Unchained - The Chopping Block: Trump’s $22B “Gold Paper” DeFi Launch, Buybacks & Garbage Coins - Ep. 896

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

Altcoin froth meets political theater. The team dissects World Liberty Financial’s explosive debut: a $22B token backed by the Trump family, a disputed Aave partnership, insider buybacks, and a “gold paper” instead of a whitepaper. We break down Justin Sun’s role, why critics call it crypto’s “garbage moat,” and how WLFi could become the Thanksgiving dinner debate of 2025. Plus: Gavin Newsom’s meme coin tease, GDP data going on-chain, and the CFTC reopening U.S. markets to global exchanges. 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. This week, the crew dives into the wild debut of World Liberty Financial — Trump’s $22B DeFi token that launched with a “gold paper,” insider allocations, and buybacks despite no product. We break down the Trump family’s $5B paper fortune, the disputed Aave deal, and whether WLFi is a serious stablecoin project or just another garbage fire in crypto’s moat. From Justin Sun’s backing to Thanksgiving dinner debates, we unpack what WLFi means for politics, memes, and markets. Then we zoom out to Gavin Newsom’s meme coin tease, the U.S. Commerce Department posting GDP on-chain, and fresh CFTC moves that could reshape crypto exchanges and ETFs. Show highlights 🔹 World Liberty Financial Launch — Debuted at $22B FDV, $6B circulating cap; price fell 34% on day one with $2.5B in trading volume. 🔹 Trump Family Windfall — 22% of WLFi supply + 75% of presale; $440M presale cash and $5.6B in token wealth now exceeds Trump’s real estate. 🔹 The “Gold Paper” — No whitepaper, but a gold paper signed by Trump’s sons; co-founder emeritus title given to Trump himself. 🔹 Aave Deal Denied — WLFi initially promised 7% supply + 20% fees to Aave; governance ratified, then team denied it ever happened. Snapshot vs. “fake news.” 🔹 Token Buybacks — Team began buying back WLFi with $3M despite no sustainable revenue streams; price rallied but raised doubts. 🔹 Justin Sun’s Role — Largest backer, holding >3% of circulating supply; reignites debate over credibility. 🔹 Fastest Growing Stablecoin Claim — USD1 touted as the fastest-growing stablecoin in history; critics call it unsustainable hype. 🔹 Speculative Mania — Hosts compare WLFi to Bored Apes: meme-driven, high valuation, little product substance. 🔹 Garbage in the Living Room — Haseeb: WLFi is “crypto’s garbage moat” breaking into mainstream consciousness. 🔹 Thanksgiving Talking Point — The coin destined to dominate family dinner debates, regardless of legitimacy. 🔹 Gavin’s Meme Coin Response — Newsom teases “Trump Corruption Coin”; Polymarket odds at 36%. Hosts doubt Democrats can meme. 🔹 GDP On-Chain — Dept. of Commerce posts GDP data on 9 blockchains via Chainlink; useful innovation or pointless theater? 🔹 CFTC Path for Foreign Exchanges — Revives FBO registration to re-open US markets to offshore exchanges; Binance/OKX implications. 🔹 ETFs vs. Spot on CME — New rules may allow CME/Nasdaq to sell spot crypto; could undercut ETFs. 🔹 The Everything App Debate — Coinbase, Robinhood, and brokerages converge on offering stocks + crypto. Hosts spar over whether ETFs belong on Coinbase. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate ⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly  Disclosures Timestamps 00:00 - Liberty Financials & The Chopping Block Intro 01:21 - World Liberty Financial 05:15 - Tokenomics, Buybacks, and WLFI Drama 08:54 - Memecoins, Bored Apes, and Speculation 11:42 - Memecoins vs. Real Products 19:07 - Gavin Newsom & Beyond 25:43 - GDP Prints Onchain & Blockchain Use Cases 35:06 - CFTC, Regulation, and Global Crypto Markets 42:15 - The Everything App: Crypto, Stocks, and the Future of Finance 51:28 - Security, Trust, and the Future of Financial Platforms Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

World Liberty Financial is like the garbage got into your living room. And now it's just there. It's like, oh, yeah, we have a gold paper written by the president's sons. And the biggest holder is Justin's son. And we're buying back the token, even though we have no revenue. And it's just like, why is this here? Why are you doing this to me? Leave me alone.

Not a dividend. It's a tale of two pawn. Now, your losses are on someone else's malagy. Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways. Unimaged trading firms who are very involved. I like that eat is the ultimate pump. Defi protocols are the antidote to this problem. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the chopping block.

Every couple weeks, the four of us get together and give the industry insider's respective on the crypto topics of the day. So quick intro, first you got Tom, the Defy Maven and Master of Memes. Hello, everyone. Next, we've got Robert, the Crypticconnoisseur and Tsar of Super State. Good afternoon. Robert, well done sidling in. Perfect timing.

Robert was super late, but you would never have known if it wasn't for me calling this out right now. next we've got tarun the gig of brain and grand pooh-bah of gauntlet you and i'm a sieve the head hype man at dragonfly we're early-stage investors in crypto and on to caveat that nothing we say here is investment advice legal advice or even life advice please see chopping block that xyz for more disclosures so uh robert i assume you were late because you were so engrossed with what's happening with world liberty financial did you end up getting your stake in the president's defy project I was not engrossed in World Liberty Financial, unfortunately. I was late because I had a call that ran very long.

I don't have a bag. I have yet to participate in the new World Liberty Financial Order. And I'm curious to see which of us do. What am I being liberated from by being part of World Liberty? Do you have any bags? Treadfine. World Liberty? I am bagless.

I am bagless. And I saw all these tweets. I couldn't tell if they're a fake or just trying to game these Quito-like things. But they were just like, I'm under 20 and I'm a millionaire thanks to World Liberty Financial. And I was like, that's exactly why I did not own it. Wow. We're just too old. Tom, you got anything?

I have some Trump, NFT trading cards. That's about the best I can do. That's an uncorrelated asset, Tom. The polygon ones? Yeah, they aren't. Polygon. One of one of the great beaty successes from last cycle. Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's like the millennial Trump coin. Millennial damn Trump coin. That's true. That's true. That's how you show your age. Just like, no, no, I got the back in the day. You kids don't know.

I got the OG Trump. That's right. It's right. Before, you know, there was a time when Trump wasn't president. We'll be saying that in the year 2050. Is it, you know, there was a time when Trump wasn't president. When he's always like, world liberty, you know. That's right. That's right. He's cry. Peter Thiel gives him the science. There's like an interface that we used to communicate with Trump and he's still president. That's what the coin is for.

The coin lets you communicate with his brain in the jar. That's how you get access to ask the president questions. Great. So World Trade Financial debuted on Binance, OKX, Bybit, and Bitget yesterday. When you're reading slash hearing this, it'll be Labor Day. So it came out at a $22 billion fully diluted valuation

with a 6 billion circulating market cap. That makes it number 33 on the leaderboard. It is worth more than the Trump meme coin, worth more than the Trump meme coin has ever been worth. Now, the price on the initial day of trading fell about 34% to about 21 cents from a high of 32 cents. Settling now around 23 cents, there's been a huge amount of trading volume,

$2.5 billion traded since launch. And supposedly now the circulating supply is 27 billion out of 100 billion total token, so 27 billion circulating. Now, I've seen a lot of question marks around how much is truly circulating, who is it circulating with, apparently supposedly initially, it's supposed to be much less that was circulating. Now it's claimed to be $27 billion. So there's a lot of confusion about where all these tokens from and exactly which tokens are

circulating to get this high of a float. Now, it's important to understand a lot of craziness happened around the time of the launch. So first of all, we saw gas prices on chain just explode to over 100 way. You saw swap prices go into the $100 around the time that the token, all the launches, sorry, all the claims and the initial trading took place. And there's been a lot of criticism of the overall project. So one thing that you've seen is that now this thing has substantially inflated the total nominal wealth of the Trump campaign, or sorry, of the Trump team.

So Trump family ostensibly now owns over $5 billion in crypto wealth, 5.6 billion, which is worth more than all the real estate holdings. Huge amount of that is now attributed to just World Liberty Financial, of which the Trump family has about 22% of the entire World Liberty Financial supply, as well as 75% of all the presale. So the presale, which they sold hundreds of millions of dollars in the presale, 75% of all that cash goes straight to the Trump family, which is about $440 million of cold hard cash. Now, of course, Trump is the co-founder emeritus of World Liberty Financial and his sons are co-founders. And of course, instead of a white paper, they have a gold paper. Now, another interesting

wrinkle of this is that originally World Liberty Financial, of course, you guys might remember, was framed as an Ave Fork. And now, of course, they have USD1, which is a stable coin, and that seems to be the main story of why World Liberty Financial is valuable. However, initially, they promised that 7% of the World Liberty Financial supply, as well as 20% of its fees, were going to go to Ave as part of the initial partnership. Well, now, ostensibly, ostensibly, because World Liberty Financial has come out at such a high price, Aves' share of this would be worth about $2 billion. But World Liberty Financial, about a week ago, denied that they had ever made this deal.

Now, this deal had been proposed originally in the governance forum, and then it was ratified in World Liberty Financial's Governing Forum. But then the World Liberty Financial team came out last week to say that this was fake news, which Stani apparently is disputing. so there's now a some kind of dispute which unclear exactly how this gets resolved or what the legal status Clarice court that's where you take it we're going to Carragon court eragon court baby forget unclear how these things get adjudicated or what the legal status or something like this is unclear but there's a lot of money at stake on whether or not Ave is going to get I don't think there

is any legal status first off that's the first answer well this does go to the heart of Dow's okay and yeah governance tokens And this is a snapshot. This is snapshot even for one side. There are non, there are non, there are binding verbal contracts. That is totally a thing. So if they engage in what a judge would determine is a verbal contract, then they could totally enforce this.

I have no idea how enforceable it is, though. Because I may not have BSL. Like I would assume they also have something in like their terms of the code use. So my understanding is that World Liberty Financial does not have a product yet. There's no app. There's no actual thing that you can do. They haven't forked anything yet. Yeah, they haven't forged anything yet.

So, I mean, they can argue like, well, we decided not to do the Ave fork and that's why we're not paying. I don't know. Very unclear how all of this works. Justice Sun today is World Warfare's largest backer, holds more than 3% of the circulating supply. And so the last thing. So when the token launched, of course, the token price immediately went down because a lot of the initial air drop recipients, or not, sorry, not air drop, the sale recipients sold their tokens. Of course, unsurprising, it was like a 20x from the initial crowd sale price.

So you had a bunch of people selling. Seemingly, the team probably panicked in response to this and decided they were going to start buying back the token, which they previously had not said that they were going to do. Now, there's no proceeds from which to buy back the token. So they said that they were going to buy back the token using the basically the liquidity, like the fees that they had on chain. And so they use a $3 million slug to immediately buy back the token, which seemingly did not actually come from the liquidity, but just came from some of their own money. So he started buying back the token, which caused the price to immediately rally.

So now there's the teams buying back the token, despite the fact that they don't really have sustainable sources of on-chain revenue. But this token, top 30 token, presidential project. Okay, where are we guys? Where is this in the overall meta of crypto that we now have top 30 stablecoin, slash AVE Fork that now is worth more than any Defy project in existence. Bored apes of this cycle. Speculative asset of the cycle. Teroon's is totally uninterested.

There's a brand new top 30 token and the man doesn't care at all. I just, it just feels like bored apes to me where it's like it, it's like a kind of thing that exists to get made fun of. I'm like, great. I'm too bored to, to, I feel like, I've been. in crypto too long. I'm too jaded by these kind of things that there's no real substance behind that have high valuations.

That's what a guy with no bag would say. Yeah. So, okay, let's break it down. Drew, I want you to break it down for me. What, what parts, let's do like a sum of parts analysis. What are the parts of this business that you feel like don't have any substance and which ones do you think

might have substance or is it all substanceless? Okay. So I think, because there's the USDA. USD one is interesting in one way. And that it was used for a multi-billion dollar investment into Binance. Yep. So it started off with the hot streak. It is, they did announce that it's the fastest growing stable coin in history, which is true over that one week period.

It was the fastest growing stable coin history. Look, look, look, look. AI companies think that they can annualize their one day, that's their best day of revenue. They just take that and multiply by 365 and then, like, raise money on that. Crypto is one-uping them with this. But I think like a USDA1 makes way more sense than trying to be a defy fork. Like remember when we first talked about it in the show and we're like, why is world liberty like trying to run a protocol?

Because like they just, this doesn't seem to make sense. Like you're basically a meme coin. So like do something simpler. You know, like, like I feel like there's kind of this interesting thing in crypto where things that are real products that launch a token have much more trouble becoming like memetic and things that are meme coins always have this like death spiral where they just have to do buybacks until they try to for as long as possible until they can figure out what to make a product with it with kind of like the yuga lab stuff like they released all these tokens and it was like down only and they were like okay that's

we have to get we have to make these last long enough for our game to survive and so like i kind of feel like there's this kind of question of like, are these just two sets that can never be reached from one another, like the like real product, but the token that's just like priced on revenue multiples and like meme coin, no product, only buybacks, eventually spirals. They try to bolt on a product, be a spec, acquire some, some IP, some nonsense. Like last cycles thing was IP. Obviously, maybe the cycle. They did run a dad.

So Alt 5 Sigma, I believe is the dat that just acquired. World Liberty Financial and they raised $750, I think. Great. I guess, like, my point is, like, it really feels a little bit like you got to me, where it's like instead of IP, it's like rights to talk to Eric Trump in question mark. Like, you know what I mean? It does. I feel like everything about this was almost like engineered to like break journalists' brains.

I'm so tired of having journalists in me up, wanting to talk about World Liberty or like ask about World Liberty. But it just feels like they just keep stacking on the offenses. And it's like everything that you have in terms of like a caricature of like the Trump family. Like this is it. You know, it's like, okay, the opaque supply and the buybacks and the dad and the self-dealing. And it's like what is actually going on here? And I find that actually would be like almost more amusing that it's like, you know, they just, you know, like the aristocrats. You know, it's like the aristocrats.

And this is like the aristocrats of crypto. It's like, what more can we stack on? this to like really offend even more people or like live up to this, this, you know, person that people think they are. I think in the in the current world, I'm post offended. I don't even think I even get offended. I just don't care anymore. What could they do to offend to room?

That's the real question because that is the next innovation. That's the last thing to stack. It's like the final boss in the video game. Right. The hair that breaks the camel's back. That's the thing I want to see. How about for everyone here? What is the thing that they could do?

Like, I'm kind of curious for everyone. I think the thing they do is they claim that they solved MIV. I feel like that would be like the last thing that would just kill Teroon. No, no, no. Yeah. I think they have to launch an L1. Launch an L1. No, no, no.

Actually, I think one thing that would be funny, but offensive is that they buy story protocol. Like, they're like, we need an L1. We're just going to do a M&A and buy out all the story. protocol token holders with World Liberty. Story protocol is pretty expensive at this point. I think that... But they can still afford it. They can still afford it. They could afford it. They could afford it.

I feel like if they acquired like hash graph or something, that would actually be pretty sick. Or like Iota, just like go last cycle and like just go really deep or like dash. I feel like that. The thing about story is like the mid-curve 30 IQ narrative of this IP thing, which like, I don't know. We can talk about in the different era of like, what does IP on the blockchain ever really ever going to mean? But that thing is like something where I've observed people who have never bought a crypto asset before are like IP. I know that has value. I'm going to buy it.

And I feel like that's a perfect brand for World Liberty Financial to own, right? The ticker IP. Yeah. So there was this piece in blockworks that I really liked that talked about the garbage. moat of crypto, which sort of describes, it sort of paints this picture that like, when you're in crypto, you constantly see this like, you know,

how people talk about there's this like ring of plastic garbage, like in the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean. That's kind of just like, there's like this big thing in crypto of just like garbage that's just floating out there that we all kind of ignore. We all know it's there of like, do you see shitty low rent projects that are constantly out there

just, you know, scalping retail. And occasionally like they bump up against your feet and you can like feel, oh, like some trashes touch me, ew. And you're like, okay, I'm in, I'm in a weird website. I'm on like Cryptopattoe dot com or whatever, one of these places where like that's where these stuff congregates. Or like I see some weird KOL who has like 300,000 followers and I don't know any of them.

I'm just like, okay, I'm in, I'm in the trash heap of crypto. I'm in like that part. The banana zone. Yeah. And then like at a certain point, like the garbage gets into your living room and you can like, wait, I'm in my kitchen and like I can feel the garbage against my feet. That's World Liberty Financial. World Liberty Financial is like the garbage got into your living room.

And now it's just there. It's like, oh, yeah, we have a gold paper written by the president's sons. And the biggest holder is Justin's son. And like, we're buying back the token even though we have no revenue. And it's just like, why is this here? Why are you doing this to me? Like, leave me alone. So that's largely been my feelings seeing World Liberty Financial.

Is that like, when you read the comments, they're all negative. Like every comment, like I was going through their tweets and they're doing all. on Twitter. All the comments are negative. Everybody hates this, but people are buying it anyway because there's like, oh, it's the president's coin. Like, you know, it'll go up. And then, of course, a lot of people who are just not crypto people are buying the token because it's like, oh, the president and defy and they keep talking about this. And it also has to be that there's no way this is the real float. Like I just, I refuse to believe that they have not picked up the tricks of the many predecessors in crypto. Like, you know, they're following in the footsteps of great projects before them

that have lied about their floats, there's no way that 24% of the supply is floating. Like, I just do, I refuse to believe that. Because especially when they said originally there was going to be 5% floating. And now how exactly is 24% out there? So, yeah, all of it just seems very, very, to Thomas point, it's all very tedious.

I feel quite exhausted by just how painful it is to see all this stuff. So, but to your point, I think we're all going to be asked lots and lots of questions about World Library Financial in every podcast we ever go on. You think this is going to be the like the thanksgiving conversation of crypto this year instead of like prior years where it was like, oh my God, did you see Bitcoin is like close to 100K? You think this year is the world.

This year is what the grandparents are like, son, you've been talking about crypto for 10 years. And all your stuff has been a scam. But we found the best coin that we made on the young. World Liberty Finan. Finally, the president is on board with your bullshit industry. Here's the, here's how you made a real. Well, if it goes up and everyone makes money, no one's going to complain about it. I'm sure it will only go up.

There's no way this thing could ever go down. I believe, by the way, the top two holders own something like 40% of World Warli Financial. And what is it? There was some number of like the amount held by insiders. It was a lot. This thing, I'm sure it'll go up. It looks like a very good token. Anyway, yeah.

Not financial advice. I don't know. I mean, maybe, let's take a step back and let's also. Asim is giving financial advice about whether to long or short. I will say, let's celebrate the fact that they now feel like they have to build an actual project. I feel like that's progress relative to the Trump meme coin, is that, you know, if that was, you know, to Turin's point, if we thought that was the first and second tower of, you know,

Trump coin and Melania coin, I feel like this is the Iraq war. This is like the war on terror. You know, this is like, okay, this is a much bigger, grander scale legacy that they're trying to build. And on some level, I support that. I feel like, okay, they're trying to actually do something about it. Are the WMD's promises to Dow's done in the snapshot? Yeah, the WMDs were the AVE governance proposals. Those are the WMDs.

Anyway, all right. So now in response to this, politics, this has been a week of watch with politics. In response, in part to this, we have presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom announcing that he is going to launch his own meme coin in response to the Trump meme coins. He was on an interview with Karas Swisher, and he claimed that he was going to launch his own coin called the Trump Corruption coin. And Polymarket is now pricing 36% chance that he actually launches the meme coin. Any thoughts on Gavin launching his own meme coin, Robert? I would not buy that. You would not buy it. This is investment advice. Don't buy that coin. Don't buy the Trump corruption coin.

I can't think of a stupider coin to launch. No, no, no. He's saying don't buy the... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think that will be a good financial investment for the people that buy it. And I think the odds of him actually launching it are close to zero. I think he was trying to call attention to what he perceives as a... He did launch the merch store.

And apparently they're like making a lot of money from it. Apparently they're selling out like hotcakes. All right, all right. You know what? I would love for entertainment value alone. to see Gavin launch a coin and to see how it's received by the world. I would love to see this. I think it'll be amazing fodder for a future episode of the chopping block.

So Gavin, if you or your staff are listening, pull the trigger. We will bring you on to talk about your meme coin. If you want to, we'll bring you on the chopping block to pump your meme coin. It does need a better name, though. Trump corruption coin. I liked actually all the fake Gavin coins that were being launched on on pump today. Wait, wait.

It has to be called G money or G-coin. We can, you know, we can workshop it a little bit. Yeah, we'll work on it. We'll work on it. We got that one had a little hello fellow kids energy. Yeah. I think that's what this point will be. I guess that's fair.

Maybe that demographic is. There was a lot of stuff on pump called new scum. So I feel like that might end up being. I mean, I mean, I just don't get it because I'm like the 4chan pumped out fund demographic is like never going to buy it so it's like who is who is the

who is like the buyer like I just don't I think the news cycle just creates the buyers like as long as it's in the news and he can keep it there then people will show up to buy it I don't think Gavin has like a raging fan club the way that Trump does

maybe he's getting it now but it doesn't feel obsessive it feels more like well I think the different difference is like Democrats policies of like trying to not talk about money or like not like basically make them

do much worse than merch sales. Like I saw some study that was like a study of Democrats or the last 10 years versus Republicans in terms of like political contributions from sales of items versus political contributions from donations and the Democrats like just like significantly lower. Like they just don't people don't buy their items. Whereas for Republicans it's

like all about like the like branded shit. And so there is something to the fact that a meme coin is like the ultimate version of the like buy my branded stuff that does nothing for you. Right. It's like the kind of. And like it's sort of I just don't see if Democratic voters don't buy hats. Do you think they're going to buy the meme coin? Like that's kind of what I'm. I think the problem is it's hard to be.

it's hard to be second, you know. It's, it's, it's the man has sort of opened the window or been the first mover for a lot of these things. And then it's like, you follow up and you're like, I'm also having the hat. I'm also doing the coin. And it's like, it's very like transparent that like, you know, this is what you're doing? And I think, like, you said, you need to kind of like look one step ahead. And it's like, what would you do next instead of actually like launching a coin today? And I don't know what that answers. Newsom is doing it obviously as a parody, right? So he's calling out Trump and all these things where he's like selling bibles. Obviously, no Democrat is selling Bibles.

But, like, he's apparently sold a shitload of these Bibles. Wait, are they branded? Branded? Yeah, yeah. They're like, Gavin Newsom branded Bibles. And, like, it's obviously a joke, right? Like, it's not nobody who's supporting Gavin Newsom is into buying Bibles. But it's working.

It's creating clicks. It's getting headlines. It's like a funny thing. It's like, ah, ha, ha. Gavin Newsom Bible. Isn't that hilarious? It just feels very, like, um, forced, right? It's clearly, like, some staffer or some conference was like, this would be a funny

anything to do, but it's clearly, like, not in Gavin's nature to be doing this. I mean, he's had however many years to do something else, and he hasn't. And you're right that, like, in the short term, you're getting this. But I do wonder if, like, what would, like, Zoron do? Right. Like, Zoron actually, I think, did something fresh in politics, independent of how you, you know, perceive him. And I feel like he would actually do something interesting in crypto. I don't know what. But, like, I feel like that would actually be the move. The Zoron meme coin would, I think, do better. I agree with you. That would crush. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

That would crush. Or like, you wouldn't. I don't know if AOC would crush though. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, it has to be someone like younger and newer. Like I guess AOC is like similar, but she's like been around for a while.

Yeah, yeah. I need to be someone fresh, I feel like. Yeah. Interesting. Tarun, you're fresh. I was just talking about how I'm too old. I'm post, I'm post being shocked. I love, I love the way you guys gas each other up.

Turun, you're fresh, you're young. Yeah. You're the face of, Crypto, you get out there. You got this, man. You're a great podcaster. You're a great podcaster. You're the best.

Yeah. Okay, what was Duransell? This is a good question. I'm like, I don't think it would be a meme. Yeah, yeah. Like, what's brainstorm? Imagine you're his PR.

Public goods. It's some quadratic voting. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Quadratic voting. Oh, no, it would be one of these things where like everybody in the world gets an irdrop and like they've all failed. Like none of them work, but it's like every single time. people love this idea.

Yeah, it would be like World coin for Astoria. Yeah, yeah, yeah. World coin that you mail in a vote and you get your coin. That, hey. That works. I actually think like, like, what is Cuomo going after him for for like somehow his apartment is not, his rent stabilized and he doesn't need to live in the rent stabilized apartment or something? I feel like you have to design some quadratic voting token around that.

So that Cuomo can't can't make up shit. Yeah, fair enough. Well, speaking of regulations, so we got some big news, some big prints on chain, specifically GDP prints. So the U.S. Department of Commerce has recently announced that it is now going to be posting GDP prints on chain. Now, which chains, there's nine chains that they're posting it on. Bitcoin, E, Seoul, Tron, Avalanche, Polygon, ZK. Sink, optimism, Arbitrum.

stellar using chain link and Pith. Apparently they got some help from Coinbase Gemini and Cracken, I guess because Department of Commerce doesn't know how to use an RPC. I don't know. Apparently they did not use Cardano. And Cardano people are very upset about this. But other than that, they apparently are going to be expanding this beyond just GDP to also post PCE and real final sales.

According to Secretary Letnik, we are making America's economic truth immutable and globally accessible by like never before, cementing our role as a blockchain capital of the world. What do you guys think? GDP prints on chain reactions. What problem does this solve? I love that this is happening

because it shows that you have bureaucrats somewhere in the Commerce Department using blockchains, which is good. It means there's more people, testing a technology, working with partners to do this. It's awesome. But like, I don't think anyone asked for this. I don't think like anyone's like, man, I don't know what GDP is. If only there was

eight different immutable records of what GDP was. So like... Also, if you post it on eight blockchains, what if they disagree? Which one? Like, which... No, it's the same oracle. It's the same Oracle posting on all the chains. Oh, it's, oh, I see, I see, okay, fine. Yeah. Fair enough. I will say the one kind of trivia, industry, that I think is funny about this is the type of person who really wanted GDP on the blockchain in 2017 was exactly the opposite of like Trump. So it's like kind of funny to me because like in the 2017 ICU boom, there are all these like CPI pegs staple coins that people were trying to like cello started that way. Right. Like they were like instead of being a dollar, we're going to see CPI peg. And actually if you have all these,

if the BLSs have ever in the world posted this, you could actually, and they were actually going to have oracles where they like posted this to their chain to like compute their CPI index. So it's like there is something actually kind of funny about this and that two cycles ago, it was like the like leftist crypto side that really love this. And like now it's like, you know, like the political spectrum is a circle. I totally forgot about that. I remember Basis once upon a time said that they were going to eventually shift to CPI. That's the best use case I can come up with for this, the GDP.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were asking what project. We were asking what project World Liberty could build to make Tarun actually implode. I found it. Honestly, if they pull that off, I would just say amazing performance. A great way to tie all these things together, though. Performance are.

That would actually be really elegant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then just take the money in World Liberty that they have as backing and replace it with basis. I feel like that's done. Brilliant, brilliant business move.

What's also, I think you back about this, like the idea of pegging something to PCI, or sorry, to CPI, which comes out once a month, right? So like every month there would be like this very sudden move where all of a sudden like the Oracle Price just jumps to the new CPI level. Just seems like a horrible design for a coin. I mean also, also all of these things would have blown up in COVID, basically. Yeah, true. Yeah, exactly. When CPI was hitting like 10%, like, yeah, these things would have all exploded. So, yeah, in retrospect, like, that sounded like such a good idea in 2017.

In retrospect, like, yeah, what a terrible idea. It absolutely do not peg anything. But I was just trying to think of, like, when does someone want this type of data on the blockchain? Yeah, even on polymarch. People don't bet on GDP prints. People don't bet on CPI. They bet on interest. Well, don't they bet on the Fed cut, though?

Yeah, they bet on Fed cuts. But, like, there's also an external. Oracle for that, which is like, go look on the CME and you can like see the interest rate futures, right? Like nobody's directly betting on these things. So it does feel to Robert's point, like, why this? Hey, hey, I was, look, for the record, that is obviously the null hypothesis. Like, there's no reason you should want this.

I was just trying to present some alternative hypotheses that one could really stretch the imagination and hope it could be useful. Here's what I think Lutnik should have announced, in addition. to this because I actually speaking solely as somebody who loves crypto and loves app development and loves all the things you can do with it, I think they should have announced in parallel to this. There's also like an XPRIZ-like thing for whoever uses this data in the most interesting way, or the most important way or the most valuable way. If they actually challenged America to use this data on the blockchain and the winner,

I don't know, gets a tour of the White House and gets to like take a photo of Trump or whatever it is, if they actually challenged America to use this data and do something with it and show off what's possible on chain, then I would be impressed. And actually I... Imagine what people could do if they had access to GDP numbers. Well, I don't know. We're not that creative, we're not that creative. If you let any American get creative, I actually think they might be something cool.

I think there's one application you can build with this, and it's called GDP bet. And I think it would have been sick if they built it themselves. That would have been sick. If they like launch this alongside GDP bed and they just like threw it on chain? I mean, I mean, a very funny but random use case that I guess there is, I mean, this is not particular to the GDP data. But there was this like contest for in 2018, 2017 for like a NIST like National Institute for Science and Technology. Like that sets the standards for like figuring out how to generate the world's best seed entropy for like a random number. generator and like they tried a bunch of different sources like stock closing stock prices like the

last 10 bits of like the of a bunch of stocks and then they use some like aeronautical stuff like basically measurements from the national weather service like they had to use public data and they tried all of them and like basically the stock price one the closing price was like the most random seed you could get from nature effectively but I kind of wonder if the GDP prints are like equally random, especially now nowadays, that like the last, the trailing bits are random enough, especially when they have this like... Isn't it just two significant digits? Isn't like 3.2?

Well, actually, you're right, you're right. What they're posting on chain. I was thinking more about the stuff where like jobs numbers and whatever with like revisions that they're round them to the thousands anyway. Now that they fired the BLS head, I don't know that I would trust the significant digits of I'm trying to, I'm trying real hard to find something useful. Yeah, we're trying to best to win this competition. Yeah, yeah.

The GDP on-chain XP prize is that way? Yeah, yeah, that's what we're calling it. You know, like it doesn't remember trueflation? Yes, yes. I feel like this was like, like, oh, you kind of remember trueflation, but it was like a dream and it was like several years later. And now you're like, we should do something with the blockchain and CP. I don't know what exactly, but like, you know, the only commonality to trueflation and this thing is, as always Justin's son. Because I feel like the truflation, didn't he end up buying that team?

There was like the whole true USD bailout thing, whatever. Weren't they the same team? I don't know. He bought trust token in the true. You can edit that. You can, you can. I think it's a different team. Yeah, all right.

Then add up my comment. We'll edit that out. Or maybe not. We're keeping it in just to just to keep the record. We're going to put on the blockchain. We're going to post it using chain link on nine blockchains. So nobody will have forgotten. Yeah, so when are we posting the podcasts on the blockchain?

It seems like now, once you get FGDP, you should have that. Actually, actually, I was asked for us to post the chopping block on Zora as content and donate the money to charity or something. But we could put the chopping block on the blockchain. I'm down. A chopping blockchain? No. If you post it on Zora, like, do they actually host the, like the files? I think so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, we could post this to Zora and any of the coin that gets made or whatever, we all give it to Coin Center or something useful and, you know, the world wins. Let's do it. Okay. Done. Thank you, M.EV snipers for funding Coin Center in this very indirect manner. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don't. Well, well, yeah, watch what, watch out before you actually buy this content coin because we understand it's a dark forest out there. So stay safe. But if you do, then you'll be supporting CoinCenter and all the great work that they do. So, excellent. So another piece of news I thought was quite interesting on the regulatory side, CFTC is reviving the FBOT, Foreign Board of Trade registration path for overseas exchanges.

So the announcement was, I think, a little bit mangled by a lot of reporters who claimed that this was finance and bybit and whatever can now come back into the U.S. market. It's not quite what it means. What it does mean is that, according to Carolyn Pham, CFTC and Trump, term head. The CFTC has opened up U.S. markets to the rest of the world. Firms now have a path back after being driven offshore by regulation by enforcement. This means that you can apply under FBot rules to be CFTC licensed and offer derivatives and other asset classes to Americans, but you have to undergo very, very, pretty strict CFTC oversight, market surveillance, you know, all this other stuff. So it's not a walk in the park and it's probably not trivial for somebody like

finance or buy a bit to do this on day one, but possible that they could decide to, you know, accept this regulatory regime and open themselves back up to the U.S. market. So thoughts, is this good? Is this bad? Does this mean the end of Coinbase slash Robin Hood? What are you guys' thoughts on CFTC opening up the U.S. market to foreign exchanges? Well, I think there might be some confusion here. And again, I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a legal expert. I haven't actually read through this too much. But I just heard, you know, on Twitter that this might have been misinterpreted a bit. And again, I have not looked at the actual guidance, etc. But one of the opinions that I saw was different, was that specifically what they were saying

was that U.S. businesses could be re-onsured. And that the goal was instead of activity moving offshore, the inverse, in that you could start a business in the U.S. with all of this activity, and it could be sold to U.S. persons and offshore persons. And that this would actually be a huge benefit to businesses built in the U.S. or that want to re-resure user activity. So I'm not really sure how this works in practice, but I just saw a lot of conflicting in different opinions and what the actual impact of this was

and what the wording and ruling really included. So my understanding is that FBOT applies to exchanges like UREX or, you know, I think for something like LMAX or something like that, it's relatively straightforward for them to get this. designation, an FBot designation, but it's something you can easily get out of the box, but it doesn't require you to be dom-settled in the U.S., is my understanding. But it does require you to expose your, like, trading surveillance stuff to U.S. regulators so that CFTC can pull records anytime they want if they want to do an investigation

or whatever. That makes sense. So you have to onshore to U.S. regulation, and U.S. and ex-U.S. businesses can do that by submitting to U.S. jurisdiction. That's right. That's right. So again, is this something that Binance is going to do out of the box? Probably not. But it's certainly possible. I'm really curious to see if you get these moves. Because right now, almost all of them are using U.S. subsidiaries that are cordoned off from the global exchanges, right? So Binance U.S. recently came back to the U.S. market is now offering trading competition or trading incentives and so on.

I think O'Kax is doing the same thing. So there does seem to be an interest. in a lot of the overseas exchanges to reestablish a U.S. footprint because they just see how big the U.S. market is becoming. But so far it's been very difficult for them to get that foothold in building these U.S. subsidiaries.

This might be a path for them to be able to compete using their global liquidity and just tap into U.S. markets. But it might well be that the people who are trading there, they're like, yeah, I don't want the CFTC to be able to see everything I'm doing

because trading surveillance requires them to be able to say, like, oh, this Chinese guy, this Russian guy is trading on your exchange. We don't like that so much. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think I see these offer exchanges trying to reopen U.S. entities. Okay, because I announce they have a new office in like San Jose and a lot of rumblings that all these exchanges are looking at going public with their U.S. entities. Obviously in the U.S.

I think the question is like, you know, is the sum greater than the whole greater than some of its parts? Like if you have Binance U.S. and Binance.com offshore, is that worse than actually having one sort of global exchange with this sort of surveillance? and I don't know what the math looks like on that or how the exchanges think about that, but it does seem like it would simplify things all as being equal. No real opinions, but there was like also some other SEC and CFTC News that like hit the ticker right before we did this. Where like they're allowing other exchanges to sell spot crypto, like the CME like spot on CME? Or it's maybe not just CME, but like CME and NASAC.

It was like certain crypto assets are safe for. equity and the futures exchanges. It was like just came out. It was like a kind of weird news headline. And so like actually I'm more curious instead of like trying to dissect the how much that headline was like one commissioner saying something or not. Let's just pretend that's true that like Nizzee and Azac, Sammy can offer spot. I saw Atkins retweeted it.

So I'm guessing there is there's some endorsement. Yeah, yeah. There's clearly something there. but like I don't know the whole new story. So I just want to, but I'm more interested in like what happened, the consequences of like if they allowed this. Like are the ETFs dead then?

Because like wouldn't you rather just buy Bitcoin on? Like I'm just kind of curious. Like what do you guys think? I think the ETFs are not dead because probably they will be, they just have kind of a liquidity mode. Right. Like if you're buying spot Bitcoin on one venue versus another, like what does it take to move it from one venue to another?

you know, like that's actually, if you're a traditional hedge fund, it's probably not the kind of thing that you're used to dealing with. Okay, I have to like provide an address from, you know, from NISI to go move it over to this other exchange over here. My guess is that they'll probably just keep trading the ETF for a while. I mean, the ETF is super low fees, right? So relative to simplicity and the liquidity that it already has, my guess is that the ETF probably just remains a trench for a while. That'd be my guess. Yeah, I don't know. I just think there's just like, it's something. interesting if every exchange can sell every asset all in the same place. Like Coinbase announcer starting to do stocks today, right? So it's like, what is the end world where everyone

can do everything? Yeah. I mean, the end world where anyone can do anything looks almost like a crypto blockchain with applications on it that are composable and open and anyone could build. I mean, I think at some point this will all get amalgamated and you will have applications that sell every financial product because at the end of the day, you have a similar user base, you have a similar set of risks, you have a similar everything. And so having these extremely tall walls that separate asset classes based on arbitrary parameters is a little bit outdated and a little bit ridiculous. And so I do think this is where we're headed. And, you know, we may as well rip the band-aid off. Yeah, it's interesting because we talked with this about, we talked with Vlad about this,

about the idea that, you know, both Coinbase and Robin Hood are going in the same direction, which is being the Everything app. And it does seem to me like, okay, let's say that, you know, Schwab or, you know, Fidelity starts offering you to buy and sell crypto, which I guess, I guess Fidelity already does. But let's say every brokerage does, every exchange does. Like what we've seen historically in crypto is that exchanges really want to verticalize. So they offer trading and lending and staking and ICOs and this, you know, whatever, every single product they can possibly come up with.

They offered under the same roof. and this is what financial institutions do is they start offering more and more products, they cross sell, they sort of pick up more and more margin through offering auxiliary services. I think, although it's already been true for a while

that there are some traditional platforms where you can buy and sell crypto, overwhelmingly people seem to want to buy and sell their crypto through Coinbase or through Robin Hood or through a few places, even when almost everywhere it will offer you to buy and sell crypto. It's not where most people buy and sell their crypto.

I don't know why. I wouldn't have predicted that five years ago if you'd ask me like, okay, what's going to happen when, you know, Vanguard's are supporting crypto or Fidelity start supporting crypto. My assumption would be like, well, everybody's going to get a piece of the pie. Coinbase is going to suffer. And anybody who has a relationship with a brokerage or with some financial institution, that's where they're going to get their crypto, because they don't get their from. They just want a trustworthy platform that's going to custody of their crypto. Demonstrably, that's not what's happened, right? People sort of want to do their yolowing over in

Robin Hood, and they want to do their safe stuff over in the brokerage account. And they sort of don't have the two elements touch each other. And maybe that's the answer is that it's sort of like these mental boxes that like all my YOLO Dijin shit goes over here. And like my safe stuff that, you know, I have like my, we have like a family brokerage account. Like that's over here. And I don't necessarily want my kids to see like all my fart coin. So now you got to put the retirement money into that court coin. That college fund put that into. Very important. You're sounding like Cliff vastness when you're describing this partition of mind thing because he always, you know how he's like,

he's always really going off on this fart coin thing and how people like, like, they need like their gambling budget and they're not gambling budget and fart coin takes up all the gam, I don't know why fart coin for some reason, people of that age who are like 50 to 60, it like really is the meme coin that like strikes them in the head the most. It's because they went to high school in like the 70s or 80s or whatever and,

you know, they just made a lot of fart jokes then. Look, farting is a human universal. Everybody, that's the thing. Everybody understands Farquine. Yeah, but I don't think, I don't really, I feel like it's like a very boomer friendly in a way that's like. But the thing that defies explanation is like, look, Venmo you can now buy and sell crypto. PayPal, you can buy and sell crypto.

Fidelity, you can buy and sell crypto. But it's not where people are buying and selling crypto, right? Overwhelmingly, they're doing it through Robin Hood and Coinbase. Like, am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. You're not wrong. But, like, I don't know. Like, I personally am an individual who,

I would like one app that I can do all this stuff, assuming that it was good economic terms. I think the risk is that a business has its core constituency and all the new products, you know, they view as like an added rake and they're like terrible terms and they're not as good as the competition. And, you know, you don't get a super app. You get a crypto-native thing that starts off and it's like good at crypto. And then everything else is they're not as good at it. So they charge too much money or it's weird structures or who knows.

So I person would love something where it's good at everything. Do I think any platform or product can be good at everything? No. I think it's going to be clunky as anything. But like maybe 10 years from now, we look back and we laugh at this. We're like, of course you can have one app and you can buy every possible asset. You know, from live chickens to crypto tokens to, you know, a stock to a derivative, to a banana, you know? I think like there is an interesting question of like, if ever.

Every app becomes the every financial product app. Let's like ignore the rapy type of stuff you're talking about where it's like, yes, I can get cash delivered or chickens delivered to my house. So I'll let those be separate from the financial one. But there's kind of this weird thing where like the stable coinization of bank accounts. I don't know what else to call it. If that happens, then there's basically very low lock-in to a lot of fintech apps. Whereas like right now, there's kind of a ton of lock-in to like ACA-H.

fronting, like lending you money so that you get money immediately on the platform, processing your ACH, and like because you've done it so many times, they're willing to do it. Like stuff like that kind of disappears when you're holding most things, like a larger percent of society is holding things in stables. And so in that world, the only competitive advantage is like yield in U.X. There's like nothing if you, and marketing, I guess. But like those are, it's like you only have three levers. There's not kind of this like I have these systematic. lock-in things. And like, does that mean that you converge to like, there's only one app? Or does that mean you have some seat-downs? Well, if you're on somebody's ledger, right, I'm sorry, you're on

somebody's platform, right? They're not necessarily leaving you out on a public ledger, right? They're probably going to have some kind of, it's a great account, but like the data is not fully public. It's not typically visible where your money is. And to that end, they actually don't want to be able to export your data, your credit, like your reputation on their platform, so that they can extend you credit, but if you go, you know, export your stable coins and go to some other platform, they don't necessarily know your spending history, they don't know how good of a credit risk you are. And so they actually don't want all that data to be exportable naively. So I think they will still fight to have that lock in, even if you can export all your cash, too, really. I think the main

problem is like, even in a lot of apps, right, they'll like give you fast withdrawal to your main bank account, but not fast withdrawal to other bank accounts because like that's the one they KYC or trust or whatever, right? But if everything is becoming more like crypto, it'll be more like using a crypto exchange where it's like I withdraw to wherever I want and you can't really stop me that much, right? And in that world, right?

Like if everyone's bank starts looking like Coinbase in that way or like Binance or wherever, then it really does become like, you know, what are the things that make people sticky on crypto exchanges? Like some of it's laziness. Some of it is like... Well, a lot of it is in. incentives, right? So, like, if you're, you know, Binance, you know, VIPTU. Yielded U.X are like really

not just that, not just that. But it's like if you're, if you're really locked, like, let's see if you've been a huge finance user, you have really low fees on Binance. You're not just going to go say, well, buy bit offers the same products. I'll just might as well use by bit because by bit doesn't give you the same fee tier because you haven't traded on by bit for as long, right? So you can you can basically build in that lock-in. Like crypto exchanges are already in the state of nature that you're describing. Yeah, yeah, but I'm saying like imagine now that's true for like all these other apps. They're going to have to change a lot.

They're not going to look. Yeah, granted, granted. But they change a lot in the direction of basically looking like crypto exchanges. Yeah. Right. But like your bank, your bank app will have to look more like Coinbase,

right? Which is like a kind of weird thing to think of it. Kind of, kind of. But then at the same time, like, look, if I imagine this end state where everything is the everything store, right? I still can't really imagine being like, great, I'm going to move all my ETFs to Coinbase. You know, I just like, for whatever reason,

like that just kind of feels weird. me like I feel like I wouldn't trust Coinbase to like if only we have Paul Graywall here right now to give you a lecture like how dare you that's the thing is like I want my ETFs on like a boring platform with like janky to FAA but like still but it has to FAA like somehow I like trust

that I had to use a transfer agent recently that is the most ghetto unsecure thing ever I've ever used that's why Super State exists but that's a different episode there you go there you go I'm just I'm just saying like there's so much of janky stuff in the equities markets. Totally, totally. But it's like janky in a way that you've got to

call somebody on the phone, you know, and like, and somehow that gives me some confidence. You somehow feel like, no Russian hackers are taking my, my ETFs. I love that you trust DTCC so much with your life. You're just like, there must be the smartest. And it's like anytime I meet someone from DTCC, it's kind of a good security model that like, yeah, no Russians are allowed on DTCC. That's a pretty good security model. I don't know. Yeah, it seems very easily hacked and forged. it's a very flimsy security model. Yeah.

I think like there's there's an obvious sense in which a big cornerstone of security is just like being very low tech. You know, so like you know, don't let the thing touch the internet. Like use very simple devices. Like, you know, like a ledger is much preferable to some like fancy newfangled thing that, you know, has a three, whatever, touch screen or whatever. And I think the same thing is kind of true for ETFs. Is that like I think it's pretty safe if like a company has a ledger that's just like an Excel. sheet. Like, I'm actually not worried at all about that getting stolen, but if I have, you're shaking

your head. We'll do a whole episode. Come out. Let's do it. This is like, this is the episode. This is the episode. I feel like the whole stock issuance process compared to like calling the mint function and like knowing where it's going is ridiculous, right? Like, it's not even terrible. I think there's tradeoffs. I think there's tradeoffs. I think there's tradeoffs. But like, I think it's very clearly true that I never worry that my portfolio company, like that my stock in my portfolio company, that stolen. Literally never worry about it. I've never worried about it once in my life. But is that because you're confident in the IT practices of these companies and the probability

that data is exfiltrated or it's hacked or data is changed? Or do you feel confident in it because you know that if there is a problem, that it's reversible and that any zero is easily turned into a one and that any court can fix a problem when it occurs. Yeah, totally. Granted. Yes, that's why. I mean, that's really what you're getting because, like, they get hacked all the time. Yeah, totally, totally.

But like, if my, if my shares ever disappear, like, I have my, I mean, it's basically a blockchain, right? We're like, we have our own idea of what we own. They have an Excel sheet. They have to match. If they don't, there's like a conflict resolution process. I do think it's just funny to hear a crypto investor be like, I don't want to hold my assets. Okay, okay.

Would you move your ETFs to Coinbase? Yes. Sure. Why not? Yeah. Straight away. Tom? Yeah.

If they gave me better fees, I'm not paying their fucking two per- I'm not paying two percent to trade an ETF. I'm not talking about better fees. Now, yeah, if there's better fees, then that's a totally different story. But that's, that's a different reason why you're doing it. I think Robin Hood is the is the counterpoint here, though, right? Which is like, this is the way the youngs have come into investing. And there's such a huge point of it.

And I think that's maybe the bigger thing here is just like, very likely for young people that, like, they grew up on Coinbase, they will totally buy their ETFs on Coinbase. The question is, will you move your ETFs to Coinbase if they start offering ETFs? I guess I have no, I have no reason to, you know, it's like I already have a, you know, a brokerage. I think part of it is just young people are going to be the ones buying crypto. So it's like, even if these other brokerages also offer crypto, I just don't think they're going to be successful. It's like sort of a very much, you know, kind of backwards way of actually, you're thinking about it, it's like people get locked into their behaviors when

they're 25 and they're not going to change. And so if you're used to banking through a, you know, a neobank, that's just where you're going to keep everything and you're not going to go and transition to fidelity just because you're like, oh, I'm old now. I should use like an old person's product. Like those businesses just die over time. Let me articulate a clear explanation is that if you hack into my Vanguard account, there's very little you can do.

Like you actually just can't do that much. Yes and no. I mean, there's a lot of scams that are similar to like the way it works in crypto exchange. where, like, they could dump your entire account into some random-ass penny stock, right? And bid up some penny stock from one cent to $2 and then through all these different other accounts, they're selling it at this price. There's ways to, like, totally rug a Tradfine account. And they do happen in financial markets all the time in the same way that it's one of the

ways that people, like, exfiltrate the profits of an exchange without sending it to themselves in crypto. So, like, there are ways where you can lose your money in a brokerage account today, right? Do you remember, do you remember when, like, the Bangladeshi Central Bank? You remember in the Bangladeshi Central Bank, like, almost lost a billion dollars because someone called the Fed? Like, these custodians are, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. They did. But I don't think they lost a full billion.

I think they lost, like, 600. They lost a lot. Yeah. Do you remember when someone fat figured, like, a bond payment? from Revlon or some company for $900. Oh, yeah, yes. I mean, like, and city, city, city how to pay a huge fine for it.

Yeah. Like, dude, Haseeb, I think it's fucking crazy when put your ETS in a crypto exchange. As, as a,

as a crypto investor, you know, like, you think it's crazy that I wouldn't do that. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's crazy.

I think you guys are not paranoid enough about crypto exchanges. I think crypto exchanges are, like, some of the biggest honeypots in the world. I used to work in anti-fraud. Right. I know like and you know, you see all this stuff coming out about like the, the, just the rate at which people on crypto exchanges are getting fucked all the time. Like, I think the answer is that you want to keep as little of value on crypto exchanges all the time because they are such massive honeypots.

Like they are extremely. But this goes back to your point. See, from earlier, the reason why they are targeted exponentially more is because today crypto exchanges handle assets that are irreversible. They handle crypto tokens like USDC and Bitcoin and Ether, that once it's gone out, you cannot get it back with a court order. You cannot get it back with all the safeguards of traditional markets. The other assets going into the crypto exchange do benefit from those protections, the stocks that you're so comfortable owning because of these incredible legal protections.

It depends on how it works. If you can take my ETFs, log into my account, sell all the ETFs, and then transfer into Bitcoin and then withdraw to an account, then yeah, I would not want that at all. You can't do that right now in my Vanguard. On my Vanguard, all you can do is like withdraw cash to the bank account. In the world where everything becomes the everything app, you can always do that. Okay, that may be true. That may be true.

That's like that's the future we are careening to work. So you might as well go to the people who learn how to build security practices the longest, then like fidelity getting hacked by North Korea five million times and then suddenly, oh, finally they hire, you know, like build in different processes because they weren't used to it. They weren't used to this attack vector. Fine. I just don't think this is something that you should be dogmatic about. I think this is like intensely practical, which is just the 101 of security.

I think it's just more like if I'm a crypto founder, if I'm a crypto founder and I'm like, I'm like, I'm trying to make this thing so that like everyone who's 21 who's like never going to buy an ETF anywhere near someone who has an E in their name. or like has a name like fidelity like no offense i don't know i'm not trying to pick on that i'm just any of these barely e-trade fidelity whatever right like no no one young was ever going to go on those apps and like i'm trying to pitch a VC and and like they're like no no no like your product's amazing it's great all these 19 year olds used to i'll never use it that's not i like that to me is like crazy that's all i look i think if you create a totally different like walled garden within Coinbase where all of the traditional assets live,

and they cannot be, like, all you can do is the same thing you could do in something like Fidelity, where you can just, you know, take the essence and take them out, they cannot cross the blood-brain barrier between the crypto side and the traditional asset side, then I would be comfortable with using it. But if it's literally all just like commingle, it's all just a big fucking pile of assets and you can just sell one by the other and then go withdraw on crypto, I'd be like, no fucking way. You're not ready for the everything app future though,

Like the regulatory stuff is making every exchange become like this. Like I like that fidelity is dumb and is not in everything app. Right. Yeah. See me has spot. Imagine a CME has spot. Are you going to stop using the CME? Yeah.

Exactly. Your argument natural leads you to this. I don't think there's anything to do with the CME and spot. Why would that affect the CME? Because now I can withdraw. I can sell on CME and withdraw it. Oh, sure, sure. Okay.

If you can withdraw Bitcoin, fair. I could see it potentially. Yeah. I mean, I can see why. I think it would because, like, yes, if you can, like, how do you fence? Like, look, I'll tell you, having worked in anti-fraud, okay? One of the biggest questions you always ask is what is the cost of fencing a stolen account, right? Meaning, like, what is the rate at which you can monetize?

If you have an account worth $100K, how much can you actually get that out for? If you're a Chinese hacker, a Russian hacker, what's the take rate? The answer could be 20%, 30%, 50%, depends on, it depends on a lot of details, right? If you can withdraw crypto, then it's like 70, 80% that you can monetize this for cash, which means your incentive to hack this account goes way, way up. Everybody in the right mind knows this. That's why I'm saying there's an obvious reason why you want your account to be dumber if you can afford it.

You want to have less degrees of freedom if a hacker is going to attack you. Now, for Coinbase, like, look, if you're costing crypto, then you have no choice. It has to be in that security model. But I think that's the reason why I would not expect many people to move their ETFs over into something like Coinbase. The same reason, like, I don't think a lot of people move their ETFs over into Robin Hood. If they, like, I have a Robin Hood account. I don't move all my ETFs into there, even though I'm sure it's probably not expensive to do so. Like you want to have as many different segregated accounts as you possibly can in case something goes wrong.

To farm the airdial to airdrop. One day we'll have a system with the safeguards that has seen. received likes and the awesome high-tech programmable stuff that Tarun likes. Look, I'm as wrong-wrote crypto as you guys, but I'm just saying if I think this, there's like millions of other people who think this and maybe can't articulate why. They intuitively feel that. So if there's some way to address them, then maybe there is a path that people could start moving their ETFs into a Coinbase or Robin Hood and really make it into that everything app.

But until then, I think I think I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, the voice of the people on this one. All right. Well, I guess with that. On that note, we got to turn off this crypto podcast and go. All right. The chopping boomers have reared their head again. The chopping boomers.

That's right. All right. I feel very attacked on this one. So we'll see what the people think. I want to hear what people think on this because I don't think I'm alone, but maybe I am. All right. That's it for this week. Thanks, everybody.

See you all next time.