Unchained - The Chopping Block: Berachain’s Hype, Portnoy vs. Cramer, & Negative Market Sentiment - Ep. 783

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. In this episode, we’re joined by Laura Shin, host of the Unchained Podcast, for a no-holds-barred discussion on the current state of the crypto landscape. We dive into Berachain’s shaky launch, dissecting its tokenomics, insider allocations, and why the hype didn’t hold. Then we uncover the rise of celebrity memecoin scams—how influencers are cashing in while their followers get rugged. Finally, we tackle the Ethereum vs. Solana debate: is Ethereum losing its edge, or is Solana’s growth just a speculative bubble? It’s an episode full of bold takes and sharp insights you won’t want to miss. Show highlights 🔹 Berachain’s Big Faceplant: Launched with $10B hype, now scraping $2.5B FDV. There are too many VCs and not enough vibes to keep it afloat. 🔹 Memecoin Madness: Celebs faking hacks to rug followers? The dark side of crypto grifts gets exposed. 🔹 Is Ethereum Lost? Once the king of culture, it is now weighed down by L2 sprawl and fading relevance. Has Solana stolen the spotlight? 🔹 Solana’s Winning the Youth Vote: Fast, fun, and flooded with memecoins—exactly what Gen Z craves. 🔹 Peak Memecoin Energy: When the scams get this blatant, are we hitting the top—or just getting started? 🔹 Cramer vs. Meme Lords: Who’s worse for your wallet—a clueless TV pundit or a shameless influencer? 🔹 Regulators, Where You At? Chasing good actors while real frauds run wild. Classic crypto chaos. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Laura Shin, Journalist, Author of ‘The Cryptopians,’ Founder and CEO of Unchained Disclosures Timestamps  00:00 Intro 01:53 Berachain Launch and Community Sentiment 05:23 Market Sentiment and Crypto Cycles 18:03 Kanye West Leaks Scam Playbook 32:17 Cramer’s Curse vs. Portnoy’s Pump 39:23 Ethereum & Solana Drama 49:06 Ethereum's Existential Crisis (Again?) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They kind of start off all idealistic, and it's like people who are really interested in the technology for what it can build. Once they kind of like prove that this can work, then all the kind of more scammery type people, they get in on it because they're like, oh, I can get rich quick, I can get rich quick. And then you just have this like massive flood of all the get rich quick people. This whole Dave Portnoy thing is, I wouldn't even call it a top signal. It's like we've crested the hill now. I want Portnoy to go on Unchained. I would love to want Portnoye to want. Watch Laura interview Dave Portnoy. Not a dividend. It's a tale of two fun.

Now, your losses are on someone else's balance. Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways. Unnamed trading firms who are very involved. I like that E is the ultimate policy. Defy protocols are the antidote to this problem. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Chopping Block. Every couple weeks, the four of us get together and give the industry insider's perspective on the crypto topics of the day.

So quick intros for us to got Robert, the Crypto Gronasurer and Tsar of Super State. Good evening, everybody. Next, we've got Tarun, The Gigabrain, and Grand Puba at Contlet. Yo. So today we've got a big get for the show. I'm sure you're all very excited. We've got Laura, who's the CEO. She runs Unchained Podcast.

Huge guests. We've been trying to get her for a long time. She's finally agreed to come on the show. Laura, thanks for coming on. I'm so lucky that I found a spot in my schedule to hop on here. We are eternally grateful. We found time for us. Yeah.

I receive the head of Hygman of Dragonfly. We're early-stage investors in crypto, but I want to caveat that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life advice. Please see Chopin Block and XYZ for more disclosures. So it's been another week of crypto feeling very bad. And the latest thing that's been instigating us feeling bad, oh yeah, definitely been feeling bad. The latest thing that's been instigating the bad feeling is all these new launches that seem to be going quite poorly. So the big one that has been on everyone's radar is Barachain. So Bear Chain, for those of you who are not brain damage by crypto, Bear Chain is a layer one

that is bear themed. And they're notorious for a few things. One, for having a lot of bears. Two, there's a group called the Bearabatties, which are affiliated with Bearer Chain, and they throw really dope parties. I love that that's your second thing you say. Laura, well, so Laura told me in the pre-show, Laura told me that she's familiar with the berry baddies.

Laura, do you want to explain for the audience what Barrab Batties are? No, because I told you that I'm not familiar. I told you. You told what you were familiar. No, I saw something about it on Twitter. And I was like, I don't think I want to know what this is. So I just clicked out. I was like, there's plenty more for me to discover in Crypto.

This is not one of the things I will choose to spend my time on. Yeah, full disclosure of Robot Ventures, investors in Barra. But I am unfamiliar with the Barra Baddies. It sounds like. Wait, really? Yeah. It's like, it's a second. All right, Turin, please.

My brief impression was, is it like only fans on Barra chain? Something like that? It's, it. Well, okay, let's put it this way. Let me put it in, let me put it in boomer terms that everyone on this, on this podcast who's over 30 will agree on, which is,

it's like the, the Gen Z version of groupies. Okay. Yes. I don't even know what group is this. for Barra Chain. I assume this was more like Instagram than only against just based on the name. Influence.

It's like influencers kind of who like represent the brand by having parties and being on jet skis and taking pictures. Yes. It's hot girls who like Bear Chain. That's the idea. But they wear these bear masks to obscure their identities for whatever reason. That's part of the vibe of Barclan. No, for good reasons.

The main. Okay. So to be clear. Okay. So the main innovation of Bear Chain is a thing called proof of liquidity, which is, consensus mechanism where basically when you're staking on bear chain, you're also providing liquidity that can be sourced from various protocols that are on the chain. It's a Cosmos SDK-based EVM chain. So they launched their main net relatively recently and launched their token. And the initial

expectations were the token was going to be valued somewhere in the range of $8 to $10 billion. That's where it initially came out at. And the token is kind of bled down to the point where now fully diluted valuation for the token is about $2.5 billion. Their last private round was $1.5 billion. and the sentiment against bearer chain has been very, very negative if you look on crypto Twitter. Now, the source for this negative sentiment has been, in part, the amount of supply that is going toward VCs. So it's something like 35% of the supply is insiders. Sorry, 35% of just being VCs alone, as well as some various accusations that, hey, this thing doesn't really work. The proof of liquidity is not even there yet.

There's some issues with staking. There's this complicated triangle of different staking mechanics that are very difficult to understand. And it seems like most of the activity or most of the noises I'm seeing are mostly about, like, there's just too much infrastructure. Like, why do we need another infrastructure chain? And the market just seemed to have no appetite to digest another infrastructure story. So you guys are investors in bear chain. Curious to get your guys' response.

How do you feel about this launch? And what do you feel like this launch portends for what's coming with the other infrastructure projects that are in the pipeline still? Well, I'll just speak generally for a couple of meta statements here. One, baritian's valuation is higher than that of Adam slash Cosmos itself, right? So whatever- Come on, that's a low bar given how bad at it, how horrible point Adam is. You're talking about fully diluted valuation.

Yeah. Baritian is more valuable than Cosmos as a whole chain. Well, Adam doesn't represent all of the-atomus. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, fine. But when I think of like Cosmos, that's what I think of, right? So when we're talking about like relative valuation, I mean, I don't think it's doing

badly. I think, first of all, it's worth more than Adam itself is, right? I do think that the Cosmos ecosystem has its own unique UX challenges, which I still think make it more challenging for most capital to access and most capital to interact with. I think we're still at that point. and I do think that it creates a little bit of a headwind for projects that are launching in Cosmos. The bigger point, though, is that it just feels like to me that this is like a flashback to, in some ways, like, the last third of the ICO wave in 2017, which is, you know, all the projects coming out, we're in a default mode of price go down after launch. And, you know, this is related in a lot of ways to, I think, like, watching meme coins have lives

go from, like, you know, a month to a week to like three days to two days to one day to 12 hours to four hours to now. There's multiple meme coin crashes in a single stream. Yeah, in a single stream. We know Toreen was, Tauru is made an honorary member of the L.A. Vape Kabala. And now he's. I'm going on next week. I'm going on a stream. Yeah.

Yeah. But this just feels like a moment of time. which there's more supply than demand, right? And you can see that at Baratrain. You can see that in all of the other launches that are happening. Everything is coming out. There's just more supply than there are buyers. And it's leading to weak price action across the board. And that's just an objective reality. So you think it's a meta thing? You don't think it's specific to Baratrain? No, I don't think it's specific to Barat Chain at all. I think it's just a function of like where we are in the cycle. And I have to disagree.

I feel like, so if I think about kind of the reputation that Barachain had, like, over the past year, it was very community oriented, this whole kind of, like, they're all about the culture and, you know, they have the best parties. And, like, they just had a lot of buzz that made it feel super community oriented. And then this kind of launch where there's so much for insiders, just the way that the distribution is, it's not something that. feels as community-oriented as the actual reputation is. It feels like there's this like sort of mismatch of this feeling like, oh, it's like more organic, it's more grass roots or whatever. And then like now that, you know, everything's come out. And I saw some of the complaints about the staking were that like people didn't really know about it.

And it just felt like it was like something for the investors to know about and the investors to take advantage of. But like everyday people couldn't. So like I think there were like multiple things. They were probably like certain expectations. about like what type of launch it would be. And then when they saw actually this is what it is, it felt like, oh, it's like way more weighted to insiders

and not the community. And, you know, I also saw like Arthur's tweet about how everybody should have been working to have the launch at a good price because the chart, you know, just from launch was going down. The launch of a lower price. Yeah, exactly, to launch it at a lower price. And it reminds me of how when Olaf came on the show last year,

he said, Olaf Carlson, he said something, like, you know, what you want for any coin is to distribute it to the widest number of people possible that will help the distribution. But in this way, when like 35% goes to insiders, like that is, I think, what caused the outrage. To run with your take. I guess it's ironic you mentioned Olaf since he led one of the rounds. But, but. Well, maybe he didn't have final say on the distribution.

No, I don't, I think most VCs have almost no saying the distribution. I feel like the teams are the ones who are creating the structures for these and everyone's along for the ride. I mean, for better for worse. Sometimes it's not even the teams, right? Sometimes it's the foundation. But yes. But anyway, I think like, A, it's kind of hard to launch something where you're launching a lot of stuff at the same time. And I think maybe that's sort of one aspect that I think people commenting on is probably reasonable.

like it is complicated and there's 500 different things you can do on day one. On the other hand, I sort of sort of think like maybe we're just like Trump, the meme coin, kind of like killed every community in crypto. Melania in particular killed every community notion of community in crypto. And I feel like that to me feels like the, you know, the dentecoin of this cycle. It's like the thing that like is so absurd and that it just like, you know, to Robert's point, about the end of the ICO boom. It really,

Melania is the denticoin of, of this, this current era. And, like, I think the malaise is not just infrastructure. I think it's like everything, everything has really just taken a beating since then because I don't know. It just,

it just, everything felt sort of cheapened and, I don't, I don't know what else to say. Like, somehow I think the macro stuff, like I agree, sure, they could have had a better launch in different ways.

Maybe they'd have different distributions, something change. But I actually think, like even then, even though it's a lower price, I just don't think it would have rallied. I just feel like the current market is this like bloodbath right now. I think there's something also about the way in which Barrowchain positioned itself, right? So Barrechain, although there's a stuff, you know, Robert, you mentioned the Cosmos SDK. They never really positioned themselves as a Cosmos ecosystem play.

Like, you know, I sort of, I know that they're cosmos based. But I would guess most people don't even know that they use Cosmos SDK because they're not, that's not how they're branding themselves. they're not trying to affiliate with the Cosmos folks. Like, I think the main thing that has been the Barretchen story is the vibes, right? They, like, kind of ran the baddies. The memetic energy, the baddies, the parties, the craziness of like, oh, the guy wearing the mask and like, okay, who, you know, they're just kind of, they're running on the, the energy of the social community they were building and the kind of basically the brand of the founders. and then the social energy

that they were able to build as a community. And so it doesn't feel like, you know, they were talking about proof of liquidity and trying to explain why it's such a big innovation. And one of the things that some of the co-founding team were saying that like, hey, what I think we could have done better of not having this launch be such a stumble is explain proof of liquidity better.

And, you know, I know what proof of liquidity is because I've, you know, I'm a VC, I'm in the space for quite a while and I care about things like this. But most people have no idea what Bear Sheen was doing different. I think most people just know that Bear Chain was kind of a party. It was a party. They had the best parties and like the Bear Chain social scene was just this continuous party.

And if your positioning is that we're the most fun place to be, when the music stops and it's not fun anymore to be in crypto, then it's like, okay, well, what is proof of liquidity? Why should I care about this? Like what exactly is it about this that's innovative is going to keep people around? And it feels like they, in a way, that's what crypto was really rewarding for the last year. with the meme coin frenzy and with, you know, all it's really having this, this kind of bifurcation between boring crypto and fun crypto is that, okay,

barretchen was like max fun crypto. But right now, no one's in the mood to have fun. And when no one's in the mood to have fun, I think like it really kind of weakens the resonance of what Baratchain was going for. I mean, I'm in the mood to have fun.

Bitcoin is still $95,000, right? Like, compare to that to a year ago, right? Ether compared to you a year ago of whatever. So compared a year ago is pretty good. Bitcoin's not. $95,000. I don't know why everyone is like sweating this. Like it's like a horrific. I mean, if you only own Bitcoin, then yes, you're feeling great. Yeah. I mean, Robert, like basically

because you're an OG, that's why you can say that. But people who entered in the last like year and call it four or five months, they are hurting. That's why sentiment is bad. Like my, so everybody's like, why is something bad? I mean, what a shocker that like fart coin and like, you know, the dumbest stuff is not doing well. Like, oh, my goodness, they deserve to get so rich because they bought, you know, fart memes. I mean, like, come on. Yeah, I know, but it doesn't matter. Like, what I'm trying to say is just like people who entered in that last, you know, recent tranche, I guess you could call it, like they're all down bad. That's why sentiment on crypto Twitter is bad, even though if you're looking at the most important coins,

like, you wouldn't necessarily be like, this sentiment makes sense. It just makes sense if you look at kind of like who's been participating. And then you realize like, yeah, they all got wrecked. Like the only people who didn't get wrecked were the people that were launching that. I mean, you know, I know later we plan to talk about like the day of port noise of the world. But, you know, those people, they were exploiting their followers or, you know, whatever you want to call it. And they made off well. But, you know, retail did not. And in my opinion, it's kind of disgusting to watch. But anyway, I was just trying to say, you've been around long enough. So you're like chilling. You've got like your sunk.

You're like, this is great. And yeah, people who are, you know, I just mean like you like you're, you're feeling good. Like you're feeling, you know, whatever. You're, you're chilling. But yeah, people who are newer, they're not. I think on some level, you can't, you sort of can't argue with the sentiment, right? You can't tell people like, oh, you're wrong because Bitcoin's at 95K. That's true.

My portfolio was just Bitcoin. I'd feel good. But I don't just own Bitcoin, right? If you just own Bitcoin, what do you, what is there to talk about on Twitter? like you're not there. You're just your own Bitcoin and you fucked off. And like that that's great. I think that clearly that was the move.

But at this point, everything is down. Like Salon is down for the high. Salon is down like 30%. Yeah, from the high. Yeah, from the high, it's down like maybe 30%. Maybe a little less. But it's like, but also look where it was a year ago. I mean, like it's up so much.

To be clear, to be clear. March of 2024, Solana was at $200. Right now it's below $200. Right now it's like $195. So Salana from not, 12 months ago, but from 11 months ago. From 11, but flat. What about from 12 months ago?

Okay, yes. 12 months ago, it's up. But my point is that like these are not. And I think it's up like 60% or something, ish, right? Well, so if you go back February, right, if you remember, like that was before the ETH ETF launched. So we were still like kind of in this middling period between the Bitcoin ETF and the Ethereum ETF all had started rallying at that point.

But once the ETHETF launched, then all started rallying, Salon had $200 during March of last year. So the point is that clearly there's a disconnect going on right now between, I think, the fundamentals of crypto and the price action and the sentiment. Like, that seems really obvious. And like, almost everybody I talked to. I think it's pretty easy to blame our president for that. But that's just my own personal view. I agree. I agree.

Right? And it's like partially macro, partially meme coins. Not just Melania. Also the trade war and all the other shit that's obviously rally. I feel like a lot of it. I feel that's it. Yeah, I feel like that's what's causing this dislocation. Yeah.

But it's surprising. I mean, like we got ostensibly, the industry got what we wanted, which is a very pro-market, pro-libertarian, anti-regulation, pro-crypto presidency, and everything's down. Everything's literally down from the Biden administration. Well, from... Besides Bitcoin. Besides Bitcoin.

Again, I just looked this up a year ago, one year ago, the sole was about half its current price. Yes, it had a crazy February. 11 months ago, it was above the price. Correct. Correct. But I'm just saying, if you look back exactly one year, Bitcoin is way up. Soul is way up. Like a lot of the major-ish stuff is way up, right? It's been a really good year. Like, in the aggregate, it has been a good year for the majority of crypto assets. Let's talk about the, so Laura was talking about some of the extraction that is going on in this cycle. And one of the big stories has been,

so Kanye West, now known as Yee, he has been unleashed onto, I don't know exactly what happened. I guess he was banned or band or something. I hope we don't. Let's not waste too many brain cells talking about. Okay. The epic tweeting of, I mean,

my head hurts. Okay, so he's been, he's been completely unhinged in tweeting all sorts of Nazi, racist, weird shit. But one of the things that he tweeted, which got the crypto world talking, was that he basically screenshotted a tweet or a DM, where somebody offered him $2 million to promote a rugpole meme coin

to basically post something, have it stay up for eight hours, and then afterwards to claim that he was hacked. And so this is the first time anybody has ever seen this concept of a celebrity basically being bribed to pretend to get hacked to promote a meme coin. And this suddenly raised the question so that we've seen this thing of that, oh, all these celebrities keep getting hacked, like, you know, Wiz Khalifa or Caitlin Jenner, they keep getting hacked and promoting these meme coins in their own name. And then, you know, some number of hours later, the tweet gets deleted and then, you know,

the meme coin, quote, unquote, collapses. And the speculation now is like, oh, is this like a whole, is this like a thing that people are now getting paid? Yeah, this is like a whole cabal. Like, at this point, it's like LA Hollywood cabal to pretend to get hacked and then to dump meme coins and, you know, split the earnings. So there's now this kind of dark underbelly behind the Minkoan economy that's starting to become more and more apparent to people.

Robert, what's your reaction to this? My reaction is I'm going to take, yay at his word, that he didn't just make this up, right? Like, I don't think that he has the motive to, like, make up that he was bribed, like, offered a bribe to pretend that he was hacked and rugpole his followers. Like, I'm going to take that at its way. word, right? So let's just assume that he is being, you know, transparent and honest. That exact pattern matches, as you pointed out, so many celebrity rugpole coins over the last year. And if those celebrities were, in fact, paid to launch a coin and then later claim that they were

hacked, A, it's dishonest on the part of the celebrities. B, it's like fraud, like actually. like to pretend to do this and see people should be livid at the con artists who convinced the celebrities to do this and who are probably the ones sniping those things, making all the money and really screwing over the communities the most. And so if this is what's been happening, like people should find those con artists and like get really mad at them, you know? Wow. Yeah, and also the celebs. I mean, the celebs are like, oh yeah, I will need my My fans to slaughter. Yeah, it's crazy.

Like, come on. Like, this is like such bad behavior. Robert is the Law and Order meme coin meme lord. I know, never thought I'd live to see that day, right? Yeah, yeah. What, Tarud, are you, are you okay with this? Are you like, yeah, let them meet tokens? So I was actually, I'll say, I like to listen to how non-crypto people talk about

crypto by listening to other podcasts. and I listen to, you know, Planet Money usually and the economists are both places where they're very derisive towards crypto and think it's stupid, right, historically. And both of them had episodes on meme coins, obviously, because of thanks to our president. And basically, they're just like, I think like they're having trouble explaining it. Like, they're having trouble explaining the celebrity coins to this audience of people who've never heard of it. it's like almost this level of incredulity that they're like, isn't this illegal? Well, I guess everything is illegal. And like they're saying this on planet money or the economy, you know, like more buttoned up kind of normal podcasts. And so I feel like it's it's a virus or something

that's like spread beyond the realm of crypto. I think this is just coming to this thing where like society in general has like gone all in on gambling. So like the themes of these, the way that it's explained in sort of the normal. media of like what meme coins are is like they're like this is the this is what happens when you make sports betting legal this is the extreme version of that that's like everyone wants to gamble yeah yeah you this is what i'm saying you should you should actually listen to how these things are covered because it will teach you the disconnect between what crypto is perceived as versus what we think it looks like and i i would say like that is actually the the main story that seems to

people be keep kind of giving is like oh well, once we went down the slippery slope of like everything being gambling, like now financial assets have no meaning anymore. There's also like a Matt Levine podcast where it's like that's very similar. Like it's converged to this narrative of like we open the parent Pandora's box of gambling and meme coins are the natural end state. Do you agree with that? I don't know if I agree with it, but I do agree with the idea that yeah, these celebrity coins are obviously unethical. but I don't I don't know what is what are you supposed to do in a trustless decentralized thing like I I can't really stop this is not a trustless decentralized environment right there's like very clear

rules if you are Caitlin Jenner about what you're allowed and not allowed to do in terms of advocating financial investments to your to your Twitter followers yeah I I don't disagree with you but like the way people are covering it is they're just like well if we make every type of gambling legal, then this just seems like the natural endpoint. And I don't know, I don't have a good retort. I don't have a good retort to that. Right. Gambling is something where there's uncertainty, okay, but it's like generally probably

fair, okay? This is not fair, right? This is pretty much a scam, taking advantage of everyone who participates. It's like, it's not gambling if I go to the casino, I'm guaranteed to lose, right? So one one kind of weird thing that I was talking with a, someone about yesterday was there was this meme coin that this president of the central african republic launched and it was it was kind of ridiculous when you looked at it on the surface but this meme coin you know i was talking to someone who who everyone i think in this podcast knows and has been in crypto

for a long time spent a lot of money on and upon losing all the money was like well you know what I got to say I got rugged by the Central African Republic president. It's like they gained some positive entertainment value from losing money, which is something kind of weird. I don't understand. It very much hurts my brain to have to reason about that. To be clear, I think gambling addicts also have this phenomenon where they're like,

oh, yeah, you know, I had this crazy night of playing blackjack. It was so crazy. It was wild. I lost $200,000. It was so wild. Yeah, exactly.

Like this is not an alien phenomenon to people who are. familiar with the gambling industry. Like, yeah, if people feel terrible when they're losing money, then you've fucked up building a casino, right? The whole idea is that people are supposed to feel good as they're losing money because most people are losing money because that's how casinos work. So I think on some level, like, yeah, that means that the meme coin complex is still working because people are enjoying losing money.

When people get rugged by Caitlin Jenner or by, you know, Sahil disguises Caitlin Jenner or whatever it is, that I think is people, feel terrible about that. People feel like this is bullshit and the SEC needs to come in and protect us. And to be clear, this is exactly the kind of thing that the SEC should be going after under anybody's definition of what a regulator should be doing, is going after outright fraud. Correct. But they were going after exchanges and good actors under the last administration. Yeah, yeah, but they've said very clearly, look, our mandate now is to go after fraud. If there's no allegation of fraud, we're de-emphasizing those particular kinds of investigations and or enforcing

actions, right? Which is a step in absolutely in the right direction, because there is a lot of fraud in this space, as there is in any financial market. And I think you need a strong cop in the beat and eyes and ears in different places to be able to police that. If this stuff is real, and to be clear, we have no fucking idea if, you know, it could very well be the other way that, yeah, people just normal celebrities get hacked all the time and somebody hack somebody, the easiest way to monetize that. It used to be this, you know, you guys remember back in the day in the previous cycle. It was, I'll send you one Bitcoin. Send me one, eight, I'll send you two. Send you one, a dollar send you two. Right. Exactly. That was like the way in which you monetize. To be fair.

Three years ago. To be fair, the world now, world liberty financial thing where they're, they're like, if you buy five million of our coin, we'll buy 10 million of yours is exactly the same. Uh, kind of, kind of. It's like, it's like, it's like, kind of. I was thinking about that and I was like a little depressed when I thought about that. Is that the same? It's not the same. It's not the same. No, that's not the same. That's definitely not the same. It's a higher... It's a cousin. It's a cousin. It's a cousin. It's loosely related. It's loosely related. But like, it does make sense. It's like, okay, now the best way to monetize if you hack somebody's account is to launch a meme point in their name, right? Like, just reliably, we can see obviously

very clearly that's a very good way to monetize a hack. So it could will be that this is just, you know, somebody sees that this happens all the time and they, and they are like, hey, maybe I could try a hustle of like convincing celebrities to do this thing and maybe nobody took them up on it. You know, that's also possible. So we don't know. So we used to go investigate and figure out, is this what's happening with all these celebrity accounts that are launching meme coins?

Or, you know, is it, are they innocent? Are they just innocent victims of people hacking and just, you know, doing what they do now? I think it's a sign of the times that there's a story now about David Portnoy, who's the founder of Barstool, Barstool Sports. and he has been creating meme coins and just launching them kind of nonstop on his audience. And he's got a very, very large following. And he's almost doing it a very different way. So, you know, we've criticized before some of the meme coin launches like the one by the runway founder, I think, Sitchie.

And then there was, what was the one? Sam Lesson. Sam Lesson one. Right, right. That to me is worse than Portnoy, below Portnoy. kind of mainstream names launching meme coins and it's even kind of cringy. But Portnoy, I think he's been unique because of just how almost willful he seems to be of his audience.

And he basically tells me, we're like, look, you crypto people are fucking morons. Like, if you buy this coin, you will lose money. And then when he basically buys the coins, announce him to his audience and dumps him immediately. And it's just like, yeah, I told you guys. Like, why are you complaining? Shut the fuck up. I'm going to do it again. And then he does it again.

And then it's just been this kind of like. pure, you know, nature red and tooth and claw, fuck you. Like, if you're playing in this meme coin deep end of the pool, why are you complaining? I'm telling you guys what I'm doing in advance, and then I'm doing it. Suck it up. It feels like we've kind of entered into a different, like, I don't know, like this, I don't feel like this could have happened a year ago. No, but we're kind of at this point now.

Yeah, this is pure jungle. This is pure jungle. This is like late-stage capitalism of meme-quoise. Yeah. And he's like, listen, this is the jungle. I'm in the jungle. You're in the jungle. let's have fun, you know, rumble in the jumble.

It's only fun for him. You know, so you guys are going to laugh. I do not know who this person is. I do not even know what Barstool Sports is. The only times I have even come across this person is all in relation to crypto. Really? And, oh, yeah. And I have the worst impression of this person based on all his, because what was it?

Like, a years ago he bought like Bitcoin and then he sold it at a lot. I mean, he just, he seems like an idiot to me, you know? But his entire persona is being a public idiot. That's, that's like kind of the weird thing. Like he gained his following. Okay, maybe that's why I'm just like, oh my God, you're so stupid. And you are publicly out there, like, just showing everybody how stupid you are. And I'm like, why?

Laura, don't watch any meme coin streams, please for your mental health. I clearly won't. But the thing is, like, yeah, I think what you, was doing to his fans is just awful it's like wow these people like like you or they follow you and like why are you like doing such an awful thing to them and like bragging about i don't know it's just super just tasteful in my opinion but the followers themselves i don't understand this is like some type of like influencer bdsm like you're you're just like enjoying the pain it's basically yeah it's like financial domination but as uh you know as like a consensual uh in public thing that's going

Yeah, it's very weird. It's very weird. But what is Trump coin? Is Trump coin really that different? No. No, no, clearly not. Like, I thought it's not. There's nothing, there's nothing positive to be said here.

There's just nothing positive to be said here, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just, like, to be clear, I think there's very few people who could do this. I think Dave Portneau is one of the people who could do this, but he can't do this forever, right? You can probably do this like three, four times and then it just stops working, right? Like, people just don't buy your coin. So, but that's the thing is like, what is what he's doing fraud? Probably not, right?

I mean, he's, I mean, didn't Hester Pierce say this is like out of their jurisdiction? Yeah, I don't think this is fraud because he's saying, like Matt Levine had a great summary of this, right? Where, you know, he obviously loves talking about things in this world. He was like, this is not like the people that got in trouble for social media posting previously for stock manipulation where they were like, I'm buying this and then dumping on you after they say, I'm buying this. You know, Matt Levine's view, which I agree with is like, Dave Portnoy is saying, only truthful things to your face in the jungle. He's saying, I just bought this.

I am going to sell this shortly. Have fun. And like, those things are true. He just bought it and he's going to sell it shortly. And like, you have the full disclosure, you know, right there in front of you saying, like, I'm going to dump this on you immediately. Yeah, actually, wait, I just realized something. Okay, so I do consider him, if I were to rank people in crypto, like definitely

he's toward the bottom, no question. However, I just realized he maybe is like a millimeter above like Jim Kramer, who Jim Kramer like, pretend like he is, you know, bullish this or that and like he really believes it, but like he must know that everything he promotes, the second he promotes it, it's going to go down. Like, he has to know that because like by the time he's getting to the place where he's going to say something, like all the people that are like more on the inside or the know, they're already in on it. And then he must know that he's like, you know, Elon Musk on S&L, that moment where like Doge, like Reitz just peak and then just crash after

that. Like that's what Jim Crailer does, but he does it like every day. So in that sense, like, at least Dave Portnoy is, like, honest about it, whereas Jim Kramer, it's more deceptive. Like, he never lets on to his audience. Like, I know that this is going to crash on you. No, he doesn't know what's going to crash. If Jim Kramer knew that these stocks were going to crash or these stocks after he says they suck are going to go up, he would be the world's richest head fund manager, period. The whole thing is that, like, we all get to laugh at how bad of a forecast for Jim Kramer is because every time he says, time to buy this, goes down. And every time he says, this is a dog, get rid of it, it goes up.

Well, wait, wait, but, but, but I think actually, this is what I think is happening. When Jim Kramer says something is a good investment, what, what traders know is that he's, that that moment when he does that, he is, he has the widest audience. So the traders know that this is their moment to sell. That's what I'm saying. So he knows that he's like telling everybody at what's going to be the peak. That's what I'm saying. Do you, do you, do you, do you understand, like he must have seen this play out so many times that he must know the second he says it, that's when it gets, why does dissemination? I don't think it's causation. I think you're making this sound like deterministic and it's not deterministic. It is still a probabilistic thing. Like,

you are someone taking risk. I think he's just a notoriously bad forecaster. I think I think the biggest thing is that like the wave of sentiment about any trend, Jim Kramer's a lot of, last person to feel the wave. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like, yeah, he's the last step in that wave. But like, from his perception, the waves are all real. You know, like, he's like, oh, everyone's doing this.

And I'm like, oh, I'll also do this. And he's literally the last dude. And there's no one after him. Right. And that's ripped. And assets ripped. And he's like, this is a win or buy it. Right.

At the time. And assets, like, going down. And he's like, this is a dog. Sell it. You know. Well, that's why I'm saying. So I still maintain my hierarchy. It's kind of a joke.

It's kind of a joke. like it's not literally true that everything he says that about goes down. Otherwise, again, that would be the best. No, not actually not because that again, you could just raise a head fund and like make infinite money by just literally shorting everything that he is bullish about every day. And you can't do that. Well, still I, I still rank you. Yeah, by the way, the inverse Kramer ETF was shuttered.

Okay. That that is true. I thought that was hilarious. But these inverse ETFs are all kind of scams because they can't rebalance daily. No, I know, I know. This inverse ETFs are the tradfai equivalent of meme coins dumping on your. face. They're like such shitty products. I could go on for hours. Okay. But there was. They're like the they're like boomers who who want to buy meme coins.

They buy inverse ETF. Correct. But there was a bad performance. They basically don't track their index very well. And like when they rebalance, they overcorrect. And you're paying fees to like do worse than the. No, but short Jim did not do well. Okay. Like there was an actual ETF that was devoted to doing the opposite of what Jim Kramer said because of the jokes that like it's always a the opposite of what Jim Kramer is saying. And the ETF didn't do well, and then it shuddered, like, recently. And so, like, when you actually put money on this, like, maybe it's 50. Bring you back. Bring it back to crypto. Well, can I just ask you guys, though?

Like, so you guys agree with me that Jim Kramer still would rank a little bit higher than Dave Portnoy in terms of, like, how bad he is for his followers. I don't know. Well, if you, I don't know if you, if you assume, no, no, if you assume like what we just said. Yeah, because he's directly releasing his followers. Okay, so I agree in a like if I don't wait the bad decisions by money, but I kind of think Kramer controls old people's retirement accounts. You want much more than Pornner.

Portnour is like 19 year old boys like trading. Right. A lot of the end point trenches. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So like, I guess it's like who, which, which, you know, which victim do you feel more empathy for? That's the thing. Jim Kramer is not making a bunch of money from just being like a CNBC anchor, you know? Like that's that's not a tremendously lucrative gig the way that Dave Portnoy, like Dave Portnoy, like Dave Horton is just directly ripping off his followers.

Like it's a very different game. Like if he was up there on CNBC talking about like, hey, buy my multivitamins. Okay. Then I would say like, all right, maybe it's a maybe it's an even comparison. But he's just, he's just really honestly running a fucking finance show, right? Like I think it's a convenient. Yeah, it's funny. It's just, it's a joke. Yeah, it's like he's out, he's, the whole point of the show is he's up there screaming and having fun and making something extremely boring, which is the random walk of stock prices stochastically doing stuff into something super fun to watch, you know? I know, loud horns and buzzers and like all this.

I know, but to Tarun's point, he does have a real impact on people's money. They, they take his advice and they lose money based on follow. him. So I mean, they lose money based on following anyone. Like you're just paying transaction fees to do random stuff. I totally agree with Haseep. Just the churn of active trading eats most people up. Yes.

No matter what their strategy is. If you buy random stocks on TV, you're just noise trading. Like that's just how it is. I don't disagree. I'm just, I was just sort of saying like, who is, who's, where is all this portnori money? It's like 19 to 25 year old males. Yeah, I completely agree. And, like, that's the thing is that, like,

Dave Portnoy's audience, that's not, it's not random. When you buy a Dave Portnoy meme coin, what happens to you? Yeah. There is no. It is decidedly not random. He is disclosing being a Findom as we're discussed earlier. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Look that up if you're curious.

That means. Okay. All right, let's change gears a little bit. So one of the big energetic arguments that comes back again and again, and we revisit on the show every once in a while, is the ETHSOL debate. So right now, of course, Ethereum has been getting disaster kicked. We talked about it on a previous show about the crisis and civil war.

Not just a price perspective, but also sentiment, right? You see the whole civil war going on within Ethereum, the uncertainty about Vitalik's role, about the Ethereum Foundation, and then, of course, about the roll-up-centric roadmap. So there was a quote by Chow Wang, who's one of the co-founders of Alliance Dow, that has gone viral. And the quote was on the Good Game podcast. He said at one point, so he runs an incubator. So he talks to a lot of early stage founders who are pre-seat stage building new, mostly consumer apps that they tend to incubate.

And what he said was, it's irresponsible for me to recommend founders to not build on Solana. Like that's how strong the evidence is. Basically saying that all these different applications that people are building on different apps, they try to build it on Ethereum. And it just doesn't work. No users, no traction, no nothing. they build it on Solana and then all of a sudden, boom, thing takes off like wildfire. And he basically is implying that he's seen that so many times that now it's irresponsible

to not recommend that founders build on Solana. So this has triggered a wave of back and forth spats from Ethereum people and Salana people going back and forth about whether or not this is true. And it came to a head with a back and forth about Camino, which is a lending protocol on Solana. And Atolle, in the comments talking about this thing, ended up admitting, not admitting, but I guess you're saying, that because of his position, he does not trade at all on chain.

He says, every once in a while, I'll do a USC, USTC, UST, $1 swap to test the latest priority fee pricing. And this, again, caused another firestorm of, oh, my God, how can you be bullish on a chain where the founder doesn't even use it? There's no dog fooding. Like, you know, what does that tell you? And of course, I think it's also well known that Vitalik doesn't do a lot on chain besides, you occasionally sell his ether or borrow against it or sell all the meme coins he gets airdrop

or donate the meme coins that he that he uh that he receives in airdrops um although vitalic notably he did um you know send donations using tornado cash and a bunch of other stuff so metallic metallic has at various levels of activation but people criticize the theorem foundation for not being active users of defy i mean to vital to vital to vitalics credit i think he got kind of used ethereum a lot then he gotten a lot of shit during the iCO boom because people were like oh you have all these, everyone was air dropping him and effectively. And like, it was kind of this weird thing. So then he was like trying to not use stuff because everyone was just like tracking his wallet.

And so like there's some ebb and flow there. I don't think there's a static story as it's being told. So people are dynamic. Their chain usage is dynamic. Yeah. I'm also like I think the story is over like who fucking cares that he trades or doesn't trade on chain. Like he's an engineer. Like he, he builds stuff.

like he's not in the trenches trading meme coins. Why would he be? Like that's not what that's not why you build a chain is because you want to be trading meme coins. Like that's what that's what traders want to do. That's not what people who are building technology necessarily want to do. So like I think, yeah, I think the dunking is obviously going to happen because now there's this big, there's this war that is just going to go on for years now between

the eat heads and the salana heads. And it, I don't know, it feels kind of tired to me. But I think this whole, this whole thing about, um, I'm, I'm, It's the one, I want to get your reactions to this, and a totally thing, but then also the Chow talking about this idea that it's irresponsible to not tell somebody who's starting from scratch that you should be building on Solana. How do you guys think about that? I disagree if it's from the perspective of the first chain has to be Solana, right? I think Solana should be part of the strategy for anyone that's planning to be across multiple chains. if you're only planning to be on one chain for some strategic reason, I don't think it's

irresponsible. Why do you say that? Because it seems like the opposite, right? Is that like basically Solana only homegrown apps tend to be successful. And for all of the, like the multi-chain people have all failed to get any traction on Solana. Right. I guess what I'm saying is if you're only going to build on one chain, right, hypothetically, then there's a lot of choices.

There's a lot of good choices. There's a lot of projects that have made homes on interesting chains and built out an audience, right? Like whether it's like aerodrome on base or like things on BSC or like, you know, like there's so many places to go to differentiate yourself, right? There's like a lot of new L2s, a lot of new L1s, you know, it's like there's a lot of places you can go. And if you're going one chain, I would say, do not go to slow up. Like there's actually a lot of competition there. Just like I would say, like if you're only going to do one chain, don't go to Ethereum. Like there's a lot of competition there.

I think if it's like if you're going to be a maxi like it I don't agree with the logic that like it has to be Solana like totally disagree with that I think if your plan is to be on multiple chains there's no reason why you should ignore Salon and there's no reason why it shouldn't be a part of your thing but Salana is like very like you can't port your contract right because it's like it's oh you have to find a limit of SVM yeah so

so wouldn't that advocate for the opposite like if you're going to go on one chain then okay bite the Salana bullet if you're going to go multi-chance Can just go EVM? Wouldn't that be the advice? Sure. I mean, I don't know any, I don't know any project that goes multi-chain that also does SVM.

I'm going to stick to what I said last time when I talked about LA Vap Kval. If you're a target audience is under 25, go to Solano. Your target audience is boomer millennials, go elsewhere. There you go. There you go.

I agree. I think the ages take is the real take because everyone young does not, like, there's, I just don't think L2s, L2s are millennials. Does that just mean meme? What does that mean besides meme coins?

So meme coins, okay, yes. You want to target Gen Z. I think even all these like weird consumer app clout type of things, right? Like the fact that everyone's trying these new. Claw's a meme tech being reinvented. Yeah, but they're more like social apps that happen to have. I mean to me, I mean coins is a different flavor. You know, come on.

Sure. But like they're consumer apps and that they're fully, you know, the, you're vertically integrated into their app. You're not using Phantom, right? Like that's a different experience. Sure. I think I would separate that, though, these ones that are like, meme coins with games or experiences that are separate from just like,

I'm buying this on a phantom, right? That there is a clear difference distinction between those. Okay. So what besides meme coins, besides meme coins? I mean, perps trading, right? Like, like, if I look at the empirical data says that, right? The empirical data says hyperliquid in Solana and then like EVM like last, right? Like, I mean, hyperliquid is EVM.

Hyperliquid is bridge through arbitrarming. Hyperliquid right now is not EVM, right? Hyperliquid right now is like, I'm trusting their centralized, their base, not totally centralized, but like their exchange. Right. The EVM is out there. I can't deploy that Salana, right? Clearly, that's not Salon.

No, no, no, that's not Salana. But my point is hyperliquid and Solana are the main kind of perps venues. I don't consider hyperliquid EVM yet. I consider it a centralized exchange that has an EVM bridge that is trying to add It's EVMS-esque, but it's not quite. Sure. It's not, but is G. IDX EVM? I mean, what about D.

No, it's Cosmos chain now. Sure. Okay, but so I mean, what, like what perp dex is EVM? GMX. All the, all the works of it. Like, GMX is like the only one that's actually fully on. It's the only one. Yeah, there were a bunch on, there were a bunch on base that launched that like kind

of had like the usual high volume for like two weeks and then not much afterwards. Right. But almost every perp chain that I see is like it's kind of an island, right? Like they sort of, okay, they may connect or bridge to something, but they're not processing things in the end. Solana perps are particularly good because all of the meme coin volume generates a ton of fees and people are constantly hedging. And so there's, I think it has a higher floor than EVM perps, right? Like, EVM perps experience is horrible. Like realistically, you go try using most EVM perps exchanges are just not good. Like I wish I could have your purpose.

Are you referring to GMX? Because like that's the only one that's actually on. And all of the endth derivatives, right? Like per protocol. There's like five million of these. If you go on Defalama, you'll find a ton of dead EVM perps. My point is any of them. I'm not saying Salon is better than hyperlocut.

Right. Like user experience wise hyperlocut is probably number one. But Salana clearly is number two. Right. And the rest of the EVM is last place. And so I think you have to think in those terms. And a lot of the reasons I think that is true is there's a second order effects of people trading mean coins, which is which generous fees and defy in different ways.

And for those protocols, it's important. So I actually want to zoom out. And obviously through this show, we have been talking about how terrible all of us generally think mean coins are, I think. I'm just, I know summarizing. But like I don't think any of us think this. is like the pinnacle of what crypto can do. However, I think about how in previous cycles, people criticize the ICO in a similar way. Like they criticize NFTs. Like every single cycle,

whatever the new crazes, everybody dismisses it. They act like it's so stupid and silly and like, why do we have this and is it important and it's not important? You know, blah, blah, blah. So, like, I feel like what's happening now. Like, I personally feel like Ethereum is at a pretty existential moment. I'm just going to be super honest about it. And, you know, the main things that I hear from Ethereum people are they dismiss Salana because they think meme coins are not important and it's just a silly thing and like, that's all they have.

And like, look, we have all this other stuff. But, you know, the fact of the matter is that on really important metrics, things have swung in favor of Solana. They have more momentum when it comes to attracting new developers, when it comes to just the fact that they were the center of this cycle's craze. That is meaningful. Those two things.

That was the first time the new trend did not emerge on Ethereum, right? And Ethereum has really major issues. It's got like liquidity issues, fragmentation, obviously because of Dengu now, the price. These are all important things. And I can't remember I was,

I think I interviewed somebody recently Oh, it might have been Chris Dixon because I was trying to ask him about this for Ethereum. And he kept kind of like zooming into the future and getting philosophical and being like, oh, but you know, I want the category to win and, you know, whatever. But I was and he kind of like was trying to say that price isn't important. But like obviously in a proof of stake system, it is important. And so I personally feel like the main things that Ethereum has going for it right now are the fact that a lot of people believe in it.

And so they are actively trying to kind of turn the ship around. But I don't know, is it too late? Like, things happen in crypto so fast, you know, and I feel like Ethereum got caught flatfooted a little bit. You know, part of it is because I do think, yeah, Vatalik, he's like, you know, he wants to be the researcher. He, like, I don't think he wants to be the CEO type. Like, he's not, you know, just from the early days of Ethereum, he's definitely never wanted that. Like, when they were all apportioning out titles, he picked the type. title C3PO for himself, you know. What a nerd. Yeah. So like I just, I am really wondering, like, is it too late for Ethereum to catch up? Like, you know, and I'm not, I'm not trying to. I don't want people to think like, oh, Laura's, you know, biased this or that way. It's more like, I am just wondering where, where are things going to go.

And, you know, one other piece of that is that, oh, shoot, I just lost my train of thought. Well, then I'll extend your train of thought. Okay. To add the most vivid example of this, what I'll call Ethereum's bad business sense, right? When Defi was growing in its infancy, right? Vitalik very publicly said, I hate Defy, right? Like many times.

He was like, I don't think this is an interesting use case. In different words, but in different words. Yeah. Like, for a long time. Like, you know, there was a whole mob like in this like Ethereum leadership pivot situation over the last couple of weeks where people got him to use defy for the first. time in 2020 for 2025, like, because he hated defy. Like honestly, he was like, this is not a good use case for the blockchain.

Like, I believe that's not totally true. He did use Maker quite a bit. Actually, if you go to the 2018. Yeah, right. He was spread to Rye. Oh, yeah, he was sent to Rye. He was one of the early earliest. Uniswap.

He like created the fucking unswap and very. Yeah, yeah, I think. But I, what Robert's really getting into just like once these things were successful and there was lots of speculative activity, Yeah, to be like, DFI summer he hated because of all this speculative food quality farming, like, he hate, he, he was hating on DFI. And most other, we'll call it chain leadership would have been like, oh my God, something is popping off on our chain. Like, is this the future?

Yes, it's the future. Right. And I just think there's like examples where like Ethereum itself has been like hostile to the things that are. working. So I want to push back a little bit on this. I think it's obviously true on a face level that, like, yes, and this is part of the criticism of the EF is that they haven't embraced DFI, and they don't really realize that this is the strategic strength of Ethereum today. That being said, if you look at the meme coin stuff that's been happening on Solana, you can see very clearly now that both Anatolia and Raj and the Salana Foundation have gotten more combative

in defending meme coin activity and saying, like, look, we're making real money, there's real revenue, we've got, you know, Trump token, we've got all this stuff. Like, we're, we're the real deal. And that's why we're better than Ethereum, right? They were not doing that six months ago. Six months ago, what you mostly saw about meme coins was they were mostly quiet. They didn't really talk about it much. They were mostly talking about, oh, we've got a lot of adoption, we've got a lot of scale, we got a lot of users. There's a lot of demands on the network, but they weren't like, yeah, meme coin trading is great and like the trenches are awesome. And I think because they probably weren't sure whether this was going to last.

And like when you see a mania like this was popping up, like, I mean, in crypto, we're used to seeing things like this. Like, DFI Summer lasted for a summer. That's why we now call it DFI summer is that it wasn't years and years of like recursive food court. It was also the honor. It was sure. Okay.

Yeah. It was a span of like four to six months, right? Until it totally died off. And it was no longer the dominant thing that was happening. The same thing happened with, you know, BRC20s that there was like basically a season that BRC20s were a huge thing and people thought, oh my God, maybe Bitcoin is going to be now this predominant place where people trade meme coins instead. And it just kind of, you know, it just had, it has a moment and it died. And so I think this lot of leadership was probably just genuinely

unsure of if we go all in on this thing and we start endorsing it and talk about how great it is and it just dies in a few months, we're going to look like fucking idiots. And we probably shouldn't do that. We should probably wait and see. And I think they're at the point now what they're just like, this is, this is not going to go away. We should just go all in on this and make this core to our story that Solana is a meme coin chain. Now, all that being said, look, I fundamentally believe, and I've been saying this on the show now for well over a year, that I think the meme coin frenzy is not sustainable and it's going to eventually run out of steam and there's going to be some rotation into another game. And the game is not going to be meme coin. It's going to be something else.

I think Arjun, Arjun from Paradigm, post something about this on Twitter that I really did with. He disappeared on for tweeting for like two years. He came back to it. It was quite a banger. It was quite a And basically the way he described it was that, you know, you think about a casino, like, many people have analogized Salana to, like, the world's biggest casino or the casino in the sky, I think is the way that Jordi puts it, which I like quite a bit, or a Las Vegas in the sky. And this Las Vegas in the sky, if you think about it, the way that a casino is generally measured is, I can't remember what it is, like, you know, return, basically the amount of money that a player expects to lose anytime they sit down at a casino. And casino is very carefully optimized this, right? It's like one of these things that, you know, various different games, you might lose 10 cents, 10 cents on the dollar per hour or 20 cents on the dollar per hour. Or for a very, very fair game, maybe one to two cents on the dollar per hour. If you're playing roulette, you lose very little per hour versus if you're playing blackjack.

So his point is that meme coins are getting worse and worse in the amount that they're extracting per hour. And as the doors are closing on the meme coin frenzy, you're incentivized to try to extract more and more, right? So like, you know, David Portnoy basically going from, you remember early, you know, early, if you're Iggy Azale, you're like, I'm going to create a community. And when you're David Borgno, you're late in the meme coin cycle. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to partner with MV&O and it's going to become valuable for fundamental reasons. Okay.

I have a fun question for you. I have a fun question for you. Like, you know, you eat that. I have a fun question, which is let's take some meme coins, some celebrity meme coins, and pick our favorite 2017 or 2016 ICOs that match them. So what is? Can we do this for next time so we have time to actually prepare good answers to this? Because I think if we have to do this on the spot,

we're going to get horrible answers. But this is a great prompt. I like the idea of comparing meme coins to ICOs. It's just like kind of a... I like that idea too. We can bring this back. We can bring this back. Yeah, we should think about it.

I won't be here. But the story of crypto is always that when it's happening, when the mania is happening, it feels impossible to say that it's going to end. Right? Like, I really, I did not have the balls to say that NFTs were going to die. Right? Obviously, they didn't die, die, but the speculative energy behind NFTs is mostly gone.

When ICOs were happening, I did not have the balls to say that, like, at least not publicly. I may have thought it in my heart of hearts, but it's just like you can't fight, you just can't fight it. It's just so big. It just eats everything. It just feels like this unstoppable force. And if you argue against it, you're just going to get swallowed in the noise. That's how you know what I would say. Actually, each time we have these trends in crypto, you can predict next.

I mean, now obviously I can see this with the hindsight of having been through multiple of these. But like you kind of can predict that it's going to end soon when things get to this sort of Dave Portnoy level. Like there were some ICOs that, yeah, we're just bonkers. And it's sort of like they kind of start off all idealistic. And it's like people who are really interested in the technology for what it can build. And then once they kind of like prove that this can work, then all the kind of more scammery type people, they get in on it because they're like, oh, I can get rich quick. I can get rich quick.

And then you just have this like massive flood of all the get rich quick people. And so, yeah, like I feel like this whole Dave Portnoy thing is, I wouldn't even call it a top signal. It's like we've crested the hill now. I want Portnoy to go on Unchained. Great. I would love to watch Laura. I would love to watch Laura interview Dave Portnoy. Like even by now at this point in the conversation, I still don't even know what Barstool Sports is.

And don't tell me. You'd be the perfect toast. This is why you would be, yeah, exactly. Laura, do you watch any sports? No, I watch World Cups. I watched the Olympics. And like I would call presidential debate sports in a way. But like those are probably the only things I watch.

Okay, but by the way, I did remember my previous points about like Eith versus Soul. And I just wanted to mention them. Okay, we got to wrap on this because we're at an hour. Yeah, I know. I know. But like I feel like it's not even just that Ethereum is at this. essential point. But, you know, the fact of the matter is that, like, its edge over Solana was always that we're more decentralized. And for sure, like, Ethereum is so decentralized. It's, it's quite

compare. Well, the Bitcoiners are going to hate me. But, but, you know, those two are probably the most decentralized of all the communities and chains. And, you know, not going to lie, like, you know, this criticism that we see from the Salana people about how the L2s have centralized a lot of the activity. Like, that is totally a valid criticism. And it's like, Eath kind of gave away the one thing that it had. Like, yeah, it opened itself up to that attack. And then by the way, the other thing that I think is like kind of ironic and strange, frankly, is, you know, and I hopefully this will come across as like huge criticism because it's not like I don't respect what they're doing. But like, you know, during that time of the angst, which is continuing,

but, you know, there was like a sort of fever pitch that it reached around like the foundation. You know, there was this big announcement about etherealize and like, oh, that, you know, they're going to, like, save Ethereum. And then, you know, you find out, oh, they're just selling ETH to institutions. And it's like, okay, what's that going to do about all the actual problems? Because Wall Street, they're like the followers. But if the center of the activity is moving to a different community and different ecosystem, like, that is a much bigger problem.

Ethereum lies, that's not going to do anything to fix the fundamental problem. So that's why I was kind of just like, oh, I don't know if it's looking good for Ethereum right now. And, you know, I have you become a salonabatty? I feel that's kind of what's happening right now. Wow. I mean, no, it's more. I'm just, I'm just looking at this drama. I'm wondering what's going to go.

We got to wrap. Wait, Laura, so are you telling us you're writing a book on Solana? Are you going to write a Salon book? No. It's quite a way to announce that, Laura. Yeah, it's not at the moment. No plans. Coming 2026.

If anybody listening has information, they don't want to send me about Salana, you can, you can do that. My DMs. I feel like it's pretty transparent. You could figure out. All right. The salon of stories, you see. Okay.

All right. Thanks, everybody. Long enough. Thanks, everybody.