly phase three if we go back. back to May 20, you know, the summer 2020 when Michael Saylor invented this segment. You know, I have a couple, I agree. I mean, it's definitely evolving.

I think I was shocked. I mean, you had similar scientific and meta planet sometime, what, in 2024? But it went almost four full years before anyone even tried what Sailor did. And then it was just really like in, you know, maybe March that this actually started to explode. And now, of course, we have them across, you know, dozens of different coins and companies. So I would say we'll probably make, I would venture to bet that we're still at the, we're only at the end of the beginning though and not the beginning of the end.

I think you're going to see a lot of evolution. I think there's going to be very few Dats that can do what Sailor is doing, which is only just sack the coin and use things like perpetual ATMs or preferred securities or debt to do it. I think you're going to start to see companies that have some real value to bring to those ecosystems start to stand out. So, you know, particularly in the proof of stake world outside of Bitcoin, you're going to start seeing some of the largest validators will be Dats. They may offer things like RPC access or endpoints and ways to interact with the chain

or even start doing their own development. You know, the one that was announced this morning with multi-coin goutes. And Jump, right? You've got the largest early sole investor, one of the largest validators, and one of the most important software developers in the Solana ecosystem teaming up for that one. And I think that's more likely where it goes. I don't, I think Sailor is going to continue to be able to do what he's doing. He is incredible pricing power and scale that really nobody else has, at, you know, what, $75 billion worth of Bitcoin or so? I don't think you're going to a lot of others be able to just do that. So it's going to turn into a game of differentiate.

I think it already is turning into a game of differentiation and value at around that treasury, and particular, like, you know, using them and defy or earning yield in some way on your holdings that, you know, is hopefully safe and, you know, there's a risk there, but I think sort of, that's what I think. I would say, I don't know which phase, which number phase, but I would say we are at the end of the beginning and, you know, maybe the beginning of the next chapter is emerging now. The only one more thing which I want to add, and I'm so sorry, I'll have to drop off in five minutes. But the only one thing I want to add here is that basically making me feel like you are raising money if you're looking at the sponsor groups. And I'm talking about a bunch of them out there without fingering or pointing to one is, first of all, the sponsor group packages have been completely crazy.

but it's a new phase, 15% 20% going back to the people who are just putting it together, not even the management team, takes away long-term incentives from the management team. That's one. Secondly, when you look at people raising so much money, which is sitting, and most of the crypto investors or the funds who have gone in gets out in four to six months, because once they have tradable stock, there is no way you can really put any sort of a pressure on them. It's the free will. and what I'm seeing is most of the people are liquidating,

I feel like instead of saying a digital asset treasuries, these are becoming companies who are now raising money to do whatever they want to do without having a clear governance for the investors to be very sure, to be very honest. Like with some of the dots which we have invested, it's becoming very frustrating that we have not seen them after raising money,

even after one and a half month of announcing raising money in their bank account. actually going and buying anything from the market, you know, and there is nothing you can do about it. Kavita, just to follow up on that, because I know you have to go. What types of promises are they making? I know sometimes like business combination agreements can take time and subject to SEC approval, so timelines aren't always in their control, but it sounds a little bit like, not that you're being sold a false bill of goods, but that sort of expectations of,

of what was conveyed in some of these meetings might not align with reality. Like, what, what are those discussions like? And I would imagine that you are connecting with those teams now, especially with premiums dropping to find out what's happening. Like, what are they telling you? I think when the premiums, so there are two faces, right? Initially, when you are making an investment decisions, most of the people are promising you that they're going to buy this particular asset

and they're going to buy it from the markets and they're going to have validated. they're going to provide eels. That's a standard story, right? And that's what most of them are saying. And I'm guessing that that's the idea, hopefully long term, that they do end up doing it, instead of trying to spend that money into whatever their creative ideas now, they have money and they can just do it, which was not part of the initial investment memo. But that is not dependent upon the SEC approval, because that part is already done once they have the changes they actually summit. And now after 30 days, once they have the new equities, new stocks, which they give to people, their investors, now those plans are already passed.

So they can go into the market and buy any time and generate yields and have somebody to do their validators or create their own validators at any given point of time. So that's where the frustration comes. Now going to your second question, which you are saying, once the premiums are dropping, how is the conversation? But when the premiums drop and you're asking, hey, what's happening? Why is there so much still? There is a standard answer.

We don't know maybe the existing investors, because these are publicly traded company for number of years, are now suddenly feel like they already have a premium. But I'm guessing that's happened when the news comes out, you know, and it's on the peak of the place instead of when the investors start getting their stocks and everything drops. So I do feel like there is a lot of drop in the prices as soon as the big investors start getting.

their tradable stocks and especially the company start getting the new sponsors start getting their tradable stocks but of course it's very difficult to trace it you can just watch the market and do the assumptions but every time it's the same days um yeah that was going to see i wrote a story on that i guess a month or a couple months ago about some of the big companies that raised a lot of money pipes and what happens when those pipe shares um become registered at the SEC and doesn't actually because the shares inflate the circulating supplies so much, it doesn't even take that much cell pressure from those insiders to crash the price. I know you have to go, Kavita.

So just quickly, any last thoughts before? I'll continue with Sam and Alex for a little more. I think for that, I want to see how the long-term strategy would work out. Like, one of the first ones which we did was Opexy, which has done really well because it did drop and then picked up really well. and I feel like hopefully that is how the trajectory going to be for a lot of other dads. But it's only time going to tell. I'm really sorry, I'm going to drop off, but I'm really going to come back to look for the conversation

of what the hell happened to Justin's son and the World Liberty Financials. I want all the costs. Thank you so much, guys. Thanks, to be it. And just to weigh in there, Steve, is like. Yes, Sam, I didn't mean to be ignoring you. Please. No, no. This is where I actually wish I could say more about some other DATs, but the ones that are publicly known, at least.

So the whole reason you would buy a DAT, right, is because the whole stat is the coin per share should go up. Whatever the digital asset is inside of the treasury company, the common enterprise of this structure of a corporation is that it is a team that people believe. in or not, I guess, right? But the main thing is believe in to increase the price per share better than the coin per share, better than other DATs in the same class, right? For Bitcoin, I think everyone is very clear, right? Like, Bitcoin does not earn revenue, right? BTC, the asset is that you can't stake it, you can't do anything with it.

It is an inert thing. It's not coherent to say the Bitcoin network has revenue because it goes to the miners. The holders don't get any kind of P&E discounted cash flow, right? It is just a piece of like digital gold, right? So in order to maximize BTC per share, you basically need a very astute, very knowledgeable, financial behemoth that can get lending, leverage, get the deals that they want at large size. Sailor is the textbook of this person, right? And so lo and behold, they have the best DAT, right?

Because the market's confidence is this entity can maximize the coin per share, right? Slightly different with different like other DATs, right? If ETH, for example, Eatsila, which disclosure, I'm one of the. the lester's in as well. And so it's like electric, which is a frax investor. If their thing is Ethereum, right, the way that you maximize ETH per share, right, is make sure it's staked. Don't lose out on the APY. You don't sit on inert ETH, right? You do things that are important in DFI that are risk adjusted, that are professional. And so the best ETHDAT would have people who know this. So like Tom Lee, obviously, he knows these things and is looking into it. ETHZILA,

Others, same thing with when you go down the actual list of token rankings, right? So like if there's like an aptos, DAT or Suey or whatever, the team that is most able to maximize the coin per share stat of a DAT, which is what the definition of this common enterprise is, is the leader of that assets DAT. And so that's kind of an important consideration because the more crowded it gets, right? The more you have to convince the market, we are the team for this asset. that can maximize the coin per share without imploding, without losing assets without doing anything.

And as Alex said really well, there's going to be differentiators, right? People are going to say, hey, we're going to, this is how we maximize it and we do it really well. You know, we're going to have RPC services. We're going to earn more money and then compound that revenue into coin per share, for example, right? And so that's the thing to watch in my opinion in the DAT space. So that's the good side of, that's the example of how all this can go well.

Companies are responsibly managed. I know, Alex, you were talking about this in between your Winston Churchill quote, which I really appreciate it. You want companies that can responsibly grow income, passive yield from staking or getting more involved in defy. But I can also see the case, especially during kind of a perilous time like this, where companies perhaps are struggling to raise that next tranche of funds, et cetera, et cetera. or maybe they start leveraging rebalance sheet. They start like rehyposicating their crypto. They start throwing money into defray protocols that are promising 100%, 200% APIs because,

hey, that sounds great and looks really good on a marketing deck until they get hacked or rugged or whatever. How do you guys, I mean, Sam, you know, and then Alex two like institutionally at Galaxy How do you try to like sniff out the projects that are going to stick to sort of the orthodoxy created by Michael Saylor versus the ones that are going to say, hey, look, we can leverage our shares as collateral. We can do all these other things. And you're not going to get burned. Yeah, sure. One, we work with them. That's one way that gives us confidence if we're working with them.

I mean, Galaxy is one of the only lenders. that didn't blow up in 2022. And it's because we didn't give away free money. And a lot of the others either gave away their clients money for free, like, which is basically what Genesis did, or they gambled their clients money in ways that was not only not disclosed to the clients, but excessively risky, you know, like the Celsius or even Voyagers. So I actually, I would say, yeah.

I didn't interrupt, but I have the exact same name as the former Voyager CEO. So I still get messages sometimes on Twitter. Wow. Well, our CFO, our CIO, Chris Ferraro has the same name as the, was it the Voyager CFO? I think it was the Voyager one, too. Also, Chris Ferraro. So look, I mean, I have to reply back. It's not me.

Like, like the different guy, different guy. But please. I would say, like, Sailor is doing nothing with his underlying coins, right? And he's, I mean, he's pledged not to. He hasn't submitted to a proof of reserves that we can technically. confirm that. In fact, he's argued passionately against proof of reserves, which is a little bit of a head scratcher from my perspective. But nonetheless, I mean, I think, look, there's absolutely a risk, especially in the hunt to differentiate that some of these digital asset treasury companies are going to

stretch the risk and try to, you know, go far out on the risk spectrum and use things like dangerous defy protocols. That is a risk. That's not something, obviously, that we recommend or I think our asset that manager would allow or advise those stats that it advises. But I mean, we will almost certainly see something like that emerge among the, I mean, there are hundreds of these companies, right? And not just in defy, not just, I mean, I think we'll see Bitcoin ones just do something really stupid. There's just so many of them, right? And surely they're not all as good at financial engineering and calculating their cost, their risk and reward as Michael Saylor, who really has

pretty minor amount of leverage in relation to. to his total market cap and his nav, right? Something like 17% of his nav that he's borrowed against, and it's all termed out quite far, and it's convertible. And it's actually, it's not actually that crazy, like the way he's done it from a risk standpoint. I think you'll see much riskier stuff happen. I think you will see, especially if you get active. I mean, the coins that he has, he's putting right into cold storage, right?

So if you're not doing that, right? If you're, you know, there's stages, like if you're on ETH and you're, staking, okay, well, it's not that risky. People know how to do that safely, right? But maybe you're doing liquid staking now. So you're kind of collecting, you're getting a liquid staking token and putting that somewhere in defy and another layer of, okay, well, I mean, you know, Lido's pretty safe. People know Lido.

And then you're like restaking with Lido, you know what I mean? Like, and then maybe you're lending and D, okay, but they're using AVE, that's pretty well vetted and safe, you know, and you can see how eventually it's just like, well, they're using, like, well, they're using, like, Alex protocol. to do something because it's like the ninth, you know, line in a risk ladder that's been built up. I think there's a risk of that. I think investors should be very cautious in looking at what the companies they invest in are doing.

Just like any company that you invest in, you should pay attention to what they're doing. And, you know, I just think it would be naive of us to think that, like, you know, people, everyone learned the lesson. And I'm pretty sure not everyone learned it. And I think to Kavita's point, I mean, like, again, there is a giant long-tail all these. There's plenty of ones that are run by reputable people with good backers and investors, plenty of them. There's also plenty I've never heard of anyone involved with it, you know. So I'm just saying, you know, be, be careful for sure. I mean, and do your diligence and read

the documents and understand what they're doing because you will see, you will see them go out on risk to try to differentiate themselves. I'll raise your Winston Churchill quote with a Mark Twain one. History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. And, uh, do you get? Do you guys remember, like, since your like history rhymes, it's like, it keeps coming. Do you guys remember when Sailor first started doing the treasury stuff? Everyone was like, why would anyone buy this other than an ETF? This is like the dumbest idea like in the world. And then like one year passed and it kept going really well.

And then two years passed. And then people were like, okay, well, let's try. Let me try it, right? And then other tokens and stuff. And the thing, exactly as you're saying, Steve, is like, I think these are like banking, where the share, the equity token or like the equity certificate represents essentially a bank note. And then inside of the DAT, like the common enterprise, is to increase the amount of claims that

this note actually has that people hold, right? What does it look like? It kind of looks like the wildcat banking era of the U.S. where it's like this note has like this much yield and they go out and do stuff with it. And then the other bank is like, actually, we'll get 10% yield. And then you don't really know what exactly they're doing. And it goes farther and farther out on the yield curve. And it is actually also similar to DFI summer, right, where something was like 40% APY.

Then another thing is like 45% APY. Well, what are they doing with it? I think the important thing about DATs is like at least they are in a fairly regulated environment. They are publicly traded stocks. And as long as there's proper disclosure, which I think it's a good thing that the NASDAQ has said, like, there has to be more disclosure of what they're doing, how they're acquiring the tokens and everything. At the end of the day, I'm a very big disclosure regime type of person where as long as there's disclosure, invest in the risky thing that you want and don't like, you know, complain if it implodes,

but also, you know, if you win out, right, that that's your winning, right? I don't know if you listened to the show last week, Sam, but actually we had Brian Rudick, the chief strategy officer for Upexy on, and one of his main arguments was that dads are basically banks, and that's set off a 20-minute debate because you get to the point of where they pay a certain yield and, et cetera, but then obviously banks are very highly regulated, more so than almost any industry in the world, and dads aren't that type of under that type of regulation, but it just kind of leads to, it's kind of a Roersack. That's a really interesting way of looking at this because simplistically, yes, it kind of functions like a bank,

but it comes with certain risks that are much more akin to like a edge is it. Isn't a DAT? Isn't a bank just a DAT with the token being dollars? Right? Like that's, I mean, that's kind of what his argument was, but obviously banks have like significant, uh, um, requirements disclosure and collateral. Well, yeah, yeah. That's what I mean.

It's like if you're doing a DAT with USD, good luck because you have to get permission from the specific branch of government that's like the USDA DAT branch, right, the OCC. And like we just passed the law, right, genius that says how your USDDAT should work and all that stuff. Right. But if it's a BTC, DAT, go ham, right? Like give keynotes like Sailor like we're going to, you know, make everyone rich or whatever. Yeah, I mean, keep in mind how I agree. This is an interesting point.

How Finney, like, you know, a year after Bitcoin launched, wrote that there would be very good reason for Bitcoin banks to exist that would hold Bitcoin, issue their own cash, right? He's referring more than to like a free banking era kind of thing like George Selgin writes about. But this is that, like, rhyming history thing, right? It's the arc line of issue, especially for Michael Saylor, he might not be issuing cash, but he's issuing paper on his Bitcoin, right? Like, it's pretty interesting and similar. So it's obviously different, but it's, you know, it's same, same, but different. So what I like to do at the end of shows is really give everybody a chance to either share some thought that was left on the cutting room floor or if you have a, or if you have some sort of contrarian take in particular that you think would be fun to talk about and maybe start a bit of a fight on Twitter. That's always good, too.

But really, I just want to kind of give her own chance to get whatever off their chest that they're dying to share with the ether. So Sam, how about you go first? For sure, yeah. I think, I don't know if there's like a contrarian take, but I think my whole point and what we're working on at Frax with Frax USD and ingenious compliance and all of the emerging stable coin space is like, I think there's going to be a world where there's many, many different branded stable coins, but there's going to be a sure. short list of stable coins that are more money like, similar to what USDC and USD are today. And hopefully for us, FraxUSD and whatever we work on and together, hopefully maybe USDA and things like that. Because the stables that are branded are more like tokenized gift cards, right? Like they're basically, if they only are accepted in different places, my contrarian

takers, there will be like, you know, hundreds of stable coins, but only a short list of five that are actually accept it everywhere. For example, if you have Starbucks USD, sure, you could buy coffee with it. And then you can also use USDC, hopefully for XUSD, you know, USDA or whatever, but a very short list, right? Those are the ones that are the one trillion dollar opportunity that people that are going for should be, you know, investing in, working together with those people and, and seeing where those projects go. Because the most important thing with stable coins is, is not if they're branded or like, you know, and the contrary to take is not what distribution they have, to be honest, because you need deep multi-distribution integration, not one, because if you have multi-distribution integration,

you are money, right? The marginal next user of it actually finds more utility in it. And so that's kind of my contrarian take. Like at FRAX, we're working on making everything one-to-one with our strategic partners. And if that's an interesting thing in stable points for you, I think Kavita actually said that really well, too. That's the most valuable thing for me is that I'm looking to work with people to unlock gateways of one-to-one moniness to C-Fi, D-Fi, and between different chains. Great. Alex, I'll come to you, anything you want to share.

But also, we didn't have time to get to it yet. We'll just get some initial thoughts on tokenizing galaxy shares on Solana. Yeah, I was going to raise something that has come out. of that, which is, and it's also come out of like tempo and plasma and these corporate chains and questions about why these corporations aren't using Ethereum L2s or why Galaxy isn't tokenizing on an Ethereum L2. And this is something that's come up a lot since we announced last week our tokenization of our Class A common stock on Solana is, and we wrote about why and part of the reason is that, you know, well, an Ethereum optimistic roll-up might be sufficient from a safety standpoint

for a native asset like ETH, because you can replay the transaction in the case that the central sequencer censors you or refuses, you know, either delays you or whatever it is. You can replay that directly on the L-1 and sort of unilaterally exit, right? That doesn't exist with issued assets, right? It might exist if we issued on the Ethel 1. And then the token you had of our shares was on as bridged or something on the Ethel 2. Then the Ethel 1 would know what the token was when you X. And there's more to it than that. But again, that reason alone is a reason that we expect issuers to issue stocks on L1s primarily.

It doesn't mean they won't eventually go to L2s. And the other thing is that a centrally sequenced, single sequence, sequenced, singular sequencer, optimistic roll-up, which basically all of them are today, can reorder your transactions, charge arbitrary fees, can delay settlement and finality of your transactions. Arbitrarily, they have that capability. And today, that's Coinbase or arbitram, right? Or maybe it's a foundation, but there isn't any true of the, I mean, and to be clear,

like, base is something like 90-plus percentage of all the roll-up transactions now anyway. So it doesn't get that much more important. Sure, there are other types of roll-ups that might be appropriate and might have different setups than the optimistic ones. But pragmatically speaking, today, the roll-ups are all single-sequenced in terms of volume. And to me, a single-sequenced roll-up that with, you know, capability to either through negligence or malice, impact the settlement fees or trading of a security, that looks a lot like NASDAQ to me. And NASDAQ is heavily regulated to ensure that it doesn't negatively impact those shareholders. And in the case that it does, whether by negligence or malice, there is recourse. And, you know, it happens accidentally all the time, broken trades and stuff.

There are rules around compensating those affected, right? So I think until layer twos are either more decentralized, Ethereum roll-ups, I should say again, specifically optimistic roles are either more decentralized. where there is no single party to hold responsible in the case of, you know, some kind of problem with the securities trade, or they register and are subjected to significant oversight to ensure that if there are problems, they can be rectified. I don't think EthereumL2s are ready for tokenized stocks. And that played into our decision to look specifically at layer one blockchains. And we pick Solana as the first place. I think we're also open to Ethereum L1 for that. And, but I think this is something that the Ethereum world is not really grappled with that L2s might be okay.

Optimistic L2s might be okay today for native assets, but they're not appropriate for for stocks today. That's a really important point. And it's something I've been trying to harp on as well, too. I mean, like every single L2, like you said, Alex, is basically centralized because there's one sequencer. And I've been asking Coinbase for years, when are they done on diversify? And I think they made an announcement what was a few months ago that they instituted some sort of challenge period as a way of like moving along the pathway towards decentralization. But as far as I know based on the latest information I have, like there are no plans to to add in new sequencers, at least as of yet, which is akin to sort of like taking training wheels off. And you're right, either by malice or negligence, something can can go wrong.

And at that point, like the L2s are exciting and they're interesting. But like people should not make any mistake. They are completely centralized. And it might not matter too much, though, for like an ETH transaction on an L2. You know, oh, crap, I'm delayed five minutes. I can, or I'm delayed forever and I can back out. But it might not economically matter for a stock trade. It might not, but it also might.

And to be clear, like national securities exchanges and ATSs are regulated such that if there's any mistake of any size, there's recourse, right? I mean, native crypto ones aren't regulated. They didn't think that's good, but I think securities just are different. And so centralized corporate L2s to me are just not, they're not it. That looks a lot like just a, I mean, NASDAQ is a centralized company that runs an L2 for trading. And it's called, you know, NASDAQ P HLX or whichever one of the other exchanges they have. Well, so then that's a good point.

So then would Robin Hoods have been ideal for you guys to issue on? Because if it's good, if the chain is run by Robin Hood, right? And they are the one of the biggest like trading. menus like in the United States for people and it's run, you know, they run their thing well and they haven't had issues. Is that sufficient for you guys, basically, if they run it? So Robin Hood is a broker dealer themselves. I don't know if their L2 is going to operate as a broker dealer. If you actually facilitate like a listed order book, you are a national securities exchange or an ATS. And that's a different registration. I think if Robin Hood or Coinbase had

that registration, then we as an issuer could feel comfortable that our shareholders wouldn't be taken advantage of without recourse. It's not that we think that point, you know, base or Robin Hoodell 2 or Krakins Inc or any of, or, you know, any of the other corporate controlled ones will try to take advantage. It's just that because they can, we think they should be overseen that, you know, and this is not to say, you know, there's a valid pushback that like, well, surely like the Solana validator set's not perfect, right, or the Ethereum validate, it's not perfect. That's totally right. I mean, we could get just crowded, it out for some reason. I mean, you know, local, you have local fee markets. There's plenty of

space on the Uthel 1 at the moment. It's not likely that you'll just like, but let's say there's just congestion. Well, that could hurt our stock trade. There's just nobody to register. We're not saying it's perfect. We're just saying because they could register and be overseen, they should. If they can't register and be overseen, they wouldn't be able to. And they start to look more decentralized. And that's the reality of a new decentralized world. And there's other steps that, you know, we take to protect our investor. One of them, for example, people raise MEV. It is true that base sequencer is preventing MEV from taking advantage of the users on base. That's true.

But because they control the ordering, right? They're not outsourcing the ordering to, you know, a flashbots market or something else. But permission tokens like GLXY, which you cannot transfer without being on allow list, isn't really subject to MEV in that way unless, you know, we accidentally were to add a MEV bot to our allow list, right? So it's not really a real thing that's possible for a permission token, which our stock certainly is. It's just among the, I think, the current setup, it's not, I think if the ultimate stock market on chain became some single company's L2, we would go there. I mean, I think like any listed stock you want to be on the biggest market, right? It's just that like we think and we're sort of in this elbowing around and debate design phase with, you know, as an industry. and with the SEC about what the nature of on-chain stock markets looks like.

And I just don't think it looks like unregulated single-sink wins, optimistic roll-ups today. Yeah. That's not enough for us. Yeah. Interesting. Now, we'll follow that. Thanks for that context. And then just quickly for me, one thing I just wanted to briefly bring up is sort of just the, again,

I don't have controversy the right word, but sure, the hoopla surrounding the World Liberty Financial team, I guess, freezing some of Justin's. Sons, WLF tokens. I heard a lot of different reactions to this. It's really just kind of interesting because, like, I profile Justin Sun one of my last stories before I came to Unchained. And like at the time, I don't know how many people remember, but he invested in WLF, no one else had in a certain way he helped them reach their

initial $30 million threshold to actually launch. And now it's just kind of, I mean, I know Justin does a lot of opinions about Justin, but it's just kind of interesting that like he's the one who's theoretically being frozen at this point in Topians. And I think it's also a reminder too that for as much as the community is happy with how much the administration and the president have supported this industry. And I led to a complete 180 in terms of the outlet from the SEC. and then et cetera. Like this is what happens in a centralized world that's pretending to be decentralized or purported to be decentralized.

And I think it's just a good reminder for people to always remember that like crypto was meant to that and that crypto was intended for things like this not to be able to happen. I know sometimes it can be the cost of doing business, but I think it's just a good reminder that crypto as it has in the past should be able to succeed no matter who is in the White House, in matter who's coming after it, who's supporting it, et cetera. And I'm really interested to see what we'll end up happening here because Justin and the White House,

they've become very strong partners. I would imagine they're going to continue doing so when they're going to find a way out of this. But it's, again, it's just a reminder that there's a lot of things purporting to be decentralized that very much are not. And that just kind of takes away I wanted to share about that particular piece. Sam and Alex, thank you guys very much for joining.

It was a really entertaining discussion. We'll have to have you back soon. We'll be back in one week to discuss how the worlds of crypto and macro are colliding one basis point at a time. So with that, thank you, everybody, and have a good rest of the week.