Unchained - The Chopping Block: Crypto Populism: From Celebrity Coins to Politics -Ep. 654

Episode Date: June 1, 2024

Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Robert Leshner, and Tarun Chitra explore the latest trends in crypto. This episode explores the buzz around LeBron James' potential memecoin, the recent approval of Ether ETFs, and Biden's shifting stance on crypto policy. We dissect the implications of Trump's pro-crypto promises and the FIT21 legislation. Tune in for a lively debate on celebrity coins, the market's reaction to regulatory changes, and the evolving landscape of political influence in the crypto space. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights 🔹 Celebrity Coins: In-depth discussion on the rise of celebrity-endorsed cryptocurrencies, focusing on LeBron James' potential memecoin and its market implications. 🔹 Ether ETF Approval: Examination of the recent Ether ETF approval, the political motivations behind it, and how it might impact the broader crypto market. 🔹 Biden's Crypto Policy: Analysis of Biden's evolving crypto stance, including recent outreach to the crypto industry and the potential effects on the upcoming elections. 🔹 Trump's Crypto Strategy: Debate on Trump's newfound pro-crypto stance, his promises to the crypto community, and the potential impact on his voter base. 🔹 FIT21 Legislation: Overview of the Financial Innovation and Technology in the 21st Century Act, its key provisions, and the potential for bipartisan support. 🔹 Political Influence in Crypto: Discussion on the increasing influence of politics in the crypto space, including the roles of key figures and the impact of regulatory developments. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly  ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures Disclosures Timestamps  00:00 - Intro 02:45 - ETF Approval  07:00 - How deep is this policy shift? 09:00 - FIT21 15:45 - Trump's Pro-Crypto Stance 24:40 - Caitlyn Jenner's Memecoin Launch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yeah, my advice is really simple. Don't do it. Just no. Anything. Come on, you want to do something. Robert, no fun lessher. Let's say LeBron. Okay, let's say LeBron is listening to this.

Okay. He's like, look, I think crypto's cool. I want to do something. We just say, LeBron, screw off. No, no, I mean, celebrity coins. Don't know what. Then he wanted a celebrity coin. Okay, LeBron, become a fan of Bitcoin and Ether.

Look straight to the camera. Look straight in the camera for LeBron. LeBron, don't launch your own celebrity token. I'm taking my talents to Solana. That's what I, he would. I saw Hyundai is using Hedera Hashgraph to reduce their carbon footprint, so maybe LeBron could do that. Not a dividend. It's a tale of two-clan.

Now, your losses are on someone else's balance. Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways. Unnamed to trading firms who are very involved. D5 protocols are the antidote. D5 protocols are the antidote to this problem. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Chopping Block, coming to live from Consensus. So every couple weeks, four of us get together, give the industry insight of the

perspective on the crypto topics of the day. Quick intro. First you got Tom, the D5 Maven and Master of Memes. Hi, everyone. Actually, you got Robert, the Cryptoconistur, and Tsar of Super State. GM, everybody. We've got Tarun, the Gigabrain and Grand Puba at Gauntlet. Yo. And I am a Cib, the head hype man at Dragonfly. So we're early stage investors in crypto, but I want to caveat. Nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life advice. Please see Chopin Block. X.YZ for more disclosures. So we're coming you live in Austin. It's been a pretty crazy event. It's been hot as hell. This is the closest thing I think any of the four of us will ever be to sportscasters.

This might be true. Well, you've got the, you've got the mic that actually feels very sportscasting. Yeah, I got to say, I'm not sure if I'm ready to be a sportscaster yet. Are you? It's funny, actually, I was sitting, I was sitting meeting with somebody and I was just like waiting for someone. And some guy came by me and he was like, oh, you're a seat from the shopping blog. And I was like, yeah, yeah, he's like, you're taller than I thought you'd be. It was like, wait, did I seem really short on the show?

You have small voice energy, small height. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's what they were applying. Because dragonflies are short. That's true, dragonflies are small. And he's one of those geogester types. He's like triangulating, you know, your height based on your background objects. And he's like, oh, damn, that's true.

I mean, you must get the opposite all the time. Oh, yeah, always. Yeah, I guess you can see it on this show. Actually, I'm looking at the footage. You can't tell that one. Yeah, actually, oh, again, stand up. Stand up all the way? You'll see, Tom is ridiculously tall.

Six five, everybody. Just so everyone else. Okay. I mean, people were actually giving us some shit on Twitter because the heights in our promo ad were not calibrated. Not to scale. Not to scale. Toron is shorter, Tom is taller.

All the intern. Yeah, okay. So we're on a tight timeline today because there's a lot of other coindexy consensus stuff going on. But since the last time we talked about Crypto News on the show, that was right before the ETFs got approved. So last week we were talking about, oh, it seems like there's some movement. The ETFs might get approved soon.

Well, they've been approved. Well, not exactly. Right. They've been approved to trade on exchanges. Individual S-1 filings for individual ETFs have not yet been approved. So it's going to be some time before any trading actually exists for these ETFs or they're approved to go live. Right. But more or less, the jubilation in the markets has already arrived.

Ether and the Ethereum ecosystem has done very well on the backs of all the excitement about an Ether ETF coming. And this very broad about face coming from the Biden administration, there was a number of other piece of news that came out today showing that the Biden administration has started reaching out to a lot of crypto people over the last few weeks going into the ETF approval as well as the Fit 21 vote, which we'll also get to. And so it looks like what we were anticipating about a broad reversal from the Democrats is a very real thing. And we're seeing it across the board. Now, the interesting thing is that how did the SEC take this? Right. So if you remember the Bitcoin ETF, there was a vote among the commissioners about whether or not to approve the Bitcoin ETF. And Genzer was on the pro side

and the two other Democratic commissioners were on the negative side, and the two Republican commissioners were like, yes, there was no vote among the commissioners on the ETH, on the ETHR ETH. Now, this is actually normal for an ETAF. Normally not every ETAF goes to the commissioners to vote, but basically, Gensler, when he was asked, he said, I don't have anything in particular about this filing, we will do it within the law and how the courts interpret the law,

and that's what I'm deeply committed to, kind of a non-answer, almost evasive, which almost makes it sound like he was kind of miffed about it, or just who's kind of like screw these guys, like, why did they make me do this? So curious what you guys think about what this portends for the SEC, you know, were they perhaps forced to approve the Ether ETHETF, but they maybe are going to remain aggressive wherever they're not, you know, specifically commanded not to be. Well, they were forced to approve the Bitcoin ETFs because a court ruled that their actions

to deny it were arbitrary and capricious. And so the ETFs fall into a very similar bucket in that there's already Ether Futures-based ETFs that are trading. There's already leveraged futures ETFs for Ether that are in the process going live right now. And there's really nothing that separates an Ether ETF from a Bitcoin ETF except with the very small possibility that the SEC was going to deem Ether itself, not Staked Ether, but Ether itself to be a security. And this was obviously an incredibly potentially controversial take because historically the SEC itself had determined through actions and comments that ether was not a security.

And so there was the risk that they would be going out on a limb to make a new, for the first-time designation, which runs contrary to what everyone in crypto knows, what everyone outside the SECC knows, what everyone in every other agency knows, what the CFTC knows is that ether's not a security, it's a commodity. And so there was some skepticism about what they would do, and they erred on the side of good administrative policy, which is not to go headfirst into disputing the courts yet again, and instead to follow the very simple principles of approving the ether spot ETFs, like they did the ether future ETFs.

Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. Obviously, they were forced into this. Presumably they got a phone call one day and said, hey, guys, we're getting hurt in the polls. Go approve ether and tell everyone we're pro-Bitcoin now or pro-crypto now. But it does feel like, I guess the big question of my mind is like, okay, Genzer has reverted on the E3TF, right? But there's still, you know, seven other prongs. Not officially.

He never came out against it. So technically, this is not a reversal. I mean, it was pretty well understood by the issuers that they were getting complete silence from the SEC. Right. Everyone's more or less new. There was no way. Getting ghosted is different than, than being assaulted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, you know, to your point, like all the facts that they decided have not changed, right? It's like the, you know, EF futures correlation with Spot Price. Like, that's like a two-year-old study that's now getting, And nothing has changed in the past three weeks that would make them change their mind. It's clearly a political shift and sort of political wins that are changing. So the question I have, though, is like, okay, they're still going after Coinbase, still going after ripple, still going after all these players that, you know, consensis, uniswap, blah, blah, blah, you name it.

How deep do you think the policy shift we're going to see from this administration? Now, that being said, there's not that much longer to this administration, but there's still a lot of stuff that can go to a verdict or a settlement within this year that's going end up affecting the landscape of crypto. So far from the executive branch of the U.S. government, there has been absolutely no policy shift. Words are not actions. The Ether ETH is not in itself a policy shift. It is them complying with a court order. There has not been any policy shift whatsoever by the executive branch until they take action otherwise. So I actually don't like this like conversation of like, oh, they've shifted, they have not shifted. There was

an article today that the Biden administration is reaching out to people in crypto to talk. Reaching out the crypto people to talk is politics. And until they actually start to reverse course on lawsuits targeting the absolute best actors in the industry, a crackdown on banks and intermediaries interacting with crypto, until Biden signs SAP 121, until the repeal of SB 121 into law, until the government actually starts to proactive steps to undo the outright hostility that has been occurring over the last three and a half years, there has been no reversal. Right. And it's still true that the Biden administration announced that they were going to be vetoing

SAB-121, the repeal of SAB-121, which is the rule that requires banking institutions to hold offsetting equity against any crypto assets of the custody. He still said he's going to veto that. And there hasn't been any recanting from the administration about that veto. Right. We haven't seen it yet, but, you know, the sounds that they're making makes it seem like something is going to change, but you're right. We haven't actually seen proof in the pudding yet. So that brings us to Fit21. So Fit21 is kind of the mega bill that we started talking about last time, but we didn't fully get around to capitulating what exactly is Fit 21 and what does it say. So Fit21 stands for Financial Innovation and Technology the 21st Century Act. Can we also talk about how the name Fit 21 sounds like energy drink? It really does, yeah. I thought it was. I thought it was. Like a fitness thing? Right? Like, 51 is like...

It feels like a Celsius competitor. No, after the death of Celsius, the only energy drink left is Fit 21. Yeah, I like it. I think that we should do like a co-branding thing. Yeah, by the way, we're partially unofficially sponsored by Red Bull. So there are no...

If there's any meme coin that ever comes up with, you know, a Fit 21 energy drink, it's not from us. Yeah. Yes, very good to point that out. Okay, so Fit21, largely designed by Patrick McHenry, who is the chair of the House Financial Services Subcommittee and the Speaker of the House, or almost Speaker of the House. So very senior Republican, and they've

done it basically a bipartisan bill that's come out of the House that ended up, many people thought that this bill was going to be dead on arrival. But in fact, it passed the House 279 to 136, a very, very broad bipartisan margin with 208 Republicans and 71 Democrats against 136 against. So, okay, let's describe what is fit 21? Because this is all a surprise. Most of people we're expecting, yeah, Fit 21, the Republicans like it, but there's no way it's going to pass the House because, you know, it's just too controversial. So Fit21, what it does is, first and foremost, it gives jurisdiction of crypto assets that are not securities to the SEC. Now, which crypto assets are not

securities? There are still crypto assets securities, and it depends on a sort of decentralization test that is a bunch of prongs. Robert, do you know what the prongs are? Absolutely. And I will Preface by saying, as we stay on the show a lot of times, I'm not a lawyer and no one here is. But this is my personal read through from what I've read mostly on Twitter. The decentralization test that determines what's a security and what isn't a security comes down to a couple factors. One is the ownership of it. If a significant portion is owned by any one individual or entity, it's not decentralized. I feel like this is relatively intuitive.

I believe it's 20%. That's right. 20%, which makes actually a lot of sense. There's some assets out there where like, you know, the foundation owns 50% and they've yet to distribute it. That's not decentralized according to Fit 21. The second comes down to the recency of ownership, the recency of issuance, I should say. So is it still being issued and distributed or is it like has that stopped? And also the development of the asset has the original issuer been working on it within the last couple months or have they stopped working on? it. If they've stopped working on it, it passes the test. And there's a couple other, like,

smaller provisions. But basically, like, the intent of it is actually really, I think, quite good, which is to decide, okay, there's a million different assets and they all behave in totally different ways. Is it generally decentralized? Starting on the assumption that it started from a foundation or a company or some group of developers that kicked it all off. So the question really comes down to is it still in their hands or has it graduated from their hands into a community? Right. So it also establishes a very different kind of disclosure's regime that is catered specifically for digital assets, right? So things like these annual reports, roadmaps, updates, you know, information about the code and where it's deployed and the smart contracts and

open sourcing and all that. Yeah. Unlock schedule. That's right. The nice little chart that we all know and love about FDVs. It also is creating this concept of a permitted payment stable coin. So it basically creates a framework for stable coins to operate in a regulatory category that hasn't previously been defined. And it basically kind of puts crypto assets between the CFTC and the SEC, and it gives a decent amount of discretion between the two agencies about how to decide what falls into each of their jurisdictions. So it's a very thoughtful piece of legislation. However, There have been many people in the crypto universe who said it's actually not a very well-designed piece of legislation, right? So we talked before about the fact that you need this ownership concentration limit of 20%.

Well, of course, that could allow somebody to buy up enough of the token to turn it from a commodity back into a security, which seems kind of like a weird attack to do on another point. I mean, one thing I had certainly thought about is there's a lot of these kind of governance attack protocols that people have tried to do. So what happens if a thing that's a commodity is acquired by a Dow whose governance token is a security? And they acquire like 19.999% and they're about to push it on the precipice. There's a lot of weird stuff that... A lot of weird edge case. The law really makes it much harder to reason about in some ways.

Yeah, but these are like edge cases that I think won't come up very often. And I think like it's important to not miss the forest for the trees here. Like, yes, there's a way... I love the edge case. I don't know what you're doing. Yeah, yeah. We're in good. We love edge cases.

Yeah, I mean, with every piece of legislation that's like pretty much ever been passed in America, there's edge cases. Yeah, no, granted, granted. I'm not too concerned about that. Yeah, the bigger concerns with Fit21 are about, so one, giving the CFTC regulatory authority over spot commodity markets, which is actually normally not in their purview as a regulator. It also has a number of very kind of unclear, a lot of areas that are really, really not been answered yet exactly how they are, going to get regulated. And so there's a lot of fighting that's likely to happen from here. And it's very likely that although it passed the House with Flying Colors, it's now going to

the Senate. And going to the Senate, there's going to be a lot of markups. It's not going to survive in its current form. So there's going to be a lot of politicking, a lot of compromising, and a lot of stuff that's going to happen. And it's probably going to go back to the House once it gets amended. And so this is really the beginning of this legislation rather than the endpoint. It's very unlikely 501 in its current form is going to get, is going to be able to pass completely. But of course, the Biden administration put out a notice saying that we are willing to work on crypto policy and be collaborative with the legislature to create something we think makes sense for digital assets. And coupled with the fact that they've been reaching out to the industry, it seems that

there is... Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly, allegedly, it does seem now that the winds are blowing in favor of something like Fit 21 being passable this year. Not guaranteed, but passable. And previously, I'd say everybody I spoke to the beginning of the year was like, there is no fucking way.

Hey, don't curse on coinette. There's no freaking way that we're going to see crypto market legislation passes here. So it's interesting. We'll see what ends up happening. But the other side of this, of course, is what a lot of this has been in response to, which is Trump. So we talked to the last show.

Trump has sort of courting the crypto industry. He started taking donations. Of course, we know he is the highest ownership of any political candidate or any person in political office of crypto holdings. He has roughly in the order of $10 million now, I think of crypto that he holds, according to Arkham. Be fair, a good chunk of that is Trump token.

So, you know, it's, uh, he does have, you know, he has a bunch of eth and whatnot from the NFT sales. Okay. Yeah, he also has, wait, how much of his Trump tokens, you know? I think it's like five mill or something. They just like airdop to them when they created the token? I don't remember the specifics, but. You can't have bought.

There's no, no, no, no. I mean, he'd assume, you know, his, his address is known. And so, you know, give him some token. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty good, pretty good, the Trump. Trump has, so if you remember back in like 2016, what was it, 2016, 2017, he very publicly stated, I think Bitcoin is a scam, these are not real currencies, crypto is terrible. He's now more or less completely embraced the crypto industry.

And a few key things have happened within the last week. First, he went to a Libertarian Party National Convention in Washington, where he stated, I will ensure that the future of crypto and the future of Bitcoin will be made in the USA. I will support the right of self-custody to the nation's 50 million crypto holders. I will keep Elizabeth Warren and her goons away. from your Bitcoin, and I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency. If you vote for me, on day one, I will commute the sentence of Ross Albright. That one was wild to me.

That was actually like I did, I was like which policy advisor to Trump wrote that? Somebody is that came up with him. Oh, to be clear. Ross Albright, for those who don't know, he was the creator of Silk Road, also known as Dreadpire Roberts. He was accused of all sorts of heinous stuff addition to like there was a supposedly he put a hit on somebody, but then that was not actually. tried and the prosecution had a bunch of lies and something something I don't know I don't know

the whole yeah I'm in the extreme I'm in the extreme minority and I will admit this I am not on the free Ross camp so why so why so um you know it went through a normal trial there was a court you know the facts of it were heard yes the relative sentencing is somewhat unfair and I think that's what a lot of people are mad about yeah but like objectively he was involved in some bad activities. Right. I think the sentencing is actually the point. So he's actually commuting the sentence, not pardoning him.

So, I mean, technical, but, you know, I think that is most of what people take. Right. Yeah. So I mean, look, I started reading about this because I'm like, I am so uninformed about why people are mad. So apparently what happened was that the two FBI agents who basically were on the Silk Road trying to frame, trying to frame Dreadfire Roberts, the both of them ended up later themselves getting prosecuted for all sorts of misconduct as FBI.

Shout out Katie Hahn. Shout out Katie Hahn. Yeah. And who was the prosecutor at that time on that case. And apparently those two agents were, they had access to the database so they could have forged these messages wherein supposedly he put a hit on some people who were like betraying him or something and multiple people, including the person who supposedly had a hit put on him said that, no, that never happened.

And like I don't think this doesn't make sense. So basically there's a lot of speculative doubt about whether or not he actually tried to have anyone killed. And if he did not try to have anyone killed, his sentencing was extremely harsh, like, ridiculously hard, way higher. It was over the sentencing guidelines. Yeah, but is the Silk Road worse than FTX? Is it a fraction as bad as FTX, right? Like, just, you know, these are obviously moral questions here. But like, they are.

The Silk Road was bad, right? The Silk Road is not a good thing. I think we can agree on that. And at the end of the day, he was. I think people got valuable utility. out of the Silk Road. The Turin does not agree with that. The Silk Road is a good thing.

I don't know what the welfare is. Like, yes, there was some negatives. There were some positives. I don't know where in that. Okay, this is not the place to adjudicate the morality of the Silk Road. Let's get back to Trump. So Trump, pro-crypto, commuting Ross Albright's sentence. And he just, of course, just as about like an hour ago, he was just the, the

He did not beat the allegations, as I said. He did not beat the allegations in the Hush Money case against Stormy Daniels. And so it looks like he potentially will be the first, not the first actually, but the first in a while, presidential candidate who has been convicted of a felony. So it looks like Trump is now really, really gutting hard for this pro-cryptop camp. What do you guys' thoughts on this? Is it surprising? Is it expected? And supposedly as well, we just saw this this morning as well in the Wall Street Journal that apparently he's considering, he's getting a lot of his advice from Elon.

And he's starting putting Elon into like a very senior position in the administration. I think that was denied. I mean, Elon said that that was false. But who knows? So what Elon would say? It's denied either way. The market certainly responded with their Doge coin purchases, though. Yeah, yeah.

I'm curious here to the backstores because I do feel like, you know, we talked about this on the show a couple times. I think the calculus of appealing to crypto as an asset class holders, it made so much sense. There was just a survey out from Grayscale, I think a day or two ago. I think it has to be like 17% of Americans own Bitcoin. 70? 17. 17.

Still very, you know, one in five Americans. And so it's like, you know, who is, it was actually doing the math and thinking, yes, it makes sense to try to put this outside of class in it in a box and sort of shut it down. I think Trump probably just did the math. I was like, yeah, these are free votes. I think it's the specifics of the policy. I'm actually very curious about, like, the free Ross thing feels like a shibboleth for like crypto people, right?

It's like, okay, you're in the weeds, you know, this is something that people care about or they talk about. And so I think that's a big part of getting it right. It's like, to your point around Biden, what does it completely translate to in terms of policy changes in terms of how an administration is treating crypto or how crypto is treated in the US? Yeah.

I mean, he was at the national libertarian convention. So it's kind of red meat for those guys. Yeah. Like I saw the video and in the video, there were literally people with free raw signs in the video. So maybe you're just reading a sign. Yeah, he might have just been like, oh, that guy, I will commute him.

Whatever you want, I just give votes for me. So I don't know what's hard to say. I think he just has policy advisors and political advisors that know that crypto on the whole is a grand slam wedge issue if he's able to claim it as his mantle. And the Democrats don't because 17% of Americans have crypto. How can you go against that large percentage of the country? It's terrible politics. You have to support it. Trump is a tactician.

He knows what he's doing. he's not an idiot on this. It's a winning issue. Good on him for supporting it. And we'll see if the Biden campaign actually comes around. We'll see if the Biden administration comes around because right now it's all talk. He is also positioning himself as being very tech aligned. Yes.

So you see the same thing in Silicon Valley now. More and more people are kind of coming out as being very pro-Trump or moderately pro-Trump or like flirting with. Yeah, I know about very. No one is like wearing the, you know, the, the Trump memorabilia shirts and stuff. That's true, but there's been all this reporting about fundraisers and things like that that have been happening in Silicon Valley. So it was a Sean McGuire from Sequoia just put out a post saying he donated 300K to Trump.

So I think there's like an hour ago. Yeah. And so anyway, I think people are becoming more pro-Trump in a way that they were not in like 2016. Yeah. There was still a Trump contingent in Silicon Valley, but it was very hush, you know, you can't publicly talk about it. Right.

And of course, the other element of it has been all of the packs that have put together, the Fair Shake pack. and then the Stain with Crypto Pack, which have raised, how much total have they raised? Over $100 million. Over $100. I know it's over $100, yeah. And A6 and Z just announced that they also made another big donation of, I believe it was $25 million. $47 million total now that they've. Yeah, yeah.

So we can tell there's a lot of money now that is being coordinated around these pro-crypto causes, which now feels like another big tailwind that money talks in politics, like it or not. And both tech and crypto are talking very loudly at a point where they weren't really doing this four years ago, which is a little bit surprising because it's not as though there was no money in crypto four years ago. But I feel like the coordination and the kind of seriousness of the crypto industry was just not really there. And maybe it was also just more weird because you didn't have mainstream institutions like BlackRock and the banks and the, you know, the, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, fidelities of the world putting their weight behind it. There was also just not as much active hostility towards crypto, um, I think four years ago versus now. It was just more general dysfunction.

Yeah, that's true. And I think that's kind of been the big regime shift has been actively trying to shut down the asset class, actively trying to put developers in jail, and I think this is the backlash against that. Right, right. Yeah, very interesting. Okay.

So another story is switching gears kind of a lot. There's been, we continue to revisit the dumpster fire that is memecoin. And this week, there was a very interesting meme coin launched by a name brand celebrity, Caitlin Jenner. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't forget Iggy Azalia, man. No, but Iggyzalia didn't launch her own meme coin. It was like a, she just, she claimed a meme coin that was launched in her name.

I was going to, there was a very nice segue there where Caitlin Jenner posted a picture of her shaking hands with Trump. And so, you know, I should have done that better. Okay, well, okay, well, well, okay, well, speaking, in the last cycle, when the celebrities started showing up is when I got really worried. Okay, well, the celebrities have shown up. Are you worried? I'm worried. I, I, do you learn, I am worried. I don't know if there's a signal for anybody who cares, but Haseeb is officially worried. So, Caitlin Jenner, kind of out of nowhere, without really talking about crypto or, like, really kind of building up the like, hey, I'm interested in crypto.

Let's start talking about it. She just tweeted, I have launched a token on pump.fund. Here's my pump. dot fund, which, for those of you who are not aware, pump. dot fund is kind of like a launch pad for new meme coins. We have mentioned it many times. We have mentioned it many times in the show. So this coin called Jenner, which, to be clear, we do not endorse it any way whatsoever.

Jennifer, apparently it kind of launched. Everybody assumed that she was hacked because why is why is Caitlin Jenner like

launching this moon coin? And then she's repeatedly claimed that she and her team are going to make sure that this meme coin goes up and to the right and it's kind of like

she is not getting very good advice on this. And basically there were some videos that also she posted and people were like oh it's deep fakes and she was really

she's like super hacked but turns out no it's really Caitlin Jenner who's not hacked and apparently this, as well as a number of other Mune coins that have been associated with minor celebrities have all been attributed

to this one guy named Sahil Aurora who is a... Sorry, let me see I guess I got this right. A former teenage business prodigy from India who somehow has a bunch of connections. What is a teenage business project? A former teenager, not teenage anymore.

So he like crashed his companies? No, no, no, he's still, I guess, a prodigy. Yeah, the former part is the teenager. Still a business prodigy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not a former teen. Where you put the pause and saying that gives you a clear? I am also former teenager and a business prodigy, so I feel a lot of affinity with this guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel a lot affinity. All right. So when your meme coin's coming out? I'm working on it, working on it. Is anything officially you see right now is not for me? So anyway, he has been accused by multiple people, including Igiazalia, of being some kind of a scammer. And to be clear, I have no idea of any of this is true.

These are allegations. I don't know who you are on. He does just have a lot of pictures in Dubai, which has already. He's not being the allegations with that one. That is very presumptuous. No, look, we, I know nothing about this guy, but apparently a lot of people don't like him and claim that he is hustling a lot of celebrities. And so apparently now there's a bunch of people who are coming out.

I don't know. This is kind of a weird story. I don't really understand where the story starts and ends. But basically, if we launched meme coins, any of us, we were hacked by Sahil. Yes. And it's that guy's fault. I guess. Hacked by Sawhill.

Back by Sao. You heard it here first. That's probably the next meme point. Shammed by Sao. Yeah, interesting. I actually felt really bad. I have a couple friends whose name, first name is Sahel. And I was like, you're Googling, it's Googling you guys going to be horrible now.

Yeah, I will say actually, I do sometimes meet founders who are named Tarun. And I'm instantly, I have like a slight positive bias for anybody with that name. You're probably slightly smarter than average, you know. And I know that's unfair, but I'm trying to work on it. Try to correct for... Wow. I feel that way with Haseeb. Although, you know...

There are no, no, no. Actually, there is one. Yes. There's one other Hesib. But there's also some guy who I think works for Salana Foundation, whose name is Chase Barker. But his Twitter handles, see Haseeb Arker. That is... And I always look at it.

I'm like, is this Haseeb with the Cee? That is true. That's true. Did I tell the story about the time I met the other Haseeb? No, we'll take it offline. I don't think coin desk. Okay, okay, okay, that's fine. We're running a long time as well.

Anyway, if you heckle us on YouTube, Haseeb might give you the story in a future episode. That's true, that's true. Okay. So what do we think is happening from here? Are we going to see celebrity overload? Are we going back to like NFTs in 2021? What do we expect to see from here? I mean, this is worse than the last wave of meme coins, even a couple months ago.

This is dumber. This has less logic to it. And I agree. a top signal. I don't think it's the very top signal because there's a lot of like incredibly positive macro tailwind still. But this is terrible. There's no future in celebrity coins. Like we don't give advice, but like this is investment advice. Don't touch celebrity coins. Please. Just don't do it. Wow. I didn't know we were we were undoing our disclaimer. I'm going to give the disclaimer. You can recant for yourself. I'm not giving investment advice.

But yeah, it does feel like, you know, if you think about when the celebrity endorsement started happening for NFTs, that was like January 2021. Right. So the cycle started summer of 2020, basically. January 2021, you had all the celebrities launching NFT collections. And then by probably summer to fall of 2021, it became the 10KPFPs and the meta had really shifted away from that. The NFTs had like some pretense of usefulness, right? They're like, I'm going to make a movie or TV show, which never, never showed up. I think the beauty is the opposite.

It's that it is just a JPEG. You know, when you're buying like the Grimes NFT, it's like, that's what you get. You're not buying your own. Yeah, the Grimes and Fenthees were just, there's album covers. I think, um, coins with pictures. I wonder if this is kind of a backdoor. Because I mean, the other thing, too, right, there was a whole wave of, um, SEC settlements with these undisclosed, um, you know, um, endorsements with these repaid

endorsements, celebrities for, you know, whatever random token, um, they end up, you know, give me back most of the money. I wonder if this is like, you know, obviously this is a kind of paid endorsement because it's my coin and I'm going to be doing. And it's like not a security because they didn't do anything or like, I wonder if this is kind of them like responding to a big market pressure where it's like, it's like an NFT that it doesn't do anything. It's obviously my token.

So therefore it's, you know, I've ownership in this thing. But yeah, I just found the whole thing very baffling, honestly. It also seems like kind of obviously against the spirit of meme points, which is all about like the fair launches and the,

you know, nobody in particular owns this. And their memes. I mean, isn't that the nature of decentralized systems? Like someone finds something that kind of works because it, it either was financially reasonable or it found a good vibe or a good community. And then eventually there's enough capital that somehow occurs there that everyone is like,

I'm going to vampire attack the shit out of this with my edge, which in the celebrity cases, I'm famous and have a big Instagram following. Okay, so let's imagine that we are, okay, let's say everyone now knows Sahel is a scammer, allegedly, allegedly, please don't sue us with Sahel. So everyone now knows, okay, maybe don't work with Sahel. let's say that there are celebrities, which obviously there are, listening to this show.

What would be your advice if you are playing the next Sawhill to how a celebrity should play this cycle? Well, if you have an announcement video, you should post a signed hash of it alongside your announcement video. So people know it's a verified video and it's definitely not a deep fake. You know, have this whole sort of several day. How does that help? What do you mean? You can have your ENS and be like, hey, this is, you know, the Kailen Jenner, EnS. And then nobody knew the Kailenner ENS before.

Yeah, maybe that was the last one actually. You need to be able to trust way early. You get active early on Chan. That's the thing. Post your address right now. Yeah. And later, if you're hacked, you can prove that the hacker also has your ENS or you're not hacked. Yeah, my advice is really simple.

Don't do it. Just no. Anything. Come on, you want to do something. Robert, no fun. Let's say LeBron. Okay, let's say LeBron is listening to this. Okay.

He's like, look, I think crypto's cool. I want to do something. We just say, LeBron, screw off. No, no, I mean, celebrity coins. Don't know. Okay. Don't do what? Then he wanted a celebrity coin.

Okay, LeBron, become a fan of Bitcoin and Ether. Look straight to the camera. Look straight in the camera for LeBron. LeBron, don't launch your own celebrity token. I'm taking my talents to Solana. That's what I think he would reply with. I saw Hyundai is using Hedera Hashgraph to reduce their carbon footprint. So maybe LeBron could do that.

I think what I would do is I would try to do a physical air drop where you literally drop stuff from the air in order to get in order to get. Like I love the idea of just physical air drops. Like you physically drop things that you're like throwing things of people. You're getting wallets that are dropping in the air and, you know, you get some of the meme coin. Okay, okay. Not as physically scalable, but yeah, I like the idea. Physical air drop.

All the way. What I would say is adopt a meme coin, right? It's like if you want, if you're a celebrity, you want to play, find some meme coin that already is community. The SPCA for meme coin. Exactly, exactly. Like, find something that's like not really working but has the right kind of credentials, the right kind of soup that it's swimming in. Like, look what Elon did with Doge.

That is the way to play a meme coin, right? Don't launch Elon coin. That's stupid, right? Instead, finds him that already has that, that Junicequa, and adopt it and help nurture it. Who was that guy during, like, all the GameStop run-up stuff that was like... Morin kidding? No, no, no, no. This, like, he founded some dog company, and then he started just, like, pumping a bunch of stocks.

He's the guy to follow. Ryan something, I afraid. He's a bunch of losses against him. No clue. a moon emoji lawsuit. All right. Well, to wrap it up, you know, we'll see what the future of celebrity coins holds. Hopefully it doesn't have much of a future, in my opinion. Thank you all for joining us on CoinDesk Chopping Block Live from Consensus. See, everybody.